Page 51 of Killer Clone

“We certainly will. Name?”

He gave it.

Stella caught Stacy’s eye. If Tripp’s alibis checked out, he was guilty of no more than being a class A jerk. Well, that and theft, underage drinking, and possession of a controlled substance. But none of those were worth the effort.

Stacy dropped the laptop and the phone into an evidence bag. “What do you think?”

Stella glared at Tripp. They had no evidence to show Tripp had killed Patrick. She could scare him even more by taking him in and letting him sweat it out in an interview room, but they had bigger things to worry about.

Plus, they had what they came for. “Turn around.”

Tripp shifted on the bed. Stella grabbed his shoulder and removed the handcuffs. He rubbed his wrists and scowled as though he’d just endured hours of torture.

Stella fished the half-empty bottle of vodka from under the bed. “We’ll confiscate this and let you off this time. You’ve been warned.”

Stacy grabbed the bag of weed and accompanying paraphernalia.

Stella leaned close to Tripp.

He retreated to the corner of the bed.

“And if we find you’ve been withholding information from us again, Tripp, I will make sure that your next dorm room is a Nashville jail cell and your next roommate will be a two-hundred-fifty-pound biker who eats little boys like you for breakfast.”

Tripp turned white.

They left him there on the bed and made their way back to the elevator.

The entrance of the student dorms was busier than it had been on the way in. A block of classes must’ve recently ended, and students were returning for an early lunch, a midday study, or more likely, some late-morning gossip with friends.

“Why wouldn’t Patrick have taken his phone with him?” Stacy dabbed at her eye makeup. “Who does that?”

Stella opened the door to head outside. “Who knows. Maybe his idiot roommate stole it before he took his last drive. Anyway, we have the thing now. We just need Mac to crack it.”

22

Mac dug an adapter out of her desk drawer and searched for the power socket on Marrion’s Microsoft Surface Laptop.

“What do think are the odds we won’t need a password?”

Stella shrugged. “Doesn’t every computer need a password to log in?”

“Sure. But you can change the settings on a PC so you only have to enter your password after you shut the thing down or after updates.”

Mac opened the screen and rubbed her hands together. She looked like a kid who’d just received a locked box and a long-handled screwdriver. This was a puzzle and a prize rolled into one technological package. All Mac had to do was crack it open.

She hit the power button. Sure enough, the laptop required a password.

Stacy swung in the chair next to Stella. “Can’t you hack it?”

“Sure. I’ll replicate a brute force attack to gain access. Basically, it’s trial and error. I use a program to generate thousands of passwords, initially based on information we know about Marrion, like his date of birth, names of family members,that sort of thing. It’s a tried-and-true method, but, as you might imagine, that could take days.”

Stella huffed. They didn’t have days to spare.

Mac’s disposition remained sunny. “In the meantime, there’s nothing stopping us from guessing. For this guy, I might try some favorite historical figures. What do you think? Napoleon or Washington?”

Stella shook her head. She wished she knew.

Mac typed. Winced. Rubbed her chin. “Hmm. No dice. Fun, though.”

---