AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yes …?” said Nisha carefully, thinking she knew exactly what was coming next.
The editor stubbed out her cigarette and leaned forward. “Unless we could perhaps come to an arrangement.”
“And what sort of arrangement would that be?” sighed Nisha.
“Perhaps we could help you with details of Bhavna’s assignment in return for details of the murder.”
“Details?” repeated Nisha.
“Mrs. Gandhe, all of us are devastated by the loss of Bhavna,” said the editor, “but we realize the show must go on. She would have wanted details of her murder to appear as an exclusive on the front pages of her own tabloid—not in some other newspaper. Come on now, what information on the case can you offer me?”
Nisha shook her head in disgust. “We’re trying to find a killer here—”
“And I’m trying to run a newspaper,” shrugged the editor. Her phone began to ring and Nisha thanked her stars. She signaled that she had to leave and made a quick retreat from the office before the editor could put down the receiver.
As Nisha left the office building she was being watched by a camera. Its telephoto lens whirred like a casino counting machine.
Chapter 18
“HARI?”
Private’s tech wizard turned at the sound of Nisha’s voice. “What can I do for you?” he asked, pleased to see her, and even more pleased when she perched herself on the edge of his desk.
“I went to the Afternoon Mirror today,” she explained.
“Looking for a job?”
She chuckled. “Looking for information on Bhavna Choksi, only her editor was far more interested in what I had to tell her about the murder than actually helping us find the killer.”
He pulled a face. “Newshounds, eh? Tsk.”
“We recovered a laptop from Bhavna’s home,” said Nisha. She pointed. “That one there, I believe. Could you crack it?”
“Of course,” he smiled.
“Brilliant.” She eased herself off the end of his desk, departing with her jacket slung over her shoulder and her Glock at her hip. “Let me know how you get on.”
“Will do,” he said, watching her go. Then he placed Bhavna Choksi’s Windows notebook before him on his workstation. This was going to be fun. The hacker in him always relished the prospect of entering forbidden territory.
He plugged in a USB flash drive preloaded with a program titled Ophcrack and held down the power button until the machine powered off. He then powered up the computer, entered the machine’s BIOS, changed the boot sequence, saved the changes, and exited.
Taking a deep meditative breath, Hari restarted the machine and waited for Ophcrack to load. The program used rainbow tables to solve passwords up to fourteen characters in length and Hari had found that it usually took less than ten seconds to pop one out. He began counting backwards from ten.
Exactly on cue, Ophcrack spat out Bhavna’s password. Hari wrote it down on a piece of paper, unplugged the USB flash drive from the computer, rebooted it, and logged in using the password supplied b
y the program. He then began examining the journalist’s computer for material that could be of use to Private India.
Besides previous articles on a variety of subjects, Hari began looking for Bhavna’s latest web searches. Within a few minutes he knew that she had been searching for travel coordinators, stylists, pet groomers, physiotherapists, public relations managers, nutrition experts, fashion designers, beauticians, psychiatrists, and fitness instructors. Not only that, but …
Hari picked up the intercom handset and dialed Nisha’s extension. “I can tell you what Bhavna Choksi was working on in the twenty-four hours before she was killed,” he said. “She’s got web searches galore, plus she was good enough to keep a list on her desktop.”
“Excellent,” Nisha beamed. “Apparently her most recent piece was a feature on the lifetstyles of the rich and famous …”
“I’m looking at it now. It’s a bunch of names, lots under the heading ‘possibles,’ just one under the heading ‘definite.’”
“All right,” she said, “let’s have the definite.”
“It’s a hairstylist. Name of Aakash—just ‘Aakash’—at the Shiva Spa Lounge.”
