Unzipped by Lois Greiman Read Free Book Online Page B

followed, but little else. No attempted murders, no harassment charges. Nothing. Maybe he saved his barbed threats for female psychologists who killed tight ends in their second-rate offices.
    I tried a few other avenues, certain I’d net a few peccadilloes at least, but I was disappointed again. Frustrated, I moved into the kitchen, spooned up a bowl of double mocha inspiration, and wandered back to my computer. But my search for facts about Bomstad was even less productive, garnering me nothing but information about his warrior days on the football field.
    How could that be? Rivera had said the man had been arrested. Had he been lying? My heart rate rose a notch. Maybe he had fabricated the entire story. Maybe Bomstad had been as clean as a nun’s undies and the dark lieutenant was just yanking my chain. After all, Bomstad had been a highly visible personality in the community. Surely if there had been trouble, the media would have plastered it on the front page. Unless the Bomber’s handlers really
had
gagged the news hounds. In which case it was going to be much more difficult to learn the truth. But there would be records somewhere. If only I knew how to break into police files, I could—
    Solberg. The little hacker’s image cluttered my mind like so much regurgitated SPAM. J.D. Solberg. I’d first met him in Chicago, but he’d since transferred to L.A. Short, bald, irritating. I didn’t really know him on a first-name basis, but he had been something of a fixture at The Warthog. In fact, he had spent a good deal of time trying to convince me to check out his hard drive. There’s nobody who can come up with clever come-ons like an electronics whiz and I had heard a million of them, which reminded me that the shrink business wasn’t so bad, even with dead men cluttering up your office now and again. It was possible even Rivera’s brooding attentions were preferable to . . . Crap. I still remembered Solberg’s e-mail address—[email protected].
    I stared at my PC, considering, then clicked the screen into darkness and wandered back to the sanctuary of my kitchen. In a matter of minutes I had finished off the carton of ice cream and slammed my head against the wall enough times to convince myself to contact Solberg.
    The task was quick and painful. When I flopped back into bed my clock said 5:55. At 5:56 I was out cold. At 6:17 the phone rang.
    I blinked groggily at my clock radio, certain I couldn’t possibly be awake. Not at such an ungodly hour on a Sunday morning. It was just a bad dream, I assured myself, but the phone shrieked again so I picked up the receiver and croaked an unintelligible greeting.
    “Gorgeous,” someone said. “I knew you’d come around.”
    I checked the clock again. Still 6:17. The nightmare continued.
    “Who the hell is this?” Consider this an early morning modification of polite but dismissive.
    “Come on. You don’t recognize me?”
    I had just about fumbled the receiver back into the cradle when he spoke again.
    “It’s J.D. Solberg.”
    My mind trundled along like a minivan at rush hour. I lifted the receiver tentatively back to my ear. “Solberg?”
    “In the flesh.”
    I shoved the hair out of my face and scrubbed at my eyes. “How’d you get my number?”
    “You e-mailed me, babe.”
    “I didn’t e-mail my number.” And it was unlisted—for several very good reasons, one of which was on the other end of the line.
    He laughed. Yep, it was J.D. all right. He still sounded like an inebriated donkey.
    “You know what they call me, babe.”
    An ass? It was just a guess, but I had a good feeling about it.
    “The Geek God,” he said, sounding inexplicably proud. “Give me a pair of initials, I can get you a green card.”
    “I don’t need a green card.” What I needed was nine hours of sleep and a lobotomy. What the hell had I been thinking?
    “So what’d you want from the Geekster, babe? The usual?”
    I refrained from venturing a guess about the usual.