by Robin Mahle
Culling the self-important masses was necessary for society to function for all. Generating fame for doing absolutely nothing to further the greatness of humanity only dumbed it down. All the while, still placing upon a pedestal the vain, hackneyed, beautiful people for their worthless contributions. Danny sought retribution for this flawed system that hurt people like him and families like he had.
An angry fire in him that grew alongside his desperation flourished. Danny threw back the last of his beer and gazed at the television.
The barman approached and braced his hands against the shiny wood top. “Hey, buddy, you need another one? You can squeeze in one more before last call if you want.”
“No. I’m good. Thanks.” Danny caught sight of a man at the end of the bar. He must’ve only just arrived. Older than he was, probably mid-thirties if he was to venture a guess. Danny scoffed at the sight of the man scrolling through his phone, utterly ignoring the world around him as so many people had.
The man drew his eyes slowly to Danny. “You all right there, pal?”
“No problem here.” He turned his gaze to the TV above the bar but couldn’t help casting a side-eye at the man, realizing he still hadn’t taken his eyes off his phone. “What a fucking joke.”
Finally setting down his phone, he turned to Danny. “What’s that now? I’m sorry, do I know you?”
The bartender eyed the exchange and appeared to sense a scuffle on the horizon. “Hey. We have a problem here, boys?”
Danny shook his head. “None at all.”
“Good.” The barman cast his gaze between the men. “Let’s keep it that way.”
“I will take another beer, actually,” Danny said to him. “Please.”
“Sure thing.” He grabbed a bottle and opened the top. “Last one, then I gotta close out the bar.”
“Thanks.” Danny drank his beer and tried to ignore the guy at the end. He’d already caused a scene at the hospital the other night and they’d almost called the cops. Given his recent actions, cops weren’t on his list of people he wanted to see.
Danny reached for his phone and casually scrolled through it like all the other lemmings, except that he had a purpose. The software installed on it allowed him to connect to the cell tower that everyone in the bar, and everyone around for several blocks, was connected to. He picked up the signals and now had to filter them. That was the hard part. Hard, but not impossible. With two main carriers in the area, Danny narrowed down the signals. He knew the guy at the end of the bar wasn’t using some cut-rate carrier since he held a brand new iPhone in his hand.
Danny sent a binary SMS to the signals coming from inside the bar. Luckily, there were only 4 as it was almost closing time. He relied on the fact that most of the big carriers still used outdated DES ciphers. While the carrier would send back an error message with an embedded cryptographic signature through SMS, Danny could use a simple table to decrypt the message. After that, he could send a properly coded SMS that carried a Java applet. Once the original phone opened the message, the Java applet would install onto the SIM card. Voila! Job done.
To eliminate the other numbers, Danny was going to have to talk to this guy. Sure, he could play the game with everyone in this bar, but the man at the end drew the short straw. “Hey, I didn’t mean any offense earlier.” He offered his hand. “I’m Danny. It’s just been a rough day. I apologize.”
The man turned to him, pulling his gaze away from his phone. “Jeff. No worries, Danny. I get it. Happens to the best of us.”
Danny returned to his beer. “Good to meet you, Jeff.”
Kate bolted upright in the hotel bed and surveyed the room. Where am I? Where am I? It took a moment to register her whereabouts until she spotted Eva asleep in the other bed. Relief swelled in her chest. She padded into the bathroom and quietly closed the door. The harsh blue light stung her eyes and when they adjusted, she saw her reflection in the mirror. Kate’s brunette hair was in stark contrast to her ghostly white face. The purple circles under her eyes aged her ten years. Some might call this PTSD, but Kate refused. Just like everything she had faced in her life, this, too, would pass.
It was important that she keep this to herself. She could handle it and wouldn’t dare jeopardize her new position. And while Nick had seen her struggles up close and personal, he wouldn’t say a word to Fisher. This promotion was too important, and Kate had worked too hard to let the Lehmann situation get in her way.
She splashed water on her face and patted it dry with a hand towel. Calmer, collected, she turned off the light and walked back into the room.
“You okay?” Eva’s tone was soft and unexpected.
“Fine. I’m fine. Get some rest.” Kate climbed back into bed and closed her eyes. George Lehmann couldn’t get to her anymore. He sat in a jail cell and would never touch her again. And as far as his brother, Richard… he was a little harder to forget.
Jonathan Surrey held a cup of coffee while he stood in the hotel lobby, waiting for the rest of his team. When the elevator doors parted and the agents appeared, he raised the cup. “Morning. You two want to grab a coffee?” He tossed a glance toward the café. “It’s not half-bad. I’ll wait.”
“Mind if we hit the Starbucks on the way to the field office?” Kate wore black dress pants with a beige blouse and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. It looked as though she hadn’t suffered a restless night at all.
“Why didn’t I think of that? Probably better than this crap.” Surrey tossed his cup in the trash and starting toward the exit. “How did everyone sleep?”
Duncan spoke up. “Not bad for a hotel. You?”
“Meh.” He pushed through the doors and headed to the parking lot. “Got a text from Tillis a little while ago. He says his team has finished reviewing all the surveillance video.”
“And?” Kate asked, trailing him just a few steps.
“Nada. No signs of anything unusual. No cars hanging around, no one scoping out the joints,” he replied. “So I guess we’re back at Square One.”
“We’re always at Square One.” Kate opened the rear passenger door of the rental car and slipped onto the grey cloth seat. “How did a man who planted bombs on cars avoid detection anywhere near the crime scenes? It doesn’t make sense.”
Surrey keyed the ignition and pulled out of the lot. “He had to have planted the devices at another location. Another time.”
“We already know he follows his victims for days, maybe weeks to learn their routines.” Duncan glanced over her shoulder at Kate. “Let me see if Villanova made any headway on determining when those phones were cloned.” She made the call. “Hey, it’s Duncan. Any news?” She listened and nodded. “Yeah, that’s great. Send it over to me, would you? We needed this. Appreciate the help.” Duncan ended the call. “Villanova got what we needed. It should help us pinpoint a timeline.”
“Finally, some good news,” Kate replied. “Something we might also want to consider…”
“What’s that?” Surrey asked.
“The unsub might work for a cell phone carrier, given his particular knowledge of phones. Do we know if the victims used the same carrier?”
Surrey eyed her through the rearview mirror. “At this point, it’s worth a look.”
Agent Stallard hurried inside the Pittsburgh FBI field office. Wearing an ardent expression, he stopped at the security desk. “I need to see Agent Tillis. Now.”
Tillis strolled into the lobby as he awaited the BAU agents and spotted Stallard. “Morning. I didn’t expect to see you this early. Just waiting on our expert profilers to see what great things…”
Stallard marched ahead of him. “We need to talk. Your office. Now.”
Tillis peered over his shoulder, hesitated a moment, then jogged to catch up. He looked back at the front desk. “Hey, when those Quantico guys show up, send them to my office.”
“You got it, Agent Tillis,” the man replied.
He caught up to Stallard. “What wild hair crawled up y
our backside this morning?”
The two walked side-by-side and as they reached Tillis’s office, Stallard continued. “I found something. A signature on the devices. Son of a bitch left us a calling card.” He opened his brief case on the small table and laid out several pieces of the explosives that had been recovered from the three blast sites. “I just got the lab analysis back comparing the three vehicle-borne IEDs. This guy might be a genius hacker, but as I suspected, he’s definitely a novice bombmaker.”
“Looks like we arrived just in time,” Surrey appeared in the doorway, capturing Tillis’s attention.
“Morning. I don’t think your timing could’ve been any better. Come in. Stallard was just getting ready to explain to us how our bombmaker is building his bombs.”
Kate headed toward the table. “Is that what’s left of the explosive devices?”
“Not all of it, but the main parts,” Stallard added. “As I was about to tell Tillis, our guy left us some clues.” He pulled out the report. “Labs came back and concluded the use of smokeless powder.”
“Easily obtained just about anywhere firearms are sold,” Surrey replied.
Stallard aimed gun-shaped fingers at him and winked. “Yep. Enthusiasts use it to load their own cartridges. And they’re low explosive. So, if the intent was to avoid harming a lot of people, that’s the way to do it. However, even that moderately low charge is all it would take to make a car go boom with the aid of the fuel as a propellant.”
“All three of the devices used this powder?” Duncan asked.
“That’s what we’ve found, yes. But that’s not all.” Stallard grabbed a pen from his shirt pocket and used it to shift a burnt can of Pepsi that lay on the table. “That right there, that Pepsi can is the casing. And again, all three used the same casings. And finally, we’ve concluded that the devices were remotely detonated. No timers found. That was a given since I didn’t see timers anywhere on the remnants.”
“Then he had to have been in the area watching his victims,” Kate replied.
“That’s a big fat affirmative. There’s no other way around that. It would require a clear line of sight to his targets.”
Tillis pressed his hands against his waist. “Look, nothing against your theory, Stallard, but we scoured the CCTV footage and found nothing out of the ordinary. Bushes, behind columns, down a narrow pathway. No one was seen near the bomb who was just hanging out—lingering.”
Kate considered the question for a moment. “It was possible, at the first two blast sites, that the bomber could’ve been inside another building and watching from there. He was close enough to initiate the livestream. Could he have been inside somewhere?”
Tillis nodded. “That could easily be confirmed.”
“But that last two locations, the strip mall and the park, there aren’t any buildings in the immediate area to hide in.” Kate glanced up. “Let me rephrase that. He could’ve been hiding in one of the businesses in the strip mall, but…”
“None of them were open at the time,” Tillis cut in.
“Right. So where was he?” Kate asked.
Tillis glanced up as if considering the question. “He might’ve found a dead spot in the camera coverage if he’d scoped it out ahead of time.”
“But you didn’t see anything unusual in the days leading up to the bombs on the CCTV, right?” Duncan asked.
“No,” Tillis replied.
“He’s there, but we can’t see him. That’s some magic trick,” Surrey added.
“Not magic. He’s a hacker. We’re overlooking the obvious.” Kate moved in to view the remnants. “If he can clone phones, hack into people’s social media…how hard do you think it would be for him to hack into closed circuit television cameras?”
“If they’re cloud-based, probably not that hard,” Duncan replied.
Kate peered at Tillis. “Then we need to look again at the footage from the surrounding areas right before the blasts.”
“What are you hoping to see, Agent Reid?” Tillis’s tone grew sharp.
“A glitch. A signal interruption. I’ll bet if we look closely at the timestamps, we’ll see it doesn’t match up.”
“He erased the footage before we got to it?” Stallard asked.
“No. I’m saying it never recorded the moments he was there. I’m saying, he hacked into it to make sure he wasn’t captured on camera.”
Tillis started into the hall and turned back. “Well, you guys coming or not?” He waited while they caught up. “Let’s go back and talk to Forensics and see if your theory pans out, Reid.”
They arrived at the lab and Tillis pushed inside. “Hey, Colangelo, do me a favor?”
“Yeah?” the agent pulled away from his computer screen.
“Cue up the footage we’ve been scrubbing for the past few days. We need to confirm something.” Tillis stood near him. “Specifically, the minutes leading up to when the bombs went off. All three locations.”
“On it.” He quickly typed in the commands and pulled up the first incident on Fourth Avenue. “Okay, this is the Delaney case.” He pressed the button and leaned back in his chair with his arms folded. “We didn’t see anything but don’t take my word for it.”
“Stop!” Tillis leaned closer. “Roll it back.” He stared at the timestamp in the upper right-hand corner. “Play it again. Slow down the frames.”
“Whatever you say.” Colangelo played the footage again.
Kate’s mouth opened, but she didn’t speak and only looked at her teammates. They appeared to have noticed it too.
“Son of a bitch.” Tillis glanced at Kate. “You see that?”
She nodded.
“Everyone saw that,” Stallard said. “How the hell did that get overlooked?”
“I—we must’ve assumed it was a signal interruption caused by the blast,” Colangelo replied.
“For almost a minute?” Tillis asked. “Jesus. Show me the rest of it.”
“We still don’t see a vehicle or anyone nearby,” Kate said, almost apologetically.
Tillis eyed her. “You were right, Reid. We may not see him, but he was there.”
9
The detail could have been missed by anyone. It was a reasonable error in light of who they were dealing with. That was what Kate told Tillis while he looked on in disappointment.
In her former life, Kate worked in Evidence for the San Diego Police Department. Oversights were common. However, this one set back their case exponentially. Had it been discovered earlier, Tillis and his people could’ve canvassed the surrounding buildings; talked to people to learn if they’d noticed anyone unusual. Now, days and weeks had passed and none of those people would remember even if they had seen anyone suspicious. So while Kate had picked up on the mistake, it did nothing but confirm what Stallard already knew and that was the bomber had been on the scene because he had used a remote detonator.
Now, they had returned to Tillis’s office, wiser, but no closer to identifying a suspect. Stallard eyed the remnants of the bomb materials. “Going back to what we’ve got here. Smokeless powder can’t be made, only bought. So, I’ll get my team running on purchases made at gun shops around the city.”
“It can be purchased online too,” Surrey added.
“Yes it can, but that would mean the bomber left a money trail,” Stallard replied. “If he’s smart enough to screw with a CCTV signal, clone cell phones, and God knows what else, I don’t see his downfall being in the online purchase of items used to make his bombs. No. He’ll use cash and we already believe he’s from around the area, so that’s where I’ll start.” He packed up his things. “At least we know what we’re up against. I only hope this guy doesn’t wise up and learn how to make a device that can do a lot more damage.” He turned to Tillis. “Let me know if something turns up on your end. I’ll do the same. Good work today, Reid. I guess there’s a reason you’re with Quantico.”
As Stallard left, Duncan appeared hesitant to speak. She moved toward Tillis who
sat at his desk. “The first two victims, the bomber took his time with. But based on the details we received about when the phones were cloned, it looks like Sienna Page’s phone had only been cloned about a week prior. Why the rush?”
“He altered his pattern with her, not only in speeding up his timeframe, but she’s the first female victim as well,” Tillis replied.
Kate approached them. “She was some kind of social media star, right? So let’s see what she was up to in the past several days.”
“You think she might have come across her killer?” Tillis nodded. “I don’t know his criteria for how he chooses his victims, but we have to start somewhere.”
“Duncan, your buddy in Unit 2 said the phone was cloned about a week ago?” Surrey asked.
“That’s right. We should start in the days before and leading up to her death,” she replied.
“I’ve got her account pulled up,” Tillis said. “Let me scroll back to around the 8th and see what we can find. She kept herself busy. Lots of information on her comings and goings.”
Kate peered at the monitor. “She fits the part. Based on these posts, luxury cars, exotic locations. She seems to be everything this bomber doesn’t like. But how did he find her?”
“This girl has almost one million followers. If he’s one of them, how the hell would we know?” Surrey pressed on. “There has to be a way to tighten these parameters. We’ll be here for days following up on every location Sienna Page posted about.”
A knowing smile played on Kate’s lips. “Hang on. That’s not necessarily true.”
Tillis shot her a glance. “I see where you’re going with this. Look only at the posts here in the city. She traveled, clearly, but we agree the bomber is from the area. That should be our focus.” He scanned through the posts again. “I want to stick closer to around the timeframe of her death. Okay, this dates back to the 10th. Two nights ago. Looks like she visited two local bars with a couple of friends.”
