Digging For Trouble

by Linda Fairstein

  “Easy as pie,” I said, high-fiving her as she passed me by.

  I took my cell phone out of my jeans pocket and saw that there was a new text message. I opened it immediately. It was from Kyle.

  There were two photographs attached to the text. “Here’s the dozer,” he had captioned the first one. “Belongs to the farmer who lives next to the dig site. It’s a John Deere.”

  The compact-looking tractor had the green and yellow markings of that brand, and looked all shiny and new. The large bucket on the front of it was what Steve Paulson would use to excavate the Ditch for shipment to the museum.

  “Here’s the tire tracks this one makes.”

  Kyle’s second photo was a close-up of the markings in the mud that the tractor had left.

  “Are they a match to the photos you took on Friday?” he asked.

  “Have you checked the actual site, Kyle?” I texted back.

  “Can’t do,” he replied. A second gray bubble was forming on my iPhone screen as he wrote a longer answer. “There was a thunderstorm Saturday night and those trespasser tracks all washed out. Lucky you took a photo.”

  I quickly got out of the message app and opened my photos, scrolling past all the Big Sky scenery and rodeo pictures I’d taken after we left the dig.

  Lucky, I thought to myself. This had nothing to do with luck. I had worked the trespass scene like a trained detective.

  When I reached the Friday morning photos I’d snapped, I studied the patterns that had been left on the surface of the dirt. Then I flashed back to the incoming text from Kyle. Then back to Friday morning’s markings again. Then to the new text.

  “Not a match,” I sent back to Kyle. “But thanks for this.”

  We still didn’t know whether the intruder could be a different nosy neighbor looking for a valuable femur of his own, or whether this guy had more than one tractor. He sure hadn’t left tracks with this colorful John Deere.

  The door opened and Katie came out to where I was sitting.

  “All good?” I asked.

  “What a relief,” she said. “The sheriff seemed like a really nice guy. And Sam was great. He told me to think carefully before I answered, and not to volunteer any information I wasn’t asked.”

  “Sam’s the best,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  I bit my lip and hesitated before asking my question. “Katie, did you tell Sheriff Brackley about the photos I took? The ones of the tire tracks?”

  “Oh, no,” she said, clasping her hand over her mouth. “I forgot completely. I’ll go back in and have Sam call him again.”

  I tugged on her belt and held her in place. “No, you won’t. No need to do that.”

  “Why shouldn’t I tell him?” Katie asked.

  “’Cause we’ve got some detecting of our own to do first, Katie. And we’re in the perfect place to do it.”

  12

  “Okay, you two,” Sam said, coming out of my mother’s office and brushing past me. “Did you break the case yet?”

  “Unlikely,” I said.

  “I’m going down to the commissioner’s meeting,” he said, straightening out his khaki slacks and buttoning his blazer. That was as much of a uniform as Sam needed to wear. “Are you taking off?”

  “I think we’ll stick around, in case my mother wants to take us to lunch,” I said.

  “I know that smile, Devlin Quick,” Sam said. “It’s not about lunch. It’s about trying to impress Katie.”

  “Guilty!” I said, holding out my wrists to Sam. “Are you going to cuff me?”

  “Don’t make all the cops downstairs crazy with your investigative ideas. We have surveillance cameras all over the place in this city, but I doubt there were any that recorded the action out on the hillside in Big Timber,” Sam said. “Since there was no sign of anything stolen from the site that morning, I think Sheriff Brackley is going to close the case.”

  “Is that what he just told you?” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s disappointing, but it makes sense,” I said. “Hey, Sam? Will you ask the guys in the Real Time Crime Unit if I can let them explain to Katie how it works there? I mean, just till you and Mom come back up for lunch.”

  “Will do,” he said. “Why? Have you got a super-duck with a rap sheet? A prehistoric arrest record?”

  Katie and I had told Sam all about the dig on our way home from the airport the other night.

  “There were bunches of Jurassic felons in those movies you used to take us to, Sam,” Katie said. “Real man-eating dinos in those theme parks. Once we get a positive ID on my fossils, we might have to check them out.”

  “Fair enough. Just don’t make any arrests until I come back.”

  “You’ve got it,” I said.

  I wrote my mother a note telling her that I was going to be showing Katie around and gave it to Tapp.

  “You need a guide?” he asked.

  “The Real Time Crime Center’s on the eighth floor, isn’t it?” I said.

  “Still there.”

  “I can find it,” I said. “I’d like to show it to Katie.”

  “Good idea. Like your mom says,” Tapp added, “it’s the beating heart of headquarters. And your buddy Richie is in charge.”

  “Yes! He was a great help to Liza and me,” I said to Katie.

  “Don’t work him too hard, Dev,” Tapp said. “I’ll call you when the commissioner is back.”

  “May we each have a steno pad?” I asked.

  “You two taking notes?”

  “Sometimes a factoid comes up that I can use in class, Tapp. And the equipment makes us look much more professional—like real cops—than just doing it on our phones. Don’t you think?”

  “I guess so,” he said, reaching into his drawer for two pads and pencils.

  “Thanks,” I said, turning to take Katie down the hallway and back to the elevators.

  “So what are we up to, Dev?” Katie asked as the elevator went down to eight.

  “We are going, my friend, to the technology nerve center of the NYPD.”

  “One of your mom’s brilliant ideas, right?”

  “Well, the guy before her started it, but she’s made it so much better. And there’s nothing else like it anywhere in the whole country.”

  The doors opened and I led us around the corner, past the Technical Assistance Response Unit—we didn’t need any wiretap info yet—and into Real Time Crime.

  “You must be Devlin Quick,” a woman in a blue uniform said when Katie and I entered. “Sam Cody just called us. I’m sorry but Richie Marcus isn’t going to be in all week.”

  “That’s too bad, “I said, pursing my lips. “I was hoping someone could give us a tour.”

  “I’m studying for the lieutenant’s test,” she said, pointing to the thick book on the table in front of her. “Let me get someone else to do that.”

  She walked away, into the huge room in which dozens of elite officers sat in front of enormous screens, 24/7, analyzing maps and satellite images of the city, helping cops on the street prevent and solve crimes in real time.

  “It’s bad that Mr. Marcus isn’t here?” Katie asked.

  I smiled. “It’s so much better for us, actually. Richie was the guy who helped Liza and me last month. Only he didn’t know he was helping us when he gave us the information we needed, so I’m not sure he’d be all that happy to see me again,” I said. “I think he’s a bit afraid of my mother.”

  The uniformed woman returned with another officer and introduced us. “This is P.O. Nieves. Sonia Nieves.”

  Katie and I told her our names. “We’re just waiting for my mother to take us to lunch. She made us come in today because we’re trying to help a sheriff out in Montana with a trespass case that happened when we were there last week,” I said, trying to g
et Sonia interested in our cause.

  Sonia Nieves was just the ticket—bright and eager and friendly. The other officer went back to her studies, but Sonia was ready to jump in with us.

  “So you two are sheriff’s deputies?” Sonia said, with a pat on my back. “Do you know what we’ve got here?”

  “A ton of stuff they don’t have in Big Timber, Montana,” I said. “That’s for sure.”

  “I know Dev has been here lots of times, but can you please tell me what you do in Real Time Crime?” Katie asked.

  “First I’ll do that,” Sonia said. “Then I’ll put you to work so you can see for yourself.”

  “That would be amazing,” Katie said.

  “I admire your mom so much, Dev,” Sonia said. “I’ve only been on the job for two years, but the idea that I can even dream, as a young woman, about becoming the police commissioner of New York? Well, it’s your mom who’s responsible for letting me dream big these days.”

  “Me too,” I said. “Would you please explain to Katie what goes on in the center?”

  “You got it,” Sonia said, walking us into the room, with its jaw-dropping display of equipment and giant screens. “So this is where it all happens. We’ve got fifteen workstations, which are staffed by three dozen analysts and investigators who work around the clock.”

  Katie let out a low whistle, taking it all in.

  “It’s like a mega–help desk for detectives who are on duty, in their cars or at crime scenes or in their precinct houses,” Sonia said. “We provide instant information to the thirty-seven thousand police officers who keep this city safe.”

  “Wow,” Katie said. “Big Timber only has seventeen hundred people living there, total. We’ve got thirty-seven thousand officers? This is just amazing.”

  “What the department did, girls, was upload warehouses full of data to a high-tech new system. I mean, a lot of it is information the NYPD has had for a long time, but it’s been stored on shelves collecting dust.”

  “Now, the minute a cop contacts the center and asks for someone’s criminal history,” I said, “he gets an answer quicker than he could make a phone call.”

  “That’s so much safer for the cops, and the citizens,” Sonia said. “Dev’s right. We’ve got twenty million New York City criminal complaints and 911 calls, and thirty-three billion—”

  “Million?” Katie asked.

  “Think big, Katie,” Sonia said. “B as in boy. Billions of public records.”

  “Just from New York City?”

  “No, Katie. They’re from all over the country. And the range of the data we’ve collected makes it really special.”

  Way to go, Sonia, I thought to myself.

  “Come on, girls,” Sonia said. “One of you should sit down at my desk.”

  “You go, Dev,” Katie said. “I’m not sure what we’re looking for.”

  “What’s the part of the Ditchley motto you don’t understand, Katie? We learn, we lead,” I said. “You can’t always tell me to go first. You ought to lead more, especially when it involves Big Timber.”

  “You’re more tech savvy than I am,” Katie said.

  “So what was the trespass?” Sonia asked. “Someone break into a house?”

  “Nope.”

  “What then?”

  “They just came on to private property, in the middle of the night, where they didn’t belong.”

  “Land? They just trespassed on dirt, not into a house or business?” Sonia asked. “That’s a tough one. Why are you two involved?”

  “Katie’s family has a ranch in Montana,” I said. “We were there digging for dinosaur fossils.”

  “That sounds really neat.”

  “My mom’s idea. She asked us to come here today in order to try to help the sheriff out there.”

  “We just got off the phone with him,” Katie said.

  “My mom thinks we can—you know—”

  “I’d do anything for the commissioner,” Sonia said, sitting down in front of her computer while Katie and I stood behind her.

  Actually, I had counted on that reaction when we headed down here. Who in the NYPD wouldn’t want to perform for Blaine Quick? Only the guys who’d spent enough time around me to know that every boundary laid out in front of me looked too tempting to ignore.

  “Are you and Katie involved because you saw a possible suspect?”

  “There are no suspects,” I said.

  Sonia turned her head to look up at me, with a puzzled expression on her face. “So what am I supposed to do, Dev?”

  “Is there anything in your databank about treads on tire tracks?”

  “Bingo!” Sonia said. “Now I can show off some bells and whistles.”

  Sonia’s fingers moved as fast as red ants chasing chocolate bits over the keyboard. When she hit Enter, a program title popped up on her screen in all caps—WHEELS OF PROGRESS.

  Then she yelled out so the other detectives working beneath the huge screens could hear her. “I’m taking screen six,” Sonia said. “Breaking news in Montana.”

  The city street scene disappeared from the overhead screen twenty feet in front of us and an image of six tires, each one of them blown up, way larger than life-size, appeared in its place.

  Katie blinked and looked again. “Why would you have a database entry full of giant tires, Sonia?”

  “Crime scene investigation work,” Sonia said. “Think of all the car accidents in a big city. When there’s a hit and run, often the only evidence we have is the image of the tire track left on the pavement—sometimes because it’s preserved on an oily surface, or a bloody one.”

  “Can I show you what we’ve got?” I asked.

  “Don’t hold back, Dev.”

  I pulled up the text of the tire that Kyle had sent not long ago, and Sonia told me how to forward it to her computer and bring it up on the larger screen as well. Then she stood up.

  “Do it yourself, young lady,” Sonia said. “The image of your tire is up there. Do you know what kind of vehicle it’s on?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “It’s on a John Deere compact tractor. I can see from the photograph I got today that the model number is F-1802.”

  “How do you know that?” Katie said, clamping her hand on my shoulder. “We never saw any machine on Friday.”

  “Kyle just texted me while you were talking with Sheriff Brackley,” I said. “This is the vehicle that Steve brought in—”

  “Wait a minute,” Katie said, obviously stuck on my mention of Kyle’s name. “He texted you? What about me?”

  “It’s not personal, Katie. It’s investigative stuff,” I said, not wanting to get in that sweet space between a pal and her first serious crush. “This is the truck that Steve arranged for after we left to pick up the Ditch filled with your clutch of eggs.”

  “Do your thing, Dev,” Sonia said. “Go to John Deere on that website—that’s your vehicle type—and key in the model number.”

  I did that, looking at the list of options the menu offered me. I didn’t want to buy one, that’s for sure. I just wanted to see which tires fit it.

  I skipped sales and repairs and replacement parts, and clicked on the word “Tires.” Three images appeared on the small computer screen, with noticeably different patterns on their treads.

  I leaned in to study the treads on the image Kyle sent—six lines of indentations in the rubber circling around the tire, with diamond-shaped detail on each side of the lines.

  “That’s a match, Sonia,” I said. “It’s just like the one on the far left.”

  “Double click on it,” she said.

  When I did, the tire I selected showed up instantly on the big screen, alongside the tracks from the dino dig’s John Deere.

  “What have you got?” Sonia asked.

  “This is like m
agic,” I said, reading the small print. “The tire is made by a company called Carlisle. It’s their All-Trail II model. It fits most compact-size riding tractors.”

  “Once again, it’s Kyle to the rescue,” Katie said.

  I was glad I was facing the computer screen. I didn’t want Katie to see me gagging while she heaped all the praise on her cowboy.

  “Does that solve your problem?” Sonia asked.

  “Not at all,” I said glumly, placing my chin in my hands. “But now I’m stuck with the reverse situation.”

  “You mean a tire you want to identify?” Sonia asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Figure it out, Dev. Throw your photo up on the screen,” Sonia said.

  I transferred the snapshot I took last Friday to Sonia’s computer, and then pitched it up to the giant screen.

  This tire that left this impression in the earth also had distinctive treads. There were double rows of indentations in the print made by the rubber, and double lines that intersected the long ones, spread an inch apart, all around the tire circumference. There were some open patches in the dirt where the tires had been, either from bald spots on the rubber or because the imprint hadn’t been firmly made.

  I thought for a couple of seconds. “Don’t tell me, okay?” I asked Sonia.

  In the search area of the site, I typed in the word “tread.” Within fifteen seconds, the database spit out almost a thousand images.

  I narrowed the search this time, describing the double lines in both directions.

  Suddenly there were only four tires left that fit the description. I enlarged each image to sit side by side with my own photograph on the big screen.

  I featured them one at a time. When the third one was blown up beside my picture, Katie was the first of us to shriek that the patterns matched.

  “That’s it, Dev! Now figure out the rest,” she said. “If that machine sitting on top of those tires is anywhere in Sweet Grass County, I bet you Kyle can find it.”

  “Kyle’s the sheriff?” Sonia asked.

  “Something like that,” I said. “We can give him a call when we’re done.”

  I trusted Kyle, just like Katie did, and he might be our best bet to do some necessary undercover work without bothering Sheriff Brackley, who’d already told Sam he was inclined to close the case.