Interference

by Danielle Girard

  “Oh, God,” Sam screamed. “Holy shit. Oh, shit. Oh. Oh.”

  He’d found Hank. J.T. unlocked the door and started the process of breathing without smelling. Six months in the morgue had been plenty of time to learn how to handle the smell. The trick was using only the mouth and not thinking about what little particles were floating in the air. J.T. did not get sick. At least now Sam would come out. But the door didn’t open. The only sound from inside was Sam’s wailing. At least it would be easy to find him.

  Cracking the door, J.T. listened. Something clattered and Sam grunted as though he’d fallen over. J.T. froze, listening. Sam was on the far side of the van. J.T. crept through the opening and slowly inched the door closed until it latched. Drew the gun then crept to the back of the van. Surely Sam would come around the front side toward the garage door.

  Suddenly, Sam went quiet. The windows of the van were dark and while the inside was visible, J.T. couldn’t see through the far side. Where was Sam? J.T. halted against the van. The slightest sound of breath. J.T. pivoted as Sam was swinging.

  The tire iron screamed through the air.

  J.T. leapt out of its path. The tire iron hit the gun. J.T. hit the side of the van hard and felt a painful crack. J.T.’s wrist screamed in pain as the gun flew across the room.

  “What the hell did you do to Hank?” Sam shouted, the words spraying from his mouth.

  “I didn’t do that,” J.T. said. “I swear. It was a cop. He shot through the window.” Hands held high, innocently, J.T. backed up slowly. “I swear.”

  Sam’s eyes narrowed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You were busy and focused. I knew you’d be upset. You kept asking about him. I was going to tell you. I just didn’t know how.” J.T. made a prayer sign. “I swear. I was just scared to tell you.”

  Sam hesitated.

  J.T.’s gaze slid to where the gun had gone.

  “You’re lying,” Sam shouted, raising the tire iron again.

  J.T. jumped back to the far wall, but the van was pressed too close to pass.

  “You killed him and you came here to kill me.”

  J.T. dropped to the ground and slid under the front of the van. Pain pulsing in one wrist, J.T. moved in an awkward army crawl to the other side. Sam was too big to follow, but J.T. knew he’d come around the other way. J.T. was trapped in the back corner of the garage. No weapon, no exit. Control the panic. There had to be something to use. There wasn’t time to load a gun. On the floor beside the van was a spare tire, the compressor… Shit.

  “I’m calling the police,” Sam announced.

  J.T. resisted the desire to scream. A weapon could be anything. Ignore the pain in your wrist and get creative. On the workbench was an orange plastic case with a set of snow chains.

  J.T. spotted Sam on the far side of the van, maybe eight feet away, searching for J.T.’s gun. The tire iron was still in his hand, but it was dropped to his side as he searched. J.T. pulled one set of the chains out of the bag, and using the good arm, heaved it onto the roof of the van with a clatter. When Sam looked back, J.T. ducked down behind the van and watched Sam through the tinted glass. Sam continued his frantic search for the gun.

  He was counting on that gun. Moving quickly, J.T. climbed on top of the van as quietly as possible and lifted the chain by one end. The pain in J.T.’s wrist was nauseating but it wasn’t enough to save Sam. J.T. grimaced at the pain and swung the chain once. Then letting out a long, deep shout, J.T. hurled all fifteen pounds of it at Sam. It was heavier than J.T. had anticipated, and for a moment, it seemed like it wouldn’t reach Sam. Most of the chain fell short but the tail end snapped across Sam’s side, shredding his shirt. Sam dropped to his knees, the tire iron clanking to the floor.

  J.T. ran across the top of the van and dropped to the cement floor, reaching Sam before his head came up. J.T. took the end of the chains and looped them around Sam’s neck, pulling a short length of chain taut against his flesh. Pain surged in the one wrist, but J.T. bit hard on the inside of a cheek and kept the chain held taut. Sam struggled, clawing at J.T.’s leg, but J.T. used a foot on his back to press him down and the chain to pull him back.

  J.T. began to count out loud. Sam tried to get up on one foot, but J.T. used the chain like reins to pull Sam off balance. He kept counting. Slowly. Sam turned his attention to the chain, clawing at his own neck to loosen it. “Thirteen. Fourteen.” Giving up on the chain, Sam tried to get his hands to the floor, to give himself purchase to stand, but J.T. was pushing down too hard. Sam was too weak.

  “This is why people needed to stay in shape, Sam. Twenty-nine. Thirty.” Sam started to arch his back to throw J.T. off balance, but that, too, failed. “Too much Mountain Dew, Sam. Not enough time on the playground with the other boys. Forty-six.”

  At fifty-four, Sam’s weight deadened, making it harder to hold up his neck. J.T.’s wrist throbbed an angry drumbeat. J.T. slowly let Sam sink to the floor, keeping the chain taut. Once Sam was facedown on the floor, J.T. simply sat on his back, shifting both ends of the chain into the uninjured hand. Finished the count. By eighty, Sam was motionless. By one hundred, he had wet himself.

  J.T. gave it to hundred and ten for good measure then let go of the chain long enough to check Sam’s pulse in his neck. That took more time than it should have because of the considerable layers of skin hiding the carotid. But eventually, J.T. was satisfied that there was no pulse left to find and let the chain fall slack onto the floor.

  It took longer to find the gun, which had fallen into one of the boxes of Sam’s extra computer equipment. J.T. had been about to give up on it. But it had the silencer. Pity to lose that one. Slowly, the calm set in as J.T. went to work.

  Using the red gas container, J.T. soaked the bed sheets from the upstairs bed and put them directly under Sam’s computer equipment then soaked a rag and stuffed it down into the gas compartment of the black van, whistling a little along the way. J.T. left the door open between the two garages and between the apartment and the garage. Good ventilation was key to a strong fire. J.T. had seen that somewhere. When all that was done, J.T. went upstairs and built a pile of crumpled newspapers on top of the old electric stovetop. Checking again to make sure there was a clear burn path, J.T. turned all four burners on and exited the building for the last time.

  Only in the safety of the car, several blocks from the burning building, did J.T. pull up the sleeve and look at the wrist. The angry purple welt said broken, or fractured at least. That was not in the plans either. J.T. took deep breaths and drove calmly toward home. A beer and some aspirin, and this day would be officially over.

  The farther J.T. got from the apartment, the stronger the rage grew. Sam had almost won. If he had found that gun, J.T. would be dead. “He almost killed you, that fucker,” J.T. seethed. There was no way to breathe through all that fury.

  Chapter 22

  Mei invited Amy to come along to Oyster Point, thinking a girls’ outing might break the ice between them. In the car ride, Mei asked Amy what sort of projects she liked working on, what her interests were in moving up in the department.

  “Aaron usually has me handle data searches and more admin-type stuff,” Amy said, the most words Mei had heard from her yet.

  “You enjoy that?”

  Amy shrugged and turned her attention to her phone. “I’m easy. Whatever he wants.”

  Mei wondered if Amy heard the way her words had come out, but she didn’t seem to notice. When Mei said nothing else, Amy turned on the radio and began to flip through one annoying pop song after another. When she found one she liked, she began to text. Mei thought she saw the name James or Jones on Amy’s screen.

  “Any word from the lab?” Mei asked.

  Amy didn’t answer. Mei wasn’t sure she’d heard the question. Finally, Amy said, “Yeah. The soldering material on the battery was automotive, whatever that means.”r />
  “Means it’s easy to get and there’s no good way to track it,” Mei said, trying to keep her patience. “What else?”

  “Blake says they just finished running the print from the electrical tape through the database of known offenders. No match.” Amy ran her finger down the screen. “And Blake’s got fifty-seven hits on the multiple computer purchase. He’s getting a list of names.”

  “Fifty-seven,” Mei repeated.

  “He started with a search of California and got three hundred matches, so he limited it to a forty mile radius around San Francisco in the last ninety days,” said Amy.

  “Okay. And he ended up with fifty-seven? That’s not too bad.”

  “That’s fifty-seven at Walmart alone. He’s still running seven other retailers.”

  Mei tried to imagine how they’d pick their hacker out of that list without a name. “Just Walmart,” Mei repeated.

  “Just Walmarts within forty miles and ninety days,” Amy confirmed, her voice flat.

  Discouraging news. “Anything else from the cell phone jammer or the computer?”

  “No,” Amy said, her thumbs working overdrive.

  “The glue?” Mei asked.

  “Generic super glue.”

  “Ask Blake to cross reference the purchase of super glue with the computers and also the cell phone jammers in the database with the purchase of computers. Maybe we’ll get lucky and be able to narrow this thing down somehow.”

  “Yep,” Amy said without looking up.

  A subpoena had gone to AT&T, the phone’s carrier, for records on the phone’s history. In the meantime, the only lead left to pursue was the possibility of a second LiPo battery which might mean a second device. Or it might mean nothing.

  Both Mei and Ryaan had made attempts to get in touch with the businesses that shared a wall with the police storage facility. Mei had left several messages for Brad Archer, the managing partner at Archer Decker Architecture. Brad’s father Colin, who was the original Archer, had passed away a few years before and Decker was now retired. So far, Mei hadn’t been able to reach Brad. Teddy ran a series of web searches to gain more insight into the architects but there was nothing to suggest they’d experienced a breach.

  The accounting firm had told Ryaan that their system had experienced no breaches while the law firm’s IT group reported that they were still analyzing their logs and had nothing to report as of yet. Mei had offered her team’s help. It was standard practice to bring a computer forensics team into the office in a case like this, but getting inside wasn’t easy. Certainly the estate law firm wasn’t giving the police access to any of their logs without a warrant. With no way to definitively link the patrol officer’s murder or the gun thefts to these breaches, obtaining a warrant was unlikely. There had been no word from the pharmaceutical company at all.

  Not surprisingly, no company was interested in filing a complaint and making a breach public unless it was absolutely necessary. Without proof that something had been stolen, the police didn’t even know who to put pressure on. Yet another way that police work felt so different from the FBI. Federal jurisdiction moved things along. People heard “FBI” and they moved aside. Mei couldn’t remember a case where there had been so many obstacles.

  Mei made one last call to Brad Archer’s phone. His secretary, Hannah, answered. Mei recognized the voice immediately. She’d spoken to Hannah before. Young.

  “Hannah, this is Inspector Mei Ling with the San Francisco Police Department. We spoke earlier. I was trying to reach Brad Archer.”

  “Oh, right,” Hannah said slowly. “Just one moment.”

  A hundred moments passed before there was a click and a very different voice came on. “This is Kyle Ramsey. I’m head of IT. Mr. Archer said you had a couple of questions.”

  For the first time in fifteen minutes, Amy looked up from her screen.

  “Yes. Mr. Ramsey. Thank you. This is Mei Ling with the SFPD’s Computer Forensics Unit. We have reason to believe that your system may have been compromised. We discovered a device that appeared to be trying to access local Wi-Fi networks. Archer is one of a few businesses within range of the device.”

  “Thank you, Officer. We are aware of the breach.”

  Amy looked over at Mei. “Can you tell me what was accessed, Mr. Ramsey?” asked Mei. “The information may help us locate the individual who hacked into the system. That same person is wanted for questioning in a murder that happened several blocks from your offices.”

  “We’ve reviewed the logs, and we show that four files were accessed on Tuesday between 3:20 a.m. and 3:55 a.m.”

  “Can you tell me what the files were?”

  “All design schematics.”

  Maybe the guns were a distraction meant to throw the police off the track from what the thief really wanted. “What kind of schematics?”

  “Retail stores. Retail spaces are about sixty percent of our business. The first file accessed was for the Gap store on the corner of Market and Powell Street across from the San Francisco City Centre. We did that one in ‘87, nothing recent.”

  Mei glanced at Amy who shrugged. A Gap? That didn’t make sense. “How about the others?”

  “The second was for an Apple mini retail store at the Stanford Shopping Center, opened in 2004.”

  “And the other two?”

  “Both are businesses that are no longer open. One was a jewelry store at Sutter and Grant and the last was a candy shop also in the Stanford Shopping Center.”

  “When were those stores opened?”

  “The jewelry store in ‘98 and the candy shop in ‘01.”

  “Can you think of any reason why someone would access these particular files?”

  “No. And our files are saved by job number, which means that if someone wanted these specific schematics, they’d have to know the job number to get the correct file.”

  “Is there a master list of job numbers?”

  “Yes, but that file wasn’t accessed in the breach.”

  Mei was stumped. “If retail is sixty percent of your business, what else do you do?”

  “The other part is mostly residences, but we’ve also done hotels, several banks, restaurants, including MG-252 which is Michael Mina’s newest restaurant.”

  Amy’s brows rose.

  “Back up.”

  “To Mina’s restaurant. MG-252?”

  “No. Not the restaurant. Banks. You mentioned banks.”

  “Right,” Ramsey said. “We’ve done four in South San Francisco and Colma in the past year. One was actually just completed.”

  Mei was puzzled. “And you’re completely confident that those schematics haven’t been accessed?”

  “We’re very confident.”

  Mei noticed he didn’t say he was certain.

  “Have you had problems with any employees?” The question came from Amy and when Mei glanced over, Amy continued, “Is it possible that a disgruntled employee breached the system as some sort of statement about the company?” The tone in Amy’s voice suggested she knew something about Archer and Decker but Mei was almost certain she didn’t. Almost.

  When Ramsey didn’t answer right away, Mei said, “Let me introduce my colleague, Amy Warner.”

  “I was just thinking about the company’s attrition,” said Ramsay after a pause. “I’ve only been here a year and a half. A few people have left to pursue other opportunities, but no one has been fired or anything. I can’t think of anyone who would break into our system.”

  “No one passed up for promotion?” Mei asked, picking up Amy’s line.

  Ramsey was quiet again. “Well, we did have one IT guy who left after I was hired.”

  Mei got off the freeway in South San Francisco and turned toward Oyster Point.

  “What was his name?”

  “Martin Ziino. Z-I-I-N-O.
”

  Amy nodded that she had it.

  Mei came back to the files that were accessed. “Can you think of any reason why someone would be interested in these four buildings specifically?”

  “Not off the top of my head. The jewelry store was completely destroyed in a fire.”

  Mei tried to think about how schematics of a burned down jewelry store would be useful, but nothing came to mind. There had to be some connection between the four places. “The job numbers aren’t consecutive, are they?”

  “The job number begins with the year so these four were fairly far apart on the server,” Ramsey explained.

  “How about the architects involved? Who headed up each project?” Mei asked as she turned onto Grand and passed Archer and Decker on her way to the police warehouse.

  “Let me look that up.” A minute passed.

  Mei pulled to the curb and threw her police pass on the dash.

  “Okay, it was Rebecca Harding on the Apple; Michael Edwards on the Gap; Jabe Thompson was the lead architect on the two others. All three of them are still at Archer.”

  “What can you tell us about Mr. Thompson?”

  “Jabe? He’s a great guy and very talented.”

  “Anyone who might have an issue with Mr. Thompson personally or with his work?”

  “No. Absolutely not. His clients are very pleased, and Mr. Thompson and his partner have been together for years. They have two daughters. I can’t imagine anyone having an issue with Jabe.”

  “How about the others? Harding and Edwards?”

  “The same. There have been no complaints about any of our architects.”

  “One last question for you, Mr. Ramsey. Does it seem odd that the hacker left a trace?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Mei wondered how savvy he was. A lot of the so-called experts had very little experience with actual IT security. “Well, why tell you which files were accessed? Why leave a trail?”

  Mr. Ramsey had no answer for that.

  “Have you considered that other files may have been accessed and no trail left?” Mei pressed.