Hacker For Hire (Ted Higuera Series Book 2)

by Wallace, Pendelton

  He’s got something to hide. “Darrell Chung, right? Let’s go in your office and talk about it.” Catrina didn’t wait for Chung to acquiesce.

  Jeff gently put a hand on Chung’s shoulder and turned him towards his office. “The lady doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

  Chung seated himself behind his desk as Catrina and Jeff took the leather chairs opposite him. “Could I see your ID again?”

  Chung isn’t about to be taken in. I guess Millennium System’s bad publicity on News Front must still be fresh on everyone's mind.

  Catrina handed him her black leather folder with a badge on one side and a picture ID on the other. It would take an expert using microscopic methods to detect the forgeries.

  Catrina matched the picture on her ID. The medium length brown hair was a wig, the brown eyes, contacts. For good measure, she wore a sports bra to flatten her chest and hip pads to fill out her dark gray suit. It wasn’t comfortable, especially the four-inch pumps, but it was necessary. Besides, the pumps gave her a height advantage over the little man, and that could be intimidating.

  She glanced over at Jeff. His normally bald head was covered with a close-cropped wig; he sported a mustache and goatee over a banker’s style pinstripe black suit. The pot belly strapped over his washboard abs was a nice touch.

  “Mr. Chung, we need to see your files on a customer.” Catrina referred to the notebook in her hand, even though she knew full well whose files she wanted. “One Jackson Schmidt.”

  "Ms., ah, Robinson, you know we can’t release that information.” Chung was sweating profusely. “You know you need a search warrant.”

  “I don’t think you understand. Surely you’ve heard of the ‘Patriot Act?’” Catrina flipped her notebook closed and dropped it into her black leather purse. “All we need is the signature of a US attorney, and we can tear this place apart.”

  Catrina watched the fight go out of Chung.

  “This is a matter of national security. We’re following the money trail of al-Qaeda terrorists. I don’t think you want it made public that First Washington National Bank is suspected of laundering terrorist money.”

  Chung hesitated, then reached for the phone. “I….I need to okay this with our legal department. This will just take a minute.”

  “Mr. Chung.” Jeff’s harsh voice cut the air as he pushed down on the phone’s release button. “We don’t have a minute. We don’t have another second. If I don’t have those files in my hands in sixty seconds,” he reached in his pocket for a cell phone, “I call in our forensic accounting team. We lock your doors, twenty carnivorous accountants take as long as they need to crawl through every file in your systems, every paper in your building.”

  “Oh, and by the way.” Catrina loosed her best evil grin. “We can’t control the media. I can’t guarantee that there won’t be news vans from every TV station in town parked in front of your building.”

  Chung dropped the phone onto its receiver. He seemed to deflate in front of Catrina’s eyes.

  Good. He’s right where we want him.

  ****

  Most of the lights on the floor were out. Here and there a small pool of light illuminated the cubicles and offices of the damned. Silence reigned. Occasionally a shadow offered the only sign of life, or was it just a reflection of life missed? This, Chris thought, is life in a big-city law firm.

  Chris’ mood matched the gloomy weather. The November sky darkens early in the Pacific Northwest. The rain poured down outside. Chris sat in his gray cubicle on a gray evening wondering what in the hell he was still doing at work at nine o’clock on a Friday night.

  He glanced over his shoulder. Kathy Nguyen was still hard at work. He must have been out of his mind. He promised himself that he would match his new boss, hour for hour. Will was right. The Dragon Lady worked longer and harder than anyone else at HB&J.

  So why did he care? This job was just temporary. He’d start law school in the fall. He didn’t really care about pleasing the Old Man. His dad wouldn’t, couldn’t possibly know about the hours he was putting in, the elbow grease he was applying to this case.

  It wasn’t even really a case yet. He and Kathy were pouring through thousands of pages of documents, thousands of emails, looking for grounds for a countersuit that hadn’t even been filed.

  Okay, if he was honest with himself, he did kinda want to impress Kathy. The tiny Vietnamese woman was one of the brightest, most driven people he had ever met. But she was hot too. Those ebony eyes, the raven hair.

  Wait a minute. What’s this?

  Chris had allowed his attention to wander. The documents had been floating in front of his eyes, his conscious mind numb. But somewhere, deep inside an alarm went off.

  The file was labeled “Donna Harrison.” He knew that name. That magical thing inside his head turned on and he was scrolling though newspaper headlines on the computer screen in his mind. There it was.

  “Software Giant Slain,” the headline screamed. He read on. Donna Harrison was the president of DigiSystems, a Redmond based computer security firm. Her nude body was found floating in Elliot Bay.

  Why does Terry Metcalf have a file on a dead software mogul?

  Chris leafed through the folder. There were pictures, obviously from surveillance cameras. There was no doubt that the woman in the pictures was Donna Harrison. Or was she? She was wearing a cleaning lady’s uniform. The name tag read “Betty.”

  Did Mrs. Harrison have a twin sister?

  Here were Mrs. Harrison’s financial records. How did Metcalf get a hold of those? Medical records. Apparently she had a heart condition. Copies of every article ever written about her. Her whole life, spread out on paper before him. The life of a murdered woman.

  Something was very fishy here. What should he do?

  Chapter 20

  “Where did you get this stuff?” Ted couldn’t believe what he held in his hands. “This is all of Jackson Schmidt’s account information.”

  Catrina leaned back in her swivel chair. “Let’s just say that Jeff and I can be very persuasive.”

  “Shit. Cat, this can’t be legal. There have to be at least a dozen laws protecting your financial data.”

  “There’s a big difference between legal and moral.” Catrina brushed back her short blonde hair behind her ear. “This is a murder investigation. We go where the clues lead us.” She leaned forward in her chair. “I’m sure that the bank manager didn’t give us everything on Schmidt. I want you to hack into First Washington and see what else you can find.”

  “No way. This is different. I didn’t mind hacking into Millennium Systems; we had their CEO’s permission. What you’re asking me to do is a felony.” Ted looked into her gray eyes and saw ice.

  “You knew what you were signing up for, Higuera. I told you that you had the chance to help people. This is it. We do what the police and the justice system can’t or won’t do." Cat leaned forward in her chair. “There’s a dead woman’s family that needs to know why. A killer that must meet justice.”

  “What will you do when you get the evidence?”

  “We’ll turn it over to the cops. This isn’t our kind of case. If we find anything incriminating, I’ll give it to a friend on Seattle Homicide, then we’ll step aside.”

  Ted felt a trickle of sweat run down his back, despite the early morning cool in Catrina’s office.

  Madre de Dios. I’m gettin’ in over my head. Could he do it? Of course. Working with Justin McCormack and Bear had taught him that every system has a vulnerability.

  Ted knew that there must be a way to get into the system. And Señora Higuera’s brilliant little boy was just the guy to do it.

  The big question was, should he? Just because he could do it, didn’t mean he should do it.

  ****

  Ted put a pan of water on the stove to boil. He added salt to the water and turned to the mixing bowl on the counter. Enchiladas were comfort food. He added flour, pure ground New Mexico chiles, garlic and cumi
no to the bowl. Chris would be here in a few minutes for their regular Wednesday night session.

  The doorbell rang while Ted was mixing the dry ingredients with water. He buzzed Chris into the building. By the time he poured the mixture in the bowl into the boiling pot, Chris walked in the door.

  “Hey, amigo. What’s on the menu tonight?”

  “Chicken enchiladas.” The rich, dark red enchilada sauce came to a boil and Ted turned off the burner.

  “What can I do to help?”

  “You can grate the cheese and make guacamole.” Ted had even been able to teach a kitchen Luddite like Chris to make guacamole.

  “So, how’s work?” Chris grabbed two avocadoes from the counter and reached into the fridge for a lemon and salsa. “You get any more jobs for strip clubs?”

  “Nah, nothing so interesting this week.” Ted shredded the boiled chicken breasts that were cooling next to the sink.

  “Y’ know, I don’t understand you. You’re always complaining about not meeting any women, then you get a job working for the biggest strip club in town and all you do is complain. Hell, I’d ’a milked that job for all it was worth.”

  He’s not serious? Of course he’s not. He’s just yankin’ my chain. “I gotta tell ya, dude, I’m a little worried about Cat.”

  Chris cut open the avocadoes and removed the pits, then scooped the meat out into a bowl. “What the problem with Wonder Woman?”

  “She has a fuzzy sense of what’s legal.” Ted put a deep frying pan on the stove and added vegetable oil to heat. “She doesn’t think twice about steppin’ over the line and I’m worried that she’s gonna take me with her.”

  “What’s she asking you to do this time?” Chris added a chopped tomato, onion and green chiles to the avocado.

  “I can’t tell you much about it, dude. It’s just that she’s handed me some shit that she couldn't have gotten legally.”

  The oil in the frying pan swirled and started to smoke. Ted dipped a dozen corn tortillas, two at a time into the oil, then fished them out with tongs when they floated to the surface. He placed them on a plate to drain.

  “What’s so important about this case?” Chris squeezed the lemon juice into the guacamole and began to smash it with a potato masher.

  “This involves that lady I told you about, the one who got killed.”

  Chris’ face went pale. What does he know?

  “Um, listen bud, this is getting kinda deep. You don’t want to be messing around in that wood pile.”

  “Why? What do you know, amigo?”

  “All I can say is that this is pretty heavy stuff. I’m not a lawyer, not yet, but I can tell you, you don’t want to get mixed up in a murder case. The police and the DA will come down all over you.”

  ****

  “Cat, I think you’re going to want to see this.” Ted, alone in the cavernous office, spoke into his desk phone. “We might be right about Schmidt.”

  Despite his ethical misgivings about following Catrina’s orders, Ted had hacked into Jackson Schmidt’s bank records. Catrina had pushed all the right buttons. Besides, Gina had the same questions about her boss. He promised Gina he’d help her find out about Schmidt.

  He saw himself as a knight in shining armor, riding to the aid or the poor and oppressed. There was zero chance he would get caught (okay, almost zero) and the possibility that he could do some real good. And it paid off, big time.

  “What did you find?” She sounded like she was in a tunnel, Ted surmised that she was talking on her cell phone from her car somewhere.

  “Some big wire transfers. Schmidt has been moving half a million dollars to an offshore account in the Caymans every month, just like clockwork. This doesn’t smell good.”

  “How much, total?”

  “Six million dollars. He’s been doing this for a year now.” Ted leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs. He had been sitting for so long that he was stiffening up.

  “Payments, you think?”

  Ted could hear background noise. It sounded like freeway traffic. “Who knows? Could even be money laundering. All I can say for sure is that he’s hiding a lot of money.”

  “This could be motive. Maybe Donna found out about his illegal activity. Maybe he had to silence her. Set up a meeting with Leah.” Leah Sykes was Catrina’s forensic accountant. “She’s been going over the financial data you got from MS. Let’s see if she can shed any light on this.”

  ****

  Tension ran high in the data center control room. Richard Freeman Sr. paced the length of the floor, waiting. Waiting. He looked up at the clock. Ten pm. This is the usual time that the hacker hits.

  The control room was glassed in on three sides. A desktop rimmed the glass sides of the room. With room for six operators, each station had a keyboard that slid out below the desk and two flat-screen monitors. On the shelf above the desktop, a parade of monitors flashed information about the health of the various systems that MS supported.

  It used to take an army of operators and technicians to support this server farm. Now, with automation, what little work was left was outsourced to India. Only one operator was on the premises for night shift.

  Beyond the glass walls, row upon row of servers, storage devices, and equipment marched into the dimly lit space. Patches of bright light shone here and there in the huge server farm where a tech worked on a rack in isolation.

  The monitors on the wall behind the operators showed the various techs at work and the hallways approaching the data center. A fly couldn’t get close without being noticed. Freeman ignored the security cameras; his attention was on the system monitors.

  He almost jumped when the buzzer sounded. “What the hell? Who would be here at this time of night?”

  “It’s Mr. Metcalf.” The thin, middle-aged computer operator looked at the monitor on his console. “Good evening, Mr. Metcalf, do you have a ticket to enter the data center?”

  Was this jerk nuts? The chairman of the board doesn’t need a ticket to get in.

  “No, Alan. I just dropped by on a whim.” The tinny voice came from a speaker on the wall. “Is Mr. Freeman there?”

  “It’s okay, Alan, let him in.” Freeman walked towards the “people trap” double door.

  Alan pushed his horn-rimmed glasses back up his long nose and hit a button on the control panel, a buzzer rang and the door opened. Metcalf stepped through the steel door into a glass-enclosed foyer. Freeman didn’t make him scan his hand print or swipe his ID card; he just opened the inner door.

  “Mr. Metcalf, I didn’t expect you here tonight.”

  “Thanks, Dick. I have a gut feeling that you’re going to catch that hacker tonight. I wanted to be here when you did.”

  Freeman hated to be called Dick. When he was growing up, his big brother dubbed him “Little Dick.” The name had stuck through high school. Needless to say, all the guys teased him and the girls took it seriously enough that he could never get a date. That was one of the reasons Freeman entered the Marine Corps the summer he graduated. No one would ever denigrate him again.

  Something about Metcalf always bothered Freeman. Metcalf was so distant, so aloof, like he was better than everyone else. Freeman felt that Metcalf treated him like a pet dog. No, make that a working dog. He was like a seeing-eye dog, or a Sheppard or something. No, he was a guard dog that was it. A guard dog. A pit bull for his master, but there was no human connection, no warmth there.

  “The trap is set, sir.” In the Corps, Freeman had always respected his superiors. Too bad that didn’t carry over to real life. “We’ve built a ‘honey pot’ for him.”

  “You’ve isolated the servers?” Metcalf walked over to the operators’ console.

  “Yes, sir.” Freeman followed, step for step. “We’ve set up a VLAN in a separate domain. There are hardened firewalls around it. No way can anyone can get from the honey pot into our network.”

  “And you have enough data?” Metcalf picked up the operators’ log and thumbed thr
ough it. “Enough servers in the honey pot to keep our friend interested?”

  “We’ve built a whole virtual server farm.” Freeman took one of the empty operator’s seats and brought up a screen on the monitor. “It’s stuffed with bogus files, databases, applications. All of it meaningless, but enough to keep a curious hacker busy for hours. While he’s wandering around in our maze, we’ll be tracking him. By the time we’re through, we’ll have his name, home address and shoe size.”

  Metcalf leaned over Freeman’s shoulder and studied the screen. “You’re not going to make it too easy are you? If he smells a rat, the bastard’ll bail before you have a chance to nail him.”

  What does he take me for? A rank amateur? “No, sir. We’ve put enough roadblocks in his way to keep him busy for a couple of hours. If he’s any good at all, it’ll be a challenge.”

  “Mr. Freeman.” Alan’s voice went up two decibels. “We’ve got an intruder alert.”

  “That’s him.” Freeman began typing on his keyboard. “Start the trace. Keep track of everything he does.”

  “Are you getting his IP address?” Metcalf showed more excitement that Freeman had ever seen.

  “He’s coming in through a server in Virginia. Department of Defense. He has to be spoofing.” Freeman brought up a new window and entered instructions. “Okay, he’s bouncing off a network in Germany. This guy’s good.”

  Freeman could feel Metcalf’s breath on his neck. He smelled of cologne and alcohol.

  “Alan.” Metcalf's voice was cold as a winter morning. “What’s he doing? Where’s he going?”

  “He’s broken into our bogus HR sub-net. I wouldn’t have believed that he could get through our firewalls that fast. He’s in the HR system.” Alan’s voice cracked.

  “Who is this guy?” Metcalf was back at Freeman’s workstation.

  “Okay, I’ve got him.” Freeman’s voice rose two octaves. “He’s in Seattle. Local ISP. This is a private residence. Shit.”

  “What is it?”

  Freeman stared at his screen. He couldn’t believe what he saw.

  “Uh. . . We lost him.”