Willow Glen Heist

by Alec Peche

  “It’s a thought, but I can’t imagine that there are many online sources storing those images that are eight to nine years old at this point. Why don’t I look for her now? Maybe start with passport control and if we see no activity move on to cameras focused on the busiest intersections in the United States? Locations like Time Square in New York, major airports, and places like that?”

  “You can do that? I wish you suggested that weeks ago,” Natalie said.

  “Yes, but we didn’t figure out who she was until this past week-end so I’m not sure who we would have been looking for….”

  “You’re right, of course.”

  They ended their conversation shortly after that and both went to work. Damian monitored the time as he needed to be over at Ariana’s later for the afternoon’s water polo match. He thought about the effort he needed to make to hack into the Immigration department’s passport control. It would likely take him at least a full day, so he sent out a few emails to department personnel hoping to trick them into giving up their access, then he put that aside and headed across the bay to the marina and drove his truck to the office. Lily would start the following week and he was looking forward to hosting the baseball game the following evening.

  He thought about his employees and decide to have a staff meeting once he got there to discuss goals of the firm, make sure that everyone was on the same page as he was. He wanted the drone ready to go in less than six months, and the wave powered technology sooner. He also wanted to demo the protective vests he’d made for Ariana and Hermione for the gang and discuss the possibility of commercializing them – who would be the target market and could he manufacture them cheap enough to meet their price point. He had a lot to look forward to with the company.

  Minutes later he arrived at the warehouse and greeted Haley, Angus, and Chris. After a thorough discussion concerning their problems and solutions since the last meeting, Damian proposed the idea of the protective vests. Haley loved the idea, but thought that the team could make them more fashionable, while Angus and Chris wondered who would buy them totally missing the female market. The conversation was very telling and he decided it was a project that he and Haley would work together perhaps with a little help from Lily once she started with the company.

  He reminded himself that the company was there to pursue his passions for better technology and not every idea would be liked by every employee. When he saw Ariana later at the water polo match he would ask her to do a market assessment and see if they had a market. It seemed like it was a good idea if a woman wanted to hike alone, had an evening shift job, or just lived in a shady area. Of course then he’d need to make it affordable and legal, not that he could think of any laws against the vest but he have to research that.

  After spending several hours at the company, he headed for his island. Truth was he was more productive in his home lab than when surrounded by the nice people that worked for him. He reminded everyone about the gathering the next day and left. He stopped at home to feed the cats and then was off again to Ariana’s house. He docked his boat behind hers pulling its sun deck and side window covers in place. Heavy drizzle was expected later and he didn’t want the interior of his boat drenched.

  Soon he and Ariana were on their way to Hermione’s school pool which was hosting the first water polo game of the season. They were anxious to see her do well and it was a new challenge for her. She’d been a competitive swimmer for years, but had never tried to play water polo until their summer vacation. It’s was true for all the players so the playing field was even. Damian had found coverage of an Olympic water polo game and studied it to understand the strategy and rules of the game. After the match they were going to grab a pizza to take home to Ariana’s house before he headed back home to the island. When the match first started he explained the positions and rules and then they were both quiet as they watched and cheered whenever Hermione’s team scored. In the end, the final score was eighteen to five in favor of Hermione’s school and she scored five of the points. Hermione was exhilarated when she met them at the car after coming out of the locker room.

  “Congratulations Hermione, that was an excellent performance,” Damian said. “You guys looked so much better than the other team so hopefully the rest of your games will go this well.”

  “Coach was pleased with our performance and several of the older players said we have a better team this year than last year and we won our league last year.”

  “Did you have fun playing the game?” Ariana asked.

  “I’ve got a few bruises on my legs and hips from all the kicking that occurs under water, but I had a blast. It’s so different from swimming, I like the teamwork aspect. Even the locker room was louder as people were remarking on plays. When you’re a racing swimmer you don’t have this comradery.”

  “Glad you enjoyed it!” Damian said as Ariana pulled into the parking lot of the pizza restaurant. “Are you hungry?”

  “Yes, very. I’ll need a big meal after every game. I feel like my stomach is touching my spine since it’s so empty and I can eat a whole pizza.”

  Damian chuckled and exited the car to pick up their order. Soon they were back at Ariana’s house sitting at her center isle eating pizza. Hermione hadn’t been kidding that she was starving as Damian watched her plow through four large slices of pizza without slowing down. Soon he was saying good bye to the two women and getting in his boat to head back across the bay. As he expected, it was drizzling when he opened the side canopy to get in the boat and he had to keep it closed up on his way home.

  Damian sat down at his computer cracking his knuckles and his shoulder joints before he planned his deep dive into the cameras at immigration checkpoints across the nation. It was a massive undertaking and might not yield any new information. If Arielle or Ashley or whatever name she was going by hadn’t left the country in the last month, then it would be all for naught. With all the airport, bus, train, boat, and car entry points, the first thing he needed to do was created a list of all locations. He was amazed to learn that Canada had about one hundred twenty entry points between itself and the U.S. and the Homeland Security Department list three hundred twenty-eight border crossings. From there he had to figure out which had cameras and fortunately it seemed that it was all of them. Some ports of entry were larger than other; busy ports included California-Tijuana, Detroit-Windsor, and El Paso-Juarez. The California location had over one hundred thousand visitor crossings every day. In a month’s worth of footage he would be looking at nearly four million faces for a match to Arielle Joseph in that one location alone.

  He thought about how to put the computer through its paces and decided to do several runs to speed up the facial recognition match. He’d do the coastal airports as one group, all other airports plus ports as a second group, each of the three largest car and pedestrian borders as their own search, and then one final run of the other three hundred twenty-five entry points as one run. Total incoming immigration was one million visitors each day. Of course he could probably ignore half of those since he was looking for females, but then again every human that looked like a man wasn’t necessarily one and visa-versa so he’d design the program to scan all faces.

  He planned to search several levels on the scan. The first round would be measurements of the relative position , size, and shape of the eyes, nose, cheekbones, and jaw. He expected to get multiple matches for Arielle so from there he’d add 3D recognition which examined the mountains and valleys of the face and even skin texture if he could find it in the resolution of the photos. Finally he had everything in place and he was awaiting success with his hack which was just a single employee in a certain area of Homeland security giving up his or her user name and password while seemingly being unaware that they just did so.

  Looking at his watch he thought it was unlikely that he’d catch a Homeland Security employee asleep at the switch, no pun intended, at this hour, but he’d try. He’d have far more opportunities for success
during the day shift when thousands of employees were on the job.

  Fifteen minutes later to his surprise, he was in their system searching for footage of the border cameras. After an hour’s work he found trouble. Only about half of the locations were on the main server, other locations hadn’t been upgraded to transfer video to a central storage facility. Now he’d have to rethink his strategy. He’d start with running a search with the photos he could access and see what that showed him and worry about the other locations later.

  A couple of hours later he had his Arielle Joseph search going and he left the lab and went upstairs to his bedroom to get some sleep. It was one in the morning and he was exhausted from several busy days. Tomorrow he’d check the program when he awoke, spend some time at the warehouse, and then head over to the ballpark where he was hosting the small party at the San Francisco Giants baseball game.

  Chapter 26

  After the night’s rest, he was anxious to see what the searches revealed and as he suspected, they came up with many matches. He had the software err on a more inclusive side knowing that many of the cameras were not great and they didn’t always capture a full frontal view of a face. He looked at the report and thought oh-no! There are over one thousand names produced by the search and that was just a month’s video footage. He had a new appreciation for the people trying to protect the United States.

  He settled down and put the thousand or so faces through his 3D software. It was a far slower program that he expected and it would likely take twenty-four hours to go through the data. He dropped Natalie an email with his findings and then thought of something to add, ‘Have you gotten a subpoena to search for seller addresses for what had looked like the stolen property of the safe deposit boxes, the five unopened safe deposit boxes and for Arielle’s personnel file?’

  Natalie must have been working on her email as he got an immediate response, ‘Yes to all, will call you after they are executed.’

  Cool, thought Damian, progress at last. He had nothing else to do with the Willow Glen heist for at least a day. This case had so far been full of serious data crunching, but he felt as though they were finally making progress in the nine year old bank robbery. He fed his cats and got ready to head over to the marina and on to the warehouse. He planned to spend the rest of the day there and then go early to the ball park for the game. Natalie’s son Trevor was accompanying Haley, Chris was bringing his date. Angus and his girlfriend were giving Lily and Jacob a ride. Lily had warned them that if the game went into overtime, she and Jacob would need to go home as he had school the next day and this was going to be a late night for them without additional innings. His little group was what he called mild baseball fans; they knew the rules of the game, some of the players and whether they were in or out of the playoffs, but they didn’t pay enough attention to the game to get the strategy or understand when or why you would use a pinch hitter. Ariana was actually the biggest fan among them and she’d be arriving with Hermione after school.

  When he arrived at his company’s headquarters, he held his usual conversation with each member of his team checking on their progress. Haley was upstairs with the drone and Chris and Angus were pleased with not having their concentration interrupted by her drone’s crashes. They were all making progress faster than Damian had been doing on his own which was his first measure of success. Once he was done with their projects he entered his office to begin sourcing fabrics for his self-defense vest. The model that Hermione and Ariana had was a photographer’s vest. He looked online at hunting and utility vests deciding on one of them based on the pocket placement. Now he wanted to take it to another level in terms of protection and fashion. In its present style, he had to agree it was ugly.

  Overall it was one of the most uneventful and quiet days that he’d had in a while. In the late afternoon he left preparing to head home and then on to the ball park. He looked at the computer search and it was still going though it was estimated to be eighty percent complete; maybe by the time he returned home tonight it would be finished.

  He was soon heading across the bay to the marina that was nestled close to the ball park. He paid the berthing fee and admired the beauty of his ‘parking space’. He could view the ball park and the Bay Bridge and he’d passed the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz Island on his way. What a commute! After a short two block walk he was entering the security for the ballpark. Looking at his watch, he figured he was a good thirty minutes in front of everyone else. So he grabbed a beer and stared out the window down to where the players were warming up. While he watched he thought about Hermione and her problems as well as Natalie’s bank heist. It was a great place to think with the background noise of bats making a ping sound when they made contact with the ball and the thud of ball caught in a leather glove. There was also the increasing ambient noise as people filtered into the stadium.

  There was a knock on the suite’s door and then it opened and the catering crew entered with a cart to set up the food. They left after a few last minute questions and Damian went back to contemplating the world from his perch above the ball park. As was often the case when he relaxed and let his brain drift, he imagined his wife Jen and their two girls alongside him at this game. He thought his oldest would have developed into an athlete and so perhaps she would have enjoyed this setting. The younger one would probably be watching people down on the field and entering the stands. He startled when the suite door opened and Angus and his friend Nikki entered with Lily and Jacob. The boy was the only person wearing any garment with the San Francisco Giants logo on it.

  “Are you a Giants fan?” Damian asked.

  “Yeah, I play catcher for Little League and so Buster Posey is my favorite player,” Jacob replied.

  He seemed tall for a twelve year old and a real baseball enthusiast. Damian bet he was a good player and so he asked, “Do you know the game strategy yet? Do they teach it at your age?”

  He saw a smirk on Lily’s face at his question and thought I guess I just proved I was stupid about the game.

  Jacob gave his a look that said, ‘I thought you were smart, man’, but said “Yeah I know strategy, what would you like to know?”

  “Maybe once the game starts you can explain a little of what is going on between the pitcher, catcher, and batter.”

  “Sure I can do that. Thank you for inviting me to the game.”

  “Thank you for coming. Maybe after you explain the secret code of the three positions, it will look more like a strategic sport to me,” Damian said with a sincere smile.

  The kid nodded then moved over to the window to watch the warm-up down on the field. He brought a mitt with him, but sighed with the realization that he wouldn’t catch any balls in this suite.

  Haley and Trevor arrived next with Chris and his friend behind them. Ariana and Hermione slipped in minutes before the National Anthem. They all stood at attention, hands over begin in earnest and Damian introduced Lily and Jacob to everyone. The visitors were up first and Jacob explained what the strategy was with the lineup and then with the first five hitters. The kid was smart and soon had the attention of the entire suite explaining what was happening. He continued to the bottom of the first inning and then he and Ariana continued discussing the players on their own while the others looked on amused.

  Damian said to Lily, “Jacob knows baseball and he’s a good teacher. I had no idea all of that strategizing was going on. He’s given me a new appreciation for the game.”

  “He’s an awesome player! If he continues to develop, he’ll end up with a farm team or a college scholarship,” Lily said.

  “Is that what you want for him?” Damian asked.

  “I want him to have a future. He’s smart and will be college eligible. He’s gifted in baseball but he hasn’t tried other sports like football and soccer yet so maybe he’s just got athletic genes. The nice thing about baseball is it’s less violent than football or soccer as long as he doesn’t stand between a runner and home plate.”
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br />   “Do you play catch with him at home?”

  “Yeah I do,” Lily said and added, “Someday I may need Tommy John surgery since the kid has an insatiable need to play catch.”

  “I’d buy a pitching machine and save my elbow. He’d then be able to catch one hundred mile an hour fastballs by the time he enters middle school.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Lily said. “There’s actually a used one for sale online, but the listing says it doesn’t work; there’s an electric short in the motor and I’m not sure I could fix it.”

  “If the price is good, buy it and bring it to work with you. We’re a bunch of engineers and I’m sure someone can fix it.”

  “I’ll do that. Jacob’s a great catcher, but if he practices he also be a great hitter and that will be his ticket to the majors or college.”

  A roar went up in the stadium and they broke off their conversation to try and figure out what happened. It was a home-run hit into the bay by the Giants catcher and Damian knew Jacob must be the happiest kid in their suite.

  He had Ariana and Hermione speak to Lily about the vest and soon they had her excited on what would be one of her projects in addition to the artificial intelligence for his DNA field analyzer. He chipped in about his fabric search that day and soon had the ladies laughing at his plunders inside the fashion world. He’d design the self-defense items and it was up to Lily to make the vest cool and fashionable, and she and Haley would work on the applicator switches that would release the various self-defense items.

  Lily wanted to head home at the seventh inning stretch, but pleading by Jacob found her staying to the end of the game. Damian was pleased that the Giants won and Jacob’s hero had hit a homerun.; it had been a great night with his employees bonding and Lily getting to know her future team mates. It was approaching eleven as he slowed down and waited for his dock to unfold. He was anxious to see what his database run had turned up. After bringing his boat and dock into their watercraft garage and thus sealing up his island, he walked over to his lower level lab to check on the search.