The Fugitive's Trail

by J. C. Fields

  “The laptop was sitting on a solid walnut desk that was larger than the Toyota I drove in college. I sat at the desk, opened the laptop, and as expected, it was password protected. Guys like Plymel are very organized and they like to think of themselves as computer savvy. But they’re usually not. I picked the computer up and looked on the bottom. Sure enough, there was the password. I took a flash drive out of my shirt pocket and slipped it into one of the USB slots. With a few keystrokes, a program I had written specifically for this occasion, downloaded. With a few more strokes on the keyboard, I erased all traces of the download. But, my program was still there, operating in the background. I closed the laptop’s lid, put the chair back like I had found it, and carefully let myself out of the apartment. I was in the apartment less than ten minutes.

  “The downloaded program was designed to record all of his keystrokes and save them to a file. Then every twenty-four hours, it would email the file to an account set up specifically to receive the data. All traces of the file and email would then be deleted from his laptop.

  “It took several days before the stealth program could record enough information to be useful. First I found Plymel was skimming funds out of P&G Global and locating those funds in offshore accounts. Second, I discovered Abel Plymel had an exit plan.”

  Kruger stopped him and said, “An exit plan?”

  JR nodded. “He had one more big deal to close. Once that deal was completed, he would have almost a hundred-million dollars sitting in offshore accounts. Once he reached that dollar level, he planned to retire and disappear. I don’t have all the details on his exit plan, but in the emails I have, there’s a hint he has an alternate set of identification papers.”

  Kruger frowned. “When will he execute this plan?”

  Smiling JR said, “From what I could tell, he planned to be gone by the end of the year, maybe sooner.”

  Raising his eyebrows, Kruger leaned slightly forward in his chair. “I checked yesterday. He’s still there. But, we can’t risk him knowing we’ve found you. He could leave the country and disappear. I haven’t spent the last seven months working on this to let that happen” Sitting back in his chair, he rubbed his face with his hands.

  “I transferred all I could find, about sixty-million dollars. Those funds were transferred through various accounts in the Caymans until it was untraceable. Trust me; there is no way he will ever get the money back. It’s gone.”

  Joseph laughed out loud. “What did you do, spend it?”

  JR shook his head. “No, most of the money was donated to charities around the world. I also set up a trust fund for Steve Wilson’s kids. His widow won’t have to worry about paying for college. I kept a little bit of it. I figured the son of a bitch owned me.”

  Kruger stared at JR. “How much did you keep?”

  “A little.”

  “How much, JR?”

  “Not very much. Don’t ask again, because I’m not going to tell you.”

  Kruger just looked at JR for a few moments, then nodded, “Okay, go on with your story.”

  “I have all of this information saved to a flash drive. I’ll give it to you when we’re done.” Kruger smiled. JR continued, “There is a lot of information on the flash drive about Plymel conducting insider trading. That’s how he screwed Tony Chien. It’s also where most of the sixty million came from. Plus he’s running a bit of a Ponzi scheme with some of his investors.”

  Kruger interrupted. “This information was illegally obtained. We can’t use it in court, JR.”

  “I know that, but it gives you direction.”

  Kruger nodded. “Go on.”

  “Anyway, after I transferred all of his money. I started putting my own exit plan into place. I thought I might have a couple of weeks before I had to bug out. I was wrong.”

  Chapter 15

  Springfield, MO

  “My plan was to leave New York by the weekend, but on the Wednesday prior to my departure,” said JR, “they found me. As I left my apartment building early that morning, a man fell into step next to me. The man was about my height and a lot more muscular. He was huge. I really don’t remember much about him, except his size. He was slightly behind me as we approached the corner. A black Suburban screeched to a halt in front of me, just as I reached the crosswalk. The rear door opened and I was pushed into the vehicle. A much larger guy was already in the back seat and pulled me in as the shorter guy scrambled into the vehicle.

  “I was now sitting between the two large men. I heard the guy on my left say, ‘Go.’ I looked at both of them and said, ‘What the hell is going on here?’ They ignored me. As the Suburban stopped for a stoplight, I tried to get up and exit the vehicle. The guy who had pushed me into the vehicle pulled a Glock out from under his suit coat, stuck it in my ribs, and said, ‘Shut up.’ So I did.

  “I had no perception of time, so I can’t tell you how long we were in the Suburban. I knew we were heading toward Battery Park, but before we got there, the driver stopped in front of a very tall building. The shorter guy next to me got out, and I was shoved out the door by the taller one. He placed his hand on my back and pushed me toward the building. We got on the elevator after passing a security guard sitting in a booth, who only nodded at my two escorts and ignored my presence.

  “I watched the floors count up on the panel. It stopped counting on the thirty-fourth floor. Once again, I was shoved and we exited the elevator into the lobby of an office suite. I was hurriedly escorted to a large office and forced to sit in front of a desk even larger than the one in Plymel’s apartment. The owner of the desk was standing with his back to me, facing a large floor-to-ceiling window. My two burly escorts stood behind me.

  “I really don’t remember how long the man stood with his back to me. Probably wasn’t very long, but it seemed like an eternity. Finally he turned and faced me. It was Abel Plymel. He said, ‘You have something of mine and I want it back.’ I just stared at him. He probably asked several times about the money, but I wasn’t listening. I was weighing the options on how to get out of this mess. Not too many came to mind. His laughing brought me out of the funk. He said, ‘I actually laughed when I saw the balance you left.’ I tuned him out again. I had left a balance of two cents in each of his accounts. Probably not the smartest thing I’ve ever done, but it sure felt good at the time.

  “He got my attention again when he showed the video recording of my excursion into his apartment. The last thing on my mind that morning was security cameras. I watched myself download the program to his laptop and leave the office. The quality was poor, but you could tell it was me.”

  “Is there a copy of this recording, JR?” said Joseph. He had straightened from leaning on the mantle, his composed expression gone, in its place a look of apprehension.

  JR shook his head. “A week after I arrived here, I hacked back into P&G’s corporate server. I found the video file, deleted it, and renamed another security file to the original file name. If anyone looks at it again, all they will see is five minutes of an empty hallway.” Joseph chuckled, relaxed, and again leaned against the fireplace mantel.

  JR took another long drink of water. Placing the bottle of water on the coffee table, he started his narrative again. “At this point, Plymel leaned over the desk and said in a low growl, ‘Now, do you want to tell me where the money is?’

  “I stared back into his eyes and said, ‘You’ll never find it.’ That’s when Plymel straightened and sat down at his desk. He leaned forward in his seat, put his elbows on the desk, clasped his hands together, and made a steeple with his index fingers. Tapping them against his lip, he said, ‘Tell me now where the money is, or I will not be responsible for what happens to you.’

  “I chuckled slightly, stared back at him, and said, ‘That’s the trouble with guys like you. You never take responsibility for your actions.’ His faced turned crimson. I thought he was going to stroke out. But just as fast, he calmed, looked at both of the gorillas standing behind me, and n
odded. They grabbed under my arms and yanked me to my feet. As I was being pushed toward the door, Plymel said, ‘Tell me where the money is. It will be less painful.’ I turned my head back toward him and just before I was shoved through the door, I said, ‘Go to hell.’”

  Kruger smiled and leaned forward in his chair. He said, “There’s the threat of bodily harm I was looking for. I’ll call Alvarez in the morning. He can start pressuring the guard who survived, then we’ll have collaboration on what Plymel said. Sorry, JR, go on with your story.”

  JR nodded and said, “We rode the elevator to the ground floor, and I was pushed out just behind the short one. I noticed the bulge under his suit coat on his right hip. He was slightly ahead of me to my left. The taller guy was slightly behind me on the right. I noticed the Suburban waiting at the curb through the front glass of the lobby. I knew if I got into the vehicle, I was dead. I’d never get out of it alive.

  “I really didn’t make a decision. I just acted. My instincts and training from the military took over. To this day, I don’t really remember much about it. I do remember seeing the shorter guy with a bullet hole just above his right eye. The next thing I can really remember is running, turning a corner, field stripping the Glock, and stuffing the various pieces into pockets of my jeans. I walked a few blocks and devised a plan. I had sixty-thousand dollars and my computer backup files in a safe deposit drawer at a bank. The money was an emergency fund in case something like this might happen.

  “After walking several blocks from the building, I hailed a cab and took it toward the bank. I got out seven blocks from it and discretely threw the pieces of the Glock into storm drains and trashcans. I figured I had less than an hour to accomplish what needed to be done. There was a sporting goods store about two blocks from the bank, so I ducked in and bought a Swiss Gear computer backpack. With the new backpack, I entered the bank and gained access to my box. I kept a rotation of thirty-two-gig flash sticks as backups for my laptop and the sixty-thousand dollars in the box. It took less than a minute to pack everything. Once that was accomplished, I took another cab to a public library about eleven blocks from the bank.

  “Thirty minutes after the incident, I was using a public computer to access my personal laptop at my apartment. Once I was into the computer, I executed a program that basically destroyed the hard drive of the laptop. Trust me. No one was going to get any data off that drive.

  “Once I had my computer destroyed, I left the library and hailed a cab. I wanted this guy to remember me, so I gave him a hundred-dollar bill from my stash. As I handed the money to him, I said, ‘Get me to Newark by one and I’ll give you another hundred.’ The guy was from some Middle Eastern country. He had the keffiyeh and a seven-day-old beard.” JR chuckled. “I’ll never forget his look. It went from bored to euphoria in microseconds. His greenish-hue grin revealed several missing teeth. The taxi screeched away from the curb as he tackled the midday traffic. We made it to Newark International with a minute to spare. I handed him the other hundred and without a word slipped out of the cab and ran into the airport.

  “I stopped inside the vestibule, turned, and watched as he slowly pulled away from the curb. Once the cab joined the multitude of vehicles exiting the airport, I walked into the terminal. Inside, I looked around and found a souvenir shop. Taking my time, I meandered into the store and started looking. I found a dark windbreaker, sunglasses, and a New York Knicks hat. After my purchase, I looked at some magazines and finally left the store ten minutes later. The down escalator was close to the store. Taking the moving stairs down, I went to the lower-level taxi queue, caught a cab, and went to the Westminster Hotel in East Hanover. I figured the cabbie wouldn’t remember dropping me off at a hotel. But he would remember dropping someone off at a Best Buy. Anyway, I walked the quarter of a mile to the store, bought a new computer, an electric screwdriver, a T-Mobile hotspot device, and a bunch of prepaid minutes. It had been four hours since the incident, and I was relatively sure I was ahead of the police. But I needed to keep moving.

  “It took me an hour to set up the laptop and clean the crap that comes with a new computer off the hard drive. Afterwards, I used the coffee shop’s free Wi-Fi to find nearby used car dealers. The smart thing would have been to take a bus, but I didn’t feel I had any extra time to waste. So I tipped one of the Baristas to call a cab for me, mentioning that my cell phone battery was dead. The cab arrived and within twenty minutes I was talking to a guy about a ten-year-old Honda Accord with one hundred and twenty-six thousand miles on it. I paid him in cash and drove off the lot.

  “I filled the car with gas at a Seven-Eleven, bought a heat-n-eat sandwich, a bag of Doritos, a couple bottles of water, and a big coffee.” JR smiled. “Road trip food. The Honda drove good, didn’t squeak, and the tires looked like they had at least another fifteen thousand miles on them. Which was fine. I didn’t plan to keep the car any longer than it took me to get to the middle of the country. I found I-78 and started driving west toward Allentown. Lehigh Valley International Airport was about seventy miles away, and it would take me at least ninety minutes to get there. To my surprise, the Honda’s cruise control worked, so I settled down for the drive and relaxed for the first time since early morning.

  “Eighty-five minutes later, I was circling the long-term parking lot at the airport and found what I was looking for. A Honda Accord. It was the same year and color as mine. It had Missouri license plates on it, and since Missouri was one of the states I was considering, it was a no-brainer. I found an open slot several rows from the car and pulled in. After retrieving the new power screwdriver from my computer bag, I casually walked over to the Honda from Missouri. As I approached the car, I determined where all the security cameras were located and found I had lucked out. The car was parked next to a large SUV, which obscured the view of the closest camera. I knelt down next to the car’s front license plate and reversed the screws and took the plate. Calmly walking back to my car, I got in and drove away.

  “I had not been in the parking lot long enough to get charged, so I left and got back on West I-78. About five miles later, I pulled off the highway and put the Missouri plate on my Honda. Now if a highway patrolman called the plate in, it would come back as the same color, make, and year car, but registered in Missouri. The only problem I might have was if the person I had stolen it from came back and noticed the license missing. If that happened, I’d be screwed, but I didn’t have any other choice.

  “Eventually, I got to I-70. From there, it was a straight shot west to St. Louis, where I would need to make a decision. I ran out of steam when I got to Columbus, Ohio, around nine. All of the day’s adrenalin was gone and I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer. On the west side of town, I found a group of small low-cost motels surrounded by chain restaurants. I paid cash for a ground-level room in the back, drove around the building, and backed into the parking slot in front of my room. Since I didn’t have any luggage, unpacking didn’t take a lot of time. A pizza and a two-liter Diet Coke from the Domino’s next door was my dinner. I used the T-Mobile device to check news from New York City. There was nothing about the morning’s event. Which was kind of surprising. A shooting close to Wall Street would normally warrant mentioning, apparently not this time. Next, I checked a map of Missouri and after a few Google searches, decided on my destination.

  “My destination was over seven hundred miles away, and I was determined to get there by the next evening. After a long hot shower, I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. Six the next morning found me back on I-70 with a big cup of coffee and an Egg McMuffin from a nearby McDonalds.

  “At seven that night, I checked into the Baymont Suites on the south side of Springfield. I was in the middle of the country, in a city large enough to start a new life, but small enough no one would think to look. At least, that was what I thought at the time.

  “The hotel was situated in an area with shopping centers and a bunch of chain restaurants. It was perfect, I bought supplie
s and clothing at a nearby shopping mall and ate at the Outback Steakhouse within walking distance of my hotel. It was my first decent meal in two days. Life was good again. The only problem was, I didn’t have an ID. Plus, I couldn’t use my real name without leaving a trail. It had been thirty-six hours since the incident, and I was over twelve hundred miles away without leaving a paper trail. I felt somewhat safe, but not until I could change my identity, which I did the next day.”

  JR took a deep breath, let it out slowly and said, “That’s it. Now you know the truth, not the BS made up by Plymel.”

  Chapter 16

  Springfield, MO

  Kruger leaned back in his chair. He looked at Joseph, who nodded. He then returned his attention to JR. “That corresponds to what we knew about the case. You confirmed my suspicions about the physical threat. Did you find all of his diverted funds?”

  Diminski shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. He probably had a few accounts he didn’t access while the program recorded keystrokes. But I got a lot of them.”

  Kruger was silent for a few moments. Then he said, “As far as I’m concerned, I still haven’t found the fugitive from New York City. But I am concerned about who else is looking for you and who accessed your military file?”

  Joseph said, “I have someone looking into the matter.”

  Kruger nodded. “You mentioned you still have a backdoor into Plymel’s computer.”

  JR said, “I have one into P&G Global. His laptop is invisible. They changed the access codes after they found the security camera recording. He has a new email account, which I’m sure will be easy to find when I go back into the corporate server.”

  “If we needed to, could you bring their system down for a few minutes?”