The Blackwood Files - File One: Family Secrets

by Terri Reid

  “Well, I’m Detective Art O’Reilly,” Tom lied. “And Miss Callahan and I faced each other in court yesterday where she allowed a drug dealer and a murderer out on a technicality.”

  “She was just doing her job,” Callahan replied. “And if you think you can harass her…”

  “Oh, no, I’m not stupid,” Tom replied. “But we got a report that her defendant, Jacarius Robbins, tried to break into her apartment this morning and ended up shooting out the window in the front of the apartment building. I’m here for her statement.”

  “Statement?” Reece asked.

  “Yeah, the doorman called 911 when he saw that the guy had a gun,” Tom said. “Then he stopped the elevator until the police could arrive. Somehow Robbins got lost in the system and was able to get free. We need a statement from your daughter to arrest him. The doorman has left town without a trace.”

  Reece stared at Tom. He’d seen O’Reilly before and knew that he was a generally well-regarded cop.

  “Don’t you think it’s karma?” Reece asked Tom. “She got him off the hook.”

  Tom studied Reece for a moment, disgust growing in his gut. “She did her job, I’m doing my job,” he said. “I just want the scum off the streets.”

  Reece bit back a smile. He could feel the disgust O’Reilly was feeling and he had to assume it was for Brooke. He didn’t blame O’Reilly in the least. Robbins should have been in jail and, if they hadn’t needed his services in the organization, he would have. He wondered what his by-the-book daughter would think if she had known they had manipulated the records she’d used to win her case. Sometimes, Reece reasoned, you had to change the rules in order to win the war. He smiled to himself knowing that by her own actions, Brooke had alienated herself from the very people who at one time would have been on her side.

  “How long have you been knocking on her door?” Reece asked.

  “For at least five minutes,” Tom said. “Maybe longer.”

  “Well then you can be assured that she’s not home,” Reece replied. “She’s not one to hide behind a door. She’d be out here in your face if she were home.”

  “No offense meant, but are you covering for her, sir?” Tom asked.

  Reece smiled tightly. “No offense taken, young man,” he replied. “But no, I would not cover for my daughter. She has to be responsible for her own actions.”

  He turned and walked back to the elevators. “You can wait, if you’d like,” he said. “But if she hasn’t answered the door yet, she won’t be answering it any time soon. She’s probably at her friend’s house, Niki Jhang. You might want to check out her apartment.”

  “I’ll wait,” Tom answered with a respectful nod. “But thank you for your advice.”

  Reece pocketed the key he was going to use to get into Brooke’s apartment and pressed the elevator button. Damn! This was not what he’d planned. He turned back to the young man still waiting at the door. “Good luck,” he said before stepping into the elevator.

  “Thank you, sir,” Tom replied. “And to you, too.”

  Once the elevator closed, Tom watched the lights on the elevator’s display signal that it was headed down to the first floor. He waited a few more minutes and then knocked lightly on the door. It immediately opened, and Tom slipped inside.

  “That was genius,” Niki said. “Pure genius.”

  “Do you really think he was here to see her?” Tom asked.

  “He seemed more surprised by you being here than her not being here,” Sam said.

  Niki shook her head. “I was sure he was keeping track of her via her phone when she came to my place,” she said. “I don’t know… this doesn’t make sense…” She looked up as an idea came to mind. “Wait.”

  She walked across the room and pulled on a tall bookcase shelf. The shelf moved forward on a hinge, revealing a small safe. “I bet he was here for this,” she said. “In case of emergency, Reece was a cosigner on all of Brooke’s accounts. He was going to clean her out. If she didn’t have any money, she’d have to do what he wanted.”

  “Well, there’s more than one way to access her accounts,” Sam said. “We may have stopped him taking the easy path, but I have a feeling he has other avenues to explore.”

  Niki nodded. “Can you guys finish this up without me?” she asked. “I think I need to go back to my office and do a little banking.”

  “Yeah, I think we’ve only got about ten more boxes of shoes, and then we should be done,” Tom quipped.

  Niki handed Sam the list. “These are the things she said were important. Everything else can be left as props for anyone looking for her.”

  Sam looked down the list. “Okay, seems pretty straightforward,” he said. “Good luck with your withdrawals.”

  Niki grinned. “Why, thank you.”

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Brooke hung up her phone and sighed. “That was Niki,” she said. “Reece came over to the apartment, and Tom was able to keep him from going in. Niki thinks he was going after my financial information. She’s moving some money out and keeping some in so he’ll think he has everything, but I’ll still have funds.”

  “Is he really that worried about you?” Bruce asked. “It’s been twenty-five years, isn’t the trail kind of cold?”

  “What were you investigating when you were killed?” Art asked.

  “I started with one case, a murder case,” he said. “For some reason, the MO reminded me of a case I’d heard about a couple of years earlier. The guy who was murdered was a creep, and no one was going to miss him. But, you know, the law is blind and we had to find out who did it.”

  “I pulled the file and it looked like the investigation just stopped,” Bruce continued. “This was another criminal shot down in broad daylight. Suddenly, I started wondering if someone was playing judge, jury and executioner. I started pulling more and more files, finding more and more cases where the investigation just stopped and the cases were unsolved.”

  “So, we’re talking a vigilante group?” Art asked. “An interior secret organization.”

  Bruce nodded. “Yeah, I think so,” he said. “And I guess I got too close for comfort.”

  “But why is Reece acting this way?” Art asked. “Is he part of the organization? Does he know what got you killed and he’s afraid the same thing will happen to her?”

  “No, even if Brooke started a full out investigation of my death, it would take her months to track down the information,” Bruce said, gliding across the floor as he spoke. “And that would be if she did it full time, and as far as he knows, she doesn’t have any incentive to push that hard.”

  “In the meantime, he got her fired from her job and is trying to tie up her funds,” Art said. “If he were thinking straight, he would have had her boss assign her to some big case where she had to travel out of town.”

  Brooke looked from Bruce to Art. “He wants me out of the picture, totally,” she said. “He doesn’t want me in the country. He wants me in Europe. Why?” She shook her head. “It reminds me of our clients before…” She stopped and turned to the men. “Before a merger. There must be some kind of deal going down, and even an inkling of an issue…”

  “Like the daughter of one of the first guys they killed finding out about it,” Art supplied.

  Brooke nodded. “Exactly,” she said. “Could spook the whole deal. That’s why he’s acting so quickly.”

  “Which makes it even more dangerous for you,” Art stated. “Which is why you should not buy this house.”

  “Which is why,” Brooke argued, “I need more than ever to buy this house. This house holds the key.”

  She gazed around the old structure and nodded. “I can set it up at as a blind trust,” she said. “So no one will be able to discover I’m the owner. And I’ll ask Niki to move in with me, at least until the case is solved.”

  Art sighed. “I can’t talk you out of this?”

  She shook her head. “No,” she said. “You can’t.”

  They
all heard a timid knock on the front screen door. “Hello,” the realtor called. “Are you two okay?”

  Brooke turned to her father. “Did you do anything to the realtor?” she asked.

  Bruce shook his head. “No,” he replied innocently. “Although I have to admit that once the house came back on the market, I was hoping it wouldn’t sell in case you’d found your way back here.”

  “So what did you do?” she whispered fiercely.

  “I was a gentleman. I promise,” Bruce vowed. “I opened doors for her. I moved a chair into the room for her to sit on. I opened the curtains so she’d have more light…”

  “And she couldn’t see you, right?” Art asked.

  Bruce nodded. “Right.”

  “Hello,” the realtor called again, panic creeping into her voice. “Please answer me.”

  Art walked out of the kitchen and back into the living room. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We didn’t hear you at first.”

  “Why?” the realtor asked, poking her head through the door’s opening but not walking into the house. “Did something happen in the kitchen?”

  “No. Nothing at all,” Art reassured her. “And we’ve decided to take the house.”

  “What?” she asked. “Are you sure? Because once we’ve signed the contract, this house is yours as-is.”

  “Yes, we’re sure,” Art said. “But we have a couple of conditions.”

  “I’m not into those exorcism things,” she stated. “If you want a priest, you got to get your own.”

  “What?” Art said, shaking his head. “No. No priest. We want immediate possession of the house.”

  “Well, first we have to work out the financing,” Judith replied, shaking her head. “I can’t give you possession without knowing you can get a mortgage.”

  “We’ll pay cash,” Brooke said, walking into the room and sliding her arm around Art’s arm. “We have just fallen in love with the place.”

  “Cash?” Judith asked. “Cash?”

  “Yes,” Brooke said. “And we’ll pay full asking price.”

  Judith’s eyebrows jumped up on her forehead. “Are you sure you don’t want to think about this?” she asked. “Spend a little more time in the house?”

  Brooke glanced over at Art, a twinkle in her eyes, and then turned back to Judith. “No, really, we’re sure,” she said. “How quickly can you contact the owners?”

  “I can draw up a contract this evening,” Judith replied. “And I can have them sign it tomorrow morning.”

  “Perfect,” Brooke said.

  “And what names should I put on the contract?” Judith asked.

  “It will be a trust,” Brooke said. “I’ll have the papers drawn up this afternoon.”

  “Fine,” Judith said, looking around the room uneasily. “I’ll meet you at my office tomorrow morning, we’ll sign the papers and I’ll hand over the keys.”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  The lights were low, and yoga music was playing softly in the background. The rest of the office was deserted, and her computer was whirling its way through the magic of the internet, unlocking gates and obstacles with the ease of a master hacker. Niki Jhang was in her element. Leaning back in her chair, her keyboard in her lap, Niki slipped through security blocks and accessed the files and records she needed to accomplish her sleight of hand. Playing off a hunch, Niki had first slipped into Cook County birth records and found that the social security number Brooke had been assigned when she was a newborn was not the same one she used today. Niki had thought Reece would not have wanted any links back to Brooke’s birth, and she’d been right. Using her original social security number, Niki opened new accounts for Brooke, changing her last name to Blackwood and moving most of the money in her checking, savings and 401k accounts to new ones, away from the reach of Reece Callahan.

  Niki decided to leave some money in each of the old accounts so Reece wouldn’t initially be suspicious. Leaning forward in her chair, she grabbed her glass of sparkling water and sipped thoughtfully as she reviewed the screen before her. She’d gone in and out without leaving a trail. She was sure of that. But it wasn’t foolproof. Someone who knew what they were doing would be able to tell the accounts had been hacked.

  She sighed and sipped again. “Okay, how many laws do I want to break tonight?” she whispered.

  She thought about Reece’s behavior and shook her head. “There’s got to be something out there that will explain it,” she said. “And the more we know, the better prepared we’re going to be.”

  Placing her glass back on the desk, she leaned back in her chair and started working. Accessing their system, she plotted a path through the web through a number of different servers, changing her virtual identity a number of times and finally routing through a server out of Poland. Then she began her investigation, first through the server at the Chicago Police Department accessing any emails from Reece. Following the IP address from those records, she moved up the line, accessing other information about Reece until she was able to hack into his email service. “Okay, Reece,” she whispered, leaning forward in her chair. “Let’s see what you’ve got hiding in here.”

  She did a search through his email using terms that were often used to replace key words government web crawlers used to look for fraud and possible terrorist activity. “Really, Reece, really?” she said, shaking her head in disgust. “Package? Your people couldn’t be more creative than package?”

  She clicked on the email and scanned the body.

  Judge,

  The final steps are in place for delivery of the package we spoke about at our last meeting. I am impressed by both your organization and your devotion to the cause of true justice and ultimate liberty. I feel confident that we will be able to form an alliance that will not only financially be beneficial for both of our causes, but will also give us the political power to continue to achieve our similar goals.

  I must caution you, however, that we will be watching your organization with increased scrutiny until the package is delivered. Anything out of order or suspicious will nullify this agreement. I know you understand how vital it is that our organization be protected from even the appearance of controversy.

  I look forward to working with you and helping you achieve the goals we spoke of when we met. I can honestly say that I see you taking a higher-level position in this organization, with more national exposure, if you understand my meaning.

  All the best.

  Senator

  Niki studied the document for another moment. If she didn’t have the information Sam and Art had shared that afternoon, the email would have seemed like another political correspondence. But her perspective shed a different light on it altogether.

  Clicking on the sender’s name and email, she started to follow it out and determine the ISP, but after following it, she was surprised to discover that she hit a wall that even she couldn’t get through. Shrugging, she carefully backed out. She had all the information she was going to get from that source.

  She found a couple more emails detailing investments into Reece’s organization and wondered if Reece had risked a great deal of his own money. “Well, there’s one way to find out,” she said, and then she glanced at the clock. It was already nearly seven, and although she’d given Sam the key to her apartment, she really ought to be there to help put things away. “Okay, Reece, your finances will have to wait for another day.”

  She backed out of his accounts, taking care to follow the same steps she had on the way in, and finally closed everything down. Picking up her cell, she rolled the tension out of her neck as she placed a call downstairs to the building concierge.

  “Hi, Gordon,” she said. “It’s Niki Jhang. Could you have my car brought out front for me?”

  She hung up, gathered her things, locked up the office and walked over to the elevators. Her offices were on the upper floors of One Financial Place in the heart of Chicago’s financial district. Even though she was more Silicon Valley than W
all Street, she loved the excitement and the security of working in a building filled with brokers and traders.

  Her car, a definite splurge, a Porsche Boxter GTS in bright, shiny, candy apple red was waiting for her at the curb. Taking the key from the attendant, she handed him a tip, climbed into the sports car and sped away from the curb and down the road.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Reece Callahan was livid. “What the hell do you mean there’s only a few hundred dollars in her accounts?” he yelled into the phone. “Brooke had thousands. I know she had thousands. She never let her balances get that low.”

  He listened to the young man on the other end of the line, his voice shaking apologetically as he repeated his findings. “I’m sorry, sir,” the young man squeaked. “I’ve checked all of the accounts you’ve given me. Their total is less than one thousand dollars. I can move that money if you’d like.”

  Reece thrummed his fingertips against the hard wood surface of his desk and tried to move past the rage and think clearly.

  “Can you tell me when the last transfer or withdrawal occurred?” he asked, keeping his voice level.

  “Sure,” the young man agreed quickly. “Sure, I can do that.”

  Reece could hear the clicking of fingers against a keyboard. “That can’t be right,” Reece heard from the other end.

  “What?” Reece demanded.

  “The last withdrawal was done, like, thirty minutes ago,” was the response. “But the bank’s been closed for hours.”

  “Niki,” Reece growled softly.

  “Excuse me?” the young man questioned.

  “Nothing,” Reece said. “Can you reverse those transactions?”

  He heard the keyboard again. And then he heard the sigh. “I’m sorry, sir,” the young man finally admitted. “It’s blocked. I can’t even find out where the money’s been transferred. Do you want me to check all the other accounts?”

  Reece ground his teeth. If Niki had done this, the young computer geek would find the same thing in each of the accounts. “No. Don’t bother,” Reece finally said. “That will be all.”