best served cold

by Sinclair, Rachel

  “I caught a new case. My brother, he came to me one day and told me that our mother was dying, and that she wanted to see me. Well, I couldn’t get a furlough to go see her, and, I just left. I left, hitchhiked my way back to San Diego, went to my mother’s house to find out that she was just fine. I mean, I’m glad that she’s fine, and all. But, I had no idea why Paul would’ve said that to me if she was perfectly healthy. Well, I hitchhiked back to the prison, and I was in trouble. I had a trial about my, what I call self-furlough, because it’s bullshit that I couldn’t get a real one, and they extended my sentence by five years. So, that’s the reason why I’m in here for another five years.”

  “You mean, even after you broke out of prison, they put you back here in minimum-security?” That did not make any sense to me. Usually when people break out of minimum security prisons – and it’s relatively easy to do, because there’s no fence around the perimeter – they don’t come back to the minimum-security prison. They go a higher security prison. But this guy was able to come back to this place?

  “Yeah. I guess that was my brother pulling the strings again. I don’t know exactly how it is he’s able to pull all these strings, but I have to say I’m glad he does.” He swept his hands around the room. “This place, it ain’t too bad. They have concerts outside every Friday night, there’s a rec center where guys play pool and foosball and ping-pong, and guys play basketball and football and all kinds of things out in the courtyard. There’s any kind of drugs you want in here, but I don’t get into that kind of thing. Some of the female guards, they even give action to the inmates around here. And the guys here, they’re not bad. Not bad at all.” He leaned forward. “I even see some guys who are kind of celebrities. You know, they get pinched for not paying their taxes and whatnot, and there they are. I hear that even Tommy Chong was housed here one time, man.”

  Suddenly, the picture was becoming very clear to me. His brother was setting him up. His brother set them up to break out of prison, by telling him that his mother was dying and wanted to see him before she died. He set him up by sending him to work for that Harry in the first place. And yet, Paul had enough decency to make sure that his brother served time in Club Fed. There was no way in hell that, after he broke out of this place, he would just be brought back here.

  Obviously Paul was able to pull strings, and I was going to have to find out exactly why he was able to do that. He must have had an arrangement with a judge. I looked through the file, saw that the judge for his absconding case and the underlying drug case was Judge Cooper, and I knew that I was going to have to look into some kind of arrangement that Judge Cooper had with Paul.

  “Okay. So, let me tell you the reason why I’m here. And I think it’s important that you know this. But your brother, the reason he put you in here, I believe, is because he wants to use your computer. He wants to use your computer to download child pornography.”

  He cocked his head. “I don’t understand. What do you mean?”

  “Well, you have a home right? You have a home, and you own it, right?”

  He nodded his head. “Yeah. My Aunt Genevieve, she left me her home in her will. My brother, he makes sure the taxes are paid each year, but, other than that, I think that this house has been vacant all these years. My brother, I asked him to go ahead and rent it out, but he hasn’t done that.”

  “And in this home is a computer, right? Isn’t that right?”

  He had to think about that one for a second. “Yes. Yes, I did have a computer. But, it’s been five years. You mean to tell me that that computer is still going after all these years?”

  “I don’t know. Actually, it would be kinda perfect if there was a new computer in there that was being used. Because that would be one way to nab your brother at what he’s doing. Anyhow, there is a computer in your home. And your brother is using this computer to download child pornography. That’s probably the reason why you’re in prison in the first place.”

  Max looked confused. “You think that he arranged for me to go to prison just because he wanted to use my computer? I guess I don’t understand.”

  “Here’s the thing. Your brother evidently has a problem with pedophilia. He regularly attends a party where very young girls service older men, like your brother. He cannot have a computer in his home and access child porn. Obviously. If the FBI ever came and raided him, he would go to prison for a long time, and, trust me, the prison that he would go to would not be as nice as this one. He would not be treated as nicely as you’ve been treated in this place. No, he would go to a very bad place. And probably for the rest of his life.”

  It was just dawning on Max that his brother was probably just diabolical enough to do that to him. “So, he goes to my house and he does his thing?”

  “Yes. Did you have broadband Internet before you went to prison?”

  “Yeah. Paul wanted me to get broadband. He set it up for me. I don’t like to deal with things like that.” He shook his head. “Wait a minute. You mean nobody ever canceled the Internet?”

  “I doubt it. I’m going to have to do some research on all this, but I doubt that anybody ever canceled the Internet. In fact, I would go out on a limb and say that for sure nobody canceled the Internet, because that was the whole purpose of your brother doing this to you. But I’m going to have to find out for sure. Did you ask Paul to cancel your Internet?”

  “Yes. I did, as a matter of fact. I asked Paul to take care of my affairs for me while I’m gone. I asked him to pay my property taxes on my house, make sure that the lawn is mowed, look after the house, and shut off all my utilities, including my Internet. Are you telling me that he didn’t cancel my utilities and my Internet?”

  “No. I’m not telling you that until I know for sure. But I have a reasonable suspicion that your utilities are still active, and so is your Internet. After all, you did have it set up for automatic debit, right? How much money was in your bank account when you came into prison?”

  “About $50,000. My aunt left me that money too. What can I say, I was her favorite. So yeah, there was plenty of money in my checking account to pay any kind of utilities and Internet for quite a few years.” He put his hand to his temple and massaged it. “But, come on now. If my brother doesn’t shut everything off, I won’t have anything in the bank when I get out.”

  “Now, I’m just telling you my suspicions. I’m going to have to get your signature on this power of attorney, so I can legitimately look into your utility and Internet bills. And I would also need your signature on this piece of paper that will give me access to your home. I would like to go ahead and see what is in your home, and, if there’s a computer in there, I would like to go ahead and have it forensically analyzed. Can I do that? Will you sign these documents that will allow me to do those things?”

  He still looked confused, but he nodded his head. “Yeah. There’s a notary here, because guys have to sign and notarize documents all the time. I’ll go in and talk to my supervisor. But yeah, sure, you can go into my house. I don’t have the keys to my house, of course, but you’ll be able to get a locksmith to help you get in, right?”

  “Yes. That’s part of the documentation here. You’re giving me permission to access your home and take your computer in for a forensic analysis. And that means that if there is child porn on there, then I also want to have the computer analyzed for any kind of DNA on it. That’s also part of the permission that you’re giving me.”

  He went up and got his supervisor, and then the two of us went into an office, where there was a notary. Max looked over the documents that I gave to him and then signed them.

  “I really hope that you’re able to get to the bottom of this. Because if my brother really was setting me up, then that’s some bullshit right there. I mean, it’s not a bad life back here. It’s not like I’m really suffering. But I’m going to be getting out of prison at some point, and I’m going to be coming out as a felon. I have no idea who’s going to hire me. Not to mention the fa
ct that I’m missing out on life back here. I mean, if my brother was responsible for putting me here, just because he wanted to go to my house and use my computer to get his perverted freak on, then that’s all kind of messed up.”

  “Well, you said that you were angry with him, even before you found out that he is probably setting you up. Why? Why are you so angry with him?”

  “Because. He was in the prosecutor’s office when I got busted for this. He did not speak up for me. In fact, he testified against me. He told the court that I told him that I knew about those drugs being in the back of that head shop. He’s the reason why I’m here in the first place. He lied about me in a court of law, but I did not think that he would’ve done all that just because he wanted to use my computer.”

  “After all that,” I began. “Why did you trust him to pay your property taxes on your home, and to take care of your Internet and utility bills, getting them shut off?”

  He shrugged her shoulders. “He offered to do all that. I needed someone to do it. And he offered it. And that’s it. I could’ve asked my sisters to do it, but Paul offered first, and I took him up on it. There’s really nothing more than that. I guess I was just naïve, thinking he was going to actually do those things. I mean, I guess he has been paying my property taxes, and good for him. But, if things are like you say, I guess he was not shutting off my utilities and Internet like he said he was going to.”

  No, it’s safe to say that he did not do those things. “Okay. So. I’m going to do a few things, and I’ll come back and see you in a couple of weeks. I’ll let you know what I found out.”

  “Thanks. You know, I knew my brother was a shady person. I had no idea just how shady he really is.”

  I knew that Paul was shady. I knew it when he prosecuted me, and withheld evidence.

  But I was about to find out just how shady he really was.

  Chapter 8

  I went down to Christian’s office the next day, because I wanted him to be a part of the situation. He was able to hack into any computer that I found on Max’s property, no problem. But, at the same time, I wanted this to be done correctly. It would be the only way that I would be able to get the kind of leverage that I would be looking for with Paul. And leverage would be the only way that I might be able to see some kind of justice done in the Carl Williams’ case.

  I knocked lightly on his open door. He was sitting behind his desk, working on his computer. I was proud of him. Ever since he had started his private practice, and especially because he was my second chair in the Esme Gutierrez case, people had been banging down his door, wanting to hire him as their attorney. He was getting a lot of good criminal cases, and he was also getting a lot of good personal injury cases. He was really working hard on learning the ropes on personal injury cases, because he wanted to eventually do medical malpractice. That was something that really interested him. At the same time, I knew that medical malpractice cases had a very steep learning curve. It was not insurmountable, so I knew that Christian would be able to do it, but I knew that it would be difficult to learn everything he needed to learn, anyhow. But he was used to working really long hours, so he didn’t mind burning the midnight oil just about every night, poring through medical books, going to medical malpractice conferences, and, when he could, he went to the hospital to do some volunteer work. He was determined that he was going to learn as much as he could about the field before jumping in.

  “Hey, Avery, what’s up?”

  “I wanted to see if you wanted to do some field work with me. I’m going over to this guy’s house, his name is Max Sharpton. He’s Paul Sharpton’s brother. Max is in prison. His brother put him there. Anyhow, I have a strong suspicion that Paul Sharpton has been going over to Max’s house and downloading kiddie porn. I was kind of hoping that maybe you would go along with me to Max’s house? I don’t know, I’m a little bit nervous about it.”

  To be honest, that was a bit of a lie. I wasn’t really nervous about going over to Max’s house. Max had given me total permission to do what I wanted to do over at his home, so it wasn’t like I would be necessarily breaking and entering. At the same time, I kind of wanted to not get locksmiths involved. I had a feeling that Christian would be able to pick the lock on the home, and, most importantly, if there was some kind of security system, he would be able to shut it down. Christian knew computers.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I wanted you to find out if there was some kind of a security system, and I would like for you to remotely shut it down. Also, I don’t know how good you are at breaking into homes. I mean, it’s not really breaking in, because the guy that owns a home has given me permission to go onto the premises. But, I have a feeling that the cops are going to come anyways, and I just want to do as little explaining as possible. I hope that makes sense.”

  Christian grinned. “Of course I’ll help you. Once we get about 10 feet away from the home, I can figure out if he has a wireless security system that relies on radiofrequency signals. A lot of these home monitoring systems fail to encrypt or authenticate signals that are being sent from the sensors to the control panels, so all I have to do is intercept the data, decipher the commands, and play them back to the control panels.”

  He was talking Greek to me, but I knew he was going to be able to disable the security system. Then it would just be a matter of the two of us jamming our way into the house. “How good are you at picking locks?” I asked him.

  “Pretty damn good.” He smiled again. “So, I’m assuming you don’t want to do this the legit way?”

  “Not really. I mean, I have a document that states that I have permission to be on the premises, but I know those locksmiths get really sticky about these kinds of things. Not too many will go ahead and honor this document. In fact, the main reason why I even have this document is because I want to have Max’s computer analyzed forensically. I’m going to have to give this document to the lab.”

  “Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s get going. I know it’s in broad daylight, but it’s my experience that people are less likely to call the police on people who are trying to get into a home in broad daylight, as opposed to going in there in the dead of night.”

  So, Christian and I went down to my car, which was parked in the underground parking lot, and I put Max’s address into my GPS. The GPS indicated that Max’s house was in the Clairemont Mesa area of San Diego. The Clairemont Mesa area was a neighborhood that was north of the Eight Highway. It was an area that had generally older homes, and it was also the neighborhood that sported an Asian section of town. Korean food, Chinese food, Vietnamese food - the Conway district, which was part of the Clairemont Mesa area, was filled with Asian restaurants of every stripe. It was also filled with huge Asian supermarkets. I was going to have to treat Christian to a Chinese meal at the Shanghai Saloon after he did this favor for me.

  We got to Max’s house, and Christian detected on his phone that there was a security system in place. He was able to do his thing, and disable it, and then he was able to jimmy the lock, and the two of us were in Max’s house in no time.

  The first thing I noticed about the house was that it looked like somebody was living there. There was not a mound of dust. I flipped on the lights. The fact that the lights came on told me everything I needed to know. That meant that Paul never did turn off the utilities, which only confirmed my suspicions.

  The house was cozy. The living room was smallish, with hardwood floors, a fireplace, several potted plants that looked well tended to, and a matching leather love seat and sofa. I smiled as I saw that there was a large screen television right above the fireplace. That told me that not only was somebody staying there, but, that person, who was no doubt Paul, bothered to outfit the place in new technology.

  We went to the back bedroom, and there on the desk were three laptops. All of them looked brand-new. I nodded my head. My thought process was that Max owned his home, therefore he technically owned everything in it. No
doubt Paul himself bought these computers, probably paying cash for them, and these were the computers where he downloaded his kiddie porn.

  It was an ingenious plan, really. The IP address would be pinging from Max’s home, Max’s Internet account was being used to access this porn, and, if the FBI ever decided to raid, there would be plausible deniability all day long for Paul. Paul could simply say that he had no idea what they were talking about, this was his brother’s home, he didn’t go in there, and he had no idea where the computers came from.

  Of course, the entire argument would break down with a simple DNA analysis of the computer and of the home. And that was what I was planning to do with the computer. I was going to prove that he was the one using it, and then I was going to use that against him.

  I grabbed a hold of all of the computers that were in this home, and I took a look at the business card that I had in my hand. Nathan Beaufort did private forensic analyses on computers, and he also had access to a lab that could do a DNA analysis of anything that was given to him. I wanted to bypass law enforcement on this, because I felt that law enforcement could not be trusted to do the right thing when it was determined that it was Paul who was responsible for downloading the kiddie porn. Granted, I was going to have to go to law enforcement at some point, otherwise what I was doing was pointless. I was going to have to find somebody who was going to be willing to prosecute Paul, or, at least make Paul afraid that he was going to be prosecuted. That was the only way any of this was going to work.

  I took the computers, and then Christian and I went to dinner at the Shanghai Saloon. Over dumplings and Chinese beer, and two of us laughed at our caper. “Here’s to making me a criminal,” Christian said with a smile as he raised his glass of beer. “Next thing you know, you’re going to have me burglarizing a home.”

  What we did was not really burglarizing, because we did not commit a felony once he got onto the premises. It was not even trespassing, because I had permission. But even I had to admit that what we did was a little bit shady.