Fractures: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery

by Mike Markel

  “What’s your rationale for asking for a warrant?”

  “Terrorism.”

  “Unless it was a hooker and her boyfriend who killed Lee Rossman, in which case it’s manslaughter. Tell me how you know it’s terror.”

  “If Lauren Wilcox killed Lee Rossman to intimidate his company—to make them stop drilling—and someone attacked Bill Rossman to intimidate the company—remember, it’s two guys named Rossman—that’s terrorism, isn’t it?” I said.

  “You can’t search a person because you might find what you hope to find, Karen. The Fourth Amendment says you can’t.”

  Ryan said, “If we search her university email, that’s not protected by the Fourth Amendment. She has no reasonable expectation of privacy.”

  Larry Klein shook his head. “Still need probable cause.”

  I said, “But she already has a federal warrant for terrorism.”

  “When was that case?”

  “Nineteen eighty-six.”

  “Statute of limitations,” Larry Klein said, frowning.

  “Not on murder,” I said. “The logger died.”

  “‘Died’ isn’t murder. It’s negligent homicide at best. And you don’t even know if she was implicated in it.”

  “She talked it up in a newsletter.”

  “First Amendment.”

  The chief spoke. “Larry, does it go to pattern?”

  “No, not close enough. The crimes are too different—first-degree murder and negligent homicide—and too distant from each other in time.” He put up his hands in frustration. “You don’t have probable cause. You have a fishing expedition. I’m not going to file for a warrant.”

  Over the years I’ve learned that when Larry begins a sentence with “I’m not going to …,” that’s the end of the discussion.

  Ryan, who hadn’t yet learned that, said, “Does the Patriot Act give you a pretext?”

  “It might,” Larry Klein said. “I’m not an expert on that. But my instinct is that things will go smoother if a federal prosecutor files the order—especially since there’s already an outstanding federal warrant.”

  “Larry,” the chief said, “how would you feel if we brought it to the FBI? Maybe they can figure out how to piggyback it on their terror warrant.”

  “Be my guest.”

  “I don’t like it,” I said.

  Larry Klein turned to me. “What’s not to like?”

  “We have different goals. I want to find out if Lauren Wilcox killed Lee Rossman—or had his son beat up and poisoned. The feds want to clear a thirty-year-old terror case.”

  “Work it out with the FBI,” Larry Klein said. “Make it a quid pro quo. They agree to your terms, you give them the lead.”

  “Will they screw me over?”

  “If it’s in their interest.” He smiled. “But I don’t see that you have a lot of other options.”

  “Would you help us?”

  “What do you want?”

  “Two things,” I said. “First, we get access to the whole file they generate. Second, if they find something linking Lauren Wilcox to the murder of Lee Rossman or the attack on his son, you get to file charges first. Is that reasonable?”

  “I’m not sure that’s the right question to ask, but I don’t mind trying.”

  I took out my phone and speed dialed Allen Pfeiffer. “Hey, Allen, Karen Seagate in Montana. I got my county prosecutor here with me. Name’s Larry Klein. We’ve got some new information for you about Lauren Wilcox, but Larry wants to talk to you about how we can go forward with it. Can I put him on?” I listened to Allen for a moment. “Okay,” I said, “here he is.” I handed the phone to Larry Klein.

  “Klein,” he said. I reached over and hit the Speaker button. “Karen Seagate’s got this lead that she thinks might help you with your terror case against Lauren Wilcox, but she’s like to reach an understanding with you about process.”

  “What does she want?”

  “She’d like a copy of the file, and the first shot at Lauren Wilcox if you find out she’s implicated in a felony murder or attempted murder here in Montana.”

  “Best I can offer her is I’ll try.”

  Larry turned to me. “Good enough?” He was nodding his head, telling me to say yes.

  I shook my head and whispered, “Not good enough.”

  Larry turned to the chief, who nodded his okay.

  Larry talked into the phone. “She says that’s fine. Here’s the information you don’t have. The Number Two at Rossman Mining says Lauren Wilcox hacked their data system. Plus, Rossman’s son was beaten up out at the drilling rig. The guys who beat him say he was grabbing some dirty water and was going to have it analyzed to see if the company was lying about the pollution it was putting out.”

  “What does Karen want me to do?”

  “She wants you to do a sneak-and-peek search of Lauren Wilcox’s university email—it’s Central Montana State University, they use Google—see if her fingerprints are on either of the two crimes in Montana. I told her I can’t do it because there’s no probable cause for the search.”

  Allen Pfeiffer was silent a moment. “You’re right, that’s not probable cause. But I might not need it. Since there’s a federal warrant out on her already, I could pitch it to a federal magistrate in Montana.”

  Ryan was reading something on his tablet. He sprang out of his chair, rushed over to Larry Klein, and handed him the tablet, pointing to something on the screen.

  Larry said, “Allen, I’m looking at the Patriot Act, Section 219: Single-jurisdiction search warrants for terrorism. You don’t have to use the magistrate in the jurisdiction where the crime occurred. If you could get the magistrate who signed off on the original federal warrant to sign off on this one, that might be faster. Where was that warrant issued in 1986?”

  “Here in D.C.” Allen Pfeiffer said. “But he’s probably long gone.”

  “You might not need the same guy. Maybe just the same district. It’s worth a phone call.”

  “Let me give it a try. You want me to get back to you?”

  “No,” Larry Klein said, “I’d just as soon stay out of the loop on this one. You’ve got Karen Seagate’s number, right?”

  Allen Pfeiffer confirmed that he did, the two lawyers said some diplomatic lawyer crap, and they ended the call. Larry handed me back my phone. “Anything else I can do to help you suborn the Constitution?”

  “Thanks, Larry,” I said.

  “I appreciate it.” The chief stood and nodded to the prosecutor.

  It was after seven-thirty that night when I got the call for Allen Pfeiffer. “Don’t you go home at night?” I said to him.

  “Some nights.”

  “Are you calling to tell me you can’t crack Lauren Wilcox’s email?”

  “No, if that was it, I’d have waited till tomorrow. I’m calling to tell you it’s done.”

  “Shit, you’re kidding me. You got a warrant and went in?”

  “We’ve got a lot of judges in D.C., and most of them want to get the terrorists.”

  “And Google?”

  “We deal with them a lot.”

  “Okay,” I said. “What did you get?”

  “We can’t tell if the Rossman Mining network has been hacked—”

  “You’d need access to that network to see that.”

  “That’s right. But we saw that two people were talking about hacking it.”

  “It’s already happened?”

  “Yeah, last week.”

  “Who’s the other person, besides Lauren Wilcox?”

  “We don’t even know if it was Lauren Wilcox.”

  “Huh?”

  “The conversations were on Lauren Wilcox’s account, but they were never sent—and they were never signed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know how on Gmail you can write an email but not send it? It’s called ‘save as draft.’ What they did was write back and forth to each other but not send anything. They’d log on
and read the draft, then write on it.”

  “You mean Lauren Wilcox gave her login information to someone else?”

  “Unless she has multiple personalities, yes.”

  “They’re doing this so they don’t leave any trail, right?”

  “Bad guys have been doing this for a while.”

  “Does this mean you can’t figure out who the other person is?”

  “It means it will be a lot harder to figure out who the other person is. They leave fragments of metadata every time they log on to her account. We can sift through that data, but it’s going to take us a while.”

  “Shit,” I said. “Okay, what are the two saying?”

  “One of them hacked the Rossman Mining system and planted some eavesdropping software, just like the person from the company said. And the hacker identified some email chatter about irregularities in the data—”

  “What irregularities, what data?”

  “Take a deep breath, Karen. I’m telling you everything we saw.”

  “Yeah, I’m sorry. I just want to get this woman.”

  “Well, you’re not going to.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like I was saying, there’s email chatter about irregularities in the data—some internal reports with discrepancies, but that’s as specific as they get. There’s nothing about either of your two crimes in Montana.”

  “Goddamn it. Nothing on taking out Lee Rossman? Nothing on Bill Rossman?”

  “There are no names at all. No names or code names or initials on the two people writing the emails, no identifying information on anyone in the company or outside the company.”

  “You didn’t see the name Nathan Kress—or his initials?”

  “No names, no initials.”

  “The fact that they’re using the saved-drafts thing, whatever it’s called, what does that tell you?

  “It tells me they want to avoid leaving a phone record or an obvious email trail. That they know they’re up to something they don’t want anyone to overhear. And that they’re not amateurs.”

  “Legally, where are you?”

  “I’m right where I was a few hours ago: I know we have the right Lauren Atherton, but she hasn’t done anything incriminating. In fact, she and this other person could be talking about taking out an airliner and I wouldn’t have anything new on her. Because Google uses dynamic IP addresses—”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a little complicated, but every time someone goes to Google, their computer is assigned a different identifying address, rather than the same one. So we can’t prove the communication comes from Lauren Atherton’s own computer, or even from a computer in Montana. And since it’s obvious there’s two people involved in the communication—in fact, it could be more than two—she could always say it wasn’t her saying anything about taking out an airliner. She could claim her account was hacked.”

  “That would take some balls, wouldn’t it?”

  “We’ve known for a long time that Lauren Atherton’s got balls.”

  “All right, let me see if I’ve got what you’re telling me. Lauren Wilcox and John Doe did hack Rossman Mining. You might learn who John Doe is, but it could take a while longer. And you didn’t see anything that lets me arrest anyone for killing Lee Rossman or attacking his kid.”

  “You can bring them in for questioning, but you’re not going to get any search warrants off of what I told you.” He paused. “Sorry.”

  “So what are you going to do now?”

  “I’m going to hold off one more day before we pick up Lauren Atherton on the outstanding terror charge.”

  “You don’t have to inform her you did the search, do you?”

  “Not right away. The law gives us a ‘reasonable period’ before informing her. Because she’s a flight risk. We’ll arrest her, then inform her.”

  “Can I get a look at the emails?”

  “Yeah, I’m having them encrypted and sent to my guy in Billings. He’ll hand deliver them to you.”

  “Allen, thanks a lot for doing this. I really appreciate it.”

  “No problem, Karen. Sorry I can’t serve her up to you. If you’re planning to arrest her, get moving. This case is on our radar now. I won’t be able to slow it down much more.”

  Chapter 28

  Friday morning, a minute after eight, I was walking back to my desk from the break room, where I’d gotten a cup of coffee and a doughnut.

  “Karen, look at this.” Ryan was staring at his computer screen.

  “Where are you?”

  “The overnight. Item 4.”

  I pulled up the report. It showed everything that had happened in the most recent shifts. I read it. The body of a twenty-two-year-old white male was discovered in Allumbaugh Park. He’d been attacked by a mountain lion. There had been reports of sightings the last few days, scaring the shit out of all the old ladies with their little dogs. “Jesus, that’s not how I want to go.” I looked up at him.

  He held my gaze for a moment. “You might want to look at the rest of the entry, Detective.”

  I read it. The guy’s wallet said he was Kirk Hendrickson. “How do I know that name?”

  “He’s the guy arrested with Bill Rossman last year. Got in a fight, remember?”

  “Shit, I do.” I thought for a second. “You figure out who Kirk is. Call the university, whatever. I’ll contact Pelton,” I said, “see what he has.” Pelton was listed as the night detective who had caught the case.

  “Got it,” Ryan said.

  I called to see if Pelton was still at headquarters, but the sergeant told me he was gone. I phoned him on his cell. He picked up. I could hear the traffic noises faint on his phone.

  “Pelton, Seagate. Sorry to get you off the clock.”

  “No problem.”

  “The case you caught last night—young guy named Hendrickson—what have you got on him?”

  “Not much. Fish and Game were out looking for the mountain lion, and the tracks led them to the body. In Allumbaugh Park. Tell you this, you don’t want to look at that poor bastard’s face.”

  “Chewed up?”

  “Just half of it.”

  “The mountain lion kill him?”

  “Not sure,” he said. “Robin’s there now.”

  “You interviewed the first officer on scene?”

  “Yeah, we did.”

  “Give me your best guess what happened.”

  “We logged the call from Fish and Game after eight. That’s when the lions start moving around, they tell me. So it was after nine when we got there. I don’t know if Robin’s gonna find anything useful because the Fish and Game guys were tramping all over the scene. So, I don’t know, maybe the guy was out there—jogging, homeless, whatever—and got jumped by the lion. Or someone killed him and dumped him there and the lion smelled him. It was cold enough he’d stay real fresh for the lion to chew on him. The body should make it to Harold soon, if it’s not there already. He’ll tell you what happened to the guy.”

  “Okay, thanks, Pelton.” I hung up. I looked over at Ryan, who was writing in his skinny notebook.

  He looked up. “What would you like to know about Mr. Hendrickson?”

  “Whatever I ought to know.”

  “Kirk Hendrickson—if that’s the victim—was a computer-science major at Central Montana State University. A junior with a 3.1 GPA: lots of A’s, lots of C’s. He was arrested in that scuffle with Bill Rossman, and he took Lauren Wilcox’s water-pollution course with Bill.”

  “Any other charges on his sheet?”

  “Couple minor traffic citations.”

  “Let’s go brief the chief. I’ll fill you in on the call I got from Allen Pfeiffer last night.”’

  We walked down to the chief’s office. He’s usually at his desk by six. Says he can get a lot of work done in the first couple hours, before everyone else gets in. He waved us in and told us to sit.

  “Two things, Chief,” I said. “Last night,
Allen Pfeiffer called me. Lauren Wilcox and another person have been using her email to talk about discrepancies related to the water-pollution data from some of the rigs around Marshall. Apparently, Lauren—or this other person—did hack Rossman Mining.”

  “Who’s the other person?”

  “FBI doesn’t know, at least not yet. Way the two talked, they wrote an email, then saved the draft without sending it. They’d log on and add to the draft of the email.”

  “So there’s nothing we can use on Lauren Wilcox in her emails?”

  “That’s right,” I said. “You looked at the overnights?”

  “I did. What about them?”

  “The mountain lion attack? We think the vic is Kirk Hendrickson. That’s what his ID reads. He’s a classmate of Bill Rossman. They were arrested for a scuffle last year. He was a computer-science student. I think he might’ve been Lauren Wilcox’s email buddy.”

  “That’s quite a coincidence, don’t you think?”

  “No, Chief, I don’t think anything in this case is a coincidence.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “I haven’t had a chance to talk it over with Ryan yet, but I think we should run out to the scene, talk with Robin, then swing back here and see what Harold’s figured out. Then give you some options. How does that sound?”

  He scratched at his cheek, then sat there, still. “I’m going to call Allen Pfeiffer, let him know where we are. He might want to put a detail on Lauren Wilcox in case she killed the boy and decides to run.”

  “Good idea. Thanks,” I said. “We’ll see you a little later.” He nodded. Ryan and I left, got our coats, and headed to the cruiser for a trip to Allumbaugh Park. The temperature was about ten degrees, the sky overcast, the faces grim on the drivers headed off to work. We pulled into the park, about eighty acres of open space with access to the Rawlings River, four tennis courts, and a forlorn looking kids’ area with brightly painted play equipment that did little to make the place look inviting. I spotted Robin’s old black-and-white Volkswagen Beetle.

  The area was brush and untended grass, already taped off in yellow, and there was a tent set up to protect the area where the vic was found. Someone had already put down the steel steps leading to the tent so we wouldn’t contaminate the scene. We crossed the tape and hop-scotched our way to the tent, where Robin was bent over, doing something in the dirt.