by Sijal Aziz
On the way over to Katherine’s hotel, detective Derek kept an eye on his back-view mirror to check if anyone was following him.
Once he reached her room, he knocked at the door lightly.
Kate opened the door and said, “Hi”
“I have some good news, or I think I have good news”
“What?”
“Remember we were looking for inconsistent behavior from Cooper. I think I may have found it. He visited Iraq in 2015. There are pictures of him in Iraq at various places in April, May and June. But then from July 2015 onwards he sort of went completely off grid and then appeared again at around November 2015”, Detective Derek said handing over the file to Kate.
“Are you sure you want to share it with me? I mean I am not a police officer”
“Yes, I have given it a great deal of thought and I am alright sharing it with you?”
Detective Derek was telling the truth. In fact, he had thought about nothing else throughout the night. On one hand his job demanded that he apprehend Kate, on the other hand he knew that she was innocent.
He was caught between doing what was right and what his job demanded. In the end doing the right thing won. He was quite impressed with Kate’s detective work as well.
If it wasn’t for her, he would never have connected the dots. So yes, he was fine sharing the evidence with Kate and in spite of himself he was being drawn to her.
“Please sit down. I am sorry I cannot offer you any coffee”
Derek looked around the room. It was just like all the rooms, he had seen in seedy motels. He had seen his fair share of these rooms during his investigations as a detective over the years. There was however one difference, the room was very clean. There was a small desk with a chair on one side. The desk had Kate’s laptop on it so Derek sat on the couch.
Kate sat on bed and started going through the file.
“You can go through the file when I leave. I have another surprise for you, and I bet you would want to look at it first”
Kate gave detective Derek a questioning look.
“The hard drive that you wanted to look at”, Derek said taking the hard drive out of his pocket and waving it up in the air, “Jeff, my IT guy has been poking in it trying to retrieve the data but nothing so far. He says that whoever erased the hard drive also formatted it, so it’s pretty difficult to get anything off of it”
“Let’s check”, Kate said excitedly taking the hard drive from Derek. She walked over to her laptop and hooked the drive to her laptop. Derek got off the couch and went to Kate’s desk and stood next to her.
Alison was right, detective Derek was hot and with him in the room standing next to Kate, it was difficult for her to concentrate on work.
She tried to focus on the computer, but her eyes kept drifting to him. She pretended to type but none of her commands made any sense.
She had to do something, to make him go away.
“Hmm”
“What?”
“Jeff was right, the drive has been formatted. But what the hacker did was ingenious. He formatted the data and then copied new junk data on the drive making it difficult for anyone who was trying to recover the data”, she said backing her chair away from the computer.
“How would that make it difficult to recover the data?”
“Because when you format a drive, there is a possibility of recovering the data. But when you write something on a formatted drive, it could be written on top of the previous data.
So, we may be able to get bits of pieces of previous data that was not written upon but not the whole thing. Sort of just like a puzzle, that we may need to put together later”
“So how long will it take for you to crack this?”
“I don’t know it depends on the data but if I were to guess, maybe anywhere between 4 to 5 hours would do”
“You are very good at this, aren’t you?” Derek said, standing up straight.
“There are people better at this than me. Can you let me know the make and model of the car?”
Derek took out his small notebook from his breast pocket and started going through it, “How would this help?”
“It will help me identify which algorithm the car was using. So, I could use the same code to get the data”
“Right, how about you explain whatever you have just said in plain English”
Kate smiled and then said, “Well Derek, cars generally use Bayesian Simultaneous Localization and Mapping or SLAM algorithms, which fuse data from multiple sensors and off-line maps into current location estimates.
There a number of sensors in an autonomous or driverless car but the typical ones are LIDAR, GPS, Stereo Vision and IMU.
Now if you want to hack a vehicle to crash it you would have to mess with the off-line map system and sensors that detect pedestrians and other objects like trees, rocks, barriers etc.
This way your car will go off the road and will not detect the obstacles in its path.
You will also have to hack the longitudinal controls to make the car go at any speed you want. And this is what our hacker might have done. If you know how the hacker has done his work, it’s easier to trace it or in our case recover the data”
“Great, the only thing that I have understood from what you have just said is that you are very good at computers, you know tons of lingo that I don’t understand, and you will be able to recover data”
“Let me explain it in another way, the driverless cars’ system learns about its surrounding and what to do in a particular situation for example what to do when a pedestrian is walking in front of the car or if a tree is there. If someone kills the ability of the car, to recognize objects and which evasive action to take, the car will drive into anything without stopping. Guessing from your description of the accident, I think that is what the hacker did to Ian Richards car, that is why it crashed into a tree”
“This is better”
“I will make a detailed report for you that you will be able to understand. Don’t worry about it now. Have you found the car’s make and model?”
Derek gave the car’s make and model to Kate and said, “I better leave you at it. Please call me immediately when you have recovered the data, no matter if it is night or day”, Detective Derek said pointing to the hard drive.
“Will do so”, Kate said without lifting her eyes from the computer screen.
Detective Derek walked to the door and was about to open it when he remembered something and turned around, “Kate, do you still have my wallet? I don’t mind, if you hold onto it but please may I have my badge back? I haven’t reported that it is missing”
Kate opened the drawer of the desk and took it out. Then she walked over to Derek with a blush on her face and said, “I am sorry. I have spent most of the cash in it. I will give it back to you once your department gives me back my wallet”
“No issues. I will have your things processed and given back to you as soon as we put this thing to rest”
They were standing in front of each other. Derek stuck out his hand. Kate took it and they both shook hands for a little longer than required.
‘I better go and check up on the drive”
“Me too, I mean not check up on the drive, go back to the station and work on this thing. Bye and keep safe”
Derek turned around, opened the door and left.
Kate stood there for a few more seconds, then sighed and turned around. The sheer presence of the man was intoxicating. She wondered how he would be in bed. She looked at the laptop and decided that it was important to work on the evidence first.
Simon was parked outside the station in his Toyota when Derek reached the station at around 9. Simon was furious was letting the detective out of his sight again but there was no other way, he could have taken the chance of driving his white van at night. He was sure that where ever the detective went, he would go there again, and next time Simon would be right behind him.
Derek turned on his computer and st
arted typing his report. It was difficult for him to concentrate on his work because being close to Kate had made him horny.
On an impulse he called Emily.
“Hello. This is Derek”
“Well, well detective I thought you would have forgotten about me”
“No, I was just busy with a case. Can I invite you to a nightcap at my apartment?”
There was no hesitation in her voice, “Well sure, I thought you’d never ask”
Derek gave Emily his address, turned off his computer and headed straight home with Simon behind him.
When Derek reached home, he took a quick shower and changed into a T-shirt and jeans. He was getting the wine glasses out of the cabinet when he heard the doorbell.
He put the glasses on the kitchen counter and rushed to the door. When he opened the door, Emily was standing there. She was looking even more beautiful than last night.
“Hi”, Derek said with a charming smile.
“Hello detective”, she gave him a kiss on the side of the face and walked inside. Once inside, she took her coat off and handed it to Derek. Under the coat, she was wearing a plunging low-neck dress, that failed to conceal most of her breasts.
“Well detective it was nice to get a call from you tonight. I would have loved to join you for a nightcap yesterday as well, but you seemed to be in a hurry to get rid of me”
“It was just my stupid case, I had to meet someone early in the morning”, Derek said moving close to Emily and with her coat still in his hand, he put an arm around Emily’s waist, pulled her closer to him and kissed her on the lips.
Emily was hungry for him and she kissed him back with the same intensity if not more.
She put her hands under Derek’s t-shirt and held onto him tightly. Slowly moving hands up and down his back.
The coat fell from Derek’s hand and he massaged one of her breasts with his arm still around her waist. Emily let out a moan. Derek then moved his hand up Emily’s legs and she spread her legs apart to give him easy access.
He then took her by her hand and they both made their way to his bedroom where they made love for the next two hours. Derek felt different in bed tonight. Although it was Emily lying down in his bed but in his mind, it was Kate he was making love to. He was tender and considerate and rough and demanding at times.
By the time that he was done, Emily looked flushed, “Oh my god, detective, you are an animal in bed. I have had sex before but had never imagined it to be like this”
Derek smiled and kissed Emily, “I am glad you liked it. Now, where were we?”, Derek took Emily in his arms one for time and they were one again.
When they were spent, they went to sleep together.
Simon stayed outside of Derek’s apartment until 2 AM, imagining detective Markus and his hot friend together in bed. When he was sure that the detective was set in for the night, he drove home.
CHAPTER 25
Derek was woken from his sleep by the incessant ringing of his cellphone. Emily got up too. He sat up on the bed and picked up his phone.
“Hello”
“Derek, this is Kate, I hope you were not sleeping?”
“I am awake now. Have you found something?”
Emily wrapped her arms around Derek and said, “One of your cases, I am sure. I will take a quick shower and be on my way”
She kissed Derek on the side of his face. Derek did not kiss her back and hoped that Kate had not heard Emily.
Kate had heard Emily, “You seem to have company detective. Perhaps, I should call you in the morning”
“It’s nothing important and its Derek. Please tell me. Did you find something? Should I come over so that we can discuss this?”
“If you want”
“I am on my way”
Derek hung up the phone. He paced around in the room until Emily was out of the toilet. He kissed her good bye and then went in the toilet, took a quick shower and put on some clothes. It was 4 AM in the morning.
He did not know why but he was feeling guilty about sleeping with Emily. He wondered how he will face Kate.
Kate hung up the phone. She was angry at Derek for sleeping with whoever he was sleeping with.
She was drawn to him and she wished that he was drawn to her as well. She was consumed by feelings of jealousy that she had never known before, and she paced around the room to calm herself down.
By the time Derek reached Kate’s apartment she was feeling better.
She opened the door for him and without looking at him she went over to her laptop and started explaining what she had found.
“It took me more time than anticipated, but we have finally broken into the drive. You were right, the car was hacked and whoever hacked it, was good. The software that was used to hack into the car was made two years ago and with just a few changes it can be used to hack into any car on the planet.
The hacker also thinks that no one can track him, or he left in a hurry because he left some footprints. Now going over those footprints, I was able to trace his commands. He first locked the car so that it could not be opened, then he killed the proximity sensors and longitudinal maps, then he sped the car and crashed it into a tree”, Kate said excitedly.
“Is there a way we can prove it all?”
“Yes, I have made this document here for you”, Kate said clicking a document on the computer, “I have sent you an email copy of this document, it has two sections, one is the technological section for the computer experts and one is for the laymen.
All you need to do is to take a print out of this document and go through it and understand it. If you have any questions you can ask me, and I will explain it. But all in all, it pretty much explains how the car was hacked and crashed”
“Great, is there a possibility that we can trace the killer through this software? I mean can it lead us to him?”
“No and yes”
“Care to explain?”
“Well we cannot trace the killer through this, but this was written by a single person and if we can find it on his laptop or computer, we can catch him”
“Good! Things are finally making sense”
“Also, I don’t need to tell you this since you are a detective. But Ian’s murder is also linked to my company since he worked there and there are software experts there”
“I like it when you think like a detective. Thank you for doing this. I am sure we are onto something big. Did you get a chance to go through Alexander Cooper’s files?”
“No, not yet”
“Let’s go through them together?”, Detective Derek suggested.
“Don’t you have your friend to go home back to? I am sure she would be missing you”, the words came out before Kate could herself.
“It was just a one-night stand. Nothing serious. Besides she has already left so she would not be missing me”, Derek said in an amused tone.
Kate felt like a fool, she tried to salvage the situation with “You know it is none of my business whoever you sleep with. Let’s just go through the file”, Kate said finally.
She went over to the table and started looking for a place in the room where they could both sit together.
Derek looked at her and realized what she was thinking about and said, “We can both sit on the bed since there isn’t any other place in this room”
They sat on the bed, cross legged, with the file and the laptop between them and started going through the material detective Derek had accumulated over the net.
“As I said before, it is as if he disappeared for some time and came back a changed man. He did spend some part of this time in Iraq. I managed to find this picture of him with the Iraqi minister for science and technology at a dinner. I have a hunch it has something to do with his transformation”, Derek said pointing to the news clipping he had found in an Iraqi newspaper.
Kate held up the other news clipping with the news of Iraqi minister’s daughter’s death and asked, “And she died within these six months as wel
l?”
“Yes, she did”
“Then we need to focus on her and the Iraqi minister and what happened between them while he was there in Iraq”
“My thoughts exactly!”
“So, what did you say her name was”, Kate asked.
Derek took a small notebook out of his pocket, went through some of the pages and said, “Her name was Jasmine Khalid Al Abdali” and spelled it out to her.
Kate wrote that name in quotes on google and pressed enter.
“It’s no fun”, Derek said.
“Well, you are sitting across from me, typing away on your laptop and I cannot even see what you are doing”
“I am only searching for Jasmine”
Derek got off the bed walked over to Jasmine and then sat next to her, “Now this is better, search on, at least I will be able to search with you as well”
“Sure”
Derek smelled good. Kate wondered whether he took a bath after having sex with the woman he was with. Yes, he definitely took a bath and brushed his teeth Kate decided.
She focused back on her screen. She could see that Jasmine was quite popular. She had studied in the University of Toronto in Canada and had raised quite a lot of money for rebuilding Iraq.
She was also very good looking. She was the only child of the Iraqi minister and from what she could see from the photographs, he looked like a doting and proud father.
She couldn’t see any other photographs of Alexander with Jasmine initially. She was going through the pages when Derek shouted, “There”, pointing to a link on google.
Kate clicked the link. There was a picture of Alexander Cooper and Jasmine Al Abdali having lunch and the caption under the story read, “Young Love” and it went on to say, “Our minister’s daughter does not think that Iraqi men are worthy enough for her attention, so she has her eyes set on America’s most eligible bachelor!”
Kate copied the picture and the news clipping onto her laptop and continued searching through the rest of the pages.
“I should also buy a laptop and use it while we are together”, Derek said when they were unable to find any news for the next half an hour.
