Data Capture

by Jesse J. Thoma

  Lola answered.

  “Update,” Holt said gruffly.

  “Good morning, H,” Lola said.

  She sounded way too cheerful for someone who had been up all night.

  “Where are the Wonder Twins? Wait, you’re grumpy and taking my report. That means everyone else is busy and you have nothing better to do but talk to me. Sucks being the boss and having a fantastic, capable, well-trained, loyal team.”

  “And here I was thinking I missed you,” Holt said.

  “You do miss me,” Lola said. “But we can talk business for a while to make you feel better. Has Max found anything from that laptop?”

  “I thought you were giving me the update,” Holt said. She already felt less grumpy. It was nice to have their connection back, even if it was only over the phone. Lola wasn’t just her employee, she was a vital part of Holt’s inner circle. It had been difficult operating without her most trusted core fully intact since Lola and Moose had been gone.

  “Oh man, you are in a mood. Fine. I’ve been following up with the gambling contacts I got from Kevin Garvey’s wife, but so far there’s no sign of him. I’ve been to a couple of the casinos and I’m hitting tracks this week. I’m sticking to the plan, ghost surveillance only, but that’s not getting me a lot. From what his wife said, his interest in you started with those college kids and the thing on the onlines.”

  “It’s called the Internet. Do you do that on purpose to get under Max’s skin?”

  “I followed up with Quinn about her lab and the computers there, just like Max asked. Why did she need information about Quinn’s lab?”

  “She found some interesting things on Kevin Garvey’s laptop. That led her down a few more interesting paths and, well, I could have her explain it to you in nerdy detail, but you just called the Internet ‘the onlines.’ How about we leave it at she thinks she figured out what Kevin was mixed up in and why his wife told you he thought he was going to be rich. Isabelle and Max are following the money now. The short version is it looks like he moved his gambling habit online. Max and Isabelle seem to think he was making a lot of money. There are still a lot of unanswered questions that we need answers to. Aside from finding Garvey, I’m hoping you can help on that end as well.”

  Lola didn’t say anything for a few beats. Holt waited her out.

  “What does all that have to do with Quinn?”

  Holt noted Lola asked about Quinn, not her lab, not Kevin Garvey, not any of the information Holt just gave her. That worried her. She needed to know where Lola’s head was, and right now, she had no idea. After the Tiffany debacle, Lola hadn’t seemed herself. Holt didn’t want her falling for someone else that was bad news, and Lola hadn’t always had the best track record of telling just what kind of news was standing in front of her. On top of that, she was three thousand miles away and Holt didn’t have any way of protecting her if she got into trouble. She hated not being able to get to her people if they needed her.

  “Since you’re full of questions and clearly can’t wait to get started tracking down all the new information I need you to get for me, sounds like it’s probably time for a full briefing.”

  Holt’s prodding had the desired effect.

  “Sorry, H. My first questions should have been about the case.”

  “CB, two minutes. Let me get the rest of the crew and we can Skype you in.” Holt hung up, confident she would hear from Lola again in exactly two minutes. She was also glad for the excuse to call everyone together and have something useful to do. Not for the first time she wondered when she’d become superfluous because she’d hired such a talented team.

  She headed for Isabelle and Max, who were exactly where she’d left them, hunched over their computers. She nuzzled into Isabelle’s neck, letting the comfortable feel and smell remind her of everything that was good in her life. She kissed Isabelle’s cheek. “If you two wouldn’t mind joining me in the conference room, Lola is calling in for an update.”

  “Just give me a few minutes, H,” Max said. “I’ve got a couple more things I want to run down.”

  Isabelle was already up and packing her laptop. She leaned in and whispered in Holt’s ear. “You really should give her more than a minute’s warning. She’s working hard enough already.”

  “Forty-five seconds, Max,” Holt said. She’d been doing this to Max more and more, springing frustrating and nearly impossible situations on her. Max didn’t know it, but it was part of her training. Max had started going out in the field from time to time, but physical confrontations weren’t the only time Holt needed Max to react without thinking, act on instinct, and be able to remain calm no matter the pressure cooker she faced. Right now, she was still stubbornly determined to look for an easy out or argue her way to a solution.

  “H, you’ve got to be kidding me. I can barely make it across the room in that much time,” Max said.

  “Thirty-five seconds,” Holt said. “If your report isn’t on the screen and ready when my phone rings, all your fancy toys go in the drawer for an indeterminate amount of time. Keep arguing if you like.”

  Max shot across the room, practically sprinting.

  “Whoa, did you drop a lit match down her shorts, H?” Dubs asked. “She’s not usually a morning person.”

  “Conference room, Dubs.”

  “Just between you and me?” Dubs meandered toward the gathering crowd but held back.

  Holt looked at her watch. She was going to be late to this meeting because Dubs was walking like a dawdling toddler.

  “This tough love training, springing things on Max to force her to perform under pressure, isn’t working like you hoped. It’s just stressing her out. She thinks you’re mad at her. That doesn’t motivate her to get better. It would totally work for me of course. I love an excuse to prove your ass wrong. But you’ve got to try something different for her, otherwise you’re just kicking your puppy and I’ve got to make her feel better at the end of the day. Although to be honest, that’s not the worst thing in the world for me personally—”

  “Stop, now,” Holt said. She didn’t need to hear where Dubs was going with the rest of that thought, but she appreciated Dubs looking out for Max. They were sickeningly over-the-top into each other, and drove everyone a little nuts from time to time, but Holt respected how much they loved each other. Plus, she cared about each of them. If Dubs was telling her Max wasn’t responding well to her attempts at training, she needed to reevaluate.

  Despite the Dubs delay, Holt slid into her chair just as the phone rang. Max beamed Lola onto the big screen.

  “Welcome back,” Holt said. “Max and Isabelle have been following a money trail they stumbled on when poking around Kevin Garvey’s laptop. They can fill you in on what they’ve found. It might give you some better leads to follow up out there. And as I mentioned, we could use some information that you might be able to gather for us on the ground.” Holt hated how Isabelle flinched every time her father’s name was brought up during their daily discussions of this case. She hoped they found this guy fast so he could once again be out of their lives. If she had her way, she would pay him a personal visit and make sure he never bothered them again, but she knew it wasn’t what Isabelle wanted.

  “Briefing first,” Lola said. “But then I need the important updates. I’ve been gone a long time. Isabelle, you have to fill me in on everything George is doing since Holt only says ‘he’s good.’ Dubs, has Max knocked you up yet? How is Jose without Moose? Please tell me Tuna finally stopped calling what’s her face? I need the important things.”

  “Can we get to work, please?” Holt asked, trying to use her best mock serious voice. “I’ve got people sending me threatening emails. I don’t take kindly to that.”

  “Were you listening? I clearly said work first. But when was the last time you got one of those emails anyway?” Lola asked. She was obviously joking.

  “An hour ago,” Max said.

  “Excuse me?” Holt said. The atmosphere in the room was
drained of its lively good cheer. “How many have I gotten since the first?” She didn’t know they were still coming in and was furious Max hadn’t kept her updated. This was her safety, her family’s safety. She didn’t realize she’d gotten up, but she was standing next to Isabelle with her hand on her shoulder. She quickly reviewed where George was and would be for the rest of the day. Safe.

  “This is the only one since the first. It just arrived an hour ago. I updated the LAPD as soon as it came in. I didn’t have a chance to add it to my official briefing since you dragged me away from what I was doing, but this one is almost identical to the first. Demands for money, threats to come and talk to Isabelle and her sister. There are two important differences. There’s no proof of life video attached here, and this one has a deadline. If you recall, the first one didn’t, which we all thought was strange. Forty-eight hours to pay or I guess something bad happens. They don’t get into specifics, which is sort of weird.”

  Holt wasn’t sure whether she was annoyed or encouraged at Max’s salty attitude. She tamped down her own anger at not being alerted immediately to the new threat. Anger had always fueled her, but Dubs said that wasn’t working with Max. Perhaps she needed a different approach. “So these guys are either complete amateurs or they think we’ll be more compliant without a proof of life video, any true threat for what happens with non-compliance, or an actual deadline.”

  “Aren’t we supposed to be able to use our imaginations?” Isabelle asked.

  “I guess,” Holt said. “But the scariest scenario here would be them killing the hostage. In order for that to be so unimaginable an outcome that I would do anything to prevent it, including pay a lot of money, it would have to be someone I cared for deeply. Kevin Garvey isn’t someone I care about, although he seemed to think he would be, for some reason. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want him to die, but they haven’t threatened me with that. The most they’ve really spelled out is that they might email Isabelle. That pisses me off and makes me want to find them more than I want to find Garvey. The worst-case scenarios I’m picturing are them coming after her. I don’t know if that’s the conclusion they’re hoping I’ll jump to, but it’s dangerous for them if that’s the game they’re playing.”

  “Did you get a briefing from Moose before he headed out here with me? Did Mason give up anything useful?” Lola asked.

  “Nothing,” Holt said. “He’s convinced Garvey hired him. Moose believes him. Whatever the truth is, Moose doesn’t think Mason was lying. What else can you tell us, Max?”

  “Well,” Max said, “like I said, the email came in about an hour ago. Isabelle and I have been working on this laptop data since we got it from Lola, though. And it’s been very chatty. Our little friend Kevin sucks at any kind of computer security. His password was password1. Not even a capital letter.”

  Holt gave Max a warning look.

  “Not important. Moving on. We know Kevin is a gambler, but from what his wife said, he’s always been a face-to-face kind of guy. Casinos, tracks, that kind of thing. Well, it seems that about a year ago, he got into daily fantasy sports online, football specifically, but he dabbled in the other big sports as well. Does anyone here play daily fantasy football or know what I’m talking about?”

  Only Dubs raised her hand, which prompted everyone in the room to look at her like she had three heads.

  “What? I stole cars for a living. You think gambling isn’t another way to get my rocks off? At least this is mostly legal.”

  “Are we going to have a problem here?” Holt trusted Dubs to be able to flirt the line between legal and illegal and ask for help if she needed it. She just worried she and Dubs would have different ideas of where that line should be drawn.

  “Nah,” Dubs said. “Turns out taking rich dudes to the cleaners or picking which freak athlete is going to rush for a gazillion yards one week just isn’t much of a thrill. Catching bad guys is much closer to the old buzz. And whenever Max sees fit to handcuff me to her bed.”

  “Could’ve done without the last update,” Lola said.

  “Think we all could have, but we’re happy you’re happy,” Holt said.

  Max, who was now impossibly red, raised her hand. Holt waved her on.

  “Like I was saying. Daily fantasy sports are big business. Players pick a new fantasy team each day, or week, depending on which sport they’re playing, and bet money on their teams. You get points based on how the players you chose perform. There are all different formats to different games, but the long and short of it is, the games are almost impossible for an average Joe to make any money. But Kevin was making money. A lot of it, and had been since he started.”

  “Wait,” Isabelle said. “Why is it so hard to make money? Isn’t it like regular fantasy football? My sister’s in a league and spends an insane amount of time researching her team before their draft and before every game so she can beat her friends in their fake football league.”

  “Hey, our league isn’t a fake football league,” Holt said. “It’s a fantasy football league. Fake football makes it sounds like the lingerie bowl or something. How is this online daily thing different from regular fantasy football?”

  “Fantasy football and lingerie bowl sound like they should go together,” Isabelle said.

  “In traditional fantasy football, you join a league and draft your team at the beginning of the season. With the exception of waiver wire additions or trades, you keep the same team the entire football season,” Dubs said. “With this daily fantasy, as Max said, you can draft a new team each week and play a bunch of different types of games.”

  “There’s also a lot of money involved,” Max said. Max, as always, was typing while she spoke, pulling up images relevant to the case and throwing them onto the screen. “But it’s hard to make money in the daily fantasy leagues because of how many people are playing at any given time and because everything is online, computers are involved. Very industrious people have figured out ways to write algorithms to enter thousands of games and maximize the odds of selecting the ideal team each week. Those teams are entered into the big money games, but also smaller ones that earn points to the high stakes games later in the season. The top winners each week are almost exclusively those computer-entered players. There just aren’t that many openings for an actual person to pick a perfect team week to week and actually come out on top.”

  “So the games are rigged?”

  “No, that would mean collusion or deliberate action by the owners of the companies who run the games. This is just intelligent people seeing an opportunity to take advantage of a weakness in the system and capitalizing on it.”

  “Is that what Kevin Garvey was doing? Is that why he was winning?” Holt had a hard time believing he was capable of writing the computer code required given what Max described of his security measures. Surely anyone developing that kind of algorithm wouldn’t be dumb enough to leave it vulnerable with such lousy data security.

  “I don’t think he was, but he was certainly taking part in something similar. He has the algorithms on his computer, and I think that’s why he was winning so much money,” Max said. “I’ve been trying to trace the code. Every code writer has unique nuances to their style and writing. It’s possible I can figure out who wrote this. I don’t think he was the author. There’s no other evidence of computer coding on his laptop or Internet history. Aside from the fantasy sites, I would have pegged him as relatively computer illiterate.”

  “Okay,” Lola said. “If this is all aboveboard and he didn’t write any of the computer gobbledygook, why are we getting proof of life videos for him?”

  “Oh,” Isabelle said. “You misunderstand. Just because the computer part is aboveboard, doesn’t mean the money part is. Someone has been financing the whole operation, and he’s probably been skimming a little off the top for himself.”

  “Naughty boy,” Dubs said.

  “So we think they’re the ones who snatched him?” Holt asked. It made sense, sort
of. Kevin was putting a lot of hope in daughters he had treated like shit for most of their lives and hadn’t spoken to in years. First, he tried to contact them directly, through Holt, hoping they would bail him out, and now he must have told his captors about them.

  “What are you thinking, H? That’s your ‘bullshit detector’ expression,” Lola said.

  “It’s the simplest explanation, so it’s probably the right one,” Holt said. “But Kevin would need to massively oversell his relationship with Isabelle and Ellen to make anyone believe they were going to come running with the cash to save his sorry ass. Plus, no one’s really put the hard sell on us yet. Aside from a couple of vaguely threatening emails.”

  Holt hated that Isabelle looked a little queasy. It was the main reason she tried to avoid having her in these meetings, but whether she liked it or not, Isabelle and her financial knowledge had become an invaluable asset to the team. So here they sat, Holt complaining that they hadn’t been properly threatened, and Isabelle scared enough already.

  “You forget, H, you’re rich as Batman,” Max said.

  “And just as ornery,” Lola said.

  “Maybe the connection doesn’t matter, as long as there’s a chance they think you’ll pay to keep us safe and him away?” Isabelle asked.

  “Like I said, it’s the simplest narrative that fits all the facts, so it’s the one we should go with for now. It just feels off to me somehow. Sweetheart, have you had any luck following up on where the money has been coming from?” Holt asked. She still didn’t like it, but for now, it was the best theory they had. They needed more information.

  “Not yet, butter biscuit,” Max said.

  Holt didn’t mind a little laughter at her expense. She liked her team loose. Too much tension meant things were overlooked and people weren’t thinking clearly. That led people to freeze up in critical moments and that’s when people could get killed. “Anything else before we all get back to work?”

  “Yes, actually,” Max said. She looked a little unsure of herself after boldly poking the bear. “Kevin Garvey isn’t the only one running this algorithm. There are at least three others, but I think it’s closer to five. He’s been emailing with a group. I think they’re students at the college where Lola’s working.”