“Any luck tracking her?” I asked.
“Moved around too quickly,” Ralston said, pulling at the ends of his mustache like some cartoon sleuth.
“She still have her phone on her?” I asked.
“No, it was dumped. We were finally able to find it, but it’s pretty smashed up. That’s what we want you to look at for us, see what the GPS tells you.”
“I can do that. How much legwork do you expect this to be?” I asked Pete Ralston.
“Uh, this is the FBI’s case now,” Ralston admitted.
“Oh, well then, do they have my wiring instructions?” I asked, reaching for a sticky note to write the numbers out if they didn’t.
The Mayor gave the detective a weird look.
“We aren’t going through the FBI with this… they aren’t—”
“Oh, ok. Mr. Mayor, do you have my wiring instructions?” I asked as I started to write the numbers out.
“See, it’s just that… that…” the Mayor stammered, pulling the shattered phone out.
“Ok then. Here ya go, Ralston,” I said, putting the sticky note down in front of him with the routing information and $10,000 underneath it. “For my retainer.”
“The Detroit Police Department is just assisting in this case; at this point, it belongs to the Feds,” he said.
I sat there numbly. I knew I wasn’t swift on the uptake about subtle clues and the nuances of body language. Instead of locking up right there, which Johanna told me freaks people out, I stood and went to the window. I opened a slat and stared outside, trying to capture the thought. In the background I heard murmurs as I chased the meaning I had missed.
“You want him to do it pro-bono, just ask him,” Johanna finally erupted. “He doesn’t take subtle hints,” she said.
Ah, I had been missing that piece of information. Still, she was often my mouthpiece at times like this, and I let her follow her instincts. My dad would have been proud.
“It’s complicated. I don’t want to be seen as the guy who went behind the FBI’s back. Their forensics and crime team is good…”
“Then why didn’t you turn the phone over to them?” I asked suddenly.
Ralston looked uncomfortable, but he answered me. “Because we thought you could do it quicker and better. Last time was a five-minute job, wasn’t it?” he asked.
“I think so. Might have been five and a half,” I said.
“So why would you charge ten g’s for that?” Ralston asked.
“That sounds like an awful lot,” the assistant said, speaking for the first time.
“If your boss wasn’t paying you for today, would you come into work?” Jo asked suddenly.
“Well, yeah,” Ralston said, looking to his brothers in blue and then the mayor.
“Doubt it,” Jo said, getting warmed up. “Listen, this is a business. A business that runs for the aim of a profit. If it isn’t money you’re offering, what is it then?” Jo asked.
“Goodwill?” the mayor suggested.
“A get-out-of-jail-free card?” Jo countered.
The cops all winced at the same time. Maybe it was the crusty donuts Jo had left on the table last night after our work meeting, just before my date.
“Something can be worked out,” the Mayor said, frowning at the cops, who were still making faces.
“Give it to me,” I said suddenly.
“Wear gloves,” Ralston said. “We’re already breaking chain of custody by bringing it here.”
“You wouldn’t be breaking it if you’d paid the retainer or signed the contract for services,” I told them, walking out of the room with the evidence bag.
I walked into the IT room, ignoring Tech Support’s surprised expression as I turned on a magnified lamp. They were normally used for soldering and close work with tiny objects. It was perfect for what I had in mind. I tried plugging in the phone and powering it up, but it didn’t respond. It looked like an Android, similar to the one that Tech Support used. I opened the back, pulled the SIM card out, and put it in a reader, which I then hooked into the USB hub of the spare workstation.
“Whatcha got, boss?” Tech Support asked me.
“Tech Support, I’ve got me a SIM card from a missing woman. I’m going to retrieve what I can off of it. I need you to access the carrier’s data, and let’s see where this puppy went. Want to put it up on the big screen?”
“Yeah… and uh… that tech support thing? I was joking,” she said, turning on the projected screen behind our desks. The wall in front of us illuminated with her desktop background.
I was amused to see some sort of anime porn in a small window on her screen and was about to comment on it when she turned away from me and hit a few keys, closing that window out. I turned to my computer and typed away furiously, copying the data to my SD drive for faster access.
“Give me two more minutes,” Skye said, more to herself.
I watched as she went to a shell prompt and started a script. It looked like a cloaking script that would bounce her all around the globe; the ultimate VPN, as she called it. It was something she’d written herself.
“Carrier?” she asked me finally.
“Sprint,” I told her, already reading data.
“Got it. Have something for me to search?”
I put my monitor up on the big screen, effectively splitting it in half.
“Good,” she said, typing furiously.
Her search strings were quick and efficient. I’d been right—she was exactly what I needed. She wasn’t as creative as I would be, but at her age, she was one of the best. I’d followed her hacktivist exploits for close to a year and, when I decided to make a go of the business myself, I had worried how to approach her and hire her to do what was essentially immoral, if not outright illegal, depending on the context. The internet and hacking was still a gray area for many, but it wasn’t something I was concerned about.
“Look at this,” she said, chewing on a pencil.
I rolled over close to her, noticing the smell of her shampoo. It was pleasant but distracting, so I slid back, as if to get a better overall view.
“Ok, now overlay with the timing of the pings,” I said, referring to every time the cell phone picked up a new tower. I worked quickly on my screen with the map of the area according to the GPS waypoints and was able to tell the path.
“Let’s back it up and go from the moment they said the abduction happened,” I told her.
She typed furiously as I tried to remember exactly when it’d happened.
“It was the morning I interviewed and you uh… almost flashed me?” Skye said.
“Right. That.” For some reason, there was a smirk on her face.
We typed away, and when we were done, we had a street map with a line of travel, times, and the final resting place of the phone—which was curious. The same block had been circled twice. I printed it out and got the SIM card and put it back into the phone, returning it to the evidence bag.
“Good job, Skye,” I said, happy.
“You can call me Tech Support if it makes you happy,” she said softly, smiling.
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that this one was a freebie. I’d just pay her out of my own pocket. We’d been closing out a number of cases, and we’d been having more coming in than usual. Johanna said the word had spread that we were becoming a very efficient and quick PI agency to work with, even if we didn’t always take on cheating spouses. We were very expensive but very good, with a nearly 100% closure rate to the client’s satisfaction.
“I don’t know what happy feels like,” I admitted. “But it does sort of sound like a Batman thing,” I finished, thinking of Alfred being Bruce Wayne’s tech support.
“Would that make Johanna the Boy Wonder, Robin?” Skye snickered.
“No, I’m Catwoman,” Jo snarked as she walked into the room. “What have you got?” she asked.
“Where it happened, and where they dumped the phone, timelines.” I said.
“Not much to go on, is there?” Jo asked, sounding disappointed.
“They circled this block twice,” I said, showing her the time stamps. “And here’s where it got smashed and quit transmitting.”
“I thought GPS units were only good to one hundred and fifty feet?” Johanna asked in awe.
“Naw, that’s a government myth. They can track within four feet with the modern stuff. That’s why I hacked my phone and made sure my GPS didn’t give me away to the…”
I let Skye’s words drone on.
I found out she was a conspiracy theorist who often thought the government was out to get her. It was how she’d found herself with the Hacktivist Group Anonymous. It was how I found her, actually. I was looking for the best, but I was paying her a pittance compared to her perceived worth. If things kept growing like they did, I’d up her percentages. I would feel as if I made an unfair deal otherwise.
“Come on,” Jo said, jerking her thumb towards the doorway, “Horse and pony show.”
“I never understood that,” I admitted, walking out.
“It’s time for you to explain what you did and how you did that and what it means,” Jo told me.
I frowned but went back to the board room, sitting down and sliding the copies of the map around.
“This is…” Ralston said, munching on what had to be the eleventh stale donut from the empty box.
The patrol car guys were looking at him in disgust, so I assumed he’d been the one eating the most.
“Here,” I pointed to my copy, “is where she was picked up. They went up this way and circled this block twice before dumping the phone here.” I pointed to where they found it.
“Ok, I’m not sure how that’ll help us,” the mayor said, his voice thick with emotion.
“It gives us a starting point to look. There’s got to be a reason they circled the block, ya know what I mean?” one of the cops said.
Everyone frowned, and he shut up.
“What about her calls?” Mayor Taylor asked.
I slid over the details of her phone calls, text messages, and everything that Tech Support… er… Skye and I had worked on.
“How did you get this?” Ralston asked.
“Through illegal hac—”
“What he means is, he’s got access to computers and read the data off the chip,” Jo cut in.
The mayor gave me a weak smile and read off the numbers.
“Most of this is to me and my wife. One’s the car service we use,” he admitted.
“Ok, well, glad I could help. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have another—”
“So can you look into this more?” the mayor asked.
“More?” I asked, confused.
“It’s my daughter. I’d like to have everyone on board I can to help find her. She’s my baby girl…”
I took the discarded sticky note and smoothed the edges out. At some point somebody had crumpled it up and left it sitting on the table. Once that was done, I walked over and stuck it to the table in front of the mayor.
“One for charity already. This one is going to be more than a five-minute fix.”
“But the FBI said…”
“Then follow their lead,” I told him abruptly and sat down.
“But… aren’t you willing…”
“To put aside all the other clients in the queue? To rush this through for you? I understand your daughter is at stake here, but I have no more personal involvement at this point,” I said, pointing at the printouts I’d provided. “But to put aside all other clients, I’m going to be losing money. A lot of money. So it’s going to cost somebody. Last I checked, Mr. Mayor, you have deeper pockets than I do, if that seems possible. Your family money came from old railroad money, where your great grandfather—”
“That’s enough,” Jo said at my side, startling me into silence.
“So you’re saying you won’t help unless you get paid?” Mayor Taylor asked.
“I need to get paid, otherwise I might as well shut down the place. As it is, if you do pay me, I have to farm out some of this work to other people, who I in turn have to pay to even keep some sort of semblance of a schedule to get things out on time as promised,” I said, hoping my logic was making sense.
The mayor was a little red in the face, but it was Ralston who stood up abruptly and made a rude gesture.
“Listen,” he said, “we’ve all paid you a lot. We’ve sent you case after case over the years.” Ralston was red in the face and advancing on me.
I stood, ready to put my chair between us. I saw Johanna stand as well, her quiet presence at my side on the ready.
“If you think,” he jabbed me in the chest with his finger, “that you always need to get paid…” He gave another hard poke and then a shove… the world blurred as Johanna flowed into action.
She turned his wrist until it was pressed behind his back, his hand almost touching the back of his shoulder blades. The three startled officers reached for their guns when she put her boot in Ralston’s ass and literally booted him across the table. He slid right into the three seated men.
“That was assault and battery,” Ralston said, getting up as the officers were reaching for the handcuffs.
“No it wasn’t,” Johanna snarled back, putting herself between me and the officers.
“You can’t do that and expect—”
“Take one more step, and you’re going to need those guns,” Johanna said in a low, scary voice.
“It wasn’t assault and battery.” I stepped into view from behind Jo. “I’ve got this whole place wired with microphones and video recorders. I’m sure I’ve got five angles were you were putting your hands on me, officer,” I said, knowing it wasn’t Ralston’s preferred way of being addressed. “So admit you fucked up, and leave Johanna out of it,” I said adamantly.
The officers looked to the ceiling, where two very obvious black bubbles silently recorded everything. They weren’t the good ones though; the cameras that looked like nail holes in the trim all around the room were the best. I used this room for interviews and interrogations. By changing the angles and re-watching things from a different perspective, I was learning ‘body language’, according to Jo. It had proved invaluable here.
“Maybe I got a little hot under the collar,” Pete Ralston said after a long pause. “I wouldn’t want the department to get investigated over a misunderstanding,” he finished.
“Yeah, some misunderstanding,” Jo spat back.
The mayor looked back and forth between us, and I could tell from his expression that he was worried for a lot more than his daughter. He looked like he needed to use the bathroom.
“Men’s room is first door down the hall to the right,” I told him.
“You’re all crazy!” he yelled and stomped out of the room, followed by his assistant and the cops.
I watched them go, smiling as the last cop turned and gave me a look. I nodded to him, and he gave me half a smile.
“You may have to watch yourself around them for a little while,” I told Johanna. “I don’t think they were amused with your performance.”
“You know, you could have taken the job to make them happy. It’s not like you need the money,” Jo said, her breathing starting to slow down as the adrenaline in her system drained away.
“Oh, I took the job,” I told her.
“What?” she asked, spinning to look at me.
I pointed at the empty seat where the Mayor had sat.
“What? What am I looking at?”
“Nothing,” I told her.
“What does that even mean?” she said, her gaze returning to me and making me feel like a bug that had splattered on the town car she drove me around in.
“He took the wiring instructions,” I told her.
Johanna smiled after a moment.
“You always taught me, stand up to the bullies, no matter how scary they are.”
“Do you always think about the past?” she asked me in an exasperated
voice.
“Usually, but mostly just about you,” I admitted.
She turned and gave me some sort of glare. Great. I did it again, and she’s pissed. I’d have to find a way to make it up to her somehow. Lately I’d been making her uncomfortable and pissed even more than normal, and I didn’t think an email explaining that I was trying to show her my empathetic side would help very much. My therapist was going to have a field day with this one… maybe she could explain to me how I was always getting this wrong.
“That’s… kinda…”
“Creepy,” I answered. “I know.” I walked out of the room and headed to my office.
4
I was already going back through the data from the SIM card when my phone’s alert went off. I’d installed the new phone app for my bank, and it was dinging to report that I’d had a deposit of $10,000. Since I was expecting this, I continued studying the streets and the map in detail, noting times of the waypoints that the cell phone had provided before going dark.
I was looking for patterns. Was the perp dropping off, picking up, or driving in random circles to perhaps avoid the cops? I started cross-referencing the businesses on the streets using Google Street View and then looked up their opening times. I called around when I couldn’t get the info online. This in itself was a feat I usually couldn’t accomplish, but I didn’t want to ask too much of Jo; she’d done quite a lot today and put herself in the middle of what could have been a sticky situation.
“About earlier…” Jo’s voice interrupted my thoughts, and I almost fell backwards out of my chair.
“Oh my God. I’m sorry,” I said, holding my hand over my heart, my pulse through the roof. I’d been so intent on my own thoughts, I’d totally missed the door opening, and I’m sure Jo had knocked. It was a common enough occurrence—when I got into concentration mode, I tended to zone out everything else.
“No, really. I meant about earlier, I just wanted to say—”
Kidnapped: A Jarek Grayson Private Detective Novel (Grayson Investigative Services Book 1) Page 3
