Kidnapped: A Jarek Grayson Private Detective Novel (Grayson Investigative Services Book 1)

by Boyd Craven III

  “We set up a task force room up here, but then the FBI came in and basically took it over…”

  Ralston pushed open a nondescript door, and inside was a conference table with a dozen chairs around it. An easel displayed a big pad of paper with ideas scrawled haphazardly—evidence of an early brainstorming session. Three computers lined one wall with desks that looked like they’d been looted from a high school.

  “Sorry, but this is quiet, private, and you sort of are on the task force, paid for by the mayor… so this isn’t really illegal. Technically.”

  “Thanks. I’ll get right to it,” I said, pulling my tablet out and sitting down at the nearest terminal.

  The computer was already logged in. Sloppy on their part. The room hadn’t even been locked. What most people didn’t realize was that the police could access a lot of information about people, but they didn’t because of the law… or amendments to the constitution.

  “This is what I need,” I told Pete, already pounding the keys, digging up Fuller’s information that they had in Detroit.

  I kept going: work history, records. I barely heard the door close softly behind me. I turned to look, and I saw that I had the room to myself. I got back into it. Within minutes, I had everything I needed. I set my tablet up on a stand and used my encrypted program to video call Skye.

  “What’s up, boss? Hey, you’re on the tablet! Nice! Your program works well.”

  “Thanks. Listen, Landon from the FBI is going to bring a tracking bug to you soon.”

  “Yeah, they just got here,” she said, looking sideways. “They said it was ok for them to be in here. I didn’t want to…”

  “I didn’t either. Listen, can you crack the signal and write an app for me to track it?” I asked her, figuring she could.

  “Yeah, easy enough. It’s an encrypted signal though, so that’ll take me a little time. Once I know that, I’ve got something in my toolkit that’ll be easily adapted. This encryption is going to be bad to crack. It’s not your regular spy shop stuff,” she told me, her face worried.

  I could see Landon behind her, either photobombing or trying to see me too.

  “Remember that hidden directory I told you about?” I asked her.

  “Yeah?”

  “Landon, cover your ears.”

  “I am not covering my ears,” he said.

  “Fine, then you’ll become complicit in a federal crime in about twenty seconds. Now Skye—”

  “I need a coffee,” he said, and I heard a door slam hard on her end of the call.

  “He’s gone, boss,” Skye said quietly.

  “I’ve got some NSA decryption scripts on the hidden directory under /cookiemonster/ieatcookies,” I said, typing it out on the tablet’s touch screen.

  Skye’s eyes got huge.

  “How did you…?”

  “Kid, you’re good, but I have nothing but time. If you can’t do it in ten minutes, then use that. Don’t let Landon see you; even that will get him fired. You work for me, so you don’t have to worry. You don’t even know what it is that I’m asking you to do, if they were to ask.”

  “Got it,” Skye said softly. “Listen, is it worth it? I mean, the potential trouble?”

  “Yes,” I told her. “A woman’s life is in danger. I don’t worry about the moral choice of protecting privacy when it comes to this. I’ll take responsibility if it becomes an issue.”

  “You know,” she said, smiling shyly, “Anonymous would have loved to have you. But I think you’re too much of a nice guy for them.”

  “Thanks, kid. I never wanted to be in with that crowd. I just watched them for talent when it became apparent I needed another me. That’s why I’ve got you here with us, Skye. I need you to do this while I crack into his bank records next. And before I go—don’t let Landon see the—”

  “Yup, we’re done talking,” Skye said, closing the connection.

  She’d been turning, so Landon must have walked back in. I couldn’t figure out if she was nervous or excited, but it was something to ponder. In the meantime, I’d found a reference to a numbered account that Martin and his deceased parents had their names attached to. I looked up the bank in question, and then looked to see how much access if any I could get from these databases. Nothing.

  A hack on their server would take too long, so I looked up who was on the board of directors. Luckily it was a large bank, and I ended up using one of their assistant’s names as I dialed the bank’s phone number listed on their website. I navigated to the tech support, half hoping they didn’t have caller ID on their internal numbers. It would show up Detroit PD, but that might not be a big problem.

  “Tech support,” a bored-sounding male voice answered.

  In the background, I could hear the basic music and gunshots of a Quake game going on over the network.

  “Hey, this is Jeff Swartz. I’ve been out of town working on that merger, and now that I’m back on the fifth floor, I forgot my password. I’m locked out of my terminal,” I told him, breaking a sweat.

  This had to work. I mean, social engineering was something I’d hardly ever done. Not having to see them face to face made this much at least possible.

  “Ok, so JeffS,” he said, saying Jeff and S in one word as he typed… good, now I knew the login. “I can’t read you the password off; that’s locked even to me. But I can bump you to the default and you can change it from there,” he said, and I could hear his keys clicking faster.

  He must have switched back to the game.

  “What’s the default again, just the enter key?” I asked, not knowing what enterprise servers or software they were using.

  “Yup. Want to try to come in in about two minutes? I’m working on something, and it’ll just take me—”

  “Yeah, that’s fine,” I told him.

  While he was killing people in Quake, probably finishing his round, I looked up the IP address of the bank. I teleneted in; an old-school method of getting into the network. I heard a virtual shotgun blast and a curse.

  “Hey, Jeff Swartz, I got you entered, man. You’re all set. Try it now.”

  “Ok,” I said, entering the login and then just the enter key for the password.

  Login successful, please change your password…

  “Thanks man, that did it,” I told him and hung up.

  “People are stupid,” I muttered, making the password something unintelligible before gaining access.

  Did that sound too easy? Sadly, that was what hacking was about a lot of the time. It wasn’t the brilliance of code or software or search strings… it was taking a lot of little pieces of information that alone didn’t represent anything. With research and by stringing those pieces together, you could get enough information to make a pretty clear picture. I had just short-cut the process by hours - or even days.

  It took me thirty seconds to figure out where to search for the numbered account. I found it, and then opened it.

  The Internal Affairs Bureau was going to have a field day with this information. I hit the print button and went to another account, one that appeared to go to the Cayman Islands with the bank’s local office there. Since I was already on their system, they let me have access. I hit print again and then pulled up some individual transactions. Surprisingly, many of them were to a real estate company right here in Detroit.

  I pondered that for a moment before I got it. Behind two different accounts, Martin was trying to set up a banking equivalent of a VPN and make things harder to trace. What I did probably would have taken the police and FBI months to get access to through legal channels. Again I printed it and added it to the pile that was going to be anonymously mailed to the police when I was done. I traced the real estate company and found that the small shell corporation that Martin had set up in the Caymans had bought several warehouses in the Detroit area about four months ago. That coincided with the time stamps on Sasha’s pictures.

  The planning of this must have been huge, and I had no idea how many
were on the team that managed to pull off this sort of operation.

  “Unless he hired them out as contractors…” I said to myself, considering what he’d done with Sasha.

  I dug through all the transactions and found most of them to be related to the real estate. I printed out the addresses of the warehouses and looked for the transactions where the money had come from. After hitting page down a few times, I found it. Four lump sum deposits of $50,000 from almost six months back. I tried to access that, but it was from a different bank. I’d have to start over.

  “Shit,” I muttered.

  I hit print on the transactions and bank info when a knock startled me. I minimized the screen, and as the door opened, my tablet alerted me that I had a message.

  “Hey Jarek,” Jo said, bursting in.

  I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath, but it all came out in one big whoosh. “Any luck?” she asked me, closing the door behind her.

  “Yeah, quite a bit,” I told her.

  I pulled the sheets off the printer and handed them to her. Jo had learned a lot about my techniques in the time she’d worked with me, and was soon nodding along. I didn’t tell her how I got it, but she smiled as I pulled my tablet out and saw the message from Skye.

  Install this program. GPS will track for you. Quick and dirty, like Google Maps. Hurry before he changes clothes or brushes it off. Sorenson is on his way back.

  “Good job, kid,” I muttered to myself, installing the application.

  I started it up immediately and smiled when I saw a blinking red dot appear up near Adam’s Street and Comerica Park, and it seemed to be moving. I hit the video call again and plugged my tablet into the USB hub of the computer terminal I was working on to make sure it could charge for as long as I could let it. I’d also try to put it on my phone and have her push it to Susan’s, Jo’s, Landon’s…

  “Tech Support,” Skye said, and I winced.

  After the ease of talking myself into the bank, I was really starting to not like that nickname.

  “Hey, I need you to trace back this numbered account. I need full details on it; where the money came from, who owns it, who has access to it. I’m out of time here, and I need to get moving.”

  “Screenshot it for me,” she said.

  I did and copied them to the tablet. After typing out the JeffS login and password to her, I logged off.

  “But that’s for a different bank?” Jo asked me as I stood, unplugging the tablet and getting the printouts.

  “Yes. I’m leaving this one for her to do now that she’s got the tracking software working.”

  “Ok, let’s hurry,” Jo said.

  I followed her towards the elevators.

  “You know what’s bugging me?” I asked her.

  “No, what?”

  “The Mayor. He was all hot to trot to get us on this case, but we haven’t heard from him directly since,” I told her.

  “Well, maybe he’s got the FBI camped in his office and home as they wait for the drop-off instructions,” she told me.

  “I thought so too, but now I’m curious. Give him a call for me in a little while. Tell him we’re on this.”

  My phone buzzed, and I pulled it out as we got into the elevator.

  “Skye?” I asked her.

  “You put the tablet away,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “This bank, it’s in Sweden,” she told me.

  “Ok,” I said, confused.

  “International treaties and—”

  “I’ll take any and all blame,” I told her, hitting the red button on the elevator and stopping us between floors, buying me precious seconds.

  “Ok, I just don’t… boss, we’re doing some heavy, dirty hacking here. Stuff that they drop you in a hole and pull the lid over you for.”

  “You will be protected,” I promised her. “Besides, if the government found out what you’d done, they’d likely hire you instead,” I told her quietly, watching Jo’s eyes raise up in question.

  “You really think so?” she asked me.

  “Yes, but I pay better, so get at it.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  “Hey, before you go… go through the footage at the bar again. There had to be a reason they circled there twice. We never saw whoever it was dump the phone, and it seems like we should have.”

  “Which is priority?” Skye asked.

  “Bank first, video last. Call me with any and all updates. We’re taking a car ride,” I said, turning the elevator back on.

  “Ok, thanks. And… I... yeah, thanks.” Skye hung up.

  “She scared of jail time?” Jo asked me.

  “Yes, but I’ll hire the best lawyers. I don’t think they will go after her. Me, on the other hand, yes. Because I told her to and gave her the tools. Also, I think she was worried, and if she’s going to be working for us, she needs to keep her head in the game. If she doesn’t, something can slip like it almost did when Landon sneaked into the room with her and—”

  “Quit freaking out, Jarek,” Jo said.

  “I am not freaking out,” I told her, stepping out of the elevator.

  “You are freaking out. Are you—”

  “Hey, you get anywhere?” Pete Ralston asked, walking up with Susan.

  “Yeah, hold on,” I said, getting my tablet out and sending the info to their cell phones.

  Jo’s phone beeped first, and then Susan’s. They both looked and smiled, installing the apps. I got an error message and looked at it.

  “Pete, what kind of phone do you have?” I asked him.

  “Oh, it’s a flip phone, gets great signal and—”

  I groaned. “Ok, I’ve got the tracking software sent to everyone who has modern equipment. I just sent it to Landon as well. You’re welcome to send that app via email to anyone on the task force. I don’t know how long it’ll be good for.”

  “Great, I’m calling the HRT,” Susan said, already dialing.

  “We’re going to leave without Landon?” I asked.

  “You better not,” a deep voice boomed. Everyone in the lobby stopped as the large G-man came rushing toward us, a rare smile on his face.

  “Don’t tell me how,” he said, holding up his iPhone. “But if this is what I think it is—”

  “He’s on the move.” I held up my tablet. “But I need to make a copy first.”

  I was clutching the addresses of the warehouses. There were five of them, and they all had to be checked out. I didn’t know how the cops and the FBI were going to handle all of it, because if they crashed one place and it was wrong, who knew what we’d find? It’d already been proven that Martin was above average in the planning and tech department. It wouldn’t surprise me that he’d be able to monitor or watch every location remotely.

  Building a degausser wasn’t that horribly difficult, but if he had the technological background for something like that, what else did he have? A portable HERF gun? I doubted it, but it made me worry. He’d had almost $200,000 wired in, and already had a small balance to begin with. If we could track the money, we could figure out where things came from. Should I tell the cops? I’d be basically admitting my guilt if I did, which they already knew; but would it even matter? Why give them evidence to convict me? Was he transferring money to himself, adding a third layer of diversion to throw us off?

  “Hurry, I’m scrambling the teams.”

  “We need more intel,” Susan said. “We go in half-cocked, he could kill her.”

  “We will get intel,” Landon said, already talking into his phone, looking at it occasionally. “We’ll have every agent in the state soon.”

  “I’m getting the car,” Jo told me. I nodded.

  9

  They’d given us a tactical issue radio with rolling frequencies so the kidnapper couldn’t listen in through the usual police scanners. We’d already made the mistake of putting the BOLO out on his van and had hauled in Sasha, who was still in interrogation.

  “We’re following be
hind Susan and Pete,” Jo told me, but I was only half paying attention.

  “Ok. Listen Jo,” I said, handing the tablet up so she could watch the map as well. “I really do want to clear the air between us.”

  Jo let out a big, deep breath. I was waiting for physical threats or yelling, but all she said was, “Yeah?”

  “The whole friendship can be mistaken for love thing. Was that meant for you or for me?” I asked her.

  “It was just something I said,” she told me quietly, turning up the tactical radio.

  “So you don’t want a relationship with me?” I asked her.

  “Who said I did?” She turned her head over her shoulder to look at me.

  “No one. I’m just trying to understand this tension. I want to fix it. I promise I won’t tease or talk about sex in front of you. It’s hard for me to tell when people are joking or teasing, and my attempts at humor lately haven’t worked out well.”

  “Yeah, Jarek, you just aren’t funny. That isn’t your shtick,” she said, following Susan and making the same turn as the SUV in front of us.

  “I know. I just try to be like everyone else,” I admitted.

  “You aren’t like anybody else; that’s why we get along,” she told me, not taking her eyes off the road.

  “So you don’t want a relationship with me?” I repeated, realizing she’d sidestepped the question entirely earlier.

  “Jarek…” she said and paused. “You’re my boss, and we’ve known each other since like the third grade, right?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I feel… close to you. We’ve grown up together. I’ve fought your battles, you helped me fight mine—”

  “I don’t fight—”

  “You’re the reason I finished school. You’re the one who got me through math and chemistry when I was flunking out. I almost dropped out of school.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t,” I admitted. “You’re the reason I stayed in public schools.”

  She went silent after that as we turned again and slowed down, coming to park in an empty spot behind Susan on the east side of the road.

  “Waiting for HRT,” Susan said quietly, her voice clear through the radio.