“Mac, I overheard you say something about being tracked earlier.”
“That’s right. Someone was tracking Montgomery and then it seemed they were able to track Ms. Wire and company as well. You have something?”
“Well, I think I know how they did it. Montgomery’s laptop has LoJack on it.”
“The tracking system?” Mac asked.
Jones nodded.
Wire’s eyes closed and she shook her head. “A tracking system. I wonder if they found that while going through The Congressional Page offices.”
“Congressional Page offices?” Mac asked. “When were you there?”
“When I was in DC earlier today,” Wire looked at her watch, “Make that yesterday, I was at Stroudt’s condo, then The Congressional Page and finally Montgomery’s with an Alexandria homicide detective.”
“Carl Court?” Mac asked.
Wire nodded and asked, “You talk to him?”
“I did. The good detective said a pretty brunette with political connections had been snooping around.”
Wire grinned and then got back to business: “The files of The Congressional Page and Stroudt’s home were completely cleaned out. Because Montgomery’s building had pretty good security, it didn’t look like his home had been raided. I bet if we look further, we’ll find out that The Congressional Page had LoJack tracking on all of their laptop computers for some reason and whoever broke into those offices, found a record, bill, contract or something along those lines that showed that the computers had the tracking on them.”
“And I bet whoever was tracking Montgomery, did so because they hacked into that system and from there they were able to track him down here to St. Paul,” Mac added.
“And us,” Wire replied. “We had the laptop, Detective. That’s probably how they continued to track us to the pub. They were tracking the laptop. I got away from Sebastian’s with it and they got back on us by tracking it.”
“Well, now, if they’re still tracking it, they know we have it and from here it isn’t going anywhere.”
“That isn’t the only thing that’s interesting on this computer, Mac, let me show you what he’s been searching on the Internet recently.” Jones opened up his own laptop.
“What’s that?”
“A company named DataPoint Electronics. Among their other products, they manufacture and distribute electronic touch screen voting machines.” Jones pulled up the website for the company on his own laptop and clicked the tab marked e-voting machines.
“Can you tell what he was reviewing on the website?” Wire asked.
“Affirmative. The information on the company website is pretty basic, kind of voting machines for dummies, so to speak. That having been said, he seems to have been spending a lot of time on the operating system for the voting machines, the components, how they operate and in particular how a vote is tabulated. DataPoint Electronics produces a paperless electronic voting system.”
“By paperless, do you mean there is no paper ballot?” Mac asked with a furrowed brow, looking at the screen.
“That’s right. There is a paper report printed off the machine with the vote tabulation, but a voter does not complete a paper ballot like we’re accustomed to here in Minnesota. It’s an e-voting machine. You use the touch screen on the voting machine to make your votes. The votes are then tabulated essentially onto the memory card. The votes are tallied on the memory card and a paper report is printed as verification.”
Mac nodded and then moved over to his own laptop and one of Montgomery’s notebooks.
“So when was it he was looking at this website?” Wire asked.
“The last week or so, he started last Saturday it looks like, went through a number of the pages of the website and then he was back on them again pretty hot and heavy Tuesday and Wednesday again. And again, the biggest numbers of visits were to the pages that contain the information on the memory cards.”
“So the way these machines work is that the voter makes their selection and the vote is then tabulated onto the memory card which contains the results for the machine.”
“Right.”
Wire nodded. “It’s interesting and all, but I’m not sure what those searches have to do with the meeting.”
“Maybe it’s because the bald guy is the president of DataPoint,” Mac declared.
“What?” Wire asked surprised. “Seriously?”
Mac turned around his laptop which showed a picture of Peter Checketts, the president of DataPoint Electronics. “Look familiar?”
Wire held up a blown up photo from the meeting next to the laptop screen, “Sure looks like him.” She looked to Jones who nodded as well.
“So the owner of a voting machine company is at a late night meeting in Nowheresville, Kentucky, with the campaign manager for Vice President Wellesley. Nothing suspicious about that,” Wire uttered facetiously. “Cripes.”
“So they’re behind and they’re going to manipulate the machines to win?” Mac asked, disbelief in his voice.
“You have a better explanation?” Wire inquired.
Mac turned to Jones. “So Jupe, I know voting machines aren’t exactly your bailiwick, but let’s assume for the moment that Checketts, Connolly and these other two men are talking voting machines and let’s go with the worst case scenario, they’re trying to manipulate the machines somehow in their favor. How could they go about doing it?”
“I’d have to get into these machines a little more, Mac,” Jupe answered. “There might be any number of ways you could do it. I know I’ve read some conspiracy theories in the past about voting machine manipulation.”
“I’ve seen those as well,” Wire responded.
“So have I,” Mac added. “I saw a special on HBO once on how you could potentially manipulate voting machines by putting some sort of virus on the machine and they showed how the vote could be changed. Which was fascinating and scary all that the same time. But in the final analysis, I was never that worried about it being that big a deal.”
“Why?” Jupe asked. “Sounds bad to me.”
“Me too,” Wire added, looking at the laptop.
“It is,” Mac answered. “But I wasn’t that phased by it because under their scenario you could only manipulate one machine at a time.”
“And to make any meaningful impact on an election, or at least a presidential election, you would have to manipulate hundreds, if not thousands of machines,” Wire added, understanding Mac’s train of thought.
“That takes time, resources and people,” Jupiter noted. “Couldn’t be done, or at least would be really really hard to do something like that machine by machine. The operational security on something like that would be a bitch.”
“Not under the HBO scenario,” Mac answered. “But that’s not what we have here, I don’t think. I think Connolly, or whoever else might be involved, has taken this a step or two further. Checketts’s presence suggests they’re going to manipulate the machines at the source, at DataPoint.”
“Going to? It’s five days to the election,” Wire stated. “If they’re manipulating the machines at the source, it’s already done.”
McRyan and Jones both shook their heads in dismay and sat back in their chairs.
“She’s right,” Jupe said.
“Yeah she is,” Mac agreed, leaning back in the chair, his fingers laced behind his head.
As if the night hadn’t been enough, the case just escalated again.
Mac pushed himself out of his chair and walked over to the windows for the conference room. He casually closed the shades and then walked to the door and looked out. Chief Flanagan was still around, talking to Riley. Mac caught the chief’s eyes and tilted his head towards the conference room. The chief walked into the room and Mac closed the door.
“What do you have?”
“I think we might know what this is all about now. At a minimum we got a big piece of the puzzle.” Mac put the picture of Checketts on the whiteboard. “This is Peter Check
etts. He is the president and owner of DataPoint Electronics in Milwaukee.”
“The picture is from the meeting in Kentucky, Chief Flanagan,” Wire added.
“So we have two of the four men from that meeting, at least other than the private security men, right?” the chief asked.
“Right,” Wire answered. “We still haven’t figured out who the other two guys are, but that’s not the interesting part of this.”
“What is?”
“DataPoint Electronics,” Mac answered.
“Which is what?”
“Among other things, a voting machine company,” Wire answered.
That caught the chief’s attention. “Go on,” he said quietly.
Mac explained their theory that the meeting had something to do with manipulating voting machines. He finished with: “Why else would Connolly, Checketts and these two other men meet?”
The chief sighed and sat down and thought about what he’d heard for the past few minutes. Flanagan shook his head, “So you two have the vice president’s campaign manager and the president of a voting machine company at a clandestine late night meeting in backwater Kentucky a week before the election.” Flanagan just looked at the picture and shook his head, the magnitude of what they were looking at dawning on him. The chief also knew what they had sounded good, but that wasn’t enough. “You may be right, it’s a good theory, makes some sense, but you’re way ahead of yourselves. You have no proof.”
“Chief, the picture, the meeting, these guys are up to something,” Jones said.
“They are for sure,” Wire answered. “But the chief’s right. We have a theory, but we have little to no proof. We’d get laughed out of court.”
“Yeah, but we’re not in court,” Mac said. “We’re conducting a homicide investigation and this gives us more to go on. But I’m thinking one other thing, Ms. Wire.”
“That we need to call the Judge?”
“Yes.”
Wire nodded. “And get the campaign to work on figuring out where DataPoint machines are and when they got there. If you’ll excuse me, I need to make a call.” Dara got up from the table and opened the door to find Detective Franklin ready to knock. Wire walked by Double Frank, who came into the room.
“What’s up, Double Frank?” Mac asked.
“Mac, we’ve hit every hospital in town and all the ‘off-the-books’ guys we are aware of and we haven’t found the guy.”
“Okay, Frank, it was worth a shot.”
“Okay, Mac,” Double Frank turned to leave but then stopped and turned, “but …”
“But what, Detective?”
“It’s probably nothing.”
“Not tonight it’s not. What is it?”
“As we’ve been asking around tonight, a couple of docs said they’ve heard rumors of a new provider out there. Nobody knows his name, it’s something of a mystery I guess, but supposedly he has high-end surgical skills. Problem is nobody we’ve talked to has a name. I was thinking if there was anyone who might know who this new guy is …”
Mac knew where this was going. “Looks like I need to find a payphone.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“He is a character.”
A police detective, homicide or otherwise, can’t really do his job without confidential sources, people who seemingly have access to otherwise unobtainable information. Sometimes they were the Deep Throat type, honest, hardworking people who just happened to have access to what was needed or were interested in blowing the whistle at that time. They were one time sources and helpful. But what you really needed as a cop were people who always had valuable tidbits of information. Of course, more often than not, the people who had the information a cop needed had it because they walked on the shadier side of life. They were people who occasionally fractured a law on their own. However, for a little quid pro quo, they were usually willing to share information. It was simply how things worked on the street.
McRyan had those kinds of sources around the Twin Cities, cultivated them, kept track of them, and it worked for him. But Mac had a source he could call on that nobody else had. This was a source who seemingly knew everything going down in town. On occasion, when the circumstances truly warranted it, and if he asked right, Mac could call on him.
The source: Fat Charlie Boone.
Back in the day, Charlie Boone ran the dope trade on the north side of Minneapolis. And he ran the trade with an iron fist. His people were disciplined, didn’t sell around schools, didn’t sell around churches, didn’t sell on Sundays and kept the trade low profile and followed the Boone Law: Never put a gun on anyone who was not in the game. That was his one hard and fast rule. If one of his people did that, that person’s fear was not the police, it was Boone.
After a number of years of maintaining a low profile and avoiding the Minneapolis Police, Charlie had made so much money that he’d been able to put several layers between himself and the street. These days, even if the street was kicking money up to him, Boone was so far removed from the action there would be no way to trace it back to him. His money was cleaned now several times over. Fat Charlie Boone was the bank. The Minneapolis Police had long given up on catching him, having been humbled far too many times in their pursuit over the years.
Now Boone was quietly making continuous investments in businesses all over the Twin Cities. He now lived in a thirty-third-story penthouse condo at The Chesterton, a thirty-five-story luxury high-rise condominium overlooking the Stone Arch Bridge and the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis. He was healthy, wealthy and wise.
Yet Charlie Boone was still street. He was still plugged in unlike anyone else and he knew everything going on in town. However, as untouchable as he’d become, he did have one Achilles’ heel. Boone had an extremely big family, some of whom were still close enough to the street game. Those family members, usually extended family types, occasionally got into trouble, sometimes in St. Paul.
That’s where McRyan came in.
Sixteen months ago Charlie gave Mac a tip during a double kidnapping that helped him save Chief Flanagan’s life and that of his daughter’s. A few months later, one of Boone’s nephews found himself pinched in St. Paul on a drug charge. Boone reached out to Mac and asked for a little return on his previous investment. Mac went to Flanagan, explained what Charlie was looking for and that the chief’s own daughter was likely alive because of the man’s assistance. The chief gave the little legal maneuver his blessing, but with one proviso. “Let’s get something in return.”
Mac got something in return.
After Boone’s nephew was in the clear, Mac made a late night trip over to the north side of Minneapolis and Boone’s office. Over cigars and a bottle of Wild Turkey, the two struck a little deal.
Mac would never come to him on trivial matters, but if there was something big going on, he could call on Charlie. McRyan figured big would involve a double homicide, cop killing, large robbery, something along those lines. He never envisioned going to Fat Charlie on something big would involve presidential politics. However, if there was in fact a new off-the-books doctor in town, Charlie would know who he was or, if not, how to quickly find him.
Mac gave Wire the short background on Charlie as he drove to a twenty-four-hour gas station on Rice Street just north of the St. Paul capitol.
“Why are we going so far away from headquarters?” Wire asked.
“St. Paul is a big city, but not that big of a city. The farther away, the less likely someone sees me making or taking a call on a payphone. That stuff always looks a little suspicious.”
There were rules when calling Charlie.
Mac had to call from a payphone to a private number and leave a message with the service. Mac went through the routine and hung up.
“So what now?”
“We wait. Give it a minute or two.”
“Even at 4:30 in the morning?”
“Fat Charlie Boone Enterprises is a twenty-four seven operation,” Mac answered. “Som
eone is always working.”
Sure enough, three minutes later the payphone rang. “This is McRyan. I need to see the big man right away.”
“He can’t just call you?” Wire whispered.
Mac shook his head and put his hand over the mouthpiece, “Everything is face to face with Charlie.” He then took his hand off the receiver. “Twenty minutes? Okay. Tell him I will have a lady investigator with me… Yeah … Trust me, the old man will love her.” He hung up. “So now we drive over to north Minneapolis.”
“He couldn’t just tell you over the phone?”
Mac laughed. “Charlie doesn’t believe in phones, cellular or otherwise. He never let his street guys have a cell phone. Cell phones could be tracked, traced, hacked and monitored. Charlie is old school, like Paulie in Goodfellas. Everything is face to face with Charlie Boone.”
The two went inside the gas station and bought fresh tall coffees for themselves, two extra tall coffees and a bag with four bear claws and started on the trek to the north side of Minneapolis. Mac motored south on Rice Street and maneuvered his way to Interstate 94 and cruised west towards Minneapolis. As he turned a sharp bend to the left on 94 and took the long highway bridge crossing over the Mississippi River, he took in the impressive well lit downtown Minneapolis skyline.
“St. Paul and Minneapolis are so different,” Wire said as they crossed the bridge.
It often amazed Mac that downtown Minneapolis and St. Paul could only be a few miles apart yet be so different from one another. St. Paul was like an East Coast city, brick and mortar, working class, union, dirt on its elbows and knees, a name tag on the left upper chest. Minneapolis, by contrast, was all West Coast, tall glass towers with the beautiful people frequenting orchestras, playhouses and the sprawling restaurant and bar scene in a city, clean, trendy and stylish. One wasn’t more right than the other and each had its own distinct character. The two cities were just both so different yet separated by a thin ribbon of water.
Mac cruised around the south side of downtown, through the Lowry Tunnel and then north on Interstate 94 until he reached the West Broadway exit and then took a left down the north side of Minneapolis’s main artery.
Electing To Murder: A compelling crime thriller (McRyan Mystery Thriller Series Book) (McRyan Mystery Series Book 4) Page 18
