by Tom Fowler
A dream of babies in the woods roused me from my slumber around eight-thirty. Groggy though I felt, I knew I was awake. I trudged downstairs, brewed coffee, and whipped up a quick breakfast of an omelet and toast. I ate it at the kitchen table, alternating between taking a bite and rubbing sleep from my eyes. Once I finished eating, I robotically drank my second cup of java and waited for the caffeine gods to jolt me awake. They must have needed their own morning beverages.
After a shower, I drove to the office. Standing under the hot water and then cruising into Canton with the windows cracked got my blood moving and made me feel like a living person again. I sat at my desk and pondered what transpired yesterday. Iris was back with Calvin and Tamika, and anyone who could try and take her away again was in jail. By any reasonable measure, it was a win. I should have felt good about it.
I didn’t.
The whole thing felt incomplete. I’d been able to get Calvin out from under Eddie’s thumb, but what if Denise needed treatment before the NBA check cleared? The point-shaving issue was in the rearview, but powerful people at John Hanson College enabled the whole situation by covering up a terrible sexual assault.
Eddie Ferrugia was small potatoes. The school’s power brokers were the real villains. I figured most of the administration knew and at least tacitly approved of the whole thing. Wherever college and money intersected, boosters were always there. Eddie had been one of them. How many more were involved? How deep did this scandalous rabbit hole go?
I needed to find out. JHC’s website told me who the administrators were, and a couple Google searches turned up an organization chart. I crafted an email in the form of a survey, asking recipients to answer a few questions about their school. When they visited the page, they would also receive a little bit of code I could then exploit. I sent this to every logical recipient based on the org chart and waited.
Sometimes, things turn out well. About twenty minutes after my message went out into the world, someone opened it. I checked the name—Ken Georgealis. He served as the chief technical officer of the college. Not a bad get. I figured Ken, like most C-level executives, thought he was Very Important and could not abide with a plebeian user account. Especially as the CTO. No, he would insist his position required an administrative account, and anyone who could refuse him worked for him.
My trojan allowed me to peruse his files. I soon found a list of production servers. Because Ken Georgealis was a buffoon, his document also listed an account he could use to login with administrator privileges on each. It’s always nice to see an overpromoted idiot out himself. Pity it couldn’t be more public. I scanned the list, found the Exchange server, and opened a remote connection to it.
Exchange is Microsoft’s corporate email manager. If Ken was dumb enough to keep a list of privileged credentials on his desktop, then he and others were probably dumb enough to discuss the cover-up via the college’s email system. Once logged in, I conducted several searches. To my surprise, I came up empty. At least the people involved in this little conspiracy possessed the good sense to talk about it out of band.
Or did they? Outlook, the client-side application which connects to Exchange, allows users to save messages into PST files. These could be stored anywhere; most people keep them on their local drives. I took up my search of Ken Georgealis’ system again. After a minute or two of crunching, it showed no results for PST files.
This left means like personal emails, texts, and encrypted messaging apps. I figured administrators weren’t smart enough to use the latter. I could find the trail if it existed, but it would take time. The young hacker in me wanted to deface the JHC homepage and broadcast the accusations to the world. This might alert the guilty parties someone was on to them, however, and then whatever evidence existed would disappear. I needed a more mature approach.
Being thirty sucked.
I texted Gonzalez and asked if they were moving on the administration. He said they were working on it, and these things took time. I let it go, passing on the chance to take another shot at the system Gonzalez served and I skated around. Instead, I reached out to someone who might be able to get the whole thing moving a little faster.
On my first case, local reporter Jessica Webber chronicled my history—a sanitized version—and travails. She was the first person to get the word out about me, which is an unfortunate necessity when running a free detective service. I hadn’t spoken to her in over a year, but I fired off a text to gauge her interest.
Jessica, I have a scoop for you.
Chapter 27
An hour later, the elevator door dinged, and footsteps approached. The clack of heels on tile echoed from the hallway. The outer door of my office swung open, and Jessica Webber walked in. She looked just like I remembered—tall, blonde, and gorgeous. Memories of our times between the sheets flew into my head. I took a deep breath and summoned my most professional smile. “C.T., it’s so good to see you,” she said.
I stood, she opened her arms, and we hugged. The smell of her hair and the feeling of her pressed against me brought back even more memories. It was all they would be. “It’s great to see you, too,” I said. “How have you been?”
Jessica sat in a guest chair, and I plopped back into my leather executive number. “Really well. I’m still with Channel Thirteen.” The local news channels bounced between network affiliates with some regularity, and I had no idea which mapped to what anymore. They all reported the same stuff, anyway. “I did some national work, but I’m back to local stories. I like it better.”
“I think I have one of those local stories for you.” Jessica took out a notepad, and a diamond on her left hand caught the light. It was a nice engagement ring. Good for her. She looked at me expectantly. I inclined my head toward her bedazzled finger. “Who’s the lucky guy?”
A wide smile overtook her face. “His name’s Jonathan. He’s in IT. I guess you could say it’s his job to keep people like you out of systems.”
“A fool’s errand,” I said.
She grinned. “He likes it. We met . . . almost two years ago now, I guess. We’ve been engaged for four months.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thanks. What about you?”
“I’m not the marrying type.”
“I remember that about you,” she said, and a smirk appeared and disappeared from her features quickly. “You seeing anyone?”
I nodded. “She’s in fundraising. We’ve known each other since I got back from Hong Kong but just made things official last year.”
“Official, huh? Like with a ring?”
“No.”
“You know what Beyoncé sang, right?”
I chuckled. “I don’t think she’s the marrying type, either.”
“You’ve talked about it?” We hadn’t, actually. I made an assumption, though I based it on hints Gloria dropped over time. Both of us were happy the way things were now. No ring or piece of paper would make it better.
“I’m not the story this time,” I said.
Jessica smiled. “Sorry. It’s hard not to be a reporter sometimes.” She held her pen ready to take notes. “What’s the scoop?”
“You’ve heard of John Hanson College?” She bobbed her head. “About a year ago, a woman was sexually assaulted by several athletes.”
“Jesus.” She blanched. “I don’t remember hearing anything about it.”
“You didn’t. They managed to keep it under wraps. The athletic director got fired, the assistant AD moved up, the basketball coach took on some of those duties, and the campus police dropped everything. They were probably directed by the administration, but I can’t find a record of it. The whole thing got swept under the rug.”
“The victim never came forward?” Jessica asked.
“No. I don’t even know her name, and I haven’t pried. They’ve gotten away with it so far.” I sighed. “There’s an issue, though. I mentioned the basketball coach. To pay back one of the boosters, the basketball team has been . . .
fixing games.”
Her pen stopped moving. “Point shaving?”
“I’m impressed,” I said.
“I grew up in a house where some sport was always on TV. What’s the issue with the team?”
“One of the players, Calvin Murray.”
Jessica’s eyes widened in recognition. “Calvin was shaving points?”
“The booster paid for his mother’s medical care. It’s all a rat’s nest of cause and effect. When Calvin wanted out, they kidnapped his baby daughter.” She stopped writing again and regarded me with concerned eyes. “She’s fine. I got her back. Still, I’d like to keep him out of the story if possible. He’s a good kid who got swept up into a shitstorm.”
“I’ll do my best,” Jessica said. She jotted a few more things down. “Any other information?”
“This should be enough to get you started. If I uncover anything else, I’ll pass it along.”
“Are the police looking into it? Not the Hanson cops, obviously.”
“Yes,” I said. “The county’s taken over. Detective Sergeant Gonzalez is lead investigator.”
Jessica flipped her notebook shut. “Thanks, C.T. I’ll dig around and see what I can find.”
“Be careful,” I said. “These assholes brought in a bunch of criminals.”
“That sounded dangerously close to concern, Mister Ferguson,” she said, flashing a smile I remembered well.
“I wouldn’t want to see anything happen to you, Miss Webber,” I said.
“It’ll be Missus Weston sometime soon.”
“You’ll still be Jay-Dub, then.”
Jessica laughed. We stood and hugged again. “Good to see you,” she said. “I’ll keep you in the loop.”
“Same.” She left, and I fought the urge to watch her leave.
I didn’t like passing this off, but I put it in very capable hands. Even if the Hanson administration somehow snowed Gonzalez, the story would come out.
Not long after Jessica departed, Denise Murray walked through the door. Her smile showed more strength than I’d seen from her recently. She still looked thin and weary, and I hoped she would be all right long term. Calvin and Iris needed her. She sank into the chair Jessica recently vacated. “Thank you.”
“I’m glad we were able to find Iris,” I said.
“Not just Iris. You helped Calvin, too. He’s free to do what he wants now.”
“What’s he going to do?”
“He wants to turn pro,” Denise said. “He don’t have anything to prove in college anymore. Even if they lose their first game.”
She was right. Calvin was a hell of a player and would be picked near the top of the NBA draft—so long as the point shaving didn’t make it into the news. I hoped Jessica could keep it tamped down. An administrator could still leak it in the hopes of deflecting criticism, of course, and we couldn’t do anything about it. Denise didn’t need to be burdened with this, however. Enough was piled on her plate. “How are you doing?”
“Day by day. I’m all right for now. I know I’ll need another round of treatment. Doctor Cheng is confident one more is all.”
“When will you need it?”
“Probably in a couple months.” Sometime in May. The NBA draft was usually in late June, and contract negotiations could go on from there. Calvin’s rookie deal wasn’t in Denise’s timeframe. She must have seen me fretting because she gave me a gentle smile. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be all right.”
“Calvin won’t have his pro money in time, though.”
“We’ll figure something out,” Denise said. Or they wouldn’t, and she’d be dead. Calvin would bury his mother, and Iris would grow up with no memories of her grandmother.
I couldn’t let it happen.
Eddie told me he used a payroll company to dispense wages to his workers, despite the size of the company. It was an unwarranted extravagance, but I figured he could afford it as long as the basketball money rolled in. There wasn’t a wealth of local options, and after a few minutes of clever searching, I found the right one. Paychexperts, a miserable portmanteau of paycheck and experts, handled the money. I had no idea who founded the company, and I already hated him. It would definitely be a him, too—no woman would be so unfunny with a business name.
Any company processing payroll must contend with sensitive information. Specifically, they needed to worry about bank accounts and social security numbers. These were high-value targets for people like me. I began by doing some research on the company and performing a basic, unobtrusive scan to map their network. Like most small businesses, Paychexperts’ network reflected the size of the company. They owned four Internet-facing servers.
I deepened my research. Google is a much more powerful tool than most people think it is. In addition to looking up the dankest of memes, it responds to certain commands and operators to run very specific searches. For instance, I launched searches of the company’s site for documents ending in common Microsoft Office file extensions. These weren’t hidden per se, but a casual browser would be unlikely to stumble upon them. Clever use of Google revealed them.
I downloaded the files and perused them. A few were boring legalese about terms of service, contracts, and the like. It was almost enough to make me need another cup of coffee. Next was a spreadsheet of IT assets. Bingo. I cross-referenced it to what my scan showed. One of the Windows desktops served as a conference room PC. Like many similar computers, this one was older and missing updates. Guests and visitors need to make presentations, and this led to lax security. The PC designated for recycling finds a new home with a projector cable coming out the back of it, and no one gives any thought to how it affects the company's defenses.
Almost no one.
This particular machine still ran Windows Vista, deprecated several years ago, as well as vulnerable versions of many common applications. Why it was even on the network with a public address mystified me. I would take advantage of it, however. I fired up Metasploit, a tool used by many people on the spectrum of white to black hats. A wealth of Vista and other exploits greeted me. I crafted a payload, fired up the exploit, and sent it at the poor machine.
It knuckled under right away.
I was now the proud owner of a file explorer window showing me everything on the PC. Someone remained logged in, also allowing me to see network-connected drives. I hunted around for a while until I came across the treasure trove. Copying the files across my exploited connection was simple. I covered my tracks and killed the exploit, severing my link to the poor old machine.
The only info I needed was Arash's, so I flipped past all the rest. I found his banking information. Using Denise's records Alice pulled for me earlier, I had her data, as well. Accessing Arash's account required a PIN. I tried his birthday. No dice. I found his sister's birthday and entered it.
It worked. Arash's account swelled past half a million dollars. Either sports analytics was a far more lucrative field than I thought, or he found a way to take a cut of what Eddie brought in. Regardless, he'd been charged with kidnapping and other crimes. This money wasn't going to help him, but it could help Denise. I transferred the amount of her treatment into her account.
I'd been about to lament my inability to resolve the cover-up so neatly when I realized I was an idiot.
When the Hanson police detained me, I saw a sign in their headquarters: Fast Eddie's Data Warehousing. I'd forgotten about it in my quest to return Iris to her family. The electronic trail of many people on the JHC campus conspiring to cover up a gruesome sexual assault probably resided on Eddie's systems. No wonder he'd been able to setup the deals he did. He owned all the leverage in negotiations. Buy these new computers, or I'll go to the press. Let's shave points, or I'll release these documents. It was brazen but brilliant.
I wanted to investigate Eddie's data scheme in person. In the meantime, I called Denise Murray. "Check your bank account later today," I said.
"Why?"
"I think you'll find your next tr
eatment has been paid for, too."
She didn't say anything for a few seconds. "Did you . . . "
"The Ferrugia organization wishes to apologize for how things have gone recently. They'd like you to undergo your next round of treatment with their compliments. Or something . . . I'm not a spokesman."
"I don't know how you got that money," Denise said, tears making her voice shake. "But thank you."
"Thank me by living a long life," I said.
I drove back into Glen Burnie to the erstwhile home of Fast Eddie’s Data Warehousing. Before venturing inside, I circled the building and looked for goons or police. I saw neither. After parking the Caprice in a prime spot to make a hasty retreat if necessary, I went in and took the stairs to the third floor.
On the third landing, I peeked out the window in the door and saw no one. I inched it open, looked east and west down the hallway, and found it empty. Eddie’s door remained locked. I did the same thing as before, timing my picking with the sweep of the camera. When the tumblers open, I waited for the electric eye to turn away, slipped inside, and flipped the light on.
Tony’s men did a number on the place. They’d knocked over all the chairs, broken every monitor, and stomped the laptops to bits. The important parts remained in a locked metal cage, safe from the random rage of unqualified hoodlums. Dents and scratches near the lock indicated they tried to bash it open, then probably took their frustrations out on the more accessible equipment when their crude method failed.
The tools on my special keyring got me inside the rack in about a minute. Everything appeared intact. I walked to the back and verified all the power and networking cords were still good. They could have cut the exposed parts of those but didn’t. With the general state of the place, I didn’t think many replacements lay waiting to be deployed.
