David Wolf series Box Set

by Jeff Carson

  “No, actually it’s not,” he said. “Do you mind answering a few questions for us?”

  “Of course I do not mind! I’m Cezar.” He slumped down on his elbows giving Wolf his undivided attention. “How can I help you?”

  Cezar blinked long and hard while turning his mouth downward, ending the move with a hard sniff. Reaching in his pocket, he pulled out a pack of Marlboros in a black box, a type Wolf didn’t recall ever having seen. He pointed the box in Wolf’s direction. “Would you like one?”

  “No thanks.” He held up his brother’s driver’s license, which he had also pocketed from John’s belongings at the morgue. “Have you ever seen this man before?”

  Lia cleared her throat.

  Cezar looked at the license with an unreadable face. “Yes! I know this guy. He and his friend come in sometimes.”

  Cezar pulled out his cell phone, apparently all his undivided attention used up on the one question.

  “You own this place?” Wolf asked.

  “Yeah, it’s mine, all mine.” He raised his arms out, showing off his pterodactyl wingspan.

  Lia stepped forward and put her elbow on the bar. “Did you happen to see him this weekend? On Friday night?”

  Cezar paused for a few seconds, swiping his finger on his phone.

  “Cezar?” Lia reached across and put her hand over his phone screen.

  Cezar inhaled a sharp breath and glared at Lia, a dark side showing itself for a brief moment. With a forced smile, he said, “Friday? I don’t think so, I normally remember everyone who comes in, and I don’t remember seeing him that night.”

  Wolf pulled out the receipt and laid it on the bar counter.

  Cezar glanced at it, then back at his phone. “He might have been in here, I don’t know. It was pretty busy that night.”

  “This is my brother’s receipt from that night—”

  “Yeah, I get it. Look, I didn’t see him that night, okay? Sorry to disappoint you.” He stared with a sad look on his face, head tilted to the side. A shrug was added for good measure.

  “Yeah. Okay.” Wolf stared icily. “Hey, you have a bathroom in that back room I can use?” He looked over Cezar’s shoulder to the back hallway.

  His eyelids drooped lazily as he pointed to the far wall. “The toilet is over there.”

  Wolf stood still, glaring at Cezar.

  Cezar held up his arms in a defensive gesture, a vaudeville look of fear twisting his face, then laughed through his tiny spit-ringed smile.

  …

  “He knows something,” Wolf said as they got into the car.

  “That guy is creepy.”

  “Yeah, that too.”

  Lia’s phone trilled. She picked it up and talked for a minute.

  “Valerio is going to meet us at the station with the police report. Let’s go pick up your brother’s computer and head down there.”

  Chapter 24

  Wolf followed Lia into the carabinieri station. She darted up the stairs to the left without a glance at the chaos below, which Wolf saw had escalated to biblical status.

  Upstairs was light and smelled refreshing after the midday rains. The lake in the distance was white capped once again, and more aquatic boarders rode the winds back and forth across the vast expanse. He shook his head, looking back at the stairway, like it was a wormhole into another universe.

  The room bustled with activity—officers on phones, paperwork being shuffled from desk to desk. A few unanchored sheets fluttered to the floor on the breeze coming in the windows. Colonnello Marino’s room to the right was closed, and once again his booming voice rumbled from within. Detective Rossi stood up from behind a desk in the distance and waved them over.

  “How are things coming along, David?” Rossi folded his arms.

  “There have been some developments for sure.” He looked to Lia, who sat comfortably on the edge of Rossi’s desk. “We found that the belt around my brother’s neck was not his own.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Wolf explained the length of the belt and how it couldn’t have been stretched, and therefore couldn’t have been his brother’s belt.

  “That is interesting, indeed. About your brother,” Rossi said. “I am working on getting all this paperwork done to release him and his belongings as fast as possible. And did you find this friend he was out with the night before?”

  “No, we just went to his place of work and his apartment, and no luck at either place. It looks like he’s been missing since John died. Or, at least he hasn’t shown up for work all week.”

  “Interesting again.” Rossi raised an eyebrow. He waved them to the chairs in front of his desk and sat back down. Wolf sat gratefully and stole another glance out to the shimmering water behind Rossi.

  Rossi handed a manila folder to Wolf. “Here is a copy of the police report. If you would please not let Marino know that I gave you that, it would be much appreciated.”

  “All right.” Wolf took the folder and put it on his lap. He looked around the room, noticing the piles of paper on each desk. It seemed mountainous compared to what he was used to. Every single person at a desk was dealing with paperwork, or holding a piece of paperwork while on the phone, or handing a stack of paperwork to someone else.

  Rossi seemed to sense his curiosity. “What?”

  “Oh, I was just noting the vast amounts of paperwork on everyone’s desk. I thought we had it bad in Colorado.”

  Rossi and Lia giggled. “Really? This is a lot of paperwork?”

  Wolf nodded. “Yes. This is a lot of paperwork.”

  They laughed like school children, Rossi slapping his hand on the desk. “Paperwork is in the DNA of all Italians. We cannot get out of our mothers’ wombs unless we have the proper paperwork.”

  Rossi leaned forward and frowned, as if remembering the sober reality of Wolf’s visit. “David, all that paperwork is the reason it can take a lot of time. But I’ve been keeping on top of your brother’s release papers. They are sitting on Marino’s desk now for final approval. In the meantime, I see you have your brother’s computer?”

  “Yeah.” Wolf nodded. “I can’t get into it. I was hoping to get your guy to help me.”

  “Good, give it to Paulo. He will be able to help you. If he can help me with this pig,” he slapped the side of his dirty cream-colored desktop monitor, “then he can help you with a brand-new computer like that!”

  “I hope,” Wolf said.

  Chapter 25

  “Porco miseria.” Lia plucked a slip of paper off her desk. “I have to go see Marino. Let me get you started with Paulo.”

  “Ciao!” Paulo stood up from behind two giant flat-screen monitors on his desk.

  Wolf estimated his age at about fifteen years old, but then again he wasn’t good at estimating ages past twelve years old, Jack’s current age.

  Paulo was dressed in plain clothes, wearing a black T-shirt that had two 1950s-style American hot rods smashing into each other. His jeans were faded, baggy in the mid-section and skin tight in the legs, a popular look Wolf had noticed propagating through the youth of Italy. He wore thick red plastic-framed glasses and had a spiky hairdo. Silver rings on three fingers and a bright-red plastic watch adorned his arm, which extended to shake Wolf’s hand. It was a firm handshake, and he held Wolf’s gaze as they shook.

  “Piacere,” Paulo said.

  “Hello. Uh, do you speak English?” Wolf asked.

  “Yes, yes! I am not very good,” he said with an impressive American accent. “But, I learned in university.”

  “Great.” Wolf wondered if college for Paulo was done pre or post puberty.

  “Well, what’s up?” Paulo pointed at the computer bag slung on his shoulder.

  “I would like to get into this computer, but I don’t have my brother’s password.” Wolf wore a pained expression as he pulled out the thin Mac laptop.

  “Pfffffffft, okay.”

  “Do you think you can do it?”

  “Yes, no prob
lem.”

  Lia looked satisfied. “Paulo can do anything with computers— programming, the internet, and all things that confuse the rest of us.”

  Paulo was blushing ferociously but also tilting his head back proudly. He opened the computer and pushed a few buttons simultaneously, all the while his attention unwavering from Lia.

  “He’ll take care of you,” she said, slapping Paulo’s back. “I have to go talk to Marino. I will be back, hopefully soon.”

  Wolf looked around. “Okay, sounds good. I’ll be here.”

  Lia walked away back across the room and down the hall. Wolf caught himself staring and turned back to Paulo, who was now standing at his desk watching Lia leave the room.

  “Mmmmmadonna.” Paulo breathed, turning to Wolf with a conspiratorial look. “She is beautiful, eh?”

  “Yes, she is,” Wolf agreed with a resigned smile. “Okay, what’s happening?”

  “Oh, yes, you can pull up that chair there. I am going to create another administrator account on the computer. It takes a few seconds. Then I can go in and access all the files.”

  “Okay, sounds good.”

  Wolf waited and watched Paulo work his magic with the computer. The screen looked to be displaying lines of code, a sight Wolf was completely unfamiliar with. He felt proficient enough with a computer, but he was watching a master mechanic rip the hood off of a car and dig into the engine. A tweak here, a command there, and soon they were inside with a normal view that Wolf was more accustomed to.

  “Okay, I’ve created a new admin account, and changed the password to your brother’s account, allowing me to log in as him. I’m going to fire up a few of his programs. Otherwise, what would you like to do?”

  “I’d like to look at his documents, I guess. His emails, the latest activity. Try to find some clue as to what was going on before last Friday.”

  Paulo tapped the keys for a few minutes, opening windows and programs. “Well, wait a minute, this is interesting.” Paulo was looking in Skype.

  “Why?”

  “Well, you haven’t logged in on this computer at all since you got here? Obviously not  ...  never mind.”

  “No, I haven’t. It was closed when I found it in John’s room. I tried a couple passwords to hack in. No luck. So I gave up and just left it to charge.”

  “Okay, okay. Well, there are messages on Skype from another person to your brother on Tuesday. Two days ago.”

  “Okay,” Wolf said expectantly, “and what does that mean?”

  “Well, okay. Look here.” He pointed toward the little logo on the bottom of the screen. “If there was someone who was trying to get hold of your brother with some messaging on Skype, say, on Tuesday, then I would have just logged into his account and a bubble would have shown up on the icon telling me how many messages he had missed since he last logged in.”

  “Okay.”

  “But there was no bubble that popped up on the icon.” Paolo was tilting his head with wide eyes. “But, if I go into his account and look at his recent conversations here on the left, look what someone is saying to him.”

  –Hey man, you there? 9:12 p.m.

  –What’s happening? Are we doing this interview or what? Let me know  ... 9:53 p.m.

  –You okay? You there? 10:09 p.m.

  Wolf shook his head, not getting it yet.

  “So, the most important part is here,” Paulo pointed. “Look at the date these messages were sent. This was Tuesday, September 18th, three days after your brother’s death, at 9:12 p.m. local time  ...  or, how many hours behind is Colorado?”

  “Eight.”

  “Okay,” Paulo looked at the ceiling for a second, “so that means between one and two in the afternoon, your time, on Tuesday, someone was trying to get hold of him, looks like for an interview. But he wasn’t answering. However, Skype is telling us these messages have already been looked at, because there was no indication on the icon that there were unread messages!”

  Wolf nodded. “Which means someone was on the computer looking at these messages at some point before we just looked at them, otherwise there would have been unread messages.” Wolf was finally getting the significance. He sat back hard in his chair, putting his hands on his head.

  “Exactly,” Paulo said. “Someone has opened this computer and looked at Skype in the past few days, after your brother’s death. So, what do you think they were looking for on this computer?”

  “I honestly have no clue,” Wolf said. “Can you somehow tell? Can you see what they did on it?”

  “No, not unless I had pre-loaded key-stroke recognition software on his computer. But, we can infer some things, like we did just now.”

  “They probably got on the computer to erase something, right?” Wolf asked.

  Paulo raised an eyebrow and nodded. “Okay, let me check. It’s actually more difficult than people think to erase all evidence of a file off a computer. We’ll see if this hacker knew more than just the log-on trick, which is actually quite basic.” He rolled his eyes as he dove back onto the keyboard in a flurry.

  Entering commands on the screen, Paulo’s fingers were a blur. Wolf marveled at the strange sequence of letters, numbers, and punctuation this wunderkind was commanding at Mach speed.

  “Ahhhh.” Paulo had a pained expression. “Well, either they cleaned it completely, or they simply didn’t erase anything. There’s no trace of any files that were recently erased. It’s more likely they didn’t erase anything.”

  Lia came around the corner and walked to the desk. She looked pained, avoiding eye contact with Wolf. “So, any luck?”

  Wolf gestured to the laptop. “We’re in, and we’ve seen that someone else has been looking at the computer in the last couple of days.”

  “Really?” She leaned forward, pressing her firm stomach against Wolf’s shoulder.

  “Yeah. According to Paulo, these Skype messages tell us that someone was on the computer sometime Tuesday night or later.”

  “Ma-donna. What else?”

  “Well,” Paulo said, looking down at the way Lia leaned on Wolf, “we can’t find any indication that anyone erased anything. We have to get online and do some work. Your brother was what, a blogger?”

  “Yes,” Wolf answered.

  “Okay, he probably did things more online than off. What’s his email address? A Gmail account?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Good. Give me a few things, and I’ll do some work. I want your email address, his email address, his blog name, your Facebook account login  ...  you do have a Facebook account, right?”

  “Uh, yeah.” He squirmed. “I don’t remember how I log in, though.”

  Lia smiled at his obvious discomfort.

  Paulo shook his head. “Just give me the blog name.” And with that, Paulo shooed them away.

  Wolf and Lia walked away. “How was your talk with Marino?” Wolf asked.

  She avoided eye contact. “It was fine.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Yes. It’s fine.”

  “Okay,” he said. She was preoccupied with something.

  Wolf left her to her thoughts and went to the window. He opened the manila folder containing the police report and his stomach sank. It was all in Italian. Of course. He would need a lot of translating done for him. And things were always lost in translation.

  “Twitter! Haha!” Paulo blurted.

  Wolf looked to Paulo, who was holding up his arms in triumph.

  Wolf shoved the papers back in the folder and joined Lia at Paulo’s desk.

  “I went into your brother’s Gmail account and checked the activity. Looks like someone erased a few messages on Tuesday night at 11:37 p.m. So, the question is, what was erased? So I went onto your brother’s blog, thinking there might be a hint there. Nothing. It looks like he hasn’t done a blog post in a couple weeks. He has a different contact email address on his blog. He runs it through Gmail as well, so I checked that email account. Nothing there e
ither. They could have erased some stuff there. I could probably hack into his blog, but  ...  well, let me move on.

  “I checked his Facebook account through his blog. It looks like there wasn’t any activity on there. But, that could have been erased also. The login and password information was, again, stored in the browser—”

  “Paulo.” Lia smacked him on the shoulder.

  “Sorry, yes. But, Twitter!” His eyes lit up. “It looks like he tweets a lot. A lot. Your brother was a pretty big deal online, I take it. He has 172,839 followers on his account and he’s following 320 people.”

  Wolf shrugged.

  “It’ means he’s popular. So, anyway, I logged into his Twitter account, and it looks like someone removed some of his tweets.

  “But you can’t just erase tweets from the web. Especially if you have 172,000 followers. People are constantly retweeting his stuff, or replying to it. All traceable, and never erasable. And on the night of your brother’s death …” He punched a couple keys and a tweet was displayed from someone who was apparently a cat wearing a hollowed watermelon on its head.

  “It’s a response to your brother’s tweet. It looks like he posted a picture, but it’s been erased from his account. But it was a picture of Jupiter by the description he gives and the responses, and he says he was at the Merate Observatory.”

  “You can’t show the pictures?” Wolf asked.

  Paulo shook his head. “Can’t. They’ve been erased.”

  “But he was there at the observatory that night,” Wolf whispered.

  “At 11:17 p.m., according to the original tweet,” Paulo added.

  Wolf stared at the screen and shook his head. “How about phone records? Can we get access to both John’s and Matthew Rosenwald’s phone records to see what they said that night? Or earlier in the week as well? We’ll also need to find Rosenwald’s car.”

  Paulo sat back and looked at them. “Yes, I’ll call the phone companies to get the records next, and I’ll see if I can get a triangulation of where his phone is at. I’ll check credit-card activity for both of them as well. I’ll look up the car registration too. These things could take the rest of the day. I’ll get started.”