Favors and Lies (12 page)

“Not worried someone is going to track you down?”

“They would have to go through Estonia, Poland, the Ukraine, and Belize. I am bounced off so many servers, I can't keep them straight. Spoofed IP addresses thrown in for fun. On top of that, they would have to find the people I pay to make cash withdrawals at the end of a very long paper trail of fake names and companies. And they would have to get one of these non-US citizens, who are making a very good salary, to turn in their very generous yet equally unknown employer. It doesn't really keep me up at night.”

Dan imagined wads of cash stashed behind the drywall of the old bungalow. The attic awash in currency and precious metals.

“What else do you have?”

“The most accurate computer program for picking winning football games in the history of sport. Professional football only at this point, but I am looking to take the program and apply it to other sports.”

“I can't imagine the odds makers would be too happy about that.”

“They will be if I sell it to them.”

“Vegas cornered that market shortly after the first casino opened in 1906.”

“No one has any software even close to this. I have the historical data for every professional game ever played. Home team, visitor, favorite, underdog. I know how far each team traveled to get to each game and by what means of transportation. For every hundred miles the visiting team has to travel, their expected score drops by two tenths of a point. I have injury reports by position. I have data on the referee teams and their tendencies, and I keep track of how far each referee has to travel for a game. I have the weather at kick-off for every game and another variable for the weather at halftime. I have the type of field and variables for how the field conditions change with weather and humidity. I know how much moisture is retained by various models of artificial turf, and how that equates to the footwear of various teams. I have the attendance records, the average decibel of the crowd per location per attendance, which by the way was not easy to get, particularly for the stadiums that have been decommissioned, so to speak. I have taken into account time-zone changes, arriving and departing airports. Local food. Prostitution and drinking ordinances.”

“Prostitution and drinking laws?”

“Absolutely. For example, if Las Vegas had its own football team, they would hold a distinct 0.4 additional point advantage due to the increased likelihood that the visiting team would partake, at least to some extent, in the all night boozing and strip shows.”

“So you are assuming the home team is more immune to the local temptations.”

“Maybe not immune, but perhaps they get their fill of sin during the week.”

“How accurate are you?”

“I have a statistically significant advantage. On average, my spread is one point closer than the best bean counters in Vegas can do.”

“That's worth millions.”

“It is worth billions.”

“A lot of data crunching.”

“The computer power here is just a fraction of what I have at my disposal. I've installed thousands of Trojan horses on unsuspecting, unsecured computers around the country. Mainly people who leave their computers on and connected. I borrow their computers during the day, when most people aren't home. Nothing malicious. Just using their CPUs when the owners aren't.”

Dan changed the subject. “How are you with unlisted phone numbers?”

Tobias grunted.

He pounded on some keys and the screen directly in front of him went blank. He entered code onto the black screen, looked over at Dan as he typed, and then hit the enter key.

“Time of the call?” he asked over his shoulder.

“Two in the morning. Last Monday night.”

“Tuesday, then.”

“Correct, Tuesday.”

“Address and phone number the call was made to?”

Dan recited it slowly as Tobias typed. The screen filled with columns of numbers and every call made to Dan's home phone in the last five years.

“They started keeping all records after 9/11. Everything you do is monitored on some level.”

“You mean everything
can
be monitored.”

“I stand corrected. As you know, all phone records reside in databases at the phone company. By law, the phone company has to maintain these records. In legal proceedings and investigations, the phone company provides these records to law enforcement. They also use this data to create invoices, monitor usage, to develop marketing plans. And then, of course, at the far end of the spectrum, this information is being crunched by the NSA for terrorist threats.”

Dan scanned the screen as Tobias zoomed through the list.

“Good, it's not there,” Tobias said.

“Why is that good?”

“Well, it narrows down the options, which can be helpful.”

“What address was the call made from?”

“I assume it was made from my sister's house via a cell phone. Her phone records are also clean, according to the police. She lives in Northwest DC.”

“Address?”

Dan provided the address and Tobias's fingers danced.

“Yes, there is no record of a call from her home either. Once again, that is helpful.”

“Your definition of helpful differs from mine.”

“A couple of things can explain a phone call that doesn't exist. The first and most obvious is that it has been erased from the database. This, I imagine could be done by a handful of people at the phone company. In your case, you are talking about a call to your house landline, so deleting that record would very likely have to be an intentional act. There are probably some controls on the people who could write to or delete from the database.”

“So someone on the inside or someone like you, on the outside, with the skills to infiltrate the system and delete evidence.”

“Yes. And that too is useful information.”

“What are the other possibilities?”

Tobias sighed. “After 9/11 the NSA and CIA saw the vulnerability of the current phone system. Anyone who made a call in the DC or New York area on that September morning remembers the phone networks were overloaded. Landlines worked in some cases, but cell phones were inundated with a volume of calls the system could never handle, nor was ever designed to handle.”

“And?”

“Even the CIA was impacted. People working for the most powerful spy agency on earth couldn't make calls from their cell phones. The CIA had two choices. One was to provide the phone carriers with all CIA phone numbers and those phone numbers would take precedence on the network should there be another incident of national security. This plan would have been the easiest route, except that the CIA and NSA refused to give a list of phone numbers to the phone company. Many of the local law enforcement agencies readily agreed. So the next time there is an emergency situation, the calls made by police officers and response teams will take priority and their calls will go through the system. The average Joe will be screwed. Well, you, not me.”

“So the CIA and NSA and others did not agree to give their phone list to the phone company.”

“No, they did not. The CIA and NSA built their own wireless network. In high-strike-probability locations. Washington, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston. The NSA acquired, or appropriated, a narrow sliver of the wireless spectrum for these proprietary network endeavors. Sometimes they attached their equipment to existing cell towers and in other cases they put up their own cell towers on government-owned buildings.”

“A private network . . .”

“With no public records of calls.”

“And if this number came through this network?”

“Beyond my domain. Wouldn't even try to poke around if I thought I could. Don't need that type of attention.”

“Any other good news?”

“Let's stick with the likely scenario. Let's assume the call was deleted from the database. Let's also assume that the call came from a cell phone.”

“Why do we assume that?”

“I could be wrong, but I'm guessing we're dealing with professionals. What professional is going to use a landline? Landlines require interaction with the phone company. Real phone company employees come to real addresses to hook up landlines. If you have nefarious intentions, who is going to go through that?”

“No one.”

“Correct. Secondly, from a pragmatic standpoint, if the call originated on a cell phone, and the record no longer exists in the central database, we can still get the data via another route.”

“How?”

“Even if a cell phone number is deleted in the central database, the record of a mobile call will still exist at the physical cell tower. Phone companies install hard drives on every cell tower and that hard drive stores the records of all calls that come through that tower. It is a failsafe. Required by law.”

“Let's take a look.”

“It's not
that
easy. First, there are a couple of dozen cell towers in the DC area. Run by different companies. AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint. All of these companies have different cell tower hard drives. Some of these companies may lease space on the same physical tower, but their local hard drives would not be shared. So right off the bat, I have to get access to the hard drives of five or six different companies in several dozen cell tower locations. That requires time, which for you means money. I currently do not have access to every cell tower. Never needed it before.”

“Just an issue of time and money.”

“Exactly. And once I locate the cell towers and the hard drives, and break the security of the hard drive, I still have to decipher the data.”

“How is that?”

“The data stored on the hard-drive at the tower is raw data. Nothing but zeros and ones. I have to figure out the algorithm for translating the ones and zeros into meaningful information. Human readable information. That will also take time as every company probably has their own protocol and formats for translating this data.”

“How soon do you think you can get an answer?”

“Depends on the level of encryption of the hard drives. Given enough time and processing power, any encryption can be broken.”

“So, if you take all those dummy computers you have out there and combine it with all the computing power in this house, and you focus it on this task, you can do it.”

“Yes, but as I mentioned, the meter would be running and the going rate is a thousand dollars an hour.”

“Ouch.”

“And that is my discounted rate for people I like.”

“Work fast.”

—

Detective Wallace looked for the entrance to the underbelly of the L'Enfant Promenade for ten minutes. He found the staircase that led downward to the adjacent street and examined the wall from where Dan Lord and Detective Nguyen had ambled into the abyss, one using a stack of pallets, the other employing nothing but gravity. Neither of those routes would end favorably for a detective in his early-fifties with two bad knees and thirty extra pounds.

He followed the outside wall of the train tracks down the street for two blocks until it disappeared into a tunnel under a newly reclaimed piece of real estate a block from the Mandarin Oriental. Detective Wallace looked up at the silhouette of the hotel as he moved towards it, an isolated oasis on the wrong side of the tracks. But when you have enough money to stay at the Mandarin, you have enough money to hire a driver to chauffer you to the brighter side of town.

Entering the hotel, Wallace, dressed in black slacks and a black sweater, flashed his badge at the receptionist and motioned for him to move to the unoccupied end of the check-in counter.

“How can I help you, Officer?” the perfectly groomed white male employee asked.

“My name is Detective Wallace. I'm investigating recent criminal activity by the railroad tracks.”

“You mean the murders?”

“Who said anything about murder?”

The receptionist lowered his voice a notch. “We hear things.”

“I know the tracks run under the street out front and under the Promenade a couple of blocks down, but do you have access to the tracks themselves, from the building?”

The receptionist looked around and dropped his voice even further. “Second floor of the basement. Near the laundry facilities. Just past the employee locker room. There is an access door directly to the tracks.”

Detective Wallace looked down at the receptionist's fingers. The yellow stain between his pointer and middle fingers hinted at a reason for the intel provided. “The unofficial smoking lounge for employees?”

The receptionist glanced sheepishly at his hands.

Wallace smiled. “Been smoking for thirty years, myself. On and off. Last week, I broke down and gave electric cigarettes a whirl.”

“How did you like them?” the receptionist asked. “I was considering them.”

“They work. Just not like the real thing.”

“Nothing ever is,” the receptionist replied with exasperation.

“Can you show me the basement?”

“Follow me.”

The receptionist led Wallace across the crescent-shaped marble foyer, under the crystal chandelier, and down a flight of burgundy carpeted stairs. They followed a short hall to the right, took another flight of stairs down, and pushed through a large set of double doors. They passed through the cramped laundry facility and the plethora of Latina maids folding a never-ending supply of linens. The stench of bleach invaded Wallace's nose. Another short passage led to the back door.

“Here you go,” the receptionist said, opening the steel fire door and inviting Wallace to an area of trampled ground that was level with the train tracks. Wallace looked at the impromptu smokers' lounge. Large plywood planks served as the floor. A group of folding chairs nicked from a conference room huddled to one side. A heavy bulb above the door illuminated the space. A hundred yards to the left, sunlight seemed to flicker with temptation. To the right, light danced intermittently as the tracks disappeared and reappeared as they went under the Promenade.

“Paradise,” the receptionist interrupted.

“You ever walk down here?”

“Uh, scary,” the receptionist answered with rising intonation. “No way.”

“You ever see anyone who shouldn't be down here?”

“Hard to say. We have three hundred employees. We do try to keep the door shut and locked so the homeless don't wander in. Found a few dozen sheets running out the door one afternoon. Looked like a bunch of ghosts.”

“Security cameras.”

“Yep,” the receptionist said, pointing upward.

“I may be back to look at the footage.”

“Where are you going?

“For a stroll.”

“Well, be careful. It isn't Disneyland down here.”

Detective Wallace unholstered his gun and checked the chamber. Then he reached in his pocket, pulled out a cigarette, and lit it. He inhaled deeply, blew the smoke into the air, and responded. “Don't worry. No one is going to mistake me for Mickey fucking Mouse.”

—

The area under the Promenade had seen more action in the last week than in the previous decade. The homeless camp was gone, trampled clay ground the only indication of a previous permanent settlement. The discovery of Conner Lord and Detective Nguyen in this location had led to a cleanup of the area. All of the debris was taken as possible evidence, garbage bags of discarded crap that were still being filtered through, piece by piece. If anything was overlooked in the removal of Conner Lord's body, it would not be overlooked in Detective Nguyen's subsequent death. The police knew how to take care of their own.

Wallace looked up at the rusting joints of the promenade infrastructure and a tear dropped from his right eye and trickled down his face.
Someone is going to pay. And I don't care what I have to do. There are no more rules.

—

Dr. Lewis, the medical examiner, was finished with Nguyen's body. Detective Wallace walked in without any warning or announcement.

“Talk to me, Doctor.”

“Detective Wallace. I can't tell you how sorry I am. Nick was a good guy. One of my favorite officers.”

“One of mine, too.”

“You missed the analysis. I gave the captain and two other detectives the run down this morning. On top of the updates from yesterday.”

“You mind giving
me
the rundown?”

“The captain asked if I would inform him of any additional inquiries.”

“I am officially
not
working the case.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Problem with that?”

“No, Detective.”

“Then let's get to it.”

“You want to see the body?”

“Yes.”

“It's not pretty.”

“I think I can handle it.”

The ME led Wallace to the wall and pulled on the stainless-steel handle. Detective Nguyen's body rolled out for display, inch by inch.

“Gunshot wound to the chest and the head.”

“What caliber?”

“A .45. Hollow point.”

“That rules out most gang bangers. The nine millimeter is the preferred caliber for most criminals in this city. Usually gives them more shots, which they need because they don't spend time on the range. And the bullets are cheaper.”

“Yes, Detective. Most gunshot wounds I see are nine millimeter.”

“Which came first, the shot to the head or to the chest?”

“The shots were virtually simultaneous. Within a second of each other at most. Very accurate. Chest first. Head second. Both perfect shots, if you can excuse the expression being used under these circumstances.”

“Double tapped. Professional. Someone with military training. Maybe law enforcement.”

“I can only speak to the wounds. Either shot would have been fatal.”

“Other evidence?”

“The detective's personal belongings are back at the station, I believe, but they were carefully categorized by yours truly. I went through everything three times. With the naked eye, the aided eye, and under high-resolution microscope. All documented. All photographed.”

“And?”

“Detective Nguyen was always well dressed, and the night of his death was no different, from a fashion perspective. He was wearing dark gray wool slacks bought within the past year, a new clothing line from Nordstrom's. The shirt was from Joseph A. Banks Clothier, as was his tie. His socks were from Target. Same brand I usually buy. He had on ECCO straight-lace shoes. Pretty comfortable, a little on the expensive side.”

“Detectives splurge on shoes. We need something with traction and support. And they have to look reasonable with most clothes.”

“As you know, his gun, badge, and detective notebook were not with the body. His car keys and his wallet were on his person when he was found.”

“Not a robbery.”

“Didn't even take his watch.”

“Anything else?”

“He had a fair amount of grayish clay on his shoes, as well as some on the back of his clothing.”

Wallace looked down at his own shoes. “Something like that?”

The Medical Examiner bent at the waist and stared intently at Wallace's black shoes. “That would be consistent with the clay found on his shoes and person.”

“Not surprising.”

“We are putting the toxicology through as we speak. Primary indication is that alcohol was not a factor. But I don't recall Nguyen as a drinker.”

“On occasion.”

“You would know better than I.”

Detective Wallace pulled out a business card and handed it to Dr. Lewis, a man he had spoken with hundreds of times. “Call me on my cell if you find anything that could be helpful.”

“There was something else I thought about after your captain left.”

“What's that?”

“You know we had another body earlier from the same location. A college student.”

“What about it?”

“I am just curious. Two bodies found in the same location. One has clay on his shoes. The other doesn't. And then we have you. The tie-breaker.”

Detective Wallace looked down again at his feet. “I will make a note of it.”

“Just thought I would mention it.”