Hacker For Hire (Ted Higuera Series Book 2) (18 page)

“Where did you get
this stuff?” Ted couldn’t believe what he held in his hands. “This is all of Jackson
Schmidt’s account information.”

Catrina leaned
back in her swivel chair. “Let’s just say that Jeff and I can be very
persuasive.”

“Shit. Cat, this
can’t be legal. There have to be at least a dozen laws protecting your
financial data.”

“There’s a big
difference between legal and moral.” Catrina brushed back her short blonde hair
behind her ear. “This is a murder investigation. We go where the clues lead
us.” She leaned forward in her chair. “I’m sure that the bank manager didn’t
give us everything on Schmidt. I want you to hack into First Washington and see
what else you can find.”

“No way. This is
different. I didn’t mind hacking into Millennium Systems; we had their CEO’s
permission. What you’re asking me to do is a felony.” Ted looked into her gray
eyes and saw ice.

“You knew what you
were signing up for, Higuera. I told you that you had the chance to help
people. This is it. We do what the police and the justice system can’t or won’t
do." Cat leaned forward in her chair. “There’s a dead woman’s family that
needs to know why. A killer that must meet justice.”

“What will you do
when you get the evidence?”

“We’ll turn it
over to the cops. This isn’t our kind of case. If we find anything
incriminating, I’ll give it to a friend on Seattle Homicide, then we’ll step
aside.”

Ted felt a trickle
of sweat run down his back, despite the early morning cool in Catrina’s office.

Madre de Dios. I’m
gettin’ in over my head.
Could he do it? Of course. Working with Justin McCormack
and Bear had taught him that every system has a vulnerability.

Ted knew that there
must be a way to get into the system. And
Señora Higuera’s
brilliant
little boy was just the guy to do it.

The big question
was, should he? Just because he could do it, didn’t mean he should do it.

****

Ted put a pan of
water on the stove to boil. He added salt to the water and turned to the mixing
bowl on the counter. Enchiladas were comfort food. He added flour, pure ground
New Mexico chiles, garlic and cumino to the bowl. Chris would be here in a few
minutes for their regular Wednesday night session.

The doorbell rang
while Ted was mixing the dry ingredients with water. He buzzed Chris into the
building. By the time he poured the mixture in the bowl into the boiling pot,
Chris walked in the door.

“Hey, amigo.
What’s on the menu tonight?”

“Chicken enchiladas.”
The rich, dark red enchilada sauce came to a boil and Ted turned off the
burner.

“What can I do to
help?”

“You can grate the
cheese and make guacamole.” Ted had even been able to teach a kitchen Luddite
like Chris to make guacamole.

“So, how’s work?”
Chris grabbed two avocadoes from the counter and reached into the fridge for a
lemon and salsa. “You get any more jobs for strip clubs?”

“Nah, nothing so
interesting this week.” Ted shredded the boiled chicken breasts that were
cooling next to the sink.

“Y’ know, I don’t
understand you. You’re always complaining about not meeting any women, then you
get a job working for the biggest strip club in town and all you do is
complain. Hell, I’d ’a milked that job for all it was worth.”

He’s not
serious? Of course he’s not. He’s just yankin’ my chain.
“I gotta tell ya,
dude, I’m a little worried about Cat.”

Chris cut open the
avocadoes and removed the pits, then scooped the meat out into a bowl. “What
the problem with Wonder Woman?”

“She has a fuzzy
sense of what’s legal.” Ted put a deep frying pan on the stove and added
vegetable oil to heat. “She doesn’t think twice about steppin’ over the line
and I’m worried that she’s gonna take me with her.”

“What’s she asking
you to do this time?” Chris added a chopped tomato, onion and green chiles to
the avocado.

“I can’t tell you
much about it, dude. It’s just that she’s handed me some shit that she couldn't
have gotten legally.”

The oil in the
frying pan swirled and started to smoke. Ted dipped a dozen corn tortillas, two
at a time into the oil, then fished them out with tongs when they floated to
the surface. He placed them on a plate to drain.

“What’s so
important about this case?” Chris squeezed the lemon juice into the guacamole
and began to smash it with a potato masher.

“This involves
that lady I told you about, the one who got killed.”

Chris’ face went
pale.
What does he know?

“Um, listen bud,
this is getting kinda deep. You don’t want to be messing around in that wood
pile.”

“Why? What do you
know,
amigo
?”

“All I can say is
that this is pretty heavy stuff. I’m not a lawyer, not yet, but I can tell you,
you don’t want to get mixed up in a murder case. The police and the DA will
come down all over you.”

****

“Cat, I think
you’re going to want to see this.” Ted, alone in the cavernous office, spoke
into his desk phone. “We might be right about Schmidt.”

Despite his
ethical misgivings about following Catrina’s orders, Ted had hacked into
Jackson Schmidt’s bank records. Catrina had pushed all the right buttons. Besides,
Gina had the same questions about her boss. He promised Gina he’d help her find
out about Schmidt.

He saw himself as
a knight in shining armor, riding to the aid or the poor and oppressed. There
was zero chance he would get caught (okay, almost zero) and the possibility
that he could do some real good. And it paid off, big time.

“What did you
find?” She sounded like she was in a tunnel, Ted surmised that she was talking
on her cell phone from her car somewhere.

“Some big wire
transfers. Schmidt has been moving half a million dollars to an offshore
account in the Caymans every month, just like clockwork. This doesn’t smell
good.”

“How much, total?”

“Six million
dollars. He’s been doing this for a year now.” Ted leaned back in his chair and
stretched his legs. He had been sitting for so long that he was stiffening up.

“Payments, you
think?”

Ted could hear
background noise. It sounded like freeway traffic. “Who knows? Could even be
money laundering. All I can say for sure is that he’s hiding a lot of money.”

“This could be
motive. Maybe Donna found out about his illegal activity. Maybe he had to
silence her. Set up a meeting with Leah.” Leah Sykes was Catrina’s forensic
accountant. “She’s been going over the financial data you got from MS. Let’s
see if she can shed any light on this.”

****

Tension ran high
in the data center control room. Richard Freeman Sr. paced the length of the
floor, waiting. Waiting. He looked up at the clock. Ten pm.
This is the
usual time that the hacker hits.

The control room
was glassed in on three sides. A desktop rimmed the glass sides of the room.
With room for six operators, each station had a keyboard that slid out below
the desk and two flat-screen monitors. On the shelf above the desktop, a parade
of monitors flashed information about the health of the various systems that MS
supported.

It used to take an
army of operators and technicians to support this server farm. Now, with
automation, what little work was left was outsourced to India. Only one operator was on the premises for night shift.

Beyond the glass
walls, row upon row of servers, storage devices, and equipment marched into the
dimly lit space. Patches of bright light shone here and there in the huge
server farm where a tech worked on a rack in isolation.

The monitors on
the wall behind the operators showed the various techs at work and the hallways
approaching the data center. A fly couldn’t get close without being noticed.
Freeman ignored the security cameras; his attention was on the system monitors.

He almost jumped
when the buzzer sounded. “What the hell? Who would be here at this time of
night?”

“It’s Mr.
Metcalf.” The thin, middle-aged computer operator looked at the monitor on his
console. “Good evening, Mr. Metcalf, do you have a ticket to enter the data
center?”

Was this jerk
nuts? The chairman of the board doesn’t need a ticket to get in.

“No, Alan. I just
dropped by on a whim.” The tinny voice came from a speaker on the wall. “Is Mr.
Freeman there?”

“It’s okay, Alan,
let him in.” Freeman walked towards the “people trap” double door.

Alan pushed his horn-rimmed
glasses back up his long nose and hit a button on the control panel, a buzzer
rang and the door opened. Metcalf stepped through the steel door into a
glass-enclosed foyer. Freeman didn’t make him scan his hand print or swipe his
ID card; he just opened the inner door.

“Mr. Metcalf, I
didn’t expect you here tonight.”

“Thanks, Dick. I
have a gut feeling that you’re going to catch that hacker tonight. I wanted to
be here when you did.”

Freeman hated to
be called Dick. When he was growing up, his big brother dubbed him “Little
Dick.” The name had stuck through high school. Needless to say, all the guys
teased him and the girls took it seriously enough that he could never get a
date. That was one of the reasons Freeman entered the Marine Corps the summer
he graduated. No one would ever denigrate him again.

Something about
Metcalf always bothered Freeman. Metcalf was so distant, so aloof, like he was
better than everyone else. Freeman felt that Metcalf treated him like a pet
dog. No, make that a working dog. He was like a seeing-eye dog, or a Sheppard
or something. No, he was a guard dog that was it. A guard dog. A pit bull for
his master, but there was no human connection, no warmth there.

“The trap is set,
sir.” In the Corps, Freeman had always respected his superiors. Too bad that
didn’t carry over to real life. “We’ve built a ‘honey pot’ for him.”

“You’ve isolated
the servers?” Metcalf walked over to the operators’ console.

“Yes, sir.”
Freeman followed, step for step. “We’ve set up a VLAN in a separate domain.
There are hardened firewalls around it. No way can anyone can get from the
honey pot into our network.”

“And you have
enough data?” Metcalf picked up the operators’ log and thumbed through it. “Enough
servers in the honey pot to keep our friend interested?”

“We’ve built a
whole virtual server farm.” Freeman took one of the empty operator’s seats and
brought up a screen on the monitor. “It’s stuffed with bogus files, databases,
applications. All of it meaningless, but enough to keep a curious hacker busy
for hours. While he’s wandering around in our maze, we’ll be tracking him. By
the time we’re through, we’ll have his name, home address and shoe size.”

Metcalf leaned
over Freeman’s shoulder and studied the screen. “You’re not going to make it too
easy are you? If he smells a rat, the bastard’ll bail before you have a chance
to nail him.”

What does he
take me for? A rank amateur?
“No, sir. We’ve put enough roadblocks in his
way to keep him busy for a couple of hours. If he’s any good at all, it’ll be a
challenge.”

“Mr. Freeman.”
Alan’s voice went up two decibels. “We’ve got an intruder alert.”

“That’s him.”
Freeman began typing on his keyboard. “Start the trace. Keep track of
everything he does.”

“Are you getting
his IP address?” Metcalf showed more excitement that Freeman had ever seen.

“He’s coming in
through a server in Virginia. Department of Defense. He has to be spoofing.”
Freeman brought up a new window and entered instructions. “Okay, he’s bouncing
off a network in Germany. This guy’s good.”

Freeman could feel
Metcalf’s breath on his neck. He smelled of cologne and alcohol.

“Alan.” Metcalf's
voice was cold as a winter morning. “What’s he doing? Where’s he going?”

“He’s broken into
our bogus HR sub-net. I wouldn’t have believed that he could get through our
firewalls that fast. He’s in the HR system.” Alan’s voice cracked.

“Who is this guy?”
Metcalf was back at Freeman’s workstation.

“Okay, I’ve got
him.” Freeman’s voice rose two octaves. “He’s in Seattle. Local ISP. This is a
private residence. Shit.”

“What is it?”

Freeman stared at
his screen. He couldn’t believe what he saw.

“Uh. . . We lost
him.”

“
Ay, que bonita
.”
Papa picked up the plate of carne asada and the plate of chile rellenos and
passed them to a server. “
Muchas gracias, Tony
.” He made it a habit to
stand at the food pass through window during peak business and check on the
food quality and plate appearance as his cooks completed their dishes.

Since Papa bought
El
Chaparral,
he kept a tight rein on his cooks. When they knew that he
was watching their output carefully, the quality made a major improvement.

Friday night
business was good. Servers rushed in and out of the service area. The infra-red
heat lamps over the pass-through window raised the temperature ten degrees in
the small room.

Papa dodged a
heavy-set girl loading a basket of tostaditas and grabbing a bowl of salsa for
a new table. “Papa,” Hope dashed into the serving area wearing a Mexican
peasant blouse and brightly colored skirt. “Mr. Thomas is here again.”

It was supposed to
be a secret. The
LA Times
food critic visited restaurants anonymously,
but one of the servers recognized him on his last visit. Now everyone was on
the alert. Papa knew that soon, there would be an article about
El Chaparral
in the newspaper.

“
Gracias, mija
.”
Papa beamed. “All right everyone,” he raised his hands in the air. “Show time.”

“Buenos noches.
Party of four?” Papa walked up to the hostess stand and grabbed four menus. The
heavy graying man with a pencil-thin moustache looked like a character out of a
1940’s movie, double-breasted suit and all.

“Yes, four,” the
food critic replied.

Papa led them to a
table near the island of shrubs and flowers that ran through the center of the
dining room.

“We have a special,
huachinango Veracruzana, tonight. Caught fresh this morning.” Papa handed the
menus to his guest and smiled.

****

“
Estamos cerrado,,
mija
.” Papa tossed the keys onto the desk. The restaurant was closed, the
kitchen cleaned up, the dining room set for lunch tomorrow.

Hope sat at the
desk in the small office, under a statue of the
Virgin de Guadalupe
, counting
the day’s receipts. Papa marveled at how beautiful she looked; her hair so
black it almost seemed blue in the artificial light, her eyes dark pools. She
looked just like her mama.

“It was a good
night, Papa.” Hope bundled the cash together and filled out a deposit slip.
“Gina’s going to be happy with us this month.”

Ted’s girlfriend
in Seattle set up the bookkeeping system for them. Every month they sent her
their records and she prepared operating statements and balance sheets. Her
advice had been invaluable in operating
El Chaparral
more like a
business than the feudal kingdom it had been under the previous owner.

For twenty-five
years Papa labored in the kitchen. His old
patron
had no sense of
business, no touch with his staff. He treated them all like servants, he yelled
at his customers.

When Papa bought
the restaurant, the staff had been overjoyed. Now he had to learn to operate a
business in the Twenty-First Century if he was to keep them all employed, their
families fed.

“It’s a good thing
you understand all of this computer stuff.” He pulled up a chair next to Hope’s
desk and set down his coffee cup. His eighteen-year-old daughter understood the
business better than he did. With the systems that Ted set up, she managed
schedules, inventory, and purchases and moved money around like a veteran. Now,
if he could only get Ted involved in the business.

It would make Mama
so happy if he could get their oldest son to move back home.

****

“Richie, get down
here right now.” Richard Freeman Sr. crashed through his front door.

“Richard, what is
it?” His meek looking wife, Elaine, dressed in her nightgown, appeared in the
kitchen door.

“That little
bastard’s really done it this time.” Freeman tossed his coat carelessly onto
the sofa.

“Richard, don’t
you ever call him that.” Elaine jumped to grab the coat and hang it in the
closet. “What’s he done?”

“Yeah, Dad.”
Richie looked down from the landing at the top of the stairs. “What did I do
this time?”

“Get down here,
right now.” Freeman’s face glowed bright red. “I know what you were doing. We
tracked you at work.”

Richie’s face went
white.

“Richard, what are
you talking about?” Elaine stepped between Freeman and their son.

“He knows full
well what I’m talking about. We caught him hacking into MS’s systems.”

Richie’s mouth fell
open.

“Dad . . .”

“Don’t ‘Dad’ me. I
was there when you broke in. We traced your IP address back to this house. My
house. My IP address. What were you thinking?”

“It’s not my
fault, Dad.”

“Richard.” Elaine
broke in. “When did this happen?”

“Tonight. Metcalf
was there. I had to lie to him. To tell him that the hacker got away, but I saw
the IP address. I know it was Richie.”

“It couldn’t have
been. He was here with me all night. We were watching an old movie on the Movie
Channel. The popcorn bowl is still on the kitchen counter.”

Freeman stopped
and looked from his wife to his son. She wouldn’t lie to him. She wouldn’t lie
to save her own life. If Richie wasn’t the hacker, then who was? And how in the
hell did they use
his
IP address? Was anybody really that good?

When Freeman found
the hacker, whoever it was, and he would find the hacker, he would come down on
him like the wrath of God.

****

“Peaceful Valley traffic, this is Cessna three six niner zero Juliet, turning downwind for
runway three four.” Chris released the mike button on the yolk and reached for
the twin throttle levers. He pulled back slightly, reduced power and lifted the
nose of the twin-engine Cessna 421. As the airspeed bled off, he flipped the
landing gear switch. The three lights on the dashboard changed from red to
green.

“Three in the
green,” he said and looked towards his father in the right seat.

Harry didn’t move
a muscle. Chris, although not a licensed pilot, had been flying his father’s
airplanes since he was a teenager. Carefully following FAA rules, he had never
flown solo, but Harry allowed him to make the flight from Boeing Field in Seattle to the private air strip in Peaceful Valley, Montana without interference.

Chris turned into
the base leg of the landing pattern and lowered the flaps forty degrees. He
glanced in all directions for any other air traffic.

The possibility of
other planes in the landing pattern was remote. His father’s five-hundred-acre
cattle ranch had its own landing strip, but not many visitors. Occasionally
business meetings were held here, and that could attract a swarm of corporate
jets, but not today. This was a family trip.

“Cessna three six
niner zero Juliet, on final for runway three four.”

Chris looked over
his shoulder at Sarah and Candace. This was the first time the four of them had
gone anywhere as a family. They were healing. He could look at Candace without
the seething resentment he once felt. Sarah was interacting with people again.

It wasn’t the same
as when Mom was alive, but it was something.

They passed over
the threshold of the runway. Chris pulled back the throttle levers and let the
big twin settle through the ground effect and kiss the runway.

He taxied to a
halt next to a dusty Jeep Cherokee. A small, trim man with a Wyatt Earp mustache
in a Stetson hat and cowboy boots leaned against the hood.

Harry opened the
cabin door and stood aside for Candace and Sarah.

“Mornin’, Ms.
Hardwick.” The small cowboy had a lazy drawl. “The Missus is anxious to see ya.”
Chad and Dora Easton had been managing the Peaceful Valley Ranch since before
Harry bought it. “Ya gonna be stayin’ through after the weekend?”

“Hi, Chad. No,
Sarah and I will fly back with Chris and Harry on Sunday.”

Chris popped open
the cargo hatch and started passing the bags to Harry and Chad, who jammed them in the back of the Jeep.

The five rode the
short distance over the bumpy dirt road back to the main house.

It might still be
fall in Seattle, but in the foot hills of the Rockies, winter had taken hold.
Chris could see his breath as he exhaled. The trees had already dropped their
leaves and the world looked gray under the sullen skies.

The place hadn’t
changed much since Chris’ last visit. It had to be what, two years?

The large white
two story ranch house sat in the middle of a complex of barns and
out-buildings. An above-ground pool stood just off to the side of the house, a
ready source of water in case of fire. The equipment shed next to the barn
housed several ATVs in addition to the requisite tractor.

“It’s good to be
back.” Harry stepped out of the Jeep and looked around. “When’s the new bull
coming in?”

“We’re still
scheduled for the 20
^th
, Mr. Hardwick,” Chad said

“Let’s get our
stuff unloaded, then go for a ride,” Candace said.

Chris felt a
little thrill pass though him.

****

“Ted, you know
Leah Sykes don’t you?” Catrina sat behind her flea market desk.

Ted and Jonathon
Jefferson took up the two unmatched chairs.

“Not really. I’ve
seen her in the office, but we’ve never spoken.” Ted would notice Leah. At six-feet
tall, she was a good four inches taller than him. Her kinky hair resembled
nothing quite so much as a fiery red Brillo pad.

“Pleased to meet
you, Ted.” Leah held out a long, elegant hand. She reminded Ted of some kind of
long-legged seabird.

“El gusto es mío.”
Ted’s eyes ran up and down the tall, willowy woman. She was about his mother’s
age. Her face pleasant enough, she had a dazzling smile and sparkling blue
eyes, but somehow all the pieces didn’t add up to beauty. She was the whitest
white woman he had ever seen, her skin dotted by the occasional freckle.

She must have
gotten a lot of teasing in grade school. Her feet, always clad in flats, were
ridiculously long and thin. She stood with the posture of a question mark,
trying to conceal her height. He could imagine her as a gangly scarecrow of a
girl.

“Leah has been
working on Jackson Schmidt’s file. She has some interesting things to tell us.”
Catrina brought Ted’s attention back to the issue at hand.

“So, what do you
do anyway?” Ted knew that Leah was a forensic accountant that occasionally
worked for Catrina, but that’s where his knowledge ended. “Are you like CSI or
something”?

Leah smiled. “Most
people don’t understand what we do. Yes, forensic accountants are the CSIs of
the accounting world. Basically, we follow the money. I crawl through a
company’s books looking for irregularities. I do a lot of work for attorneys.
Cat hires me to look for hidden assets in divorce cases.”

“So what have you
found?” Cat cut off the explanation.

Leah pulled up an
extra chair. “Something doesn’t smell right here. I’ve been going over the MS’
books and I see some irregularities.”

“What kind?” Jeff
asked.

“Ted already put
us onto some expenses that Schmidt billed to the company that may be
suspicious. Travel, personal services. Things like that can be hidden in a huge
corporate general ledger. But here’s what has me worried.” Leah passed copies
of a spread sheet out to her audience.

“There’s enough smoke
here to make me think that there may be a fire. You’ll notice that there are a
series of postings to the retained earnings account. That’s suspicious.
Normally, you don’t post anything to RE, that account flows from the GL. Look
here.” She pointed a long finger with clear nail polish to a line on the spread
sheet. “Here’s a posting to Opening Balance Equity. That account usually is set
up when a company is formed. It never gets postings.”

“Is this enough to
prove malfeasance?” Catrina asked.

“No, this is just
the smoking gun. There’s more though. The audit trail report has been turned
off. Whoever has been doing this doesn’t want anyone to follow their trail.
With the data Ted got from MS, I was able to examine their GL system and
determine who was making the entries. It wasn’t Schmidt. By the way, do I want
to know how he got all this information?”

Jeff ignored her
question. “So who was it?”

“A staff
accountant. All of these entries are made by the same person. A Gina Lombardi.”

Ted froze. How
much could he tell them? He told Gina that he would keep her out of the
investigation, but here she was, smack dab in the middle of it.

“I don’t get it.”
Ted needed time to think. “If this Gina Lombardi made all of those entries, how
can we pin it on Schmidt?”

“That’s a tough
question. Most of the suspicious entries I found benefit Jackson Schmidt in one
way or another, but I can’t prove he made them. It could be that this Lombardi
woman is smart enough to push this stuff through incriminating him, then drain
off the money for herself.”

Shit
. He
was going to have to explain to them how he found out about the book-cooking in
the first place.

“I also found some
interesting expenses.” Leah handed them another spread sheet. “This is from the
Delphi Project. It’s a billion-dollar spit in the ocean. They’ve spent over a
billion dollars on this one project. They’ve basically bet the company on it.
If Delphi, whatever it is, fails, then MS goes down.”

This wasn’t new
news to Ted. That’s why Alison Clarke had hired them in the first place. He
waited for Catrina to take the lead. How much could they tell Jeff and Leah
about Delphi?

“We’ve seen Delphi.” Catrina put on her poker face. “It’s impressive.”