A Sense of Justice

by Jack Davis

  “PJ, glad I finally found ya.” He shook his head, his jowls followed. “You need to spend more time at your desk, and less time walkin’ around chatting with your staff. Have them come to your office, not the other way around.”

  Morley might have voiced his disapproval of Brown’s management style if he hadn’t seen Pencala round the corner. She hesitated when she saw Morley and for a second looked like she might turn around, but then she continued toward her office.

  “Tommy, I’ll be right with ya. I’ve just gotta chat with Kay for a minute.”

  Brown stood and waited.

  “Kay, hi. Just stopped by to, uh, give you an update. But, uh, Tommy and I have to brief the Front Office. I’ll stop back later?”

  “Okay, yeah, I have an update too…”

  Pencala’s voice was melancholy, her eyes became glassy. Morley desperately wanted to hold her.

  “PJ, we gotta go.” Brown looked at his watch, then turned to go. “You too can talk later, let’s go.”

  Morley smiled, he mouthed the word sorry and nodded, then turned to follow his huffing supervisor.

  “PJ so help me, if you make me late again…”

  The rest of Morley’s abbreviated day was filled with briefings, phone calls, emails, and paperwork. By lunch, he’d decided to reschedule the standard 1600 hours briefing for 1400 hours, as much for him to get to see Pencala as to let his team get a well-deserved jump on their weekend. Having kept up on all aspects of the case, he didn’t expect any surprises from the meeting.

  Greere and Swann were the last two in the room, and while that wasn’t rare for Greere, it was highly unusual for Doc.

  “If agents Greere and Swann don’t mind, I’d like to get started. We’ll try and wrap up quickly so you can get out of here, get home, see your families and get some rest.”

  “Which one do you want us to do, see our families or get some rest? They are mutually exclusive at my house,” quipped Greere.

  “The Service didn’t tell you to have another child when the first one wasn’t already in high school. Normally that type of poor planning is highlighted, then punished by sending you out on a ‘twenty-one-on, twenty-one-off’ campaign assignment, but since we are in a noncampaign year, we’re letting you off with a stern warning and sixteen-hour days. No more kids until we give you authorization, or the youngest is old enough to seek gainful employment.

  “Who’d like to start?”

  Kruzerski and Murray gave an update on the last of the contacts they’d made, and how many of those sites had been infected.

  Next, Posada and Pencala provided short nothing new updates.

  Finally, Morley came to Swann and Greere, and when he looked their way, Greere started. “As you know, we’ve been looking for information regarding the second account that accessed the target WoW account a few weeks ago. We got the information this afternoon. The account resolves back to Road Runner, an upstate New York ISP. They indicated the customer was a Mihai Antonescu, in a small town outside of Binghamton.”

  Everyone knew there was something important here. Was there a real name and address associated with their target?

  Swann continued the narrative. “We’ve run preliminary checks and found that his most recent DL comes back to the same address.”

  The importance of two pieces of information on the suspect matching could not be overstated. Swann passed out enlarged photos of the suspect’s license.

  “What the fuck’s wrong with this guy’s face?” asked Kruzerski in his unfiltered style.

  “Antonescu’s unique physical features should help with positive identification.” Swann underscored the obvious.

  “Unique physical features my ass; he looks like he went bobbin’ for French fries in the McDonald’s deep fryer.”

  After Kruzerski’s painfully accurate observation, Greere said, “He’s a white male, thirty-nine years old, who apparently lives alone. He has no criminal record, not even a parking ticket. Antonescu graduated from Le Moyne College in Syracuse, with a degree in—” Greere paused for dramatic effect until he saw Morley roll his eyes, “—computer science.”

  Every agent was on the edge of their seats waiting for confirmation that the case finally had a solid suspect.

  Greere motioned to Swann, who took up the thread. “According to Antonescu’s tax return, he works as a computer technician for the SUNY system in Binghamton, New York.”

  Greere grinned. “Keith, my Romanian’s a little rusty. The name Mihai, what’s that in English?”

  “Michael!”

  Morley waited for a second to see if there was anything else his two agents were holding back in order to tease the group.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, you’ve just lost your weekend. Greere, Swann, Kruzerski, Murray, go home, pack a bag. I want you in Binghamton later tonight.

  “Jaime, you and Kay start working on the paperwork the AUSA will need to get so far up this guy’s butt we see his Adam’s apple. I’ll call Carpenter and tell him to expect something later this evening. Then I’ll call the RAIC in Syracuse and have him send a couple of agents to Binghamton to meet up with us when we arrive.

  “Everyone understand what they have to do?” There were nods all around. “Get it done.”

  Later that evening, Morley had two important phone calls. One he initiated, the other he received.

  “Hey, buddy, something important has come up. I’m still at the office. I won’t be home in time for pizza night.” He hesitated before he gave the really bad news. “Then early in the morning I have to go out of town for a couple days. Sorry.”

  There was silence on the line. PJ knew Sean was processing the information. The young man’s world was a series of routines. Routines he planned out and relied upon for stability. He liked knowing what was happening from one day to the next, from one hour to the next. With PJ’s help, Sean had made a whiteboard calendar for the back of his door. On it, he listed not only his daily tasks but also his upcoming activities. He put stars next to things he looked forward to, and sad faces next to events like a trip to the dentist. He scrupulously kept track of everything. This weekend had three stars each day.

  Guilt over the late work nights and time with Kay had led PJ to schedule a full football weekend. He’d gotten college football tickets for Saturday and New York Giants tickets for Sunday.

  “What about our football?”

  “Buddy, we’re going to have to change plans a little. I talked with Mr. O’Shea and he’s gonna take you and Danny to the Giants game Sunday, but we won’t be able to go to Rutgers tomorrow. I’m really sorry.

  “But, Mom-mom has a couple good puzzles to work on with you. And she said there’s a John Wayne Western marathon on TBS. She’s gonna record a few for the two of you to watch in the evenings.”

  The disappointment was palpable.

  “I’m sorry, buddy, but we’ve got a big case and we’ve found the bad guy. I need to go and search his house for clues tomorrow.”

  “Can’t you search for clues on Monday?”

  “No, buddy, that’s not how it works. I have to be there early tomorrow.”

  There was a long pause and PJ thought he heard a sniffle before, “Will we get to do anything this weekend?”

  PJ’s heart sank. He looked at his computer screen. He’d been writing the daily report for Brown and had another hour’s worth of work to do. Fuck Brown. He’s not gonna read this ’til Monday anyway.

  “Buddy, I’ll leave the office right now. I’ll be home in an hour and a half. We can have pizza and work on a puzzle together when I get home. Okay?”

  “Great! Great! Mom-mom will order the pizza and I will set up the puzzle.”

  Pure joy radiated through the phone. “Remember it’ll take me ninety minutes, so don’t get ready too soon.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  Morley was twenty minutes from home when he received the second call.

  “Hey boss, it’s Keith. Ron and I are just starting for Binghamton. Hope you
don’t mind that we sprung that news on you in the briefing. We’d just gotten the info and were working it right up until we came in the room.”

  “As long as this is the guy, I’ll let it slide. If not, Rwanda is lovely this time of year and if you’re careful the flesh-eating parasites can mostly be avoided.”

  “That’s what we wanted to talk to you about…not flesh-eating worms, Antonescu. He’s our guy.”

  Morley knew instantly the two had done something—probably illegal—to access Antonescu’s computers, and had found evidence. He realized the two were giving him information without getting him involved to the point where he would possibly perjure himself.

  Morley’s trust in his agents was absolute; he didn’t need to know anything more. Antonescu was their man.

  “Understood. I’ll meet you up there tomorrow morning and we’ll take him off. Drive safe.”

  Search Warrant (10/17/09, 0700 hours)

  Morley arrived at the briefing location the following morning at 0700 hours. On the drive AUSA Carpenter had reluctantly informed his friend since they couldn’t “put Antonescu’s hands on the keyboard for the hack,” there wasn’t enough yet for an arrest warrant. Morley, confident in what Swann had found, didn’t press the issue.

  The team met Syracuse RAIC Meyer Scott and the local PD counterparts at the Johnson City Police Department for the briefing.

  Both sides provided field briefings on what they knew, didn’t know, and thought.

  Antonescu had never come in contact with the local PD or any of the other small departments in the area. The detectives explained the suspect lived in a small apartment complex, described as a two-story brick structure with four units side by side. Checks on the neighbors failed to reveal anything pertinent. Antonescu’s 2003 Toyota Corolla had been parked on the street in front of the building all night.

  At 0806 hours, Morley received a call from Kruzerski who had the apartment under surveillance.

  “Boss, our boy’s on the move. He’s on foot heading westbound.”

  “Roger that. En route. I wanna hit the place while he’s out. If we find something incriminating, we’ll snag him out of his element. The Syracuse agents have the eyeball?”

  “Yep, they’re on him.”

  “See you in five.”

  Kruzerski knocked the hinges off the door at 0813 hours. It took the agents an additional two minutes to confirm the apartment was empty. During that time the agents surveilling Antonescu radioed that he had gone into a bagel shop a few blocks away.

  Antonescu had four computers in his house: an old laptop, two newer ones, and his home PC. Swann and Greere took the newer machines, Murray sat down at the desktop, and Kruzerski went to work on the older laptop.

  From the previous day’s electronic reconnaissance, Swann and Greere knew where to look and what to look for, but they also realized they had to put on a good show.

  Swann waited until they heard Antonescu was on his way back to report that he had found something. “PJ, the mac address of the machine I’m working on is linked to the command and control server for the botnet, and more importantly, it has the code that was used to hack into the pharmaceutical and the foreign financial institutions.”

  Armed with this new information, Morley called Carpenter, Kensington, and Brown, to tell them he was going to arrest Antonescu.

  55 | Mihai Antonescu

  Mihai Antonescu, Anton to his friends—of which there were few—had grown up in Communist Romania until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. After that he lived in the whirlwind caused by the power vacuum that was left. He was born into a gypsy family outside the oil producing city of Ploesti. In Romania, as a gypsy, he was considered a criminal from the day he was born, and worth less than a farm animal…the feeling being that stock animals will at least do work and won’t rob you blind.

  Things probably would have played out along those lines, and Mihai would have become a semi-nomadic petty thief, had it not been for a tragedy in his family when he was six years old.

  On a bitterly cold February night, when the light of a fallow moon danced behind fast-moving clouds, Mihai and his mother, Sasha, walked back to an abandoned hut they had called home for the previous two weeks. Mihai’s father and two older brothers had gone to Bucharest ten days earlier to find work…or money. Sasha expected them back to retrieve her and her youngest as soon as the weather broke. Until then, it was just her and Mihai, fending for themselves and living off the local economy—begging and stealing.

  A day begging in the Ploesti city center had garnered radish soup and stale black bread but nothing more. So as darkness approached, Sasha and Mihai retreated to the outskirts of town to gather firewood from the side of the road. Each had collected two armfuls; Mihai’s not more than twigs. Empty bellies and zero-degree temperatures hurried their efforts. The bitter cold caused by a front dipping down from Siberia convinced Sasha that her pile, along with the meager haul of her little helper, would have to do. It would get them through most of the night. After that they would have huddle together and wait for the relative warmth of daybreak.

  The two crunched along on a dusting of fresh snow on the road. Elsewhere, the blanket of white lay almost a meter thick. The plows had pushed the height of the banks to three times that in spots.

  When Sasha heard a car coming toward them on the narrowly cleared pavement, she hurried to get little Mihai off the road. Next, she tossed up the wood that the two had so painstakingly collected to keep warm. Finally, as the car came around a copse of trees, she started climbing the bank of snow.

  Reaching the top, Sasha caught hold of a branch to pull herself up the last half meter. The branch broke with a sharp crack. Mihai heard his mother gasp and watched in horror as she fell backwards into the path of the oncoming car.

  Even if the driver had tried to brake, he couldn’t have stopped in time.

  Sasha was struck while she was on her knees as she tried to get to her feet. The fender broke her back and caused massive internal injuries. Mercifully for her, her head hit the front quarter panel and for the next forty-five minutes, she never regained consciousness. Her broken body was thrown against the snow a meter from where Mihai had his hands clasped over his closed eyes hoping against hope that his mother was not hit.

  The driver of the car stopped twenty meters up the road. He hurried, but didn’t run, back to look at the condition of who he’d hit. When he was close enough to see the contorted figure was a gypsy woman, he was relieved. Then he saw the boy, hands still over his eyes. Not wanting to be seen and possibly identified by the child, he ran back to his car.

  Reaching the next town, he stopped and told the local constable that he’d hit a deer. He knew that the constable would no doubt go to get the deer for the meat, and the driver assuaged his conscience by thinking that the boy would be found before too long.

  Hearing the car’s engine fade, Mihai took his hands from his eyes and saw his mother face down in the snow, blood dripping from her ears and mouth. She didn’t look right. Her body was in a strange position; it was bent at an angle that even a six-year-old knew wasn’t normal. He slid down the snowbank and touched her back. There was no motion, only a gurgling as the air in her lungs mixed with blood as she tried to breathe.

  Mihai asked his mother if she was okay. She didn’t answer. He asked again. He put his little hands—wrapped in rags to ward off the cold—on her shoulders and shook her gently, trying to elicit a response. He got none, only the continued gurgling as Sasha’s heart and lungs continued their now useless tasks. Mihai asked his mother if he should go get help; still, no response. He didn’t know what to do. He was desperate, alone, and in the dark. He wanted his mother to tell him what to do. He started to cry not knowing if he should get help or stay with his mother. He asked her again, and again.

  Sasha Antonescu was from strong stock, but all that did was prolong the inevitable. Her injuries were too severe for her to live even if she had gotten immediate medical attention.
She gave up her fight for life close to forty minutes after being hit. Never being able to respond to the pleas from her anguished six-year-old son.

  When the constable finally came upon the boy cradling the corpse of his mother, it was two hours after the accident. The headlights illuminated the scene and would have blinded Mihai if he had looked in their direction; he didn’t. The constable now realized why a driver had called and reported hitting a deer. Walking closer he heard a small quiet voice asking a motionless body, “What should I do Momma, what should I do?” It was the same question the small rag-clad boy had been asking his mother for hours.

  The constable, who felt like most Romanians that one less gypsy was a good thing, was moved to pity by the sight of the child, tears frozen on his little cheeks, face already frostbitten asking his dead mother what to do. He took the boy, who was in deep shock, and put him in his car to warm up. Then, knowing the boy was watching, but not wanting any blood in his car, he dragged Sasha’s body to the car and clumsily put her in the trunk. He drove to town and called the local doctor to come treat the boy.

  The doctor refused to come out past midnight in the freezing cold to look at a gypsy boy. He told the constable how to treat the frostbite and hung up. The tip of the boy’s nose, chin, cheeks, and upper lip were severely frostbitten. Parts would have to be removed, making the little orphan, while not ghastly, difficult to look at. If there was any good news that night, it was that all the boy’s fingers and nine of his toes were able to be saved.

  After three days of half-hearted effort, the constable had been unable to identify any of the silent boy’s relatives from the gypsy camps. The problem was compounded by two facts: one, the boy would not utter a sound—he hadn’t said a word since being put in the car, and two, none of the gypsies, if not directly related, would claim any knowledge of the child for fear of having him dropped in their laps. Not even the gypsies wanted another unproductive mouth to feed.

  When there was no progress after four days, the constable’s wife had also had enough, “He has lice and fleas and who knows what other diseases. If that isn’t enough, he’ll wait for the nice weather and rob us blind some night. I want him gone tomorrow. Take him to the orphanage first thing.”