Interference

by Danielle Girard

  Ryaan shook her head slowly. “I’ve been thinking about it, too.”

  “Where is Jacob Monaghan?” Mei asked.

  “In the detention center, why?”

  “He’s the only other person I’ve had contact with.”

  “But I never even introduced you.”

  It was true. If someone was going to be targeted, Ryaan was a more obvious choice. Ryaan’s phone buzzed on the table. She lifted it up and stood. “I need to take this. You okay?”

  Mei nodded. “I think I’m going to head to bed.”

  Ryaan answered the call and Mei heard a series of short, muffled responses that made her think Ryaan was discussing the shooting at Ayi’s. She tried to put it from her mind. She needed rest but there was one call to make first. Settled into the bedroom, she called Andy and was grateful when he didn’t answer. Even his voice on the recording made her feel sad and scared. How many times had she heard that voice? How many times had she turned to him for comfort? Soon, she would lose that, too.

  She cleared her throat and left him a message about what had happened. “They think it was probably random,” she lied. “Don’t worry about me. I’m fine, I promise.” She hung up before the tears came.

  Andy called back almost immediately. “I’m coming straight up from L.A. I can be there by midnight.”

  “No,” Mei said. “I’m down in Palo Alto, staying with a friend tonight. I’m fine.”

  Andy hesitated. “What friend?”

  “Ryaan Berry.”

  “Ryaan?” he repeated.

  “Yes. She’s an Inspector in the Triggerlock group.”

  “Mei, you’ve been shot at. You’re in danger. At least let me call in the local office.”

  “Absolutely not. No.”

  “Mei, it’s reckless not to contact them. I can’t go back to Chicago knowing you’re in danger.”

  “You have to,” she insisted.

  “I have to take care of my wife.”

  “No, Andy. I can take care of myself. You have to go home,” Mei said.

  A beat passed. “Mei, what is wrong with you?”

  She took a breath. “Please. Just go home to Chicago. Don’t come here. I need to be alone right now.”

  Andy’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Mei, what is this about? What’s going on?”

  “I’m focusing on a case.”

  “I thought you said the shooting was random.”

  Mei said nothing.

  “This isn’t just a case, Mei. This is a case where you’re the target.”

  “Maybe. But it’s my case and I’m not working alone. We’ve got a good team.”

  “Why wouldn’t you want me there?”

  Mei hesitated. “I need space, Andy. To figure things out.”

  “Figure things out? What things? Talk to me! I’m your husband,” he shouted. A momentary pause followed then he said, “There’s someone else.”

  “No.”

  “This Ryaan…”

  “Andy, I told you. There isn’t anyone else.”

  Andy said nothing.

  Startled at the silence, Mei pressed on. “She’s my colleague. I’m staying here with her and her mom tonight because Ayi’s front window is blown out. That’s all.”

  Still, Andy was silent. Only his deep breaths confirmed he was still there.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow. Okay?”

  Nothing.

  “I’m sorry, Andy.”

  After a moment, there was dull void on the line. Andy had ended the call.

  Though Mei was grateful to be staying at Ryaan’s, she didn’t sleep. Instead, she rose before five, took a quick shower and called a cab to the BART station, then rode the train to the city.

  Linda James, captain of the precinct that included Ayi’s house, called to confirm that there had been no further incidents during the night. Officers were still stationed outside her home and also in front of Hui’s. According to Linda, Ayi had come home about an hour before, and there was already a glass repair van at the house.

  “We’ll keep someone out there tonight, too, and I’ve got a couple extra cars in the neighborhood,” Linda assured her.

  Mei thanked her. The momentum of action made it easier to shrug off worries. It was all part of the job. She was a cop. Maybe not the kind of cop who was usually targeted, but a cop all the same. Somewhere, just below the surface Mei knew this logic was wrong. This was not status quo for a police officer. They didn’t get shot at in their homes—certainly not computer forensics officers. Andy was right about that.

  As right as he was, Mei hoped their argument would give her a little space. She knew her parents would be calling soon to remind her that this was not normal, demand that she acknowledge the danger, answer to it. Amazingly, she had yet to hear from them. Perhaps Ayi had been distracted—too frightened—to tell them what had happened. It wouldn’t last.

  For now, Mei would keep her head down and work. She arrived at the lab just before seven a.m. and was grateful to find it empty.

  Her first move was to check on the status of the chemical test being run on the liquid she’d found inside the cell phone jammer. She sat behind her computer and stared at the screen as it booted. Logged in, she launched the case tracking system and scanned for results. The file indicated it was complete but no results were listed. She picked up the phone and dialed the chem lab. At least she shouldn’t have to wait for the results. With the department’s workload, the lab was staffed twenty-four seven. “Gordon,” came the response.

  “This is Mei Ling in the tech lab,” she said. “Looks like you’ve got some results for one of our cases but they’re not in the system yet.”

  “I can get ‘em. Case number?”

  Mei read the case number.

  “Mountain Dew,” Gordon said after a brief delay.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The liquid sample was Mountain Dew.”

  Mei thanked him and hung up. Soda. Not the break she’d been hoping for. She found the case number for the shooting at her house and tried to open it. A gray box popped up on the screen. “You are not an authorized user on case QF17643294AL.”

  Mei sat forward in her chair and broke the dead flowers off the orchid plant her sisters had sent as congratulations on her new job. Mountain Dew. Americans drank millions of gallons of the stuff. That was not going to help her narrow her search. Frustrated, she crossed to the small room that housed a refrigerator, a coffeemaker and a printer. She filled the glass with water from a dispenser, drank half, and poured the remainder into her orchid. Don’t over water it, her sister was always saying.

  She left the drowning orchid and the glass and went to the safe to retrieve the computer and peripherals they’d found. Surely there was something someone had missed. At an empty station, she pulled on gloves and removed it from its storage box. She set the computer aside and studied the cell phone jammer pieces. Blake’s notes were beside it. She checked off the components he listed as she went. Generic aluminum box, UHF connectors. Blake had tracked the connectors to a Motorola brand phone. Last built in 2003. Too old to track. It used a clock oscillator, but there were no markings to indicate what it had come from. No lead there either.

  A decent soldering job, probably someone used to building this sort of thing. Mei removed the 9V battery and unwrapped the yellow foam plastic insulate in which it was wrapped. Using neon orange powder, she coated it then blew off the excess. Holding the ends lightly, she turned the battery over on the desk and shined the orange light on each surface. Nothing.

  Removing her gloves, Mei logged in to the main computer. No notes in the file. She searched cell phone jammers. Forty-six results came up. She clicked through the files one at a time to search the images. If their suspect had built another cell phone jammer, it would likely look similar to this one. In a half-hour s
earch through the images, nothing remotely similar came up. She expanded the search to the entire state of California and got three hundred and ninety-three hits. Too many to search. She’d get Amy to work on it.

  Mei went back to the table and snapped on a new pair of gloves. She stifled a yawn, wishing for apple juice, her equivalent of a morning coffee or tea. Nothing like that in this office. She rolled her neck and focused on the homemade battery pack.

  Just then, the lab door opened and Blake came in.

  “Morning,” Mei said.

  “Morning. You’re here early.”

  Mei nodded.

  “Glad you’ve got that out,” Blake said, crossing straight to her and setting his bag on the floor. “Did you see my notes on the heat sink?”

  “No.”

  Blake reached into the box of gloves marked XL and pulled two out. Using one to cover his fingers, he pulled out the LiPo battery back and carefully lifted the top off. He pointed to the heat sink.

  “You traced it?”

  “It’s an Acer, same as the computer.”

  Mei stared down at it. “You think the perp bought more than one computer and used them for parts.”

  Blake smiled. “I do. They’re the identical version and according to the manufacturer, the two were made within weeks of each other.”

  “So we need to search for purchases of multiple computers.”

  Blake dropped the gloves on the table and crossed to the main computer terminal. “Already done.”

  Mei waited for Blake to mention the shooting, but he didn’t say anything. Teddy and Blake were easy to work around. They were friendly and outgoing, but they rarely asked questions about non-work related subjects and never probed into her personal life. Something she was particularly appreciative of today.

  He checked his open inquiries. The Acer one showed no response. “I’ll follow up with them today.”

  “What parameters did you enter?”

  “At least two sold at once, within the state, in the past sixty days.”

  Mei nodded. It was possible that the computers were bought outside the state, but buying two three hundred dollar computers couldn’t be very unusual. Getting back thousands and thousands of matches wouldn’t be useful. Better to make some assumptions on where and when they were purchased.

  “Anything else we can check on?” asked Mei.

  Blake shook his head and pulled on his gloves. “The cells are generic. I sent a sample of the soldering material to the lab.”

  Mei pulled a magnifying glass from a drawer. She put a little pressure on the soldered connection. “It looks heavy duty.”

  “Probably automotive,” Blake said.

  Mei moved the glass over the pieces and across the black electrical tape that held the individual battery cells together. “Let’s see if there are any prints on this black tape.”

  Blake handed Mei a pair of tweezers and held the cells steady as she unwrapped the tape. The first piece wound around the cells twice. The second piece only went around the sides, across the top and partway down the sides, and had been cut, jaggedly as though with a box cutter or a knife.

  “Why doesn’t this piece go all the way around?” she asked as she lay the tape, sticky side up, on the table.

  “Maybe he ran out.”

  There were no cardboard fibers on the tape. “Doesn’t look like the end of the roll.”

  Mei held the tape down while Blake dusted the center for prints. Halfway down the length of the piece, the beautiful curve of a print appeared.

  Blake whistled.

  “Let’s get some images.”

  Mei used an orange light on the tape to illuminate the dusting powder on the print while Blake took photographs. Then, carefully, Blake lifted the print.

  “I’ll get this run now.”

  Blake carried the tape with the print to the main console and set it on a sheet of glass to be scanned. Mei carefully flipped the tape over, dusted the other side and brought the magnifying glass close. A shape emerged.

  Blake returned a moment later and looked over her shoulder. “What is it?”

  “There’s a ‘2’ written here.”

  “Like number two?”

  “Yeah.” Mei studied the shorter piece of tape. “Let’s dust this one, too.”

  Blake dusted orange powder on the sticky side, and Mei shined her light alone the length of it. Once, twice, a third time.

  “Nothing,” Blake said.

  Mei flipped it over and they did the same thing on the smooth side. Again, nothing.

  “No number on this one.”

  Blake lifted the camera and took pictures of the number.

  “Put that on the overhead along with the words that were written on the jammer.”

  A minute later, Blake and Mei were staring up at the screen on the wall. On the left side, was the small, printed “2.” Opposite it were the words “on” and “off” that had been written on the cell phone jammer.

  “Looks like the same handwriting.”

  Mei nodded. “Let’s send it to the lab for their opinion.” She looked back at the battery cells that were now loose on the table. The vertical pieces of tape ran full circle around the cells, but the horizontal pieces only went edge to edge. It was as though there had been a bigger batch of cells taped together before someone cut them apart. A number one to go with the number two? “Why would he need two LiPo batteries?”

  Blake looked up. “What?”

  “It’s like he had more cells, all taped together. Then cut them apart to make two separate batteries rather than one big one. Why?”

  Blake nodded. “So he cut the cells apart, left half the black tape on these and the other half on the other stack then wrapped these with a fresh piece of tape.”

  “Is it possible there were two batteries packs?”

  Blake shrugged. “Sure, it’s possible.”

  Mei pulled her gloves off to call Sydney Blanchard.

  “What are you thinking?” Blake asked as the phone started ringing on Sydney’s desk.

  “I’m thinking maybe there’s another one we missed.”

  Chapter 20

  Ryaan arrived at the police impound lot with a full cup of coffee. In the twenty-minute drive from home, she hadn’t had a chance to take more than a couple of sips. It had been one phone call after another. Ballistics had a partial print off a slug pulled out of Mei Ling’s aunt’s wall that they were running through the police database. Patrick had news about a car that was dropped in the Tenderloin with a trunk full of guns. It was called in by a school teacher who lived on the block.

  According to Patrick, the teacher had watched a few kids walk off with guns before the police arrived. Kids she knew, probably, but she said she had no names. She also couldn’t say exactly how many guns she’d seen walk off before the police had arrived.

  “Too many,” was all she’d said. When Patrick pressed, she’d added, “Even one is too many.”

  Ryaan parked her car on the curb in front of the impound lot, half in the red, and got out, taking her coffee with her. It was mostly cold now, too, but that wouldn’t stop her from drinking it.

  She walked across the gravel lot and entered through the open door of the police garage. At a glance, it might have been a Jiffy Lube. Three bays stretched across the space. Each bay had a pit big enough for a forensic team and a hydraulic pump strong enough to lift a midsized commercial truck. From the high ceiling, florescent lights gave off a hard, yellow light. In a far corner, one of the bulbs flickered as though having a seizure. Two of the bays were empty. The third held a small sedan, centered over the pit. The pit appeared empty. Made sense. The techs would be focused on the car’s exterior and the trunk where the guns had been.

  Standing off to one side, Roger Sampers directed the team. Ryaan recognized his light complexi
on even from the side. Roger had been hairless from birth due to some condition whose name Ryaan couldn’t remember. He rarely referred to his condition but was vigilant about avoiding the sun. She’d heard he was married with a couple of kids, lived somewhere out in the East Bay.

  He wore a white lab coat which he seemed to favor whether a crime scene was inside or out. Roger also had a white raincoat, straight at the bottom like a blazer, that she’d seen on occasion as well. It, like his lab coats, was embroidered with his name.

  Standing in the impound lot, Roger wore a white baseball cap backward as though protecting his neck from burning despite the fact that they were inside and the sun had yet to rise above the horizon. He glanced up as she approached, his eyes covered in blue-lensed sunglasses. The combination made him look like an aging hip-hop star.

  Today, Roger had four other techs working with him. Ryaan knew two of them from scenes like this over the years. She said hello to Bill and Stacy as she walked to get a better look at the car, which had been painted brown with something other than auto paint, giving it a flat finish. In several places along the front wheel well and back bumper, the brown was stripped and a similarly dull white paint applied.

  “Morning,” Roger said, and Ryaan took a long gulp of her lukewarm coffee before responding.

  “What’ve we got?”

  “1988 Ford Focus. Originally white but it’s been repainted.” Roger motioned to the dull finish. “Inexpensively. Front quarter panel appears to be from a newer model, but we won’t know for sure until we pull it apart.”

  Ryaan took another drink and set her mug on the cement floor to pull out her notebook. “How about the weapons?”

  Roger introduced his two younger staffers, an attractive young black woman named Naomi and a slightly older, but still very young, blond man named Chase. The two were huddled close together over the pile of weapons.

  Chase said something indiscernible, and Naomi laughed, covering her mouth with the back of a gloved hand. She reached out and punched his shoulder, playfully. Dear God, they were flirting over a pile of weapons in the middle of the night.