by Alec Peche
Chapter Five
Ariana had a long swim back to her own cove across the bay in Belvedere. She’d been reckless not watching her tank pressure until it was too late. If the man from the island hadn’t rescued her, she could have had a dangerous swim home. There were ferries that crossed her path overhead and if she had been swimming at the surface, it was very conceivable that she would have had a hard time avoiding the boats. She rather liked pretending she was a fish and swimming at a depth that avoided boats. It was easy to get lost in the darkness of the water and her own fascination with the floor of the bay. She planned to look up who the man on the rock was and thank him for filling her tank.
It had been a bizarre encounter. She’d thought the island was deserted and she was still puzzled as to why her cell phone hadn’t worked, since it worked in every other part of the bay. She nearly jumped out of her skin when the man had called down to her, but she’d liked his drone technology and the hot tea had been good also. He looked about her age, smart, and she liked his brand of ginger tea. Maybe she'd send him some as thanks. Except how did you deliver anything to that island? It wasn’t like UPS or the postal service made it a stop. Maybe she’d have to match a gadget with him. She owned a small boat that she could drive back to the island and then operate her own drone to drop some tea on his doorstep. Not that she’d spotted his house to even know where his doorstep was. She dropped her scuba equipment off in her boathouse, hosed down her wetsuit and the equipment, and then headed up to her house to shower and research the man on the rock as she would call him until she had a name.
Twenty minutes later, her brunette bob of a haircut clean and dry, with yoga pants and flip flops and a soft hoodie, she sat at her computer excited to have something new to research. She’d bought this house four years ago when she relocated from New York City to the West Coast. Her husband of ten years had lost his battle with pancreatic cancer and everything about New York had reminded her of her loss. He’d been a hedge fund investor while she was a whiz at sniffing out business interactions that would impact companies that her husband would or wouldn’t invest in. They’d been the perfect pair. At first they put off having children, but then once they started trying, Jared had soon after been diagnosed with cancer. He’d lived longer than average for that cancer, but it hadn’t been the time to try getting pregnant as he’d been on powerful chemo agents and she wanted to be focused on helping him at first fight the cancer, then in time to have a comfortable death. He hadn’t had a bucket list to fulfill rather he played the investor game up to about the week before his death. It had left her a very wealthy widow, but she’d rather have been poor just to have had Jared around a few more years. She’d up and left New York, her friends and family included, and bought this beautiful house just north of San Francisco. She’d found that by using the same acumen that assisted Jared, she’d increased her net worth by operating a private venture capital fund successfully investing into some highly successful Silicon Valley start-ups.
Her future assured, she’d been trying to find a purpose for herself. Making companies successful was intellectually fulfilling, but she’d yet to find meaning to her life. How could she make an impact on the world? She’d hiked all over the region and thought about ways to protect this incredible natural beauty that she was surrounded by, but she hadn’t found her passion yet. Recently, she’d taken to exploring the bay with scuba gear, but still nothing was striking a cord. Oh well, cracking her knuckles she went to work creating a dossier on her man from the rock. She would approach him like she would one of her start-up companies.
Thirty minutes later, she sat back and frowned. He was a hard nut to crack. The island was indeed owned by a private trust, but she’d been unable to locate who was behind the trust. It was like someone had gone into several public systems and erased data that was usually available. She felt a cold nose nudge her, and looked down to Miguel, her Portuguese water dog. The dog was so smart that she was sure that if he could talk human, he’d be an even better investor than herself, and he loved to swim. He demanded rain or shine to go swimming in the bay every day.
“What’s up Miguel? You don’t like being ignored? You need to go for your swim?”
He smiled happily up at her and so she took a break, grabbing a floating toy for him to chase in the waves. While she stood at the shore’s edge, she thought again about her mysterious man, checking off in her head different sites to visit to research him. She couldn’t come up with anything new so once the dog was satisfied with his exercise, she went back inside and ordered a drone that could carry up to five pounds of tea. She would practice with it dropping toys into the bay for Miguel and once she got the hang of it, she would journey out to his island and drop some tea as thanks.
Chapter Six
Damian opened Natalie’s email and thought about her request. Could he access the FBI’s fingerprint system? Of course she didn’t ask the question in those exact words; that would be setting up the two of them for some jail time. He thought he could get her an answer. The five cases he’d picked for her all had fingerprint evidence and that had changed in the last twenty years. In the past, if you had a suspect’s name you could have a fingerprint expert compare fingerprints at the scene versus the particular suspect. Fingerprints collected on paper cards left detectives to sort through thousands of cards, assuming the criminal was fingerprinted in their own jurisdiction. There were simply too many cards to search for a suspect and that was assuming the fingerprinting occurred in your own city or county. Fingerprints collected in Florida were impossible to search for a match.
The FBI setup a computer system that collected and computerized fingerprint cards from about 1990 onward and had over 100 million fingerprints on file to match. As four of the five cases that Damian highlighted were from 1980-1990, there was a chance that the fingerprints from the old cases were never matched against the FBI’s computer system. Could Damian reach inside the firewalls of the FBI to check on the fingerprint matches? Of course what she was asking him to do was illegal, but it was for a very good cause and he understood her request as cold cases like this might take fifteen weeks to get results officially from the FBI. If he could instead peek inside their system and run the analysis himself, Natalie would be that many weeks ahead in solving the case.
It was an intriguing request. He was sure he could break into their system because he, as yet, had never failed to access a computer server. However, the key here was rather ironic. He needed to not leave any ‘fingerprints’ behind when he broke into their system. He replied to Natalie that he could fulfill her request, but he wanted to think overnight about the implications of doing so. That settled, he turned to researching his mermaid from earlier.
Damian spent about fifteen minutes assembling a dossier of sorts on Ariana. His conclusion was that she meant him no harm and was actually a person he’d probably enjoy knowing, not that their paths would ever cross again since he didn’t dabble in venture capital and he hoped she learned her lesson about watching her air tank while scuba diving. She had to be a risk taker as it was never recommended to scuba alone. He glanced at the time and decided it was time to get his work out in before heading across the bay to the Oakland harbor.
Two hours later he sat in Pete’s pub talking with Pete on how his alcohol dispensing system was working and whether he should make any changes to it to better meet Pete’s needs. Each upgrade he created for Pete was then worked into the system sold to other small pub owners. Pete asked if he could include an inventory system, that would calculate his weekly alcohol consumption and then he could use that for ordering from the various distributors. He presently felt he was carrying more inventory than he needed, but it would help if he had the data to better decide what his weekly alcohol needs were. He also thought he might be able to spot some trends sooner from his patrons such as the recent rage with Fireball, a cinnamon whisky. He’d run out of it for about six weeks in a row before he wised up and kept spare bottles in his office that
he purchased from a local big box store. Damian took notes and thought he could work something out for Pete in a few weeks. They’d just finished their conversation when Trevor walked in. Trevor must have looked like his father as Damian could see little of Natalie in him. He was slightly shorter than Damian’s six feet, with a nearly bald head. He had a severe receding hairline and had given up having any hair on his head in his twenties. He liked to run 10K races and so had the long lean look of a runner. Despite the seriousness of his job, he always had a huge smile that nearly blinded anyone nearby.
Pete provided Trevor a cold Blue Moon as soon as his butt hit the barstool. There was no need to look at the menu because the two men always ate Pete’s cheeseburgers and fries when they appeared at the bar. In time they moved over to a table and dug into their meal.
“How did you find tickets to tonight’s game?” Damian asked.
“Pure luck. One of my office mates sold his set, but then the sale failed at the last moment. I offered him twice the face value and he took it. It helped that I’d helped him on a case of his last week, of course, and he owed me.”
“It’s so exciting to be there and potentially witness history, perhaps we’ll see seventy three wins in a single regular season in just under three hours. It’s going to be an electric crowd.”
“I hope to see Curry hit the four hundred 3 pointers mark. It feels like each of those records will stand for my lifetime. I love the fact that their skill records are amazing, rather than sheer physical strength on the floor. It’s like watching a basketball genius at work.”
“Yeah, it’s going to be a historic night,” Damian said. “What else is going on in your life?”
“Haley and I are talking about getting engaged, so expect to hear the announcement soon,” smiled Trevor. Then he frowned and said, “Sorry man, I shouldn’t have said that on this day,” and he looked crestfallen.
Damian had felt just a dim memory of when he asked Jen to marry him, and thinking about his earlier resolution said, “It’s okay, this has been a taking stock of my life kind of day and I’d concluded earlier that I needed to start living more, beginning with accepting your invitation for tonight’s game. Attending a game on the death of the anniversary of my family’s murder, rather than wallowing in depression for the entire day and night, is a new event. I guess time is beginning to soften the wound.”
Trevor couldn’t think of anything to add to Damian’s statement, so he just nodded and decided to head to less emotional waters and said, “Mom mentioned that she’d pulled you in on a new assignment of hers. What does she want you to do this time?”
“Since you’re a respected member of the California Bar, I can’t tell you,” Damian replied grinning.
“Oh God, she must have asked you to hack into the Governor’s account or something; you should really consider whether you want to go to jail. You won’t have unlimited computers there.”
“Yeah, but with the way I engineer things, I’ll spend the first month improving the place for the convicts and the second month planning my escape. I might even make it back in time for the NBA finals.”
Trevor just groaned and added, “The NBA finals in what year? 2030?”
Poor Trevor, the line of questioning had just gone from bad to worse, so Damian decide to steer the conversation into calmer waters.
“So I had a mermaid visit my island today,” Damian remarked.
Trevor choked on his beer with this last comment. Damian waited for him to catch his breath and he finally croaked out a, “What?”
Damian had watched the emotions chase across Trevor’s face; concern, briefly wonder if it was hallucinations, and then decide that whatever happened he would sit back and enjoy the story.
“I was working on a wave power invention when my underwater perimeter alarm sounded. I grabbed my slingshot and water gun and went outside to investigate. A woman surfaced with her scuba gear; she’d run out of air.”
“Wow,” was all Trevor could say since he never visited the island and his mom said it was more protected than Fort Knox.
“I used my drone to lift her tank up the cliff to me and sent her down some tea. A few minutes later I was back with a filled tank that I sent down to her. She returned the tea thermos to me with her business card inside and she set off to swim underwater back to Belvedere.”
Trevor blinked trying to think of something relevant to add to the conversation, but he was stuck back in the vision of a mermaid on the rocks of Damian’s island, using a drone to move objects, the fact that there was an air compressor on the island, and finally that someone would want to swim underwater across that area of the bay. Where to start? Finally Trevor admitted, “Damian, since you’re turning over a new leaf, you need to invite me out to your island so I can see these quirks – mermaids and drones in the middle of San Francisco Bay.”
Damian paused and then nodded, “Okay, there’s a guy in the Richmond Marina that I make arrangements with to bring your mother out to the island. So when you want to come, let me know and I’ll arrange it.”
Trevor, never one to let grass grow under his feet said, “How about this weekend? Say Saturday at 11. Do you have a TV? We could watch the first playoff game.”
Whoa thought Damian, uneasy about the thought of having anyone inside his home for the length of a basketball game, but then he thought, turn over a new leaf and start living your life.
“I do have TV, but no beer, so you’ll have to bring a six pack with you. If game time is 12:30, you just need to be at the marina by 12. That will give you plenty of time to get out to the island and climb the hill or ride my zip line.”
“Okay,” was all Trevor said; unwilling to put any hesitation or roadblocks in the way of visiting Damian. Having made arrangements for the weekend, the two men left the bar to walk to Oracle Arena to watch basketball history being made.
Chapter Seven
The next morning, the two cats and Damian were sitting at his breakfast counter. They were eyeing his bowl of milk and cereal, and he was giving them the evil eye to keep them away until he finished. It was like this every morning and he tried giving them just a plain bowl of milk, but they let him know they liked the additional flavor provided by his cereal remnants and so this routine started. He said to them, “We’re going to have a guest this weekend; are you guys going to show yourselves?”
They blinked at him, then Bailey leaned over to clean his leg as though Damian wasn’t worthy of an answer, Bella just looked at him and blinked her eyes, giving him a look that said ‘cut the conversation and hurry up and give me my milk.’ When Natalie was on the island, they stayed out of sight, but she was never there for more than an hour. Trevor would be there for three hours so they might come out of hiding. All three of them liked to hide from the rest of humanity, but it would be interesting to watch them adjust as he interacted more.
On today’s agenda was to see if he could hack into the fingerprint system at the FBI without detection. His money was on his own technical skill. He checked out the news to see if any hacker announced getting into the security system, but all he found was fingerprints stolen from the federal government’s Office of Personnel Management which contained the prints of those employees with security clearances. That wasn’t the system he was after or likely the fingerprint sources. He would hope that none of the employees with security clearances had fingerprints that belonged in a criminal justice system.
Natalie sent the fingerprint request for matching to the FBI in case he couldn’t get into their system, but he loved the challenge. Stretching his arms and cracking his knuckles, he went to work. He could approach the hack a variety of ways, but his first choice was to borrow a username and password from someone with access to the system. His presence would be much harder to detect, and frankly it didn’t feel as criminal as exploiting the fingerprint software. He set to work figuring out who had access to the system. Once he had their names and the username for FBI employees he went to work trying passwords.
Two hours later, he found what he was looking for and was in the system. He then sent the fingerprints in for a match that were lifted from the crime scenes of the five cases he selected and Natalie confirmed as being the first cases to work on. In total, there were fifty sets of prints to match. He checked the database, looking for ways to mirror it onto his own computer. Sure it wouldn’t be the most updated as he assumed that new entries are added to the database every day, but given that these were cold cases that they were researching, it should work for most if not all of their cases.
The first set came back with a match, and he set that information aside for the moment while he looked for a way to copy the database. It was so large that he couldn’t do a single copy and go. He recognized the company that created the database for the FBI and knew how to write queries to copy entire columns of data from their database. The difficulty with copying a column at a time was that it was a relational database, data in one column having a relationship to data in another column. It wouldn’t do him any good to have just a column of fifty million fingerprints, without the corresponding names to match. Even the names were probably not enough given the frequency with which people’s last names were Smith or Garcia.
This was such a huge database he thought his best bet was to implant a backdoor command string into the database that would allow him endless access. The fingerprint data he located in the database would give Natalie a head start on her investigation, while she waited for the same information to come through the proper route from the FBI. Since he understood commands for this database, he had the backdoor access implanted in no time and then he looked at the coding that produced matches of fingerprints. He decided that at some point he would leave an anonymous message with the Bureau of how they could speed up their fingerprint matches.