Willow Glen Heist

by Alec Peche

  “You’ll have to search for authors that tell similar tales then. Check out Amazon and see what else they recommend if you like Harry Potter.”

  “That’s a good idea, I’ll do that.”

  “We’ll leave in under an hour, I just want to see to Bailey and Bella and check my supplies then we can leave.”

  “Ok.”

  “Did you respond to the Facebook comment?”

  “No I was waiting for you to decide it was okay.”

  “As soon as we finish eating, we’ll go down together and I’ll watch you hit the button. Then we’ll wait ten minutes and see if there’s a response. If not, then we’ll go about our day.”

  “Sounds like a plan. Why ten minutes?”

  “Ten minutes may tell us if someone is monitoring the account. You might get a response right back, or there may be dead silence.”

  Hermione just nodded and continued to work on her pancake stack as they ate in a comfortable silence, not rushing to finish. After cleaning up, they went downstairs for Hermione to enter the emoticon they agreed upon in response to what Damian thought was a fake Facebook comment. Hermione hit the keys and then Damian sat with his timer counting down the ten minutes.

  At the six minute mark, a response came back at them again in Chinese. Hermione translated it with a note of depression in her voice.

  “Hannah is that you?”

  Hannah was Hermione’s real name but they had changed it to cover up her identity. Hannah had picked Hermione so that she could keep the same initials and it was the name of a beloved character in the Harry Potter books. It ended up being a good choice as it was an instant ice breaker when she entered the new school.

  “My parents are too smart to put my name in print like that. You’re right Damian, the original message isn’t from my parents,” Hermione said with a sign and watery eyes.

  “Look at the positive side; it means that someone is after you.”

  “What’s positive about that?”

  “I think it suggests that your parents are alive. Why would anyone be after you unless it is to have you available to put pressure on your parents to do something? Maybe if they have you, your parents will come out of hiding to come to your rescue.”

  “There are a lot of maybes in that explanation, but yeah perhaps you’re right. I feel like I’m back to the beginning and I still don’t know if they’re alive.”

  “Regardless, ignore the message and let’s get ready to return to Ariana’s. You have a busy day in front of you.”

  Ten minutes later they were bouncing across the waves in Damian’s ultralight two seat boat. The wind and the bay worked magic on their moods so they arrived at Ariana’s dock with smiles on their faces despite the stress of the last twenty-four hours.

  They walked inside the house and greeted Ariana who had papers spread out on her kitchen counter. Pointing to the mess, she said to Damian, “I have things for you to sign to get your new company underway. We can do that after we play water polo. How was your sleepover, kiddo?”

  “It was a grind,” she replied.

  Ariana hadn’t expected to hear that answer and said, “What?” with alarm in her voice while looking at Damian.

  “There was a message on her family Facebook page last night in Chinese that initially appeared to have come from her parents. But I think we agree that it’s not from them,” he replied quietly and Hermione nodded.

  Ariana asked for greater detail of the situation and was dismayed to hear of Damian’s plan to re-enter her parents’ house.

  “Is that safe? It’s been four months, what do you hope to find?”

  “I don’t know what I’ll find. Maybe there will be something new on the security tapes that will provide a clue, maybe I’ll walk away empty handed. If the house still contains a thug; then that’s new information,” Damian said with a shrug.

  “Maybe the house has been sold,” Ariana suggested softly. “It’s been empty a long time.”

  “Actually, it’s still owned by the Sherwoods. Hermione’s parents’ estate continues to pay all the bills.”

  “Oh, well that’s good news.”

  “Yeah, and if they weren’t, I’d pay the bills since it’s Hermione’s inheritance.”

  “Do you want some help? I suppose I could creep into the house with you,” Ariana offered tentatively.

  Damian laughed at the tone of her voice as much as the words.

  “If it makes you feel any better about breaking and entering, I was very nervous about breaking into the house the last time. What if I got caught by the good guys or the bad guys? Actually, it went smoothly with no blowback on me, so I’ll still be scared this time, but slightly less so since I’ve done it once already.”

  “Can we just go outside and play water polo?” Hermione asked. “This conversation is making me feel weird.”

  Ariana replied, “Sure honey and I’m sorry I didn’t think of the impact this conversation could have on you. Let’s go outside and play.”

  She gave Damian a look that said, ‘we’ll discuss this later when the kid isn’t in hearing distance.’

  Half an hour later, they were all breathing heavy after a rousing twenty minutes of one on one water polo play. Ariana called for a time out and the three of them sat on the dock catching their breath.

  “You think you’re in shape, and then twenty minutes of play with a star swimmer has you crying for mercy,” Ariana said.

  “If you don’t make the water polo team tomorrow, it’s only because all the other athletes were on the Olympic team,” Damian added.

  “Thanks, guys. I can’t wait to try out and see how I do when compared to my classmates. Of course the game will be different when there are fourteen people in the pool rather than three, but at least I had a little practice before playing.”

  “When will you know if you’re on the team?” Damian asked.

  “I’m guessing, we’ll all be on the team this week, and he’ll begin cutting players the following week as we roll into the first match,” Hermione said.

  Damian was impressed with her insight into the strategy of a coach. He nodded and said, “Well I’m heading home after I sign those documents for you. I need to spend some time on Natalie’s bank heist, and then I’ll prepare for the night’s excursion into your parents’ home. By the way, is there anything you want me to retrieve from any of the rooms?”

  Hermione thought about it for a while and then asked, “Do you think I’ll ever live there again?”

  Damian caught Ariana’s eye, trying to read her mind; then he replied, “I don’t think so. If your parents return, unless they know each bad guy that was chasing them is dead or in prison, they’ll need to stay hidden and find a new place to live. At least that would be my strategy if I were them.”

  Hermione nodded and then asked for a few things in the house. Damian wrote the list down and the area the items were supposed to be and moved over to Ariana’s counter to read and sign the documents she had laid out for him. Twenty minutes later, he was back in his boat starting the journey across the bay. He and Ariana hadn’t had an opportunity to discuss Hermione’s reaction to the Facebook post, but there was no immediate urgency to do so.

  Chapter 6

  Damian settled into writing the program that would begin looking for serial numbers of bank notes in circulation and jewelry items that were alleged to be in the safe deposit boxes in the bank. For those items, he was using an item recognition program to see if there was an online auction of any similar items. He’d check sites like eSale, Cassim, Agave, or Beetle. Who knew whether the items were resold in the US or China or India? By choosing these four companies, he would cover sales in most of the world and he might get a sense of whether any items had been resold from the heist.

  Both analyses were going to be extremely large data runs. In the first case, there were twelve serial numbers on a twenty dollar bill which equaled 479 million number combinations for just the twenty. Add the other denominations of currenc
y and it was an extremely large database to match. Then add that the average one dollar bill moves two miles a day and changes hands at least weekly, then banks all over the United States plus the rest of the world might be handling bills from the heist. If he weren’t so lazy at the moment, he’d add up all these variables to determine just how large a database would cover the scope of where the money might be now.

  He’d have to use some of his rented cloud computing power. Soon he had mega capacity computers searching for his data and an estimated time of completion of sixteen hours. With that processing, he sat down to plan his visit to Hermione’s home. He’d take much of the same equipment he did on the last visit including his forward looking infrared sensor and another Halothane bomb in case he needed to put anyone asleep. He had similar protective wear and would purchase clothes to change into and then discard for the night’s trespass. He also had his mandatory water gun filled with pepper juice for protection.

  He loaded it all into the two seater with a plan to pick up his truck from the marina once he got there. Then he just needed to hit a discount department store for the few remaining items and wait for dusk to appear. When it was an hour before dusk he steered his boat toward the marina, wondering what the night would bring for him. Ariana had demanded that he text her as soon as he finished and was safely in his truck. If he failed to do so by a preset time, she would call the police on him.

  Once he had all of his supplies ready he still had another thirty minutes to kill so he grabbed a foot long sandwich and diet cola for dinner and spent the remaining time waiting for dusk to arrive eating. Finally he drove to the empty street near the house and changed into dark clothing and darkened his face. He then drove slowly by the house, close enough to register heat sources. Holding the scanner up, he noted that there were no inhabitants in Hermione’s family home. He’d still take the Halothane bomb in case there were any surprises.

  He parked on the empty street and then moved quietly toward the home, and opened the gate to go into the back yard. He was out of the street view in the back yard and since he might have to spend some time picking a lock, he wanted to do it where people couldn’t see him. He had the codes and keys to the house from Hermione, but if the bad guys were smart, they would have changed both by now if for no other reason than to frustrate Hermione if she ever returned home.

  He debated whether to block the use of the cameras before he entered the property, but it might just end up being a waste of time; or he might miss shutting one of them down which might be an alert if anyone was watching. He was carrying a fabric that resisted bullets and did much to cloak his presence. It’s wasn’t as good as Harry Potter’s invisibility cape, but it was better than nothing. Pulling out the key, he tried the back door and he heard the latch unlock. He also heard something behind him rustle in the bushes, but he didn’t turn around to look. Before he entered the property, he done his infrared scan looking for heat sources and discovered the presence of squirrels and probably a cat and he was convinced that they were making the sounds in the bushes.

  Opening the door, he entered and looked at the key pad for the security system just inside the door. The word on the panel was bypass meaning the system wasn’t armed. He would arm it before he left he decided, and he moved about the home still under the cloak. He went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. The smells were bad as the remaining food items had expired at least two months previously. He wanted to just empty the unit and unplug it. He pulled out a trash bag and emptied both the freezer and refrigerator in under two minutes and placed the trash bag outside the back door. Then he left both doors open and unplugged the unit. He stopped a moment and took pictures of each room as he quickly went through gathering the items that Hermione requested.

  He approached Hermione’s secure room in the bedroom and spent ten minutes looking at the computer system. It had run continuously since he was last here except for one power failure of two hours. He wrote the time of the failure down so he could verify later that it was a neighborhood blackout. He took the tapes out of the recording device and inserted new ones. He also installed a camera for the room and software so that he could manipulate the computer from his home which he should have done during his first visit. He had one final stop in the master bedroom before he left the house.

  Pictures taken, objects that Hermione wanted collected, and security discs in his duffle for later viewing, he made to leave the house. He was walking firmly down the stairs when he heard the front door open.

  He quickly retreated to the second floor, his heart racing. Crap. His first thought was that the intruders would discover the refrigerator wide open and the trash outside of the back door and know someone might still be in the house during their absence. He listened a while to the intruders’ movements and discovered them to be neighborhood punks out to rob the unoccupied house. They must have picked the locks on the front door. He debated what to do for a few moments. He decided to place a 911 call from a house phone, which was amazingly, still working.

  He dialed the number and the emergency operator answered,

  “This is emergency dispatch, what is your emergency?”

  Damian replied in a soft, deep voice, “There are teenagers that just entered my home and they’re robbing it,” He reeled off the address and then told the operator that he had to end the call as they were coming. He hung up and then quietly made his way through the house and out the back door, engaging the alarm system as he went. After a quick debate, he decided to leave the stuff he’d pulled out of the refrigerator on the back porch with the hope that the crime scene techs would discard it. He was lugging two heavy duffels, close to reaching his truck, when he saw the first police car traveling down the street. While he wanted to wait and watch the fun, he knew that returning to the marina was his wisest choice. The cool thing about the teenagers was that their visit covered up his own, if the bad guys were still monitoring the house.

  Once he reached the marina, he took a deep breath and tried to slow his racing heart. He really wasn’t cut out for this cloak and dagger stuff he decided. He texted Ariana that he was at the marina and heading back to his island with the stuff that Hermione requested.

  She texted back one word, ‘unharmed?’

  ‘Yes, unharmed,’ he replied. Then seeing is was 12:30 am added, ‘I’ll call you in the morning.’

  She replied, ‘Before 7:30,’ a reminder that Ariana had to drive Hermione to school.

  He put the duffle bags in the boat, shining a flashlight around the interior before he cast off the ties. Since finding Hermione in his boat four months ago, he reflexively searched his boat before leaving the marina to ensure that no other surprises were waiting for him. Five minutes later he pulled up to his island watching the water craft door open and the folding dock unfold for his use. Shortly thereafter, he deposited the duffle filled with the items Hermione requested on her bed, and dropped the other in his lab before heading upstairs. He was tempted to study the security tapes before heading to bed, but he knew that would take two to three hours and he needed to be awake by 7:30 am to talk with Ariana.

  Chapter 7

  Damian called Ariana and replayed for her the night’s work. Just before he called her, he checked the Shepard Canyon police blotter and noted that two teenage boys were arrested as juveniles for the burglary of Hermione’s house. Hermione was listening on Ariana’s speaker phone and cheered with the news that the boys were caught. Damian would be over sometime in the next few days and would bring the duffle with him containing the items the teenager had requested. He mentioned the contents of the refrigerator, resetting the alarm, and the security discs. Mostly good news, but still a lot to carry on her shoulders on her first day of school. It was a short conversation because they needed to get going to school.

  “Hey Hermione, good luck on your first day of school and enjoy your junior year!” Damian remarked.

  “The kid just rolled her eyes,” Ariana said with a laugh just before they ende
d the call.

  Damian made himself breakfast and then headed downstairs with a large mug of coffee. He briefly debated what to do first and settled on looking at the run of money and other items from the bank heist case. His curiosity was killing him as to what the massive data run would show. He spent the next hour looking at the data and thinking about how to use the information for the case. He then wrote another to program that would visually display on a map each serial number. He let that run then went on to look at what the data revealed for the non-monetary stolen artifacts of the heist. He found about a twenty-five percent match and went on to look at the items.

  Jewelry and coins had been pawned from all over the United States, Canada, Mexico, Europe, and some Asian countries. Then he thought to do a match of a country by country basis for both the currency, and the jewelry and coins. He found location clusters for the currency and in some cases for the jewelry as well. He studied his map and thought that it looked like the bank robbers sat on their stolen items for a year and then began frequent trips out of California to start fencing the stolen goods. He gave it another two hours of data crunching work and then sent the document and map off to Natalie.

  Next, he turned to the mystery of Hermione and her parents. Looking at the discs of the security cameras over the past four months was an endlessly dull exercise. It appeared that the man stationed in the house departed about a week after Damian visited the house and since that time, the house had sat empty until he and some thieving teenagers visited the house on the same night. He made a note to himself to see if he could figure out if the house alarms were set and then he thought about how to make the house alarm on one of his computers. He could protect the house better if he knew when someone appeared to be about to rob it.

  The man that had stayed behind left his image on different cameras and he ran a facial recognition scan to identify him. He ran him through several systems with no result and then he thought about the passport control at the borders. He was soon inside Homeland Security’s database that contained the logs of all people entering the United States. He downloaded their database and exited their system. He then used his facial recognition to run the man against this database.