C T Ferguson Box Set

by Tom Fowler

  Not much changed as I watched. Most people have boring Internet habits. Even visits to adult sites aren’t interesting from a traffic perspective.

  With nothing of note happening, I got in my car and left for Perry Hall.

  Later, after we got ran, showered, and spent some time in the bedroom, Bobbi pulled things out of the fridge. “Want turkey burgers?” she said.

  “Sounds good,” I said, sitting on her couch. This was our third time running, showering, and having sex until we tired ourselves out. I could get used to it, and I got the distinct feeling Bobbi could, too. My thoughts drifted back to Gloria. We didn’t owe each other anything, and she was popular and outgoing enough to have someone else to have fun with. Still, I wondered how long I could keep seeing both of them, however informal the arrangements were. In college, doing this didn’t make me feel like a cad. Five years out of grad school, it did. Funny things, consciences.

  “Can you give me a hand in the kitchen?” Bobbi said.

  I went in to see what I could do. Bobbi cooked three turkey burgers on a George Foreman grill. I didn’t hear much sizzle from the grill, but I could smell the ground turkey broiling. “What do you need?” I said.

  “I still need to toast the buns and make a salad,” Bobbi said. Her kitchen was small and the grill, the rolls, and the salad ingredients she spread out consumed nearly all the counter space. I got to work slicing and dicing vegetables and selecting the perfect avocado to accompany the turkey burgers. Bobbi busied herself seasoning the turkey as it cooked and toasting the buns. I added my sliced and diced veggies—including carrots and artichoke hearts—to a bowl of lettuce and spinach. It needed dressing, so I rummaged around in Bobbi’s fridge and cabinets.

  I mixed a simple vinaigrette, whisked it until my arm grew tired, poured it into the salad bowl, and tossed everything together. Bobbi took the turkey burgers off the grill, set each on a roll, and added lettuce, tomato, and avocado. I availed myself of a dash of barbecue sauce from her fridge. Bobbi carried her burger and two domestic light beers to her small dining room table; I carried the salad and my burger.

  Bobbi and I were both hungry, so we wolfed down salad and half our burgers without talking. After another round of salad, I slowed down. “What’s wrong with your car?” I said after another bite of my burger.

  “It’s getting old,” Bobbi said. “I bought it in college, and it wasn’t new then.”

  “You’ve got a good job now,” I said.

  Bobbi frowned. “It’s OK. I mean, I like it. It just doesn’t pay a lot. I was an intern before I got the job so they’re not paying me much.”

  “Sounds like you should be looking for a job, too.”

  “I am,” Bobbi said. “My résumé is on the coffee table. You mind looking it over while I clean up?”

  Except for learning the basics of it in high school, I had never assembled a résumé. Still, how hard could it be? I sat on the couch and looked at Bobbi’s CV. She led with her education. My teacher in high school, good old Mr. Williams, impressed on us to lead off with job history. Everybody went to school somewhere, he would tell us. Where you’ve worked is more important. However, Bobbi had a master’s degree in a STEM field, which was worth shouting from the rooftops.

  Her job history was sparse. She listed some good accomplishments at her current job. I saw she interned at Hopkins while going for her master’s. Developer and Website Designer, Graduate Admissions Office.

  Uh-oh.

  Below the department address, I saw what I dreaded.

  Supervisor: Daniel Esposito.

  Shit.

  There were a million ways the revelation could be bad for my current case, and I couldn’t think of a single thing to counter it. Chris Sellers went to Hopkins for his advanced degrees. Bobbi likely could have accessed his information. She could have fed it to Danny Esposito, who in turn gave it to his brother. I now wondered if she even contacted Chris when I asked her to.

  I was sleeping with the enemy—or at least the enemy’s mole.

  So much for getting used to running and sexing with Bobbi.

  I thought about what to do. My hand almost crumpled Bobbi’s résumé so I set it back down. I was mad enough to confront her here and now but was it my best move? Did she still provide any value to the Esposito brothers? Severing the connection could make them unpredictable. I didn’t want to risk it with Brian, Chris, and Anna.

  Bobbi washed dishes in the sink when I walked into the kitchen. She smiled when she saw me. Its warmth made her even more beautiful. I needed to know to what level she was involved in this whole mess, but pursuing it would have to wait. For now, I simply wanted to get away. “Hey, I need to go,” I said. “A detective’s life is never easy.”

  “So soon?” Bobbi said. She shot me an adorable pout. Dammit, why did she have to work for Danny Esposito?

  “Yeah, I’m afraid so,” I said. “But I’m sure I’ll talk to you soon.”

  Bobbi wrapped me in a hug and gave me a lingering kiss. I wished her involvement could be chalked up to coincidence. She was a great girl. I didn’t want her to be in league with the enemy.

  I left her apartment expecting to be disappointed.

  I pounded on the Caprice’s steering wheel as I drove away. Part of me thought I should have seen this coming. Bobbi had been nice and helpful all along. She was pretending to help me, probably trying to get information out of me—and I told her some things about the case—all while feeding information to the Esposito brothers. Another part of me thought the only part of her involvement I knew for certain was feeding Chris’ name to Danny Esposito. The rest was above her pay grade.

  The more I thought about it, the more the second one made sense. Bobbi worked in the office. Her job gave her access to records, and her knowledge of the people would have been something Danny Esposito didn’t have. She gave him Chris’ name, and he then gave it to his brother. Afterward, though, Bobbi didn’t have to be involved. She worked with Chris. When I said he was missing, I didn’t recall a guilty reaction from her. A nice, caring person like Bobbi would have felt bad if she thought she had something to do with Chris’ disappearance.

  Of course, I wanted the second option to be true.

  Wanting it didn’t make it so, of course. I would need to be careful around my run and fun partner. Breaking all contact with her while working this case made the best solution. If I did talk to her, I needed to stop giving details of the case. I told her about Esposito, Chris and Anna going into hiding, and other things. If she were feeding information to Danny Esposito—and, by extension, his asshole brother—then I’d given her some choice intel.

  While considering what to do about Bobbi dominated my thoughts, Joey called. “They left,” he said when I answered.

  “What?”

  “They left the house.”

  “Seriously?” I said.

  “Yeah,” Joey said. “A half-hour ago. Cameras saw them leave and walk up the street.”

  “A half-hour ago?”

  “I figured they might have gone out for a walk. Stupid . . . but no need to panic. However, a half-hour is a long walk.”

  “All three of them went?” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Goddammit.” How dumb could they be over and over? “I was headed home, but I’ll go to Columbia instead. Maybe I’ll catch them at the house.”

  “Let me know,” Joey said and hung up. I could hear the frustration in his voice. His job required his clients to listen to him, thus maximizing their chances of survival. When they flouted his advice, especially after they had already displayed some boneheaded behavior, frustration was bound to set in.

  I stayed on I-95, bypassing the Baltimore exits and continuing to Columbia.

  I got to Joey’s house and saw one light on inside. Joey hadn’t called back or texted, so I knew they hadn’t come back yet. If the three of them went for a walk, they were gone for fifty minutes now, and I hadn’t seen them on my way into the neighborhood. This wasn’
t good. From the car, I called Chris and Anna, getting no answer from either. I didn’t call the burner phone I gave Brian Sellers. If something bad happened, I didn’t want to give away him having a secret cell phone.

  There was no activity on the street. I got out of the car and made a loop of the house. Nothing looked out of the ordinary: no windows broken, the doors looked unmolested, and no corpses lay in the grass. What the hell would possess Chris, Brian, and Anna to leave? They enjoyed a good situation here. Esposito didn’t know where they were, and Joey was going to relocate them. All they had to do was sit in the house for a few days and wait. And they couldn’t even do something so simple to save their asses.

  I called Joey. “You want me to break in?” I said when he answered.

  “No sign of them?”

  “None.”

  Joey sighed into the phone. “No,” he said. “There’s no point. The cameras haven’t shown anything since they left.”

  “All right.”

  “Thanks for the courtesy call before breaking in.”

  “It’s always good to try new things,” I said.

  Gloria called as I drove home. I ignored it and let it go to voicemail. She would want to do fun things which would distract me from working. On a normal night, I'd be all about Gloria's usual methods of distraction. Tonight, however, I needed to focus on the case at hand. Three people's lives could depend on me.

  Joey lived closer to Columbia than I did, so I stopped at his house. He frowned when he answered the door and didn't change his expression as we sat and discussed what happened. "Did you see anything before they left the house?" I said.

  "Like what?"

  "Did one of them get a phone call? Did you see them go online and look something up?"

  "No," Joey said, shaking his head. The frown remained in place. "They all went into the kitchen, looked in the fridge and the pantry, and then left."

  "Did they talk?" I said.

  "Sure, but my cameras don't get audio. I ain't trying to eavesdrop."

  Joey brought up one of his extra computers. He was the only person I knew who could match me in terms of technology owned and used. I knew more about how to use it (and misuse it) but Joey owned at least as much of it as I did, and when it came to specialized things like printing, he was way ahead. From his PC, I opened an SSH connection to my server.

  Esposito was still in the dark regarding the stripped SSL at his router. I combed through a bunch of captured web traffic and didn't find anything of interest. "What about text messages?" Joey said.

  "From his computer?" I said.

  "You're the one who says this guy hates technology," Joey said with a shrug. "What happened to his guy's phone you knocked over?"

  "Didn't stay knocked over for long."

  "So maybe this asshole doesn't trust phones," said Joey. "Maybe he thinks texting from his PC is more secure."

  In absence of a better theory, I decided to work with it. It sounded plausible on some level. I added a traffic filter, further narrowing my results to anything using HTTPS and connecting to an SMS device for texting. The filter gave me a slew of results. There was a signal here the whole time, and my initial filter put too much noise in the way. How much time did I already lose?

  Joey sat with me as I combed through the captured SMS messages. Swaths of them were unimportant, but then we hit a goldmine. Esposito and one of his cronies exchanged texts not even two hours ago.

  Esposito: I think we have a line on the girl.

  Crony: How?

  Esposito: Looks like she used a credit card again.

  Crony: Seriously?

  I flashed on the same thought. After I found Anna and Chris the first time, I warned her about doing things like using her credit card again. These people would never learn, and now they endangered poor Brian, too. All he wanted to do was find his brother again. Maybe they were being held captive together.

  I kept reading.

  Esposito: Different credit card. It was actually her mother's.

  Crony: I guess the geek you got paid off for you.

  Esposito: He did. I want you to get the asshole who took my money and anyone who's with him. If he doesn't have it or doesn't want to pay, let's see how long he sticks to his greed when other people are involved.

  Esposito hired his own hacker. For someone who hated technology, he embraced it in selective ways. It made sense, though. Now I wondered how long my router hack would last. I couldn't count on it long-term.

  "Her mother's credit card," Joey said. His frown remained and, if anything, only deepened. "Jesus Christ."

  "Just because he picked them up in Columbia doesn't mean they're still in the area," I said. I combed through the rest of the conversation, but Esposito never gave his goon any instructions about where to take Chris, Brian, and Anna. It must have been understood.

  "We don't know where they are," Joey said.

  "No," I said. "Esposito was out of town for a few years. Now he's back. He'd have to set something up quickly to be able to hold people he's captured."

  "One of Tony's old places?"

  I shook my head. "No way Tony would go for it."

  Joey and I both stared at the monitor, looking for some bolt of inspiration to emerge from the pixels and strike us. Joey relented first. "What now?" he said.

  "Not much to do but wait," I said.

  "For what?"

  "Esposito is a braggart. He'll want to rub this in my face, especially after Delaware."

  "So you think he's going to call and taunt you at some point?" Joey said.

  "I know he will."

  "Better hope he does it before he kills one of these three."

  "I am," I said.

  Chapter 16

  I didn't do waiting well. It's something I've never had the patience for. I can stand by while computer processes take their time and do their things. Those are logical delays, and I know what the results will be. Those, I can handle. Other things, not so much. I have little patience for just waiting, especially when the result is a giant unknown. At this point, I didn't even know if Chris, Brian, and Anna were still alive.

  After I left Joey's, I went back to his safehouse. Before, I snooped around the property. Now I needed to look inside. Joey would see me on the cameras and understand. I wouldn't scratch his precious locks. Based on what he described, I didn't expect to find anything, but I was willing to be surprised. I drove to the safehouse, parked across the street and a couple houses down, and surveyed the scene.

  The street was as empty and boring as the last time I visited. I got out of the car and did another circuit around the house. As before, nothing. I walked up to the front porch, looked around for miscreants and curious neighbors, saw neither, and got to work. Joey chose good locks. It took me almost two minutes to get past the regular lock, and a little longer for the deadbolt. Every so often, I would knock on the door to keep up appearances for the neighbors. Almost five minutes after I started, I walked into the house.

  The alarm was silent. I turned it off via the keypad. It flashed a SYSTEM DISABLED message before returning to its usual blank green screen. Checking houses after people vanished could not be counted among my many talents. Still, I saw it done on TV plenty of times. How hard could it be? The house had a basement, so I started there. Armed with pocket flashlight and gun, I went down the steps.

  The stairs opened into a large rec room Joey never did anything with. He didn’t need to; really; the house had two living rooms, and he didn’t live here anyway. The room was at least twenty by ten and being devoid of all but carpet and air was easy to declare empty. I moved on to the extra bedroom. Nothing. Ditto the full bath and laundry room. All that remained was an unfinished storage room.

  I stood outside the room and felt for the light switch. I flipped it on. Nothing. I moved to the other side of the doorway, gun at the ready. Leading with the flashlight, I took a tentative step into the room. The flashlight was small but powerful; its LEDs could disorient someone if shone
right in their face. The beam lanced through the darkness and showed me the emptiness of the room. Even Joey’s built-in shelves held nothing but a small box of cleaning supplies.

  The first floor was equally vacant like the basement. Two living rooms, a dining room, a small study, and a half bath held not even a cricket. Joey said Chris, Brian, and Anna gathered in the kitchen before heading out of the house. I searched the kitchen table, all the cabinets and cupboards, the drawers, and the pantry. I peered under and behind appliances. All I found was nothing.

  Brian was a sharp kid. He should have been aware of the stupidity of what Chris and Anna considered. Maybe he left a message somewhere. I went back through the first floor, looking under couch cushions, pulling out desk drawers, and stopping just short of ransacking the place. Still nothing. If I hadn’t known three people occupied this house just a couple hours ago, only their dirty dishes in the sink would have betrayed them.

  Expecting to find more of the same, I went upstairs to three bedrooms, two full baths, and a large linen closet. The master bedroom contained a walk-in closet with enough space to fit another bed, along with a sitting room, and a bathroom bigger than my bedroom. I looked inside, under, and behind everything I could and found nothing.

  The second bedroom was smaller, about three-quarters the size, with a small walk-in closet. It was as empty of anything useful as the master. Ditto the smallish third bedroom, the second bathroom (I even looked inside the toilet tank), and the linen closet. I couldn’t claim to be surprised by the lack of anything resembling a clue, but I still felt frustrated.

  On my way out of the house, I offered a giant shrug to one of the first floor cameras. I turned the alarm back on, locked the bottom lock from the inside, re-locked the deadbolt with my burglar’s tools, and left.