Take the Fourth

by Jeffrey Walton

  Chapter 8

  His remark for calling himself an idiot earlier was the fact he removed his hat and put on another pair of glasses and his lucky baseball cap, to someone watching, in his mind, this was a sure tell sign of someone changing his disguise. “Idiot, it’s the little things like that, that will be trouble down the road,” he thought to himself. Seventy-one miles later clocking in at just under two hours and fifteen minutes, he was in his driveway. He made just two stops along the way, stop one was to check on his little girl and slip a gag over her mouth, the other was to the laundry mat to pick up his clothes that were placed in the dryer earlier that day. A clever ruse so he thought, for when he pulled into his driveway, he popped open the trunk, grabbed the big canvas laundry bag and the detergent and calmly walked into his house. He wished he would have thought of this earlier it would have saved him from trying to come up with a last minute scheme during his third attempt. That time he panicked when he entered his driveway for he simply didn’t think it through. He ran into his house and pondered the situation. He pondered his dilemma way too long, for his prized little blonde died from heat exhaustion in the back of his trunk. Not this time, it was pure brilliance, so he thought, and this time his prized little blonde was safely inside the house. He carried the bag down into the basement, the bag that contained his little girl. She was still out cold. He moved her into a bedroom, a bedroom he finished not long ago, a bedroom for a little girl, his little girl. The room was far from perfect from a builder’s perspective and would have never passed inspection. The electrical work was shoddy at best, the drywall buckled near the top, the drywall tape showed through the bright pink paint, and the trim was uneven but the room was perfect for a little girl. There was a bright pink shag carpet on the floor, and the furniture was pine painted in white, trimmed in gold and not new, there were many scuffs marks on the legs from a vacuum cleaner maybe, and a few deep scratches on the bureau. The bureau was filled to the brim with little girls clothes in all types of sizes and the same was true for the nice size closet—nothing seemed to be missing in the wardrobe department for a little girl, from shoes, sneakers, hair barrettes, little undies in every color, to bright t-shirts also in every color, sweaters and jeans, one or two very nice dresses appropriate for church attire and even a cute little jean jacket with rhinestones in the shape of a daisy. There was a nightstand with a white wicker lamp with a white wicker lampshade that provided the only source of light in the room… there was no natural light whatsoever. The bed was small but still perfect for a five year old and had a canopy with white ruffles around all the edges. Fresh linens and a big fluffy comforter on the bed disguised the fact that it was used. Pink throw pillows and a stuffed panda bear completed the ensemble. There was a bookshelf with many new and used children’s book with such classics as Chris Van Alsberg’s The Polar Express to the Grim Brothers’ Fairy Tales and the complete collection of the Chronicles of Narina. On top of the bookshelf were a record player and some old children’s records. There was even a fairly new Barbie’s dream house with pool and swimsuit Barbie along with her corvette in the one corner. On the walls were a few nicely framed prints of beach balls and a sandcastle and some seashells, and a full length built-in mirror on the opposite side of the bed. She even had her own bathroom with a toilet, a small tub and sink, a pink toothbrush and a pink plastic rinse cup, along with pink towels and a bathmat that matched. The bathroom was badly tiled all in white ceramic tile and would have made it sterile looking if it wasn’t for all the pink accessories. Any five year old girl would have thought this was heaven… . if not for the dead bolts on the steel door.

  He opened his canvas bag, took out his little girl and placed her gently on the bed… . like sleeping beauty. He bent over and kissed her on the forehead, she did not wake—unlike sleeping beauty. He picked up the canvas bag, walked out the door, and clicked all three locks to their locked position. His little girl was safe at last; his little girl was home at last.

  . . .

  Chapter 9

  The chaotic day of the Mall Massacre came and went, it was closing in on early February, and it seemed as though the FBI had things under wraps and Jorja was back to the mundane work of poring over budget reports. Working at the DS&T was not a glamorous position by any stretch of the means; one could justifiably be called a nerd. It entails a flare for technology, analytical skills, as well as a vast comprehension for numbers, a lot of numbers and not just the ones and zeros of the digital world. Jorja is good at this part as well, strike that—great; this, more than any other characteristic was what propelled her into this position, the characteristic of her vast comprehension for numbers, numbers of the general ledger kind. She is responsible for budgets that involved payroll, computers, servers, routers, T1 and T3 lines, fiber optic lines, databases, satellite uplinks, software, pagers, cell phones, email, operating systems, and any other form of communication device that links people and people, computers and computers, and people and computers. She is responsible to report these numbers directly to the Deputy Executive Director of the CIA. She is responsible for running a tight ship and running a state-of-the-art ship—a ship that has to stay one step ahead of the competition, the thieves, the terrorists, the hackers, and the governments—both hers and theirs. She is responsible for learning on the fly, learning from the past, and learning from mistakes—both hers and theirs. Green eyed Jorja Carson, age thirty-eight, has many responsibilities as Deputy Director of the DS&T. and her most important responsibility is that of security.

  As one can imagine, security at the Central Intelligence Agency is top priority—“the” top priority. Everything is checked and checked again, then checked again. All software must be reviewed, line by line, by the best in the business. If a company didn’t supply the source code (the actual code written in a language understandable by humans) or the CIA would not be allowed to compile the code on their own, the software package was simply not permitted in house, even Microsoft had to go through this rigorous ordeal, no exceptions. The hardware side of things must also be checked and checked and checked again, from disk drives, to computer memory, to the keyboard and the mouse. A few years ago a company who shall remain nameless, supplied the CIA with replacement keyboards. The keyboards failed quite regularly and replacements were always supplied with a speedy smile. They failed due to planned obsolescent, in plain English, the return key was made with shoddy parts—on purpose. The keyboards were also made with a few added perks that went under the radar of the agency for over two years. They were made with a memory chip and a small processor that logged the first one hundred or so keystrokes each and every time the computer was turned on. In other words, the first thing most people do when turning on their computers in the morning… . they log on… . capturing their usernames and passwords. It wasn’t noticed until a devious little CIA techie was performing an April Fool’s joke. The joke was to place a music chip, like those contained in a greeting card, and hook it up to the caps lock key. Why the caps key lock? The caps lock key is linked to a small power supply in order to light up the small LED to notify the user that the caps lock is on (located on the top left-hand or right-hand of almost any keyboard). All the joker needed was to solder a few extra wires from this power supply to the music chip, when the caps lock key was pressed it supplied power to the LED and at the same time, the music chip, and music would begin to play. When the joke worked most people assumed the annoying little ditty came from their computers and not underneath their keyboard, driving them and their neighbors a little batty while trying to adjust their volume on their computers. On one particular early morning of April 1st a keyboard was opened and a little secret was revealed. That same caps lock key light was used to supply just enough power for a memory chip to capture the first one hundred or so keystrokes each and every time the computer was turned on. Then when the keyboards failed, the chips were swapped out with each new keyboard the CIA received. Ingenious. Needless to say, the ingenious company has since perishe
d along with many of their employees. The former security officer was in a wee bit of hot water over that one but he managed to survive just long enough to open his golden parachute. The techie who discovered the device was given a small reprimand for his devious stunt but in the long run it was totally worth it; he was given a promotion and is now the security officer reporting directly to Jorja. If Jorja was ever to remain in her position and receive her chute, she would need help from people she trusted and the techie reporting directly to her she trusted with her life. She trusted Greg Manoski.

  Greg was plain and simple—a stereotypical nerd, aside from the fact he was trim even though he lives on junk food from the vending machines. He drinks the Dew like it was going out of style, dresses in grays and blacks, not for the slimming effect but because it was easy to look coordinated with minimal effort—learned that one from Albert E, has the driest of humor that even an Englishman would consider wet, occasionally has the same flair for the word fuck as the military, and could spout a quote from the popular Tracy Ullman spin-off quicker than two teenagers getting off in a backseat of dad’s car. If he wasn’t sleeping, he was in front of his array of computers pounding away to the ends of the internet and running reports out his ass and that’s exactly what he was doing on this Sunday,

  This Sunday was a slow yellow day. “Elevated” was the term provided by Department of Homeland Security on their five color-coded scale. Funny, no one can ever recall if their scale was ever set to their lowest color green or “Low” . . . don’t want the terrorists hitting us with our guards down do we? “Hey Amad, look, it’s green on the website—no one’s watching, let’s go, bring the nuke.” Yes it was a slow yellow day with CNN churning out their liberal slander, forest fires in California, and something about the latest femme fatale who drug overdosed right after her concert the night before. Yes, a slow yellow day for Greg as well; sitting in his cubical running daily reports, looking for suspicious activity among library book checkouts (kidding on that part… . but possible), and theoretically making the world a better, safer place. He was working on his fourth can of crab juice, aka. Mountain Dew, so aptly named by one of his colleagues while watching a Simpsons’ episode involving the World Trade Center and some low-bit toilet humor, when an automatic email appeared on his Blackberry. It read ‘Fingerprints’. This was a message generated from a program in which he wrote years ago. It was to inform him that a file was on its way. The file contained all fingerprint records to be uploaded to IAFIS (Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System owned by the FBI) through various Police departments around the country. The normal channel of delivery for such a file was through the FBI network; after all it was the database owned by the FBI. Being the smart guy Greg was, he intercepted this file prior to arriving on the FBI’s network. He had listeners installed to retrieve any packages of information with specific headers verifying it was indeed a Federal Bureau of Investigating IAFIS file and he simply routed this to his/CIA network first. From there he would download the file into the CIA’s database and cross-reference this with any known undercover agents, CIA’s wanted lists, or VIP’s in the system. The program was requested by the former Deputy Director of DS&T after the FBI exposed one of their ops in the field. It was an accident but try explaining that to his widower and only child. Since this program was installed there have been several incidents that have gone under the radar of the feds at the bureau and for good reason. Once the file was scanned it was placed back into the queue for IAFIS, uploaded with a new timestamp and maybe, just maybe a few key pieces of information deleted or changed and everybody was none the wiser. The whole process of cross-referencing was an automatic process but there was a manual process in which Greg alone was responsible—it needed a pair of human eyes and the touch of human logic that a computer could not provide in order to evaluate the hits within the CIA’s database. It was rare that a hit occurred but when it did he would have to investigate the matter and sometimes call his supervisor in order to continue. As luck would have it on this slow yellow day one such hit flashed on his screen after he opened his trusty old program.

  It was from a police report from Saint Michael’s, Maryland dated 1978. The IAFIS system came on line in 1999 but since then there has been a tremendous amount of backlog with getting old files uploaded. The typical scenario would be when an officer responsible for caseload had any downtime; they would gather any unsolvable crime or missing person reports and batch them together to be sent to the feds. Some departments worked better than others, some took their time; after all, a thirty-year old unsolved case rarely took precedent over a case that was in the here and now. The scenario in Saint Michael’s was they just forgot until some newbie wanting to make a good impression, entered the department. That newbie found a few files in a forgotten box by a forgotten file cabinet in a rarely used room. He noted a few fingerprints and decided on his own to send them to the good folks in Washington. There was not one officer left in the department who worked on any of these cases.

  Greg did a double-take when he saw the name, the name belonging to the fingerprints, the name that should not belong on a missing person report, and the name he knew all too well. He had mistakenly put two and two together and came to the wrong conclusion; that conclusion being the owner of the fingerprint was missing. He read the summary and corrected himself. He then went on to read the entire report. He noted the date, the time, and of course the name and location. These fingerprints were lifted at the last known scene of the missing person, they were found on a vessel drifting afloat in the Chesapeake. The report claimed that Ms. Nash was an avid boater, who enjoyed sunset cruises and tossing an occasional trap into the waters for the tasty Maryland Blue Crab. The report claimed Ms. Nash was by herself at the time, confirmed by the neighbor who stayed at home to watch her daughter in return for a few crabs and by another boater who waved to Ms. Nash upon passing her within a mile from her home. Ms. Nash’s husband was still at work. The boat was found the next day with a small amount of blood belonging to Ms. Nash and a few dead crabs. One of the crabs in particular contained some of Ms. Nash’s blood within its claw. There were no traps on board and a few pieces of chicken used as bait. Also on board were two wine glasses and no wine bottle. The glasses contained one set of prints belonging to Ms. Nash, the other to an unidentified person. No other liftable prints from the unidentified person were found on the vessel. The case remained opened since a body was never found but the conclusion was that she fell overboard during the retrieval of one of the crab traps. The officer working the case wrote a brief note saying no foul play was involved and deemed it an accident but never officially closed the case due to the missing body. The blood was caused by a poorly placed hand and the claws of a captured crab.

  After Greg read the entire report, he reread it again just to be on the safe side. He knew this file could be detrimental to the name belonging to the fingerprints even if it was over twenty years old. He also knew this was a call out of his hands, so he called the Deputy Director of Science and Technology, he called Jorja.

  “Yes, Greg”

  “I just received a hit off our incoming IAFIS file… and”

  “And what?”

  “You’re going to want to see this, and see it now”

  “Anybody we know?”

  “Yes, everybody is going to know.”

  “Send it.”

  “Will do, it’s on its way. Just remember I’ll need you to embiggen more power to me in order to change the timestamp a sap.”

  “Embiggen?”

  “Yes embiggen, it’s a perfectly cromulent word.”

  “Cromulent? Now you’re making things up.”

  “No, no, no… that’s in the Webster’s Dictionary, look it up.”

  “Never saw those words on my SAT’s.”

  “That’s because they didn’t exist until about 1995 or so.”

  “Oh let me so guess… . your favorite yellow family, the Simpsons?”

  “You got i
t, season seven,” with that he hung up before she could even ride him about it and sent the file via the normal encryption to Jorja’s desktop.

  Almost instantaneously it was on her computer monitor. Almost instantaneously she was in shock. Almost instantaneously she knew she had a big decision to make. Greg was more than right; everyone knew the name of this person. It was indeed a VIP and possibly a future VP. It was the name of Senator Anderson’s best friend. It was Jorja’s uncle. It was Floyd Carson. “But why were they on a missing person’s report?” Even before she read the report summary she came to the conclusion to change the file and yes, mainly because it dealt with her uncle. She immediately picked up the phone and dialed Greg’s extension. As she waited for the connection, which was almost instantaneously, she glanced at her monitor and glanced at the report.

  “Hey Jorja, told you, what do you want me to do?” There was silence. “Jorja?”

  On the other end of the phone Jorja was now truly in shock. She was trying to reel her mind around what she just read but couldn’t grasp it. It went blank. Then she finally heard Greg on his fourth attempt.

  “Jorja, do you want me to flag this?”

  “Yes, flag it, flag it now, I’ll call you back,” and she hung up the phone and started to read the entire report. Her eyes stopped at a specific word. She stared at this word and couldn’t move past it. It was as if her eyes blurred out all other surrounding words on purpose, as if this word was in 3-D, and burning into her retinas. The word wasn’t really a word at all. It was a name—the name of Nash. She hadn’t thought of that name in quite some time and now that name opened a floodgate of memories.

  Greg got his answer. He removed the report from the file without so much of a reaction. His nimble fingers glided across the keyboard typing various commands and hitting various function keys and before any amount of time had elapsed the file was on its way back to the FBI with a new timestamp—a new timestamp and a missing report that would have seriously caused questions and concerns for a campaign duo that could take on the White House. Greg knew why she had flagged the report, although he thought he knew; given the circumstance he’d have done the same, and almost did but he wanted that decision to be hers. He didn’t need his ass on the line and what a thin line it was. Greg returned his eyes to a copy of the report he had just confiscated and reread it yet again. He took note of the facts and wanted to dig a little more, he wanted to find out who was the mystery woman, who was Ms. Nash. Again his fingers flew around the keyboard and not before long he had his answer. His jaw dropped as he read her file. One word stood out from the crowd, yet it wasn’t a word at all. It was a name, a name of a daughter, the name of his boss, the Deputy Director of DS&T, the name Jorja Carson. Now he knew the real reason she had him flag the report.