Cal Rogan Mysteries, Books 1, 2 & 3 (Box Set)

by Robert P. French

  “Well yes. When you log into your bank’s computer to pay a bill you enter a user name and password and can get to all your financial records. Well, everyone who operates a secure system, like a bank, uses an encryption method called public key encryption. Your computer encrypts a message to the bank’s computer using the bank’s public key that is available to anyone who wants it. But the message can only be decrypted by the bank’s private key, which is known only to the bank’s computer.

  “When you gave me the oboe code, I showed it to one of my guys and he agreed that it was probably a key. Well, public keys are available to anyone and have no intrinsic value, so I made a guess that maybe this was a private key and if it was, it could be very valuable.”

  “Valuable to whom?” I ask. I am only just getting this.

  “If you had the private key of a bank and if you could access data going to the bank’s computers on, say, an unsecured wireless network in a coffee shop or a library, you could find out the user name and password of every person who accessed the bank’s computer on that network.”

  “So you’d have access to those people’s accounts?”

  “Yes. You could do anything they could do with internet banking. Pay bills, transfer money to other accounts at the same bank. Depending on the bank’s system you might be able to wire money to accounts at other banks.”

  “But the bank’s customers would find out pretty quickly if someone else had transferred money out of their account, wouldn’t they?”

  “Yes. When they logged in to their account, they would notice the transfer and complain to the bank. If the bank got complaints, they would know that they had been hacked and, among other things, would probably change their keys. That’s what’s so funny.”

  “Funny?” I ask.

  He smiles at my puzzled expression. “Yeah. You see, I figured that it might be the private key of a bank or insurance company, so I did a little experiment. I wrote a program to get the public keys of all the major Canadian banks and insurance companies and then encrypted some data with the public keys and tried to decrypt it with the oboe code. And bingo, it turns out oboe is the current private key of one major Canadian bank.”

  “Toronto National Bank,” I say. Varga’s employer and Mark Wright’s former employer.

  Now it is Damien’s turn to be puzzled. “How did you know that?”

  “It’s relevant to the case I’m working on.” I don’t need to share the details with him yet. “Why did you say ‘funny’ before?”

  “Well if someone has got the private key of a bank, they are going to use it to steal money. As I said, customer’s would notice, inform the bank and the bank would change the key. But they haven’t. That’s strange.”

  My coffee has cooled. I use it to wash down a handful of Tylenol. Damien gives me a strange look.

  “Who in the bank would know the bank’s private key?” I ask.

  “Someone in the IT department and maybe one senior executive.”

  Varga! I can feel my antennae twitching.

  “Could that be the VP of Private Banking?”

  “Not a chance. It would be much higher up the chain.”

  So much for that theory. But another one leaps to the fore.

  “What about a former IT guy?”

  “No. The person in IT doesn’t actually know the key, but he knows where to access it. If that person quit, all his access rights would be removed and anyway, they would probably change the key too.”

  “If a former employee did have the key, how might he have got it?”

  Damien gives me a sly smile. “The guy with all those servers in his basement?”

  I nod.

  “I would really like to know how he did it, but all those servers were wiped clean. Still… I guess he must have found a way.”

  So Mark Wright had the key to hack into people’s accounts, but he didn’t use it because, if he had done, people would have complained and the bank would have changed the key. And there is another thing that doesn’t make sense—

  “Cal,” Damien interrupts my chain of thought. “You realize we need to tell the bank that their private key has been stolen.”

  “Yes, I suppose so. Someone more senior than me in the department should contact them. I’ll get on to that as soon as I get back; I’m going there now.”

  As I take my leave, I realize that although I now know what the oboe code is, I can’t see how it fits into the puzzle of the deaths of Terry Wright and Marguerite Varga and the attempted kidnapping of Michael Chan.

  Except that it strengthens the theory that they are all connected.

  And I do know who kidnapped me and shot me to the moon. I never would have guessed.

  42

  Cal

  “Mark Wright didn’t kill himself and I’m starting to doubt that he killed his step-son.”

  Inspector Vance takes the news without a reaction but Steve sighs. “Cal, the initial forensics point to suicide.”

  I level an eye at him. “Yes Steve, I remember another case where the forensics pointed to suicide but it turned out not to be.” He looks uncomfortable; he knows the case I am talking about. “The point is, his wife says that he called her, asking her to meet up with him at the motel. His plan was to take off with her, disappear. He said he had enough money for them to go and live in another country.”

  Steve is irritated at me now, he does not like to be contradicted in front of his boss. It hits me how much he has changed. When we were street cops together, he would follow every lead. I suspect he is becoming a politician now. “Maybe he wanted to punish her. Get her all excited about leaving and then come to the motel and find him dead.” Even before he has finished, I can see a flush appear on his cheeks. He knows it’s a flawed theory.

  Vance cuts in. “If he was planning to run, that’s a pretty good sign he was guilty of killing the kid. I still think we’ve got our killer. Mark Wright killed his step-son to punish his wife for having an affair with the guy at her church. He cut the kid up like a picture in the church to try and implicate the lover.”

  “There are a couple of things you don’t know,” I say, earning a sharp look from Steve. “One: it’s unlikely that Mark Wright ever saw the mutilation picture in the church, he was only a guest there once and the minister says that at guest meetings they keep the pictures covered. Two: his wife says he didn’t know about her affair until after Terry was dead.”

  “Who’s to say he didn’t sneak a look at the picture,” Steve counters. “And the wife could be wrong about when the husband learned of the affair. No, Cal, I gotta believe Mark was the killer.”

  I grit my teeth but before I can say anything, Vance chimes in, “I’m gonna wait until all the forensics are in on Wright’s death and the autopsy’s done before speculating whether it was murder or suicide. Then we’ll decide the next step.”

  “About the oboe code…” I cut myself off. Vance doesn’t know that I had Damien working on it and he wouldn’t be happy if he found out.

  “What about it?” he asks.

  “Did, uh, Sally Wilkes in Forensics work out what it meant?” I cover.

  “Not yet but it’s probably nothing.” For a second I toy with the idea of relating Harold Varga’s reaction to the words oboe is blood but decide to wait. I’ll go and see Sally Wilkes in Forensics right after this meeting and put the encryption key idea into her head. Then it can come from her, rather than from an outsider. Then I can bring up Varga’s reaction.

  “Steve, can you excuse us for a minute?” Vance requests.

  Steve glances at me, gets up from his chair and leaves without a word.

  I’d better come clean with Vance about the code. It is too important. It provides a strong motive for Terry’s death and for Michael’s kidnapping and I’m starting to think that the bank needs to be told. Damien says he showed it to one of his ex-con hackers, what if he starts making use of it?

  “Sir, about the oboe code—”

  “Cal, we need to
talk.”

  He looks very uncomfortable.

  I can feel a clamping in my stomach. I’d temporarily forgot about—

  “The results came back,” he says quietly. “Your last urine test showed positive for opiates. You’ve been using again, haven’t you?”

  “Yes sir, but there were extenuating circumstances.” I can’t let him fire me now. I need to find out the truth about this case, I need to find out who tried to kidnap Michael Chan and crippled Stammo in the process. If I tell him about my kidnapping and the drugs they pumped into me—

  “Cal, I’m really sorry about this but I’ve got to ask you to give me your gun and your ID. You are suspended with pay from right now until your case is reviewed at a disciplinary hearing by the Police Board.”

  My heart is thumping in my chest. “You really need to hear—”

  “I’m sorry Cal. You can bring it up with the Police Board. It’s out of my hands. Steve is waiting outside the door to escort you off the premises. Someone from Human Resources will be contacting you.” He holds out his hand.

  Defeated, I take my gun from its holster and hand it over, then my ID.

  Back in the Department for fewer than six months and now it is over.

  Again.

  I have one thing I must do before I leave the building and I know how to manipulate Steve into helping me. He is standing silently over me while I take my few personal effects from my desk and put them in a box that was conveniently left on my chair.

  The task done, I ask him the first thing that I need him to agree to. “Steve, this is embarrassing; can we go out the back way? Please.”

  He agrees. We make our way down the corridor to the back stairwell. Just before we get there I make my second request. I stop outside the lunch room. “Can I just have a quick drink of water please?”

  He shrugs. “Sure.”

  I walk in, put my box on a table and go to the sink. I pour water into a paper cup and drink. Then throw the cup into the garbage can under the sink. While I am bent down, I reach over and open the adjoining cupboard.

  There is the proof.

  Sacks of coffee. That smell.

  The humiliation of knowing that my own colleagues wanted me gone so badly that they were prepared to do this…

  I look up at Steve. He holds my gaze for a moment but then looks away.

  Et tu, Brute.

  43

  Mike

  One wrong card. One wrong card and I owe them over a hundred grand. ‘Pay up,’ the huge one said, ‘or… do this one little job for us.’ I’m between a rock and a hard place. If I don’t keep doing it I’ll have to sell off everything to pay ’em; if I do it and get caught, I’ll get fired and lose my pension. Pat and the kids’ll be long gone. I got no choice.

  I connect a new set of cables to the device. Despite the heavy duty air conditioning in the network operations center, I can feel the sweat running down my face. It only takes a few seconds but if—

  “What you doing Mike?” My heart rate doubles.

  I dare not turn round; he’ll take one look at my face and know something’s up. “Got a job ticket on this router,” I tell him. “Looks like a faulty cable,” I wave the cable in my hand. “Won’t be long.”

  If he walks down the alley between the racks and sees what I’m doing, I’ll be well and truly f—

  “Soon as you’re finished, let me know, I need your help installing the new gear we got in from Cisco.”

  “Couple of minutes.”

  Silence. I guess he’s moved off. I look up at a router above my head and can just see the end of the alley out of the corner of my eye. No-one’s there. He’s gone.

  I can’t keep the trembling out of my hands while I connect the last of the cables. It seems to take forever. Take ’em one at a time, Mike. I force myself to do it.

  Done.

  Now all of Toronto National Bank’s internet connections from their Calgary hub are also routed through it. God knows where the data’s going. Who would want it anyway? It’s all encrypted.

  44

  Cal

  Steve knew. I can’t bring myself to believe that he was one of them, but he knew. Knew that a bunch of our colleagues had taken me and pumped me full of smack. I could read it in his eyes when I opened the cupboard full of head-sized sacks of coffee.

  It’s why he made me take a second test, he knew something was wrong with the first one.

  That’s why I’m here.

  To apologize.

  He’s asleep, so I sit down beside his bed. I don’t know Stammo’s age but it’s around fifty I’m guessing; lying there in the bed, he looks gaunt and much older. He is gently snoring.

  I can wait. The one thing I have now is time.

  Despite the fact that Stammo and I have never liked each other and probably never will, he is a fair cop. It’s why he took the urine test for me. He wanted me out of the department as much as anyone, but not that way. And I repaid him by accusing him of selling out to some drug gang I thought had ordered my kidnapping.

  So I’m going to wait here and think until he wakes up.

  They can put me on suspension but they can’t excise the cop from me. I am not going to let go. It may look like Mark Wright killed his step-son but there are just too many things nagging at me. Mark was working for someone, a client, what was it Grace Chan said? Someone that Elizabeth took an instant dislike to. I must ask Elizabeth more about him. Mark somehow used all those computers in his basement to get hold of the private key for the Toronto National Bank’s computer systems. Maybe he got it so he could sell it to this ‘client’. If the client knew that Terry and Michael knew the code and were repeating it, then he might have been responsible for killing Terry and attempting to kidnap Michael. But if someone other than Mark killed Terry, how did they get him out of the house under Mark’s nose. Unless they did it with Mark’s cooperation.

  Wait a minute. Wait a minute, what if—

  “What are you doing here Rogan?”

  “Hi Nick. I came here to apologize.”

  “Uh-huh?” Non-committal.

  “I know who kidnapped me and shot me full of heroin. It was some of our colleagues. I don’t know who specifically and I don’t really care. I just want to say that I’m grateful that you tried to help me out by taking the drug test for me and to say I’m sorry for what I said last night. I was waaaay out of line.”

  “Yeah… You were.”

  Silence.

  “They put me on suspension.”

  “Who pulled the plug.”

  “Vance.”

  “Not Steve?”

  “No.”

  He digests this.

  “When?”

  “An hour ago.”

  “When did they pull the second urine test on you?” Where’s Stammo going with this?

  “Tuesday afternoon about three.”

  His eyes narrow. “So why’d they wait ’til Thursday morning to fire you.”

  “Maybe the lab was backed up and—”

  “No way. They turn those tests round right away. They’re not like DNA. Steve knew the results Wednesday morning.”

  “Maybe the paperwork got delayed. It happens.”

  “Yeah.” He’s not convinced.

  “What are you getting at Nick?”

  He gives me a long, hard look. Something is going on behind his eyes but I can’t read what it is. He opens his mouth, then closes it.

  Finally. “Nothing.”

  “Come on Nick, what is it?”

  “Time to check your dressings, Detective Stammo.” She is blonde, cute and excessively perky.

  “You’d better go.”

  I stand, “Yeah,” and head for the door.

  “Rogan.”

  I turn.

  “Thanks for coming. And thanks for… you know.”

  “Thanks, Nick.”

  I turn again and walk through the door.

  “Watch your back,” he throws after me.

  Why would I
need to watch my back? I’ve already been fired.

  45

  Cal

  I didn’t need to show my VPD identification to get in here. I have a window of opportunity where I can interview people who will not know I’ve been suspended. While I wait in the reception area setting up my phone for this meeting, I mull over Stammo’s words. Watch my back against whom? The members in the department who kidnapped me have achieved their goal: I’m gone from there. After the hearing by the Police Board, I’ll be fired for sure. So who is it I have to watch out for? And if he’s right about the speed of the drug test turnaround, why did they wait a day and a half before firing me?

  “Mr. Varga will see you now, sir?”

  I get up and follow the plush secretary through the bank’s plush corridors into Varga’s plush office. I can smell coffee and the leather of the chairs but am offered neither.

  He doesn’t get up from his desk nor does he look up from the document he is studying. “What do you want now Detective Rogan?”

  One look at his demeanor and I know Here is neither cheer, sir, nor welcome.

  “Mr. Varga, as you probably know, Mark Wright is dead.”

  He still doesn’t meet my gaze. “Yes. Such a tragedy.”

  Man, this is like shooting fish in a barrel.

  “How did you know, sir?”

  Now he makes eye contact. “I beg your pardon.”

  “Who told you Mark Wright was dead?”

  “It was on the news last night.”

  “Yes sir but Mark’s name wasn’t mentioned. It wasn’t released to the media. So who told you?”

  Rather than answer my question, Varga reverts to type. He takes a deep breath and leans back in his chair. “Why are you questioning me about a former employee, Detective? Should you not be trying to find the man who murdered my wife?”