by Peche, Alec
"I recall that same terminology, Jill. Give me a moment to look on the Internet so I can find that section again,” replied Jo as she was clicking away at her keyboard.
Jill did not want to lose track of her thoughts about RMCT so she made a few notes on the temporary murder board. Then she looked over at Nick and Angela and asked, “Anything from your end?”
“With Angela’s help, we have identified at least forty frames where our suspect was close to Mr. Morton.”
“Forty frames wow! Is he doing anything more than stalking Joseph? Is he talking on a cell phone, playing with gear, etc.? Did he ever speak with Joseph?”
Nick smiled at Jill’s usual staccato approach to questioning of anyone involved in one of her investigations and replied, “He seems to just be stalking Joseph and David. You really can’t tell which man he is watching or following. What we really need is an automated way to look at hours of camera footage, but in the end if all it tells us is the guy followed these two around, I’m not sure there is much useful knowledge in that.”
“Have we heard back on the chairlift stoppage?”
“Let me ask Tom if the resort has heard anything back from Henrik’s engineer.”
"Can you explain your question about the chairlift stoppage?" asked Jake.
"About the time of death for Joseph, the chairlift that served the ski trail he was found on was stopped for about sixteen minutes. That is an unusually long length of time for a chairlift to be stopped and the resort had not found the source of that failure. We connected the resort to Henrik and he thought his company could find the source of failure for them and he offered to do it free of charge as it might be connected to the murder case that I am involved in. So the resort gave access to Henrik's engineer this morning and we should've heard back if he was able to locate the source of the failure."
"Your German friend seems to have an odd collection of talents that could help you on this case,” observed Jake. “I'm interested in making his acquaintance this evening."
"Henrik has technology that assists us in collecting evidence,” affirmed Jill. "He also has a pretty amazing obstacle course protecting his house and a server farm that both the Belgian police and Interpol are using to train their men on. You might ask him about that tonight too."
"Speaking of Henrik, he is on his way here and I'll be in the kitchen preparing our dinner to be served in a little more than an hour’s time unless that timeline doesn't work for you, Jill," announced Nathan.
"That sounds like the perfect plan and thanks for cooking," said Jill.
"Marie, anything new on your research?” asked Jill.
"I switched directions a couple of times as new information has emerged from someone else in this room. While you all were chatting about Mr. White, I decided to focus my research on him. There is a lot of material. He is on his second marriage and has two teenagers from his first marriage. He is an avid skier, golfer, trap shooter, hunter. He seems to have been on vacation in many exotic locales. He has beautiful homes and what seems like a good life. He is very active in making RMCT successful. He gets a fair amount of positive press in business journals and he uses that to market to other pharmaceutical companies regarding the clinical trial services it provides," remarked Marie as she paused looking up from her notes to see if anyone had questions.
"How are he and Joseph tied together in the business community? Have they spoken together at some pharmaceutical meetings; have they been seen together at charitable events; what is the word on the street about the two companies working together?” Jill quizzed.
"Good questions, Jill. I had just started following some of the same lines of questioning as you,” explained Marie. “I'm not finished looking at all my sources just yet, but there seems to be little interaction so far between Joseph and Mr. White in the public business arena. That may just be a reflection, perhaps, that Joseph was more prone to interact with RMCT’s CEO rather than with Mr. White. Does anyone else have an angle they would like me to explore on this?”
Jake had his own resources at the FBI who were concentrating on fleshing out the picture of their suspect’s present life and he doubted that Marie would be better than his own staff so he stayed quiet.
Angela asked, “Can you send me any pictures of his known associates? I would like to see who else is on the ski slope that we should worry about. We’re looking for a second person but we don’t know what they look like. It would help to place them in these pictures and unless the second person is a hired hit man, there has to be a connection between Mr. White and our second person.”
“Excellent suggestion, Angela, thanks. Jo, Morgan do you have any special requests of my research?” asked Marie.
“The highest paid corporate officers are listed on the tax returns,” Jo pointed out. “I would look each of them up seeking a connection between any of the officers and Mr. White. I’ll email you the list so you can start looking at these people.”
“Another excellent suggestion, thanks. I think I have my work laid out for me for the next few hours.”
“I almost forgot I took pictures of shoppers around me at the supermarket, just to see if they were related to this case. Angela and Nick, you can add them to your list of people to identify,” said Nathan as he passed his phone to them.
“Yikes, I had no idea I was making you paranoid as well!” exclaimed Jill.
“Just trying to contribute to your case,” Nathan revealed.
Once again the room was quiet as everyone doubled down on their research. Jake was standing at the far corner of the room talking to his staff, looking out the window at the sunset on the mountain tops. He had worked with private investigators in the past, but none as impressive as Jill and her team. Listening to them discuss their line of reasoning, he had liked what he heard and added some tasks for his own team to do.
An hour later found Nathan opening the door to Henrik. After a brief hug and murmured words of friendship, Henrik stepped into the room reacquainting himself with the people that had solved his wife's murder. He also met two new people representing the world-famous FBI. As a security software CEO, Henrik was in his element as Jill and her team explained the angles they were pursuing to solve Joseph’s murder.
"Jill, I can lend you more assistance. I brought my laptop with me that contains the beta version of my facial recognition software. No offense Angela and Nick, but I can replace the two of you and get answers in about three minutes per face. I also checked in with my engineer on my way here to find out if he had been able to locate the issue with the ski lift."
"And? Don't keep us in suspense!" exclaimed Marie.
"I can tell I am a real popular person at this dinner party," pronounced Henrik. "You should see your faces – you're all glaring at me with impatience.”
“Henrik, you're just getting a dose of the ugly American," Jill laughed. "I'm happy you're here, and it's good seeing you again. But it's time to come clean and spill the beans -what happened to the chairlift?”
“Okay. The chairlift computer system was hacked and that was what caused it to shut down for sixteen minutes. The suspect in this case has deep computer skills as the resort’s own IT department could not find the trace of his or her hacking. My engineer was able to determine by going back two weeks before your victim's death where he could see a tiny section of code that told the computer to stop a specific chairlift when a certain signal was sent and to restart the lift when a second signal was given and then like an Instagram picture the two coding change orders were to disappear into cyberspace after they were activated. So anyone looking at the chairlift at the date and time of the event saw nothing out of place, but by going back to the original time that the code was written he could see the code that would cause the lift to fail.”
"Henrik, you and your engineer are brilliant,” pronounced Jill. “What was the resort’s response to your finding?”
"Considering that my engineer offered to share computer code at no cost to the resort th
at would prevent it from ever happening again, well let's just say I was offered a lifetime ski pass to the resort.”
“Marie, have you discovered anyone in the searches that you are doing that might have these extremely sophisticated computer programming skills?” Jill queried. “This would have to be someone with extraordinary ability with the computer.”
"Give me a few moments to sort through my suspect list and see if anyone is rumored to have these fabulous computer skills."
"Just a friendly warning to all of you, we will be sitting down to eat in about ten minutes. I have a red and white wine that pair nicely with the meal." Nathan made the pronouncement with a look that said don't mess with the chef. He got enough nods to know that his wishes would be complied with.
"I could use a break about now," declared Jo. "I'd like a glass of the white wine, Morgan what is your preference?" Jo was making sure that the room understood that she was on break and everyone else may as well join her for a brief happy hour.
"Why don’t we all take a break and enjoy Nathan's fine wine choices and the company of friends," said Angela in earnest.
With her comment, the entire room folded. They parked their hunt for Joseph's killer and crowded around the wine bottles. Soon, everyone, with a wine glass in hand, ventured into the kitchen, curious to see what Nathan had prepared - it certainly smelled delicious! For the next hour, everyone enjoyed the sumptuous meal placed before them. Beginning with bacon-wrapped water chestnuts and mozzarella and basil topped tomatoes. This was followed by almond-encrusted sea bass, grilled asparagus and garlic-mashed potatoes. For dessert, there were three choices: a hot fudge sundae, crème brûlée, or fresh fruit in a yogurt liqueur.
Thanks to the excellent food and wine everyone enjoyed the genial atmosphere. Jill asked Henrik to describe his obstacle course for Jake and Morgan. They were soon laughing at how Henrik’s course had allowed the capture of the serial killer covered in green slime. Jake was even more impressed with Jill and her team as he saw a strong instinct to solve the case and bring justice for David Gomez, deep friendships, and new acquaintances like Nick and Henrik that brought additional depth to Jill's problem-solving abilities. He would have to contemplate about how he assembled his team and what he could do to make them individually function at the highest level as Jill had done with her team.
The very enjoyable meal and camaraderie was soon over. Henrik needed to head back to the airport to return to Austin. He told Jill that he would return at the end of this conference and see if he could help her solve the case, if she hadn't already solved it. With many hugs he left the suite and their lives for the time being.
Jill came back into the living room clapping her hands like a teacher and urging everybody back to work. With a few groans at the end of the wonderful meal, everyone dispersed to their seats somewhat re-energized to do more information gathering.
Henrik had trusted Nick with his laptop and facial recognition software. When the software was out of the beta version, he wanted to be able to sell it to agents like Jake Porter. From a marketing perspective, if he got his product in front of a very important client, then it would generate future sales. It had been worth diverting his plane to Denver in order to get his software in front of the FBI. Of course at the time he made the decision to give Nick a ride, he had not known that the FBI was involved in Jill’s case.
A few faces had been matched while they were eating dinner. Of the many frames they examined of people near Joseph either at the lift or on the trail, they had not found an identity for the second person that was near Joseph for most of the week. Henrik’s software had also picked up a face in the supermarket near Nathan that matched a face on the ski slope near Joseph. Jake was impressed with the nimbleness and speed of Henrik’s software. The software was working out the identity of the shopper/skier. Maybe this would give them the identity of the second person involved in Joseph's death. A few minutes later they had a name for the face -Bjorn Daniel Sundin.
"Hey Jake, looks like we have another one of your Yanks," revealed Nick.
"Who?" asked Jake walking over to where Nick was gazing at the laptop left by Henrik.
“Bjorn Daniel Sundin, on the FBI's Most Wanted Cybercrimes list,” replied Nick. "Perhaps your office should regularly obtain footage of skiers and match faces to your Most Wanted list. What are the odds of having two of these prestigious criminals in our current case?"
"Ha ha," Jake said as he studied Nick’s monitor. “It would be great to bag two of these guys off of our Most Wanted list. So we have footage of these two in the vicinity of each other, but otherwise we have no connection so far. By the way, guys, would you all like jobs with the FBI when this case is over? Your investigative work is some of the finest I have ever seen in my career."
"Thanks, but no thanks, on the job offer,” replied Marie. “Remember this is a part-time job for all of us. We all have other full-time jobs, and we work on these cases because we like Jill, we earn vacation funding, and we do like bringing justice to our small part of the world. Besides, we really like our day jobs."
Jake made a note to himself to call Leticia Ortiz when he had a quiet moment to thank her for connecting him to Dr. Quint and her team. He was going to arrest some bad people and he was learning from her team’s thought processes on some potential different avenues to approach future investigative work.
"If you'll e-mail me the images you have of Mr. Sundin, I'll get those to my team and set up the same surveillance on him that we have in place on Mr. Brown."
"If he is good at computer crimes, I would be very careful with electronic communication concerning him as he may have some piece of code out there in cyberspace that alerts him whenever his name is mentioned electronically,” said Nick. “Certainly if I had the computer skills and wanted to evade the FBI that is what I would do."
"Good piece of advice Nick, thank you. I am not an expert in the world of computers or the Internet. I need to get his picture to my people, but I'll give them a call and rename this gentleman and put all communications under his new pseudonym."
Angela looked up and advised, "Why don't you call him Mr. Green? Since our other potential murderer goes by the last names of white and brown, why don't we stay in the color scheme? In fact if you're interested in a name for this operation for the FBI, you could call it ‘operation rainbow’ or ‘operation Crayola’ reflecting the names of the suspects in this case."
"Gee whiz, I offer you a job with the FBI, and now you're taking over my operation," remarked Jake.
"Just trying to be helpful! In the past, the FBI has kept Jill alive. Now your agency is providing us protection. The least I can do is help you name this operation.”
"Okay, guys, back to the investigation," said Jill impatiently. "Jo and Morgan, would you do financial research on Mr. Sundin and Marie, would you look into any aliases that he has? If you find any, pass the names over to Jo and Morgan. Nick, will you connect with Henrik to see if his engineer can determine if Mr. Sundin was the source of the chairlift computer failure? I’m going to update my murder board with this new information and then I'll be working on a connection between these two. Jake, in case you haven't noticed that while we declined your job offer we all still feel free to advise you on how to manage your side of the investigation. So in keeping with our past behavior, I would advise that you assign your people also look for this connection between Brown and Sundin. I think it's really critical that we figure it out."
Jake sighed, gave Jill a pained look, and pulled out his cell phone to make another call to his team. He had arrived at the same conclusion that Jill had; she just jumped the gun before he had the opportunity to contact his people. Still, he couldn’t complain; they were an efficient and proficient investigative team.
Soon silence reigned in the room as everyone pursued their own avenue of the investigation. Around nine o’clock Jo had had enough and called a halt. “I need some fresh air and a walk before I head to bed. Anyone else want to join me?”
After a chorus of “yes”, it was decided that Morgan would join the group of six as they headed out. Jake planned to stay behind. With Nick and Nathan’s martial arts skills, and Morgan’s ankle gun and purse knife, they were better protected than one would suspect. After exiting the hotel lobby, they walked down the main thoroughfare. Both pedestrian and car traffic was light given the time of the evening and the beginning of the ski season. They entered a bar that offered two bar tables that they could stand around and chat. After all the sitting they had done that day working on the computers, the walk was welcome as was standing. Morgan had positioned herself so that she was looking right at the door. Nick and Nathan had positioned themselves to be looking at a back door and the door to the kitchen. With all entrances covered, they felt safe within the bar.
"You know, Jill, you warned us about the altitude, but you have to experience it to understand its impact," Marie disclosed. "I can't believe how breathless I become walking fast down the street. You know me, I readily run several 5K races a year, but my lungs still notice the thinner air here."
"Yeah thanks, Jill, for pouring water down my throat for the past twenty-four hours. I have had no headaches so far," noted Jo. “Usually when I visit my sister, I'm miserable the whole time I'm there. Since I don't stay for long, I never have the chance to acclimate. It will be interesting tomorrow if the headache comes on once we've reached Leadville."
"We’re going to miss you when you leave tomorrow, and not just for the work you've done on this case. You have offered me some very sage advice,” said Jill.