by David Archer
“I'm checking,” Indie said. “Nope, all I've got are local folks. He's got a few people on his friends list from other places, but no recent chats with any of them, so I'd bet he's not visiting any of them, either.”
“I've got an idea,” he said, and got up out of his chair to hobble toward his dining room. His computer desk was in there, and he grabbed a stack of paper from the printer and began laying it out on the table. He noticed Indie had followed him and was watching. “What I'm gonna do is set up a flow chart. Let's go through all of his deals that we can and see who he goes to most often, that sort of thing. Why don't you bring your computer in here, and we can get started tonight.”
Indie shrugged and went to get her laptop, checking on little Mackenzie as she did so. She came back quietly a moment later and took the chair beside him. “Kenzie's out like a light. She usually won't fall asleep until she's snuggled up next to me; she must feel safe here.”
Sam grinned. “Good, because you can both feel safe here. Now, let's make a list of his customers and see if we can figure out which ones he talks to most frequently...”
Indie slid her laptop in front of him, and he saw a spreadsheet laid out on it, with names and email addresses, along with dates and times. “That would be all of these in the first twenty-odd rows. I copied his friends list and scanned through his chats to get the times and dates when they talked, then had the computer put it all together in this format. Does that help?”
Sam stared at the screen, then realized that each entry had a link attached. When Indie clicked one to show him what it did, a box opened up that held the actual chat conversation from that particular time.
“Okay, and why is it the police don't hire people like you?”
Indie grinned at him. “I'm guessing that would be because the police would have to get a warrant to do what I'm doing, and that isn't always so easy to do. Hey, I told you, I'm a gray hat. I'm honest as they come in my own way, but laws are meant to keep people honest, and when they don’t, then they're just in the way! If you can't live with that, then I need to shut down and leave now.”
Sam stood still for a moment and looked at the screen. “I can live with it. Heck, I can even be grateful for it. So, these are his most common customers? Can you get me real IDs on them all?”
“Already did.” She clicked another link, and a different spreadsheet appeared. This one had names and addresses, and even some phone numbers. “Here they are.”
Sam shook his head in amazement. “Wow,” he said. “What I coulda done with you, back when I was on the force!”
She sneered. “Back then, you probably would have at least thought about arresting me. I like you better this way.” She pointed at the screen. “So, what else do you need to know? I can sort the data just about any way you might wish.”
Sam looked at the screen for another moment, then pointed at his desk. “My printer is wireless; can you print this stuff out, and then let's start printing out info on each of the top twenty, so we can build a pattern out of it all. If we can find the patterns, then we can find the source of the patterns.”
Indie looked at the printer and turned it on, then went to her laptop and tapped on the keys. A moment later, the first of the spreadsheets began spitting out on a number of sheets. The others followed, and then Indie was printing out individual pages on each of the people Rice had been dealing to through his Facebook account: Jason Burgess, John Merrell, Steve Wilson, Connie Miller and sixteen more. Each of them had a photo of the individual, base information like name, email, and address (if Indie could find it), phone numbers, and any other info she could dig up that seemed relevant. Some of them included arrest records and aliases, courtesy of public records databases that Indie had hacked her way into.
“How do you get all this info so fast?” Sam asked her, as the sheets kept spitting out. Each one he looked at amazed him for all the data he saw on it, more than most cops ever have available to work with.
“I don't,” she said. “I let Herman do it. Herman's a program I wrote; I gave him all the passwords for the databases I use, and then when I feed him a profile, he'll take the names and info off of it and check through all of them. When he finds something that's a ninety-five percent match or better, he puts it into his report. Those reports are a lot like what you’re seeing now.”
Sam looked at the report in his hand—Marvin Dennis—and then looked back to Indie. “Herman did all this work? In a matter of seconds?”
She nodded. “Yep. He's fast.”
“Yeah! No wonder you found me so quickly. I should hire Herman and let you go!”
Her eyes darkened. “Don't even think about it, Herman is loyal! We're a team, me and him!”
“Okay, fine, then,” Sam said with a laugh. “But you pay Herman out of your share! I don't need to keep adding people to my payroll!”
They kept going over Herman's reports, and it wasn't hard to determine which of the customers were Rice's regulars. They were using tape to stick significant reports to one wall of the dining room, and Sam had found some string to use to indicate connections between different individuals. The five most common contacts went into one group, and Sam planned to start visiting them the following morning.
By the time they got their game plan laid out, it was nearly one AM. Sam had noticed Indie yawning. “You're tired. Why don't you go on to bed, and we'll work on this tomorrow. I'm gonna get up early and start on these first creeps, so you can sleep in. We'll talk when I get back and you’re awake.”
She smiled. “Thanks. The shelters make you get up at five thirty and eat breakfast, and then you gotta stay out ‘til after seven that night and hope you're in line to get a spot to sleep. We were up early the last few mornings, and I don't sleep well in crowds of people I don't know.” She walked to the living room and picked up her daughter, then carried her carefully up the stairs.
Sam went around and turned off lights, then made his way to his own bedroom. As he did so, he heard the shower start upstairs, and it occurred to him that it was kind of nice, having other people around. He hoped he'd still feel that way in three days, which is about as long as he'd ever lasted before with visitors until they got on his nerves.
He tossed off his clothes and pulled on the shorts he always slept in, then let himself lay back and relax. He was asleep within seconds.
Upstairs, Indie was enjoying the first really hot shower she'd had in weeks, and wishing she'd bought some new shampoo; the bottle she had was getting pretty low, and the only thing she found in the bathroom was a bottle of “Men's 2 in 1” that was so old it was crystallized. She'd have to scrape through the change she had left and see if there was enough for something generic.
There were towels, though, big fluffy ones that looked brand new. The top one had been pretty dusty, but the rest were fine, and she enjoyed the feeling of the one she was using against her skin. She'd give Kenzie a bath tomorrow, she thought, and let the little girl feel how nice the big towels were, too.
She slid into shorts and a t-shirt, then went back to the bedroom where Kenzie was sleeping already, climbed into bed, and whispered a short prayer of thanks to God for this break.
Sam's room was in the back of the house, which meant that the window on that wall was facing due east. That was fine by Sam, who hated to sleep late in any case, and so the sun coming through the window was better than an alarm clock. His eyes fluttered open, and he realized that it was morning.
He threw off the covers and reached for his cell phone, plugged into the charger he kept on the nightstand. The time display on it told him that it was already past seven, so he'd managed to sleep through some of the sunrise. A quick trip to the bathroom got him feeling more alive, and then he decided to finish it off with a shower.
Sam was a guy who sang in the shower, and he completely ignored the fact that there were others in the house. Something had him feeling so good that he launched into his own version of “Don't Worry, Be Happy,” which was nothing like t
he original in any way. He sang through it twice during his shower, and was still humming it when he made it to the kitchen fifteen minutes later.
He froze as he entered, because there was something in the air that was unfamiliar to him. It was—it was—was that the combined smells of fresh coffee and bacon?
“Morning, Sunshine,” Indie said from over by the range. “I couldn't sleep, and neither could Kenzie, so we decided to make breakfast.”
“We're makin' breakfast!” said Kenzie, sitting on a stool beside her mother. Sam couldn't hold back a big grin at her delighted smile.
“You are?” he asked the little girl. “Well, now, I don't know what to say! Nobody's made me breakfast in a long time! Are you gonna eat breakfast with me?”
The little blonde smiled from ear to ear as she nodded her head vigorously. “Uh-huh, me and Mommy!”
Indie was smiling at their exchange. “I warned you,” she said. “She likes you already! Go ahead and sit, and I'll get you a cup of coffee.”
Sam's hip gave him more trouble in the mornings than any other time, and was hurting, so he took her up on the offer. When he’d gotten himself into a chair at the kitchen table, Indie handed him a cup of coffee and a spoon. The sugar was on the table where he kept it, so he added his usual and stirred, then took a big sip.
“There's something about a cup of coffee that you didn't make yourself that always tastes better, you know?” he said, and Indie laughed.
“Yeah, well, this is the first coffee I’ve had in a while that wasn't either stale or too strong to drink. The stuff they give you in the shelters is some kind of acid; there's a theory that it's designed to dissolve the homeless, so that society won't have to deal with them anymore.”
A few moments later, she slid eggs and bacon onto plates, and then took a tray of hot buttered toast out of the oven, where it had been staying warm. She put two slices on each plate, then set one in front of Sam while Kenzie pulled out a chair for herself next to him. Sam reached over to help her get it where she wanted it, while Indie set their own plates on the table and joined them.
“We say grace,” Indie said. “Is that gonna bother you?”
“Not a bit,” Sam replied, then folded his hands and closed his eyes as Indie and Kenzie did so.
“God is great,” said Kenzie, “God is good, and we thank Him for our food, Amen!”
“Amen!” Sam echoed, and Indie smiled at him.
“Thanks. I'm trying to teach her to be thankful for what we do have, instead of upset over what we don't.” She suddenly found her plate to be interesting, and stared at it. “Um, I was thinking, since you're gonna be out today for a while, would you mind if I did some of our laundry in your washer and dryer? And could I use some cleaning supplies to clean up the upstairs? It's kinda messy and dirty up there.”
Sam frowned. “Well, of course, you can use anything I got, but I don’t know what cleaning supplies there are. I have a lady who comes in once a week to clean down here, and she brings a bucket full of stuff with her. I can give you some money, and you can go get whatever you need. I'm sure we could stand to have that kind of stuff around, anyway, right?” He shoved another forkful of eggs into his mouth. “Now that I think about it, is there even any soap or shampoo up there? And do you need anything for Kenzie, like special soaps for little kids?”
Indie grinned and looked up at him again. “You haven't been around kids much, have you?”
“Only when I get invited to the Mitchells' place, lately, and that isn't often.” He looked at Kenzie and reached over to tickle her under the chin, which made her laugh. “But I could get used to this one, I sure could!”
Kenzie smiled and looked at her mother. “Mommy, does that mean we can live here?”
Indie choked, but Sam laughed. “It means you sure can for now, anyway, Sweetheart. No more shelters, okay? You and your mom can stay here for as long as you need to, and Mommy can help me out with some things.”
“See, Baby?” Indie said. “We prayed for God to give us someplace safe to stay, and He brought us to Sam! We can stay here for a while, and I can help Sam with something in return for him letting us stay.”
The little girl nodded her head wisely. “God's like that,” she said, and Sam and Indie both burst into laughter.
They enjoyed their breakfast together, and then Sam gave Indie another fifty dollars to use to buy cleaning supplies and other necessities. She and Kenzie went back upstairs to finish dressing for the day, and Sam headed out to the van. He fired it up and drove to Rice's address.
The old town neighborhood was pretty run down and rough, but Sam had been there many times and wasn't too intimidated. He found the house and parked in front of it, climbed out and walked up to the door. There was a doorbell, but he didn’t hear a sound when he pushed the button, so he knocked loudly.
A woman came to the door wearing only a long t-shirt, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “Yeah?” she said.
“I'm looking for Allen Rice,” Sam said. “I was told he lives here. Is he around?”
She looked up at him. “Nope, he hasn't been back since Sunday. You with the others lookin' for him? I already told those guys, I don't know where he'd go, and he didn't leave no money or dope here.”
Sam nodded, as if he already knew that. “Yeah, well, he may have made a big mess, and we're just trying to clean up a lot of loose ends. You don't mind if I take a look around, do you?”
The woman stood there looking at him for a moment, then stepped back and motioned for him to enter. “Not a bit. Come on in.”
Sam stepped inside carefully, leaning on his cane more as a caution against whatever might be slippery on the floor than because of his hip, and made his way through the small house. There was a living room, two bedrooms, a kitchen and a bathroom, and it took him only minutes to know that there was nowhere in any of them where a grown man might hide. The bedrooms only had mattresses on the floor, and the only furniture of any size was a sofa in the living room. Even the refrigerator in the kitchen was one of the small, college-dorm sized ones, but he peeked inside just to be safe.
“Listen,” he said to the woman, “one of the problems he left us with is about his little girl. She's gone missing, and if the cops get to lookin' too close, things could get ugly. You don't know where she might be, do you? Or what might have happened to her?”
The woman's eyes went to the floor, and she said, “I don't know where she is, but he said she was gonna make him a lot of money. All I know is she's supposed to be back in a week, if everything goes the way he wants it to, and he said we'd have enough money to get out of this rat hole and move out to Vegas.” She looked up at Sam. “I don't know anything other than that, but I've met the kid and she's okay. I hope he ain't done nothin' that's gonna get her hurt.”
Sam nodded. “Yeah,” he said, “me, too.” He took a pen out of his pocket and found a slip of paper to write his cell number on. “If you hear from him and call me, there's a twenty in it for you. And just so you know, all I really care about is finding the kid.”
She looked at his name there on the paper. “Sam Prichard,” she said. “You used to be a cop, you’re the one who got hurt last year, right? My dad's a cop, he talked about you. You know him, Bob Bennet?”
Sam smiled. “I know Bob, he's a good man. You're his daughter?” He wanted to ask her what had brought her down so far, but some things just were none of his business.
She glanced around and then nodded. “Yeah, I'm Carly—but it isn't something I talk about a lot, not around here, y'know? He's always tryin' to get me out of here, back on the straight and narrow. Maybe someday I'll make it. I'll call you if I hear anything.” She shut the door, and the conversation was over.
He went back to the van and thought about his next move. He had a printout from Indie's work of the night before, showing him the names and addresses of the top five of Rice's customers. These were the ones who seemed to be trying hardest to reach him, so they were the ones Sam thought most likel
y to have some idea of what was going on. He scanned through them, deciding who was closest.
He parked the van outside the home of his first contact, Jason Burgess. Jason had apparently made a number of buys from Rice over the past few months, and was looking to score again. Sam climbed out and went to the door, knocking “shave and a haircut” to see what reaction it would get.
The man who answered the door looked pretty rough, as though he hadn’t been sleeping well lately. “Yeah?” was all he said.
Sam smiled. “You Jason?” The guy nodded. “I'm Sam Prichard, and I'm looking for a friend of yours, Allen Rice. Any idea how I might find him? It's kind of important.”
The guy suddenly looked more alert and wary. “I don't know any Allen Rice. Who told you I knew this guy?”
Sam tried to look surprised. “Well, Allen told me,” he said. “Allen said if anything ever happened to him, that you'd be the guy to go to. He's disappeared, and so here I am.”
The guy shook his head as if trying to clear it. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Allen told you to come to me, if something happened to him? Why would he do that? I don't know nothin' about his business, and he didn't leave anything here with me.”
Sam smiled. “Okay, good, so you do know him, and you know he's disappeared with money and dope that isn't his. Now we're getting somewhere. Tell me what else you know, Jason, like what you know about his little girl who's missing.”
Jason's eyes got wide, and he started looking around as if trying to find something to say to get him out of whatever mess he was getting into. “No, look, man, all I know is there's other people askin' about where'd he go, and where's the stuff, and I don't know none o' that! He was supposed to bring me some stuff day before yesterday, and never showed, so that's all I know.”
Sam leaned forward until his nose was only an inch from Jason's. “Okay, that's cool,” he said, “but just for fun, lemme tell you this: if it turns out you know anything about the little girl, and you don’t tell me, then I'm gonna come back, and you will not enjoy my next visit. So get on your computer and spread the word, there's a guy comin' around looking for that child, and if I don't find her soon, it's a pretty safe bet that the whole list I've got of all of Allen's customers is gonna end up in the hands of the DEA. Got all that?”