by David Archer
Jason's eyes were wide, and he nodded his head rapidly. “I got it, man, but I swear, I don't know nothin' about the kid! If I did, I'd tell you right now!”
Sam pulled out his pen and reached over to grab Jason's hand, then wrote his name and number across the palm. “If you hear anything about the kid, or about where Allen is hiding, I want to hear it a minute later. If I find out you didn't call me, or if I find out you waited two minutes to call me, I will be back to see you, and you will not like it.” He let go of Jason's hand and smiled, then turned and walked back to his van.
4
The rest of Sam's morning was similar, but around ten thirty, he noticed that people seemed not to be so surprised when he showed up at their doors or workplaces. They also seemed less inclined to talk to him, so he was beginning to think he was shaking someone up. If he could find out who that was, he might get a little closer to learning what had actually happened to Cassie.
By noon, he was out of what he considered serious leads, and decided to go home. He called Indie's phone, and she answered on the first ring.
“Road Kill Cafe, you kill 'em, we grill 'em!”
Sam laughed. “Oh, Lord, I haven't heard that since I was a teenager! Listen, it's Sam; I'm heading back to the house and was thinking about grabbing something for lunch. You guys like pizza?”
Indie chuckled. “Have you ever known a girl who didn't like pizza? Of course we do! Supreme, if you can handle it!”
“I can, that’s my fave. I'll swing around and bring home a giant one. What about drinks? I'm into root beer, myself.”
“That'll work for us, too. And don't be shocked when you get home, I've been cleaning, and you need to fire your cleaning lady! The gunk I got out of your carpet and kitchen counters? Grrr-oss!”
Sam grinned. “We'll talk about it when I get there. Bye!”
He called his favorite pizza parlor, a small independent shop that beat all the chains he'd ever tried, and ordered their giant supreme with a couple of big jugs of root beer. They told him it would be ready in twenty minutes, so he drove slowly in that direction.
He called Dan while he was poking along.
“Hey, Buddy!” he said. “I've been shaking a few trees today, and you might bear some rumbles about it, as well. That guy Allen Rice I asked about? He seems to have vanished, and apparently a significant amount of merchandise and/or cash has gone into the wind with him.”
“I'm already hearing it. Word is that you're making people nervous, claiming to have lots of info I'd like to get my hands on. Any truth to that rumor?”
“Am I making people nervous? Yes. Do I have any such info? I do. Are you gonna get it? Yes, as long as you don't ask too many questions about how I came by it.”
“Came by what? I don't know what we're talking about. So how is this fitting into your hunt for a missing kid?”
“Allen Rice is a small-time dealer for this online outfit, I think, but he seems to be trying to get bigger. He told his girlfriend that his daughter would be gone a few days, but that she was going to make him a lot of money, then he drops off the face of the earth with money and dope that belongs to the big guys. Sounds to me like he’s going after a big score, something that'll move him up in the organization, and using the kid as some kind of collateral.”
Dan let out a low whistle. “I've heard of things like that,” he said, “but I didn't think I'd ever come this close to a scumbag who'd do it. Any leads on where she is, yet?”
Sam shook his head automatically, even though he knew his friend couldn't see the gesture. “Nothing. I'm hoping that someone will decide to talk to try to keep me quiet about Allen's little black book, which they all think I've got. It's not that good, but it's worth some brownie points.”
“You get it to me, and I'll see you get the points. Just let me know if you need anything, okay?”
“You got it,” Sam said, and hung up. He pulled in to the pizza shop a few minutes later and got his purchase through the drive-up window, then headed for home.
It suddenly hit him that this would be the first time in more than nine years that he would be going home and finding someone there, other than his mother or his sister on one of her rare visits. Sam had resigned himself to being alone while he was a cop, because so many cops had a hard time making relationships work. Wives hated the waiting, and dreaded the midnight phone calls, so they didn't usually manage to stick it out for long.
After the shooting, he had tried to date again a bit, but he still couldn't quite see himself with a wife and family. Maybe someday, he thought, but not anytime soon.
He pulled into his driveway and parked next to Indie's Taurus. As he climbed out of the van, carefully balancing the pizza on one hand and holding the bag with the root beer in the other, Mrs. Tanner said hello to him over the hedge that separated his place from hers.
“Hello, Sam!” she called. Mrs. Tanner was about seventy and pretty lonely, so whenever she saw him outside, she was sure to call out and chat for a moment, and he never let it bother him.
“Hey, Mrs. T! How you been?”
“Oh, I'm fine,” she said, “but I see you've got some company staying with you. Is that your girlfriend? She's awfully pretty!”
Sam laughed. “No, she's just a friend of mine who needed a place to stay for a bit. Yeah, she's a pretty little thing, that’s true, but don't go tryin' to get rid of me, now, you know you're my sweetheart!”
The old woman smiled, but gave him a look that said he was full of it. “Sam, if I was forty years younger, I'd be all over you, boy, but I've seen those cougars on TV, and I can't live that way! You're safe, don't worry, but if that one is as nice as she seems, you better grab on while you can! And that little one she's got, she's just precious!”
“I'll bear that in mind, Mrs. T, but I don't think there's much to worry about there! I gotta go in, I brought home lunch! Wanna come join us for pizza?”
“Ha! No, thank you, you go on! That'd give me heartburn for days to come!”
Sam was still smiling as he went inside. Indie asked what had him so delighted, and he couldn't resist.
“Next door neighbor, Mrs. Tanner. She must have spotted you on your way out this morning, because she's decided I need to marry you and make an honest woman of you.”
Indie's eyes were wide, but she was smiling. “And did you happen to suggest to her that I might have something to say about that?”
Sam set the pizza down on the kitchen table. “I did better than that,” he said. “I told her I couldn't marry you because I'm so in love with her, but she wasn't havin' me, either. Guess I'll just have to wait for Kenzie to grow up, and marry her.”
Kenzie had come into the room when she heard his voice, and Sam reached down to tousle her hair, which got him a giggle. He picked her up and set her in a chair while Indie got out plates and glasses, then opened the box and put a slice on Kenzie's plate first.
They sat down together and Kenzie led them in saying grace, before Sam dug in. He had always liked pizza, and he got a kick out of watching the little girl eating hers.
“Well, we've got some people nervous,” he said. “I'm not a hundred percent sure what's going on, but the way I'm reading things, Rice has used his daughter as some sort of collateral on a big drug deal; it looks like he's letting someone hold her in order to ensure he delivers on whatever it is he's doing, and that seems to be something that will make him a lot of money and get him a better spot in their organization. If we could figure out what that spot might be, we could be onto something big.”
Indie shook her head. “If anyone told me I had to leave my daughter as a deposit for something, I think I'd kill 'em! That's disgusting!”
“It is, and it's even worse when you think about the kinds of things that might happen to a child in such a situation. I've known of people literally allowing others to abuse their kids in exchange for drugs and other things they wanted. I'm concerned about what little Cassie might be going through, and that makes me all the
more determined to bring her home as soon as possible.”
“Well, I had an idea,” Indie said, “and maybe it'll help. I've got Herman scanning all over drugspot. Out on the surface, it's about getting information about prescription drugs, you know, but there are several hidden links that lead to different sections. Herman can spot those, and follow them, and that way we can find which ones lead into the back end, where we can find out more information. Then I'll try to figure out Allen's login and password, and we'll go from there. If I can get into his account there, we should be able to find out a lot more about what he's doing, and what drugspot does.”
Sam smiled. “You're quite a whiz with that computer stuff, aren't you?”
“Yep. Now if only I could find a job doing it, I'd have it made!”
“Well, you've got one for right now. Let's eat up, then see what old Herman's been doing, okay?”
“Huh-uh, not ‘til you let me show you how bad your housekeeper's been ripping you off! I don't know what you're paying her, but it's way too much; as far as I can tell, all she's doing is sweeping dirt under the carpet and slinging a dirty mop and rag around in your kitchen, and I am not kidding!”
“Hmm. She came highly recommended, too, by my mother. Mom's a real estate agent, and this gal cleans up empty houses for her. She doesn't cost a whole lot, but if you want the job, I'd be willing to talk about it.”
Indie froze and looked at him for a moment. “You mentioned something yesterday, about housekeeping in exchange for room and board. Is that offer on the table? I keep the place clean, and me and Kenzie get to stay here?”
Sam thought it over. “I could go along with that, but there isn't that much cleaning to do. I guess that would leave you free to get another job, if you wanted to...”
Indie nodded. “That's what I was thinking,” she said. “If I knew we had a place to stay, then I could get a real job and put some money away so we could get our own place, sometime.”
Sam nodded and extended a hand. “Deal. But don't go job hunting ‘til we get done with this case, okay? I'll pay for your time on it, no problem, and if you need some cash in the meantime, just say so.”
They shook hands, and Sam made a note to call his mother and tell her she didn’t need to come help with cleaning his house any longer. He just hadn’t wanted to admit to Indie that the cleaning lady was his mom, and that it was actually him who'd been sweeping stuff under the carpet.
When their lunch was over, they went to the dining room, while Kenzie got to go out into the backyard and play for a while. There was a privacy fence that went all the way around, and the pool was secured with a safety fence around it, so there was nothing out there that would be likely to cause an injury. They left the big sliding glass doors open and listened as she played.
Indie pulled up Herman, and let Sam see what it was doing. “Another part of Herman is a search program that allows me to put in various criteria that I want him to look for. That way, I can tell him to look for things, like people who are all friends with Allen Rice on Facebook and also have Sam Prichard as a friend. Surprisingly, you guys have three mutual friends, though I suspect they're just people who friend everyone; there's a lot of those out there. Anyway, he can also scan every bit of text or code or imagery on a website and look for hidden links, back doors, gateways and such, and when he finds them, he tries to figure out how to get past them. That's what I've had him doing since I got back from the store this morning, so let's get his report.” She tapped the keyboard rapidly, and then sat back to watch as line after line of text began to appear on the screen. She was reading it as fast as she could, silently, and running a finger along each line as it appeared.
“Okay, we've got some pay dirt, here. Herman found an unsecured back door into a directory called 'freightliners,' and from what I'm seeing, it's probably a listing of names and usernames for their dealers or delivery people. This link was a single period in the fine print in the footer of one page, so the chances of anyone other than a robot ever finding it without being told are slim to none! Let's see if we can find Mr. Rice—and there he is, big as life! His username is tinman!”
Sam stared at all of the data on the screen, and shook his head. “Indie, you're amazing. Now, does this mean we can get into his account?”
She shook her head in the negative. “Not just yet. Now we need his password, and that won't be in a list on the site. However, if he used his main email address...” She began tapping keys again, and a moment later, a dark blue page appeared with only two white boxes. “This is the login page. We put in his username, tinman, and then we use his password from his email account—nope, that wasn't it, but we got lucky, and it has a lost password bot! So I put in his email address, and yes! It's sending him his password even as we speak!”
She opened another browser and brought up Rice's email account, then clicked on the email from drugspot.org. There was a link inside it, and she clicked that, as well, and then got another email that contained his password. She quickly deleted those emails.
“I'm getting rid of those, so he can't log in and see them. This way he doesn't know we got his passwords and can watch everything he's doing.”
“Smart girl, aren't you?” Sam said, and she grinned up at him.
“One of the smartest!”
“I believe it. Let's see what we've got there!”
She went back to the original browser and entered the password into the box. The page began to refresh, and then there were more entry fields, with titles like District, Crew, Services and more. Some of them were simple text boxes, and others were checkboxes that allowed multiple selections; for instance, the section titled Services had possible selections like: NRCS, SXL, BMKT and other alphabet soups, and it was possible to select more than one at a time. Since they didn't know what Rice might be involved in, they were cautious.
Sam pointed to NRCS. “Narcotics, I'd bet,” he said. “We know Rice is into drugs, so let's try that one.”
“Okay, but what about crew and district and line? We don’t know what they mean, let alone how he would enter the data.”
“True, but we gotta try something. District is a drop-down list, so just check the first one, then same for crew and line. Can't be worse than it already is, right?”
Indie shrugged. “Okay,” she said. She clicked on District, and selected “1,” then on Crew and selected “A.” Line didn't have any entries, so she ignored that, and continued choosing the first item she could in each of the other fields. When all of them had an entry, she hit the Submit Button at the bottom of the page.
Suddenly, they were looking at a page that appeared to be a collection of business programs. There were folders arranged all over the page, and each one had a title. The first was called “Accounting,” and that was followed by “Marketing,” “Receivables,” “Payables” and then “Deliveries.”
The one that caught Sam's attention, however, was titled “Communications, Internal,” and he pointed to it. Indie clicked on it, and what looked like an email program popped open.
There were dozens of messages, each one either to or from Rice. They began looking at the ones that had already been read, and the story that unfolded before them was mind-boggling!
Allen Rice had dreams of being bigger in the organization, all right, and he didn't care what he had to do to get there! Some of the earliest emails between him and his supervisor were discussions about his insistence that he was smart enough to run a crew all by himself. The supervisor found this funny, apparently, and let Rice know that he didn't have anywhere near the brains it took to run a crew for the Company. Rice protested, over and over, that all they needed to do was give him a chance and he'd prove himself.
This had all begun weeks before, and every email seemed to be a mere continuation of the same theme. Rice demanded his chance; the supervisor denied it. Sam shook his head.
“Personally, I'd have shot the guy after the first week,” he said. “I don’t know how this supervisor had t
he patience to keep putting up with him all this time! I couldn't have done it!”
They continued reading, and suddenly struck gold. Only two weeks before, the supervisor finally made a proposal that Rice found interesting.
“I was out your way last weekend,” the email read, “and saw you with a young girl. That would be your daughter, of course, whom you get to see every other Saturday. She's a pretty little thing, and I thought that perhaps you might be worth a try after all. If you were to arrange for her to come and stay with us for a few days, with no harm to come to her at all, of course, then I would see fit to let you have a shot at running a crew. We'd send you off to St. Louis to handle a specific situation for us. When you get back, if you've sold all your product and done well, then we'll give you a crew of your own to run out in Vegas. Your daughter would only be our guest until you got back from St. Louis, of course, and she'd be returned to you as soon as you come back with our money.” The next few emails discussed the idea further, and the last one—dated the previous Friday—was Rice's agreement and promise to deliver his daughter the next day.
Sam shook his head. “That's what I figured,” he said. “He used his daughter as security, so he could make some fast money.”
“Man, that is sick,” Indie said. “Can we hang this guy? I want to see him do time over this, especially if the little girl gets hurt!”
“Oh, I promise you,” Sam said coldly, “this guy's going down, one way or another.”
“Okay, look here,” Indie said, pointing. “He says he'll drop her off at 'the old warehouse,' wherever that is. Let me see if there's anything here that gives us locations, but I'm sure they're smarter than that.” She tapped at the keys for several minutes, pausing now and then to look at the screen, but finally, she shook her head. “No luck, I'm afraid.”