“Well?”
“I have an idea.”
“No shit. Now tell me.”
He needed a minute to think.
Rigas understood. “Where’s the bathroom? Gotta go.” She headed out and Josh sat back down at the computer and started typing. First he needed to shield his own IP address, so when he logged into Helen’s account it would be impossible to trace it back to him. This was probably what her boss did if he were as careful as Josh decided to assume he’d be. Rigas came back in the office.
“Well?” She was expectant again.
“I’m going to send him an email. From Helen’s account.”
That got a smile. And another punch on the shoulder, which Josh didn’t duck.”
Her good humor was brief. “Send him an email – and what, ask him his name? Maybe an address would help, too.”
Josh didn’t know if Rigas was rolling her eyes, but it sounded that way. “Pretty much. I’m going to do a social hack.”
“Oh, that explains it.” This time she was rolling her eyes; he knew because she had gone around to the front of the desk and showed him.
Josh tried to explain it to her. “Technology isn’t as reliable or as fast as social engineering. I could spend a year writing a program to break into the phone company’s database and let me do reverse look-ups to get the address of anyone in the country. But there’s a good chance they would detect it, or it wouldn’t work, or I’d get caught. So when you need something fast, you do a social hack.”
Rigas looked like she thought he was full of it. “Bullshit.”
“Tricking people is a lot easier than tricking a computer. It takes just as much skill as a technical hack.” She looked dubious.
Josh needed her to work with him so he needed her to understand what he was doing. He decided to do a trick he’d caught a guy doing once when Josh worked for a security company a few years earlier. “I’ll show you. Who’s your favorite actor?” She looked at him like he was about to waste a lot of time, but humored him.
“I kinda like Ryan Gosling. Why?” She didn’t mention that it had just occurred to her that Barnes looked a little like Gosling.
“Give me your cell phone.”
She still looked skeptical, but gave Josh the phone. He knew she wanted him to make a fool of himself and get back to work. Josh popped the back off her phone and copied a long string of digits and letters from a tiny black and silver strip onto a pad of paper on his desk. Hitting a few buttons on the pad on the front of the phone, he copied down her cell phone number too, then handed it back to her. On his computer, Josh pulled up the web site for Verizon Wireless and spent two minutes moving around the site. Then a quick visit to SBC for the telephone number of the local phone company. He hit the Speaker button on the office phone and dialed. Looking at Rigas, Josh navigated the automated answering system until he got a live operator.
“This is Detective J. Rigas, Los Angeles Homicide, Valley Division. Badge number 70312. What’s your name and ID?”
“Sharon Krantz, JL45562. How can I help you, Detective?”
Rigas looked down at the gold shield hooked to her belt and back up at Josh.
“Sharon, I need a physical address on Rosling, Ryan, in Beverly Hills.”
There was a moment of silence, and then: “That’s an unlisted number, Detective.”
“That’s right, Sharon. You know the procedure. Call the West Valley station and confirm my badge number. Then ring my cell; they’ll give it to you. Call me back immediately with the address.”
Josh hung up, not waiting for an answer. Rigas still didn’t say anything, but now she looked a little pissed. Less than one minute later, the office phone rang. Josh hit Speaker again.
“Rigas.”
“Detective, this is Sharon Krantz. Sorry for the delay. Here’s the address.”
She read out an address in a ritzy part of Beverly Hills. Josh didn’t write it down. Thanking Sharon, he disconnected.
“How the fuck did you make it ring on your line?”
“Anybody can do it; I just needed some info and access to the web. The important part was convincing the operator to give me the information.”
“Bullshit,” Rigas concluded. “You had to have my badge number.”
“Public information.”
“Okay,” her eyes narrowed, “you needed my cell phone number.”
“It’s on your business card.”
“Goddamnit, then you needed to get a serial number off the back!”
“I would only need the phone for a minute – someone with the right skills could get it from you easily for that long. But I could have gotten the SIM code from a dozen other places on the Internet without ever seeing the phone, it just would have taken a little longer.”
She let go of her anger faster than Josh expected. “You could have at least written down the address… Now put my phone back the way it was.” Rigas was impressed, something that seemed to keep happening the more time she spent with Barnes. It was also a little distracting.
Josh went back to the computer and did. While he typed, he described the outline of a plan for drawing out Helen’s boss. Josh needed some time to figure out the details, and if it worked it would take a couple of days to make it happen. Rigas was still doubtful, but she knew he was motivated.
“Okay, you work out the details. But don’t do anything yet – don’t contact him or leave the house. I’ve got a few things to do at headquarters and I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
It was an order, but one Josh agreed with. He walked her to the door and let her out. As she went down the walk, she turned. Her eyes sparkled with excitement. She was a good cop, and she was excited by the chase. For just a moment Josh could see the cheerleader in her, getting ready for the big game. It put her in a very different light and she didn’t look so much like the rough cop Josh had disliked only a day ago. He was glad they were on the same team. Josh went back to the office and starting pacing.
Chapter Twenty-six
After talking to Josh on Saturday morning, George had left Allison in the car and walked to the small convenience store. She could see him on his cell phone. A couple minutes later he got back in the passenger side and picked up a small pack he’d left on the floor. “We’ll leave your car in a safe place. Head back south a mile and a half. I’ll tell you when to turn.” Allison did as he asked and when they reached the point in the freeway, George had her turn off onto what looked like a driveway heading down into the woods. Another turn into a dirt road and the spacing of the trees on either side thickened. Four more turns and 1.2 miles according to the odometer, and they were driving on mossy earth, on what was more trail than road. George had her stop next to a beautiful, seventy-five foot tree with bushy green branches all the way to the top. While they were driving, George had pulled a small device that looked like a CD-player from his pack and affixed it just below the passenger window. They got out of the car and Allison was surprised by how much the air had warmed compared to just a couple miles away at Gorman. She watched George go to a spot where the brush was particularly thick. She called out to him:
“I’ve got a bunch of stuff, George. I won’t be able to carry it very far.”
George didn’t answer. When he reached the brush, he pulled away several large branches, revealing a Hummer painted in camouflage. He pulled a key out of his pack and the muted “whoop-whoop” of the alarm being turned off sounded out of place in the middle of the forest. He popped the trunk and began to transfer the lode from the BMW to his vehicle. Allison smiled to herself; George had always wanted a Hummer.
Once everything was transferred to George’s car, alongside what looked like boxes of groceries from Costco that George already had in the back, they closed up the BMW. Just before shutting the passenger door of the BMW, he pressed a button on the device he had attached below the window and Allison could see a green light blinking.
“If any seal on the car is broken – window, door, roof, anythin
g – it will detect it and send me a signal on my cell phone. We’ll know if they’ve found you.”
Two weeks ago, Allison might have snorted and poked fun at a comment like that. Now she wasn’t so sure. They got in the Hummer and George began to navigate slight openings in the forest that didn’t even qualify as trails. Surreal as it was, Allison felt comforted. She caught him up on the events of her life while George navigated between trees and over several small streams. He seemed particularly interested in the divorce proceedings, not just because it meant Allison was single again (she managed to not roll her eyes at the idea that this meant he was going to try to start “dating” her while holed up in the middle of nowhere) but because it also provided a launching pad for his theory about how her ex-husband must have been a corporate mole and part of a larger effort to undermine the independence of…Allison stopped listening after a minute and enjoyed the scenery. Averaging just four or five miles an hour, it took ten minutes for them to reach what looked like a ravine between two small mountains – really not much more than large hills – that looked like a dead end. George put the Hummer in an even lower gear and moved up the ravine. A hundred yards in he turned sharply left at a spot Allison would have sworn had no opening. Twenty feet further and a quick jag to the right and suddenly she gasped. There was a flat area seemingly cut into the hillside, rock on one side and a panoramic view of the forest going off to the horizon on the others. The ground was covered with brush, rock, and moss, and several trees formed a natural canopy. Beneath the arch was a small but multi-roomed cabin that could have been taken from the cover of Architectural Digest. The cabin was simple, but elegant in a way that would have fetched a million dollars on a quarter acre in a neighborhood that had an actual road or utilities hooked up. It looked as though someone had transported it by helicopter from one of LA’s nicer areas and dropped it here. George parked in the “driveway,” a packed area under several trees. Allison noticed the cabin probably did not get much light, but when she got out of the car and looked up, she understood at once why that was. George had carefully built the cabin beneath the clutch of trees so as not to be visible from the air. Same reasoning for the makeshift carport.
“George, this is really something.”
“Wait ‘til you see the inside.” They unloaded the car and put everything on the well-crafted front porch. Somehow, nothing George did surprised her.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Rigas called her partner on his cell phone. While she waited for Crevins to pick up, she turned her phone over and looked at the back. Barnes had made it look easy to get the info off the SIM. She didn’t like that. The whole thing was just a trick, but it made the point: what Barnes did was just like regular police work in that intimidation and misdirection often got perps to confess things they didn’t want to tell you. She trusted Barnes’ technical skills, but wasn’t sure she wanted to rely on his sleuthing abilities. She’d have to keep a close eye to make sure he didn’t screw it up. She was spending more time with this guy than she was with her partner – or anyone she’d dated for a while, come to think of it. Telling him about Mills pushed the right button. Rigas had started to worry he’d back off now and let the cops handle everything. But she knew the guy who hired the dead woman and her partner wasn’t going to wait around for the feds to track him down. Barnes was dead if this didn’t get wrapped up, and she wouldn’t take any bets on his sister getting out of it either. Putting that fear into him helped him focus, and she needed him sharp. This was a dangerous game, and she wasn’t as sure as she’d led Barnes to think that she had it under control. Rigas wanted the score, but knew she had to balance the risk with the reward. She’d let Barnes come up with a plan for baiting the guy out, but she’d make any tactical decisions. And Barnes would stay out the line of fire – he could do everything he needed to do from home. Right now she needed Crevins to know enough to be there for backup when she needed it, but more important that he cover her ass so her boss didn’t catch wind she was still following the extortion angle.
Crevins answered and she told him she was following up on leads connecting the Mills case to Barnes. Crevins asked a couple questions that let her know he knew she was going beyond the scope of what the captain had said was okay. But he also got the message across he’d help when she needed it. She hung up, knowing she had some space to maneuver and help if she needed it. Sitting in the large information room at headquarters, Rigas looked up at the computer screen in front of her. She was connected to a string of databases covering crimes in LA County and four surrounding counties in southern California, with the ability to link up to federal databases if she got permission from her boss. She was looking for other hits, other deaths that might be tied to the pair of bodies Barnes was connected to. Mills and Barnes. Two wasn’t a pattern, but it screamed for attention. She believed there was a sophisticated operation behind all this and she wanted more places to go fishing in case neither of these two panned out.
After an hour, Rigas hadn’t found any other deaths by strangulation using piano wire, just a few with rope, bare hands, and one with a shoelace. If this pair pulled this scam regularly, they probably had it down to a rhythm and the M.O. would be the same. If she couldn’t find any similar strangulations, that probably meant there weren’t more bodies, at least in Southern California, but there might be a bunch of scared people with bruises who had given up whatever Helen asked for before it got too violent. She sat back in her chair, arms crossed on her chest. Her excitement from a couple hours ago had faded and now she was just pissed. No way to track these fucking psychos if their victims didn’t report what happened or got killed. She needed to find another way to connect their activities, something about the stuff they were stealing. That was out of her area of expertise. Rigas wasn’t a big fan of the Wall Street Journal or the business page. She got as far as the sports section in the morning and maybe skimmed the news headlines at night. No way she was going to track down some fancy white collar bullshit herself. She’d have to figure out another approach. Maybe Barnes could help out there, too. Barnes – it kept coming back to him. He was starting to get under her skin a little. Not in a bad way, though. Her thoughts drifted a little.
“Fuck me!” interrupted her reverie, as the expression erupted from the mouth of another detective sitting in the break area fifty feet away. CNN was on the screen above his head, turned down low and with the closed caption feature on. Rigas turned and recognized Tim Cooth, the only guy on the squad with a dirtier mouth than her own. Dumb as a sack of hammers was how she thought of him, but he had doughnuts in front of him so she stopped by for a hello. Along with the cruller, she got an earful.
“Goddamn Lockheed was down four bucks this week. Goddamn piece of shit company lost me three grand in one goddamn day. Couldn’t hit a barn door with a slingshot of cow shit, goddamnit.”
Rigas didn’t really listen, having heard his rants about playing the market and making money on the side. She watched the television screen and scanned the captions. A test of the missile shield system had failed earlier that week, Lockheed was being blamed for lousy work, the usual finger pointing among its vendors. Then she stopped chewing. Calypso Software of Pasadena, CA was identified as a key subcontractor. Rigas didn’t watch the rest of the broadcast. This wasn’t a coincidence, but she didn’t know what it meant. She finished her doughnut as she walked to her car, heading back to Barnes’. Maybe he knew what the hell the connection could be.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Josh needed a way to get Helen’s boss to show himself. He racked his brain, coming up with a hundred variations. All led to dead ends. He had to assume he couldn’t just track her boss’ IP address, though he’d try just to be sure. If Josh got his phone number, it would probably be untraceable – he could be replacing the SIM card or using a stolen account. He’d still check to be thorough, but Josh didn’t believe it would work. What did he know about him? Josh knew he didn’t care about killing innocent people and would hire so
meone like Helen to do it. Josh didn’t know what he wanted with the Ventrica. Rigas’ story about Bernard Mills and the software company was all the convincing Josh needed that he was just one of the people whose life had been ruined by this scam, so he also knew her boss was motivated by money. Josh couldn’t get to him by threatening to expose him, but maybe the Ventrica design was important enough to get him to incriminate himself. There were also the accounts. Josh had logged in while Rigas was out and found $17.5M in the second account. He was pretty sure the 2.5M from the first account was Crawford’s and the bigger account was Helen’s. Maybe that money, plus the Ventrica, could be enough bait. Josh wasn’t sure how good a blackmailer he could be, but he was going to find out.
Showing great timing again, Rigas pounded on the door just as Josh was getting the last couple minutes of hot water out of the shower and thinking about the details of the plan. Still wet but properly covered this time, he let her in.
“Nice hair,” was her greeting this time. “Hello” wasn’t part of her vocabulary.
“I’ve got an idea.”
“Well, quit dripping and start talking. Let’s get some food, too.”
She brushed by and headed to the kitchen, again. They seemed to have established a pattern. She rummaged around and pulled some things out of the fridge. It was mid afternoon, so a late lunch or early dinner was fine. They heated things in the microwave and sat at the kitchen table. Josh noticed Rigas had combed out her hair. She wasn’t one for makeup, but he saw a hint of gloss on her lips. It looked nice.
Josh told her what he was thinking. About the plan, not about how nicely her lips were glistening. A little tomato sauce from a meatball sandwich she’d made sat on the corner of her mouth. He offered her a napkin but she brushed him off. She thought about the idea he’d come up with, then licked the sauce off with her tongue. Josh felt a little tingle again.
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