by Ken Fite
I looked at Jami, who I could tell had more questions for the man. “There’s a keycard reader outside,” she said, “that unlocks the revolving door if a resident approaches before you can let them in?”
The young man nodded.
“How many readers are there, and where are they located?” she asked.
“Just the one outside and a reader on every floor to access the hallway where the residents live.”
“How many residents live here?” I asked.
“I don’t know, a couple hundred, maybe. I’m not sure.”
I crossed my arms. “I need to know who hasn’t used their keycard in the last twenty-four hours,” I said.
“How would I know that? I’ve only been here for a few hours now, and I don’t know the other doormen. And our schedules change all the time. I can only tell you who I’ve seen since I’ve been here at four.”
“I want access to the card reader system. Where is it?”
“Listen, I don’t know how all of that works. There’s a computer system, but I don’t know how to run it.”
“Then we’re going to learn together,” I said. “Take us there now, and I want you to log us in.”
He stared at me. I could tell he didn’t want to have anything to do with this. I put my right hand on my gun. I hated using intimidation. It was out of character for me, but we were running out of time.
“Sorry, I’m not going to do that,” he said.
I let go of my gun and grabbed the man with both hands and threw him up against the wall. “Log us in now!” I yelled. My heart was racing and I was breathing hard. The man was still defiant. I held him against the wall and brought my right hand up and made a fist. “I said now!” I yelled, and Jami grabbed my arm and held me back.
“Alright, I’ll take you there. I’ll log you in.”
SIXTY-FOUR
THE DOORMAN LED Jami and me down a hallway and unlocked the door to a small office. Once inside, we found a computer, and the young man sat down in front of it and logged in. “Okay, this is where I go to clock in and out and check work email. It’s a small company. We all share the same computer,” he said.
“Let me take over,” said Jami as she switched places with the man and searched for the program. “Okay, I think I found it,” she said as she accessed the program’s main menu and was prompted with a number of options, including creating a new keycard, troubleshooting the system, and reporting.
“Go to reporting,” I said, but the system stopped her from moving from the main screen without entering in the password.
“Do you know the password?” she asked the man.
“No, I’ve never used this system. I was trained once, but haven’t touched it since.”
I looked around the room. “Did you get a training manual?”
He walked to a cubby and shuffled some things around and pulled something out and handed it to me.
“Here’s what they gave me.”
I flipped through the manual until I got to the section on accessing the system. “It says the username is your RACF ID. What is that?”
“UIZ1,” he answered.
“Password is first initial plus last initial plus the last five of your SSN,” I added.
The man looked at Jami. “CL74956,” he said as Jami entered in the credentials.
“I’m in. Blake, how do we run a report?” she asked after entering the reporting section.
“We want to run it by usage, so run it by date last active. For time frame, use the last twenty-four hours.”
Jami typed in the report parameters and ran it. “Twenty-seven results, Blake.”
The doorman looked at us. “Is it because of the curfew?”
I thought about it for a moment. “Okay, run it by last seventy-two hours.”
Jami reran the report with the revised requirements. “Now I’m only seeing three results. Two women and a man. The woman is in suite 910, then a man and woman both from suite 706.”
I stepped closer to look at the screen. “Do you know a Barbara Nichols in suite 910?”
“Yes, I know her,” replied the doorman. “I helped take her luggage out to a cab a few days ago, said she was traveling to Florida to visit some family.”
“What about Anita and Victor Perez in 706?”
He looked at the screen. “I don’t know them.”
I put a hand up to my ear. “Morgan, can you do a reverse search on 180 Pearson, suite 706?”
Morgan responded immediately. “Looking now, Blake.” A few seconds later, he had something. “I found an Anita Perez, just turned sixty-five over the summer. Purchased a condo at 180 Pearson in July. I’m doing a crosscheck against her retirement benefits and bank account. I’m going to need a few minutes.”
I turned to Jami. “Can we find out when their keycards were created?”
“There’s a time stamp right here,” she said, pointing at her screen. “Anita’s keycard was created three months ago, and Victor’s was added about a month ago.”
“Looks like she started receiving her retirement benefits, but hasn’t cashed her check from this month yet,” Morgan said.
“Something’s not adding up. Who the hell is Victor Perez?” I asked Morgan.
“I don’t see the name associated with Anita in any way,” he replied. “Victor isn’t a beneficiary and not related from what I can see.”
Jami navigated back to the main screen.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m going to create a keycard for suite 706.” She looked at the doorman. “Where do you keep the card stock?”
“I don’t know. Like I said, I’ve never had to do this. The residents are usually good about not losing them. When new people move in, someone just updates the cardholder name, I guess.” He looked around and started opening drawers and finally found a stack of blank keycards and handed one of them to Jami.
She inserted one of the blank cards into the reader located next to the computer and hit reprint on Victor Perez’s keycard. It disappeared into the reader and, a second later, popped back out and Jami grabbed it.
SIXTY-FIVE
JAMI TURNED TO me. “It looks like Anita’s keycard stopped working the same day Victor’s was created.”
“It’s not adding up,” I said. “Sounds like the man may have forced her to get him access and has been staying in her home.”
“If so, then what did he do to the woman?” she asked.
I shrugged and held my hand up to my ear again. “Morgan, can you run a lookup on Victor Perez?”
He responded a few seconds later. “Blake, there’s over a hundred just in Chicago alone. I’m going to need more than that to perform a proper search.”
“Is there a cardholder profile we could look up?” I asked the doorman. “Maybe we can get an SSN or a driver’s license?”
He shook his head.
“How do you know?” Jami asked the doorman before he realized what he’d done. Jami looked at the usage report again. “Wait a second. Victor’s keycard was created by user UIZ1. That’s you.”
The man started to run, and I tackled him and slammed him against the door. “You lied to us!” I yelled.
“I’m not involved, I swear. But I did create the keycard. I remember them walking down to the lobby a few weeks ago. I’ll tell you everything that happened, just don’t arrest me.”
I let go of the doorman. “Start talking.”
“Okay. Early one morning after I started my shift, the lady came downstairs with the man you’ve described. She introduced herself as Anita Perez from suite 706 and said she was going to be going out of town for a while and she couldn’t find her keycard. She thought she’d lost it. I shook the man’s hand, trying to figure out who he was. The lady said he was her son and he’d be staying at her place while she was gone. I created a reprint and volunteered to create an additional card for her son. You’re not supposed to share keycards, it’s one per person. He was reluctant at first, but finally gave me h
is name. Victor.”
“You haven’t seen the woman since?” I asked.
“Not since that day. I haven’t given it much thought.”
“Morgan, we might be dealing with a squatter in 706. Can you access the city’s power and water usage for the suite over the last few days? I want to know what we’re dealing with before we go inside.” He said he’d get back to me.
“How do we get to the seventh floor? Where’s the elevator?” asked Jami.
“There are two, straight back. You’ll need that keycard to get onto the floor. You can use the same one you reprinted to get into suite 706.”
“Alright, mate, electricity’s being used,” said Morgan. “There was a drop in usage this month, but it’s still active. Same with the water. Very minimal usage, almost nonexistent. Maybe from an icemaker, I can’t be sure, Blake.”
Jami turned to me. “Sounds like nobody’s been in the suite for a few days now. It should be clear.”
I turned to the doorman. “Is there anything we’re missing? Anything else we should know about?”
“No, I don’t think so. What are you going to do with me?”
“Let’s head up,” I said to Jami and we walked out of the small office. I stopped the doorman from leaving. “Give me your cell phone,” I said, and the man took it out of his pocket and handed it over. I yanked the phone from one of the desks inside the office and took it out with me. “You’re staying here.”
I closed the door behind me and positioned a nearby chair against the doorknob. “You can’t do this!” the doorman yelled from inside the room.
“Blake, what are you doing?” asked Jami.
“We can’t trust him. I’m not taking him upstairs with us, and if we leave him here and he calls CPD, we’ll have a mess to deal with. You take the north elevator and I’ll take this one,” I said when we got to the first elevator. “If he’s here, I don’t want to lose him.”
Jami nodded. “I’ll wait for you when I get to the floor.”
SIXTY-SIX
I ARRIVED AT the seventh floor a few seconds later. “I’m here,” I said to Jami through my earpiece.
“Copy that,” she responded as I jogged down the hallway that stretched the perimeter of the floor that had two entry points, one on the east side and one on the west. When I found Jami, she was holding her Glock 17. I grabbed my 22.
“You ready?” I asked.
“Ready.”
Jami pulled the keycard she’d created from her pants pocket, swiped it against the reader, and we saw the light change from red to green. I grabbed the handle and turned it, then pushed the door open. Jami went in and I followed right behind her. The hallway was empty.
Jami looked at the suite numbers on the floor. We were standing in between suites 748 and 749 across the hall. “It must be on the opposite side,” I said, and we started to pick up speed. I thought about David Mitchell’s apartment on the Gold Coast. It was nothing compared to this place. There were ornate decorations along the wall and the partially tiled floor looked expensive. Millionaires, I thought.
We slowed down when we got close to suite 706 and stopped outside the doorway. We didn’t have enough time to ask Morgan to look into the floor plan of the suite. But it would have been nice to have known what we were getting ourselves into ahead of time.
“You take the left side and I’ll take the right,” I said, and Jami nodded in agreement.
I held onto my Glock and aimed it at the floor as I waited for Jami to swipe the keycard and push the door open with her foot. As soon as it swung open, I turned and ran inside and heard Jami follow me in.
“Federal agents,” I said loud enough to be heard inside the condo while trying to keep my voice down to not alarm any of the other residents. There was nobody in the living room, so I entered the bedroom and it was clear.
Jami walked through the kitchen and entered the office and I heard her go into the bathroom. That was clear, too. Victor Perez wasn’t here. “All clear,” I heard Jami say before she joined me in the living room.
The condo was filled with expensive antiques that looked like old family heirlooms while at the same time it was decked out with a huge flat-screen TV and modern furniture. The entire east side of the condo had windows that stretched the full length of the wall and overlooked the buildings of downtown and Lake Michigan. The sky was growing darker by the minute, reminding me that we were running out of time.
“Blake, Mallory is asking for an update,” I heard Morgan say through my earpiece.
“Victor’s not here; neither is Anita Perez. We’re going to search the home and see if we can figure out who this guy is.” Jami had already started going through some of the belongings.
“How long was this guy staying here?” she asked.
“At least a month, it seems. I wonder what he did with the older lady,” I replied. I looked around, trying to figure out where I should start. Jami was in the living room, going through some papers that were stacked on the coffee table. “I’ll check out the bedroom; then let’s go through the office together,” I said.
There wasn’t much to go through. The closet had a few of Victor’s clothes in a small section next to the woman’s dresses that took up most of the closet area. The bed was made and there weren’t any personal effects on or anywhere inside the dresser. I went through every drawer. All I found was Anita’s jewelry.
I walked out of the bedroom and passed through the living room. Jami was just wrapping up and looked like she was ready to join me in the office to look around. I noticed the front door was still wide open.
“I’ll get the door,” I said and walked over to shut it when a woman appeared and startled me. I reflexively put my right hand on my gun.
“Is Anita back home yet?” the lady said to me.
“Who are you?”
“Sandra, I live in 705 across the hall. Is Anita okay? Are you the police?”
I motioned for her to enter.
“Come inside,” I said, and the woman walked inside the residence.
SIXTY-SEVEN
I SHOWED THE woman inside and escorted her to the living room. “Please, sit down,” I said. Jami sat next to her on the couch and I sat in a recliner across from her. She was an older lady, looked like maybe she was in her early seventies.
“Are you friends with Anita?” asked Jami.
Sandra smiled and looked down. “Very good friends.”
“Can you tell us where she went?” I asked.
“I wish I could. One day I stopped by to pick her up to go to breakfast like we do every day, and she didn’t answer the door. I went back inside and got my cell phone and came back to her door and tried calling her. I heard her cell phone ringing from inside. I didn’t think much of it at first. I thought maybe she was in the shower. But an hour later, the same thing happened.”
“Then what happened?” asked Jami.
“Then I knocked on the door again, and this man walked up and introduced himself. It was her son. He told me she left the state for a few weeks and he’d be staying here until she returned. I asked about the phone. He told me not to worry about it and opened the door, inviting me inside. Her phone was on the kitchen counter. He said she had left it behind by accident. I felt very uncomfortable and excused myself. She hasn’t returned yet. I’m worried about her.”
Sandra’s eyes started to well up and Jami handed her a tissue. “Have you seen the man since then?” Jami asked after grabbing her hands and trying to comfort the woman. I’d been wondering if any neighbors had seen anything. Who is this guy? What did he do with Anita Perez? Is she really out of town, or is she dead—killed by the kidnapper, Victor Perez?
“I haven’t seen him again, no. But I’ve heard him a few times while walking past Anita’s door.”
Jami and I exchanged a glance and I spoke up. “What do you mean you heard him a few times? On the phone?”
“No, not on the phone, I heard him arguing. Yelling is more like it. I might be getting up th
ere in age, but my instincts are still intact. I had a feeling the guy was going to be trouble.”
I leaned forward in the recliner. “Sandra, was Anita’s son arguing with someone here in the room?”
“Yes. Loud voices. Always two men.”
“What did they sound like? Does Victor have an accent?” I asked.
“Not much of an accent, not like Anita’s at least.” Sandra looked away briefly, trying to remember more. “She told me once that she had a son and a daughter born in the States. She didn’t talk about them much.”
Sandra stood. I felt she was ready to leave, but I still needed more answers. “What were the men yelling about? Could you make out anything they were saying?”
“Their voices were always muffled,” Sandra explained to me. “I could pick up a few things here and there, but not enough to understand what they were saying. It usually happened late at night around eleven o’clock. Sometimes I can’t sleep, so I’ll just go for a short walk inside the building. That usually does the trick. But whenever I’d hear them, I’d just go back inside. I try to avoid them both.”
“What do you mean avoid them both, Mrs. Sandra? Do you know who the other man is? The one Anita’s son argues with?” Jami asked.
“Oh yes. Well, I don’t know him, but I know where he lives, right down the hall. He’s in 723,” Sandra said and walked to the door.
“We’ll let you know if we figure out what’s going on,” I said, and she smiled. “Please stay inside and don’t come out for the rest of the night, okay?”
After she left, Jami and I talked about next steps. It was getting late and we didn’t have time to chase down dead ends. “Go ahead and call it in. I’ll get started on the office,” I said, and I walked into the next room and started going through everything.
“Morgan, can you look into suite 723 and tell me who lives there?” I heard Jami ask in my earpiece.
I was going through the desk and found something interesting. “We’ve got schematics,” I yelled, and Jami ran into the room to join me. “Looks like floor plans for the United Center,” I said while Jami sifted through a pile of papers.