by R. L. Akers
Gray swore again, more viciously this time, slamming a fist into a brick wall with enough force to split his knuckles. The weasel's reactions made perfect sense now. The man who'd murdered Rose had most likely been after Gray, not Rose; he probably fled the scene of that crime thinking Gray was dead. Encountering a very not-dead Gray Gaynes in an alley would be enough to shock him into reaching for a gun. But then, even if he knew Gray had survived, he probably would have reacted the same way — because he would certainly expect Gray to recognize him. And when Gray didn't...
The detective let out a wordless cry of rage. Yes, the man's behavior all made sense now. And he'd been standing there, defenseless, under Gray's power. Gray had even held the man's ID in his hands. If only he could have read the name! If he'd even had the foresight to take a picture of it with his smartphone!
Both of Gray's fists were bloody now, as he punched that brick wall again and again — and he was definitely drawing attention. If he didn't cool down, there would undoubtedly be a uniformed cop here within minutes, asking what was going on. That was not something he wanted to deal with at the moment, so he pushed away from the wall and began stalking back up the alley.
His phone rang, ripping him out of a sequence of murderous thoughts. "What?" he demanded.
There was a long pause. "Hey man, it's Bobbi."
"Yes, I have caller ID," he bit out. "What is it?"
"Whoa, who pooped in your cereal? Just thought I'd help you out on your case. Never mind." She hung up.
Gritting his teeth so hard his jaw hurt, Gray called her back. "I'm sorry, Bobbi, I... I just... Sorry."
"Whatever, man."
"What did you find?" Gray asked, forcing himself to breathe deeply. Bobbi Falmer was one of the geeks who operated out of the precinct and performed data analysis and forensics — the technical stuff that generally flew over Gray's head. She was the one who'd been analyzing the security access logs sent over from ATC this morning.
"Nothing," she responded. "No obvious tampering in the logs."
"That's impossible," Gray spat. "There's no way a hellhound stole this guy out of a closed office. There has to be a rational explanation."
There was another pause. "Uh, okay, dude. You realize I have no idea what you're talking about." She sighed audibly. "Look, I'm not saying the logs weren't tampered with, just that if they were, it's not obvious. There aren't any missing records. This table uses an auto-increment key, you know?"
"No," Gray ground out, "I don't know what that means." It felt like he'd been saying that a lot lately.
"It means all the records have a sequential identifier. A row number. So if you delete one or more records..."
"Then there would be obvious gaps. Got it." He shook his head. "So there are no gaps. But assume for a moment that the logs were tampered with — how did it happen?"
Bobbi was thoughtful for a moment. "If it was me, I'd dump all the records, then drop and recreate the table, inserting from scratch so that I could remove any records I wanted without leaving a gap."
"Uh huh," Gray responded, as if any of that made sense to him.
"But if that's what happened, you're skee-rood."
"What?"
"Screwed, Gray, you're screwed. I can't prove something like that did or didn't happen. Although..." She was thoughtful another moment. "There's something else I could check for. A less sophisticated hack, but still a possibility."
"I have to ask," Gray said — more complaining than really asking—"what's the point of having a security system if the logs are so easily altered?"
Bobbi snorted. "It's not that easy. It's not like every Tom, Dick, or Harry knows how to do this. You're looking for someone who's tech savvy."
"Bobbi, this entire company is tech savvy. They're working on some sort of process for automatically removing DGM from media files."
"You mean DRM? Cool."
Gray blinked. "Did you say cool?"
"Yeah, dude — down with the man, freedom for the masses, et cetera, et cetera."
"You realize you work for 'the man', right?"
"Bah. So I'm using my talents for evil in order to pay the bills. I'm not proud of it, but it is what it is. The job does not define me."
"I really don't understand you sometimes. You know that, right?" Gray was surprised to realize he was no longer teetering on the edge of rage.
"Hey, the feeling's mutual, Double-G."
"So about the tampering on the logs..." he prompted.
"Yeah. Okay, so... I'll keep poking at the logs, see if I come up with anything. Meanwhile, if you're sure the logs were hacked, find out who had access to do that. Like physical access to the security office. Prolly only a few people, and at least some of them management types — you know, as computer illiterate as a person can be. If you're lucky, only one of the peeps with physical access will also have the technical know-how to hack the logs."
"Got it." Gray took a breath. "Thanks, Bobbi. Seriously. And sorry about biting your head off earlier."
"No worries. Occupational hazard of working for the man. You still at the ATC office?"
"I'm headed back there now."
It was an hour past noon when Gray walked back into the lobby of the building that housed the ATC offices. He was surprised to run into Mack waiting for an elevator.
"Hey!" the other man said. "I just tried calling you."
Frowning, Gray checked his phone. Sure enough, he'd missed a call from Mack roughly twenty minutes ago. "Sorry, that was probably about the time I was talking with Bobbi."
"Oh yeah? She have anything to report?"
Gray shook his head. "No obvious tampering on the logs—"
"Ha! So it was the hellhound after all!" Mack froze as soon as he said the words, glancing around quickly to make sure no one else was within earshot of his outburst.
"Um, no," Gray said. He was in marginally better spirits than he'd been half an hour earlier, but that didn't mean he was in the mood for Mack's antics. "Bobbi says there are ways to doctor these logs if you know what you're doing. It's a matter of figuring out who had access." He stepped up beside Mack to wait for an elevator.
"Uh-huh," Mack said absently. "What happened to your hands?"
Gray immediately withdrew his scraped and bruised knuckles from view, clasping his hands behind his back — and in the next instant, he realized just how guilty that reaction looked. "It's nothing."
"If you say so." The other detective glanced around the lobby again, lowered his voice. "You learn anything from that woman you were meeting with?"
Gray sighed, shrugged. "I don't know. Not really. Mostly background info about the company. She's scared, thinks she may be the next victim, but it's all vague — she's paranoid they're going to silence her because she knows too much about the quasi-legal business ATC's involved in."
"Quasi-legal sounds interesting."
Gray managed a small smile. "I'll fill you in later."
"What about our timeline? Did your girl have any better idea whether it was yesterday she saw Weiss?"
Gray hesitated. Your girl? But of course his partner meant nothing by it; Mack had never even met Katy Cogan. "That lead was a bust," Gray confessed. "She got confused, realized it was actually Friday she ran into him."
Mack nodded. "Good."
"What's new in your world?"
Mack glanced at the elevator display bank, saw the closest car was still a few floors away from arriving, and started tapping his foot impatiently. "Well, I got a judge to sign the warrants — went ahead and got one for Blake's car too, just so we have all our bases covered."
Gray frowned. "So why aren't you at Blake's house?"
His partner smiled. "Because I got a tip that Blake was here."
It took a moment for that to sink in, then Gray said, "Here? In the building?"
"Yeah, man. And we found his car in the parking garage down below. Uniforms are going through it now." That was where the extra warrant came in handy. Though warrants weren't
necessary during a traffic stop — assuming the officer had probable cause — they were necessary if you wanted to search a vehicle without the owner present. "No sign of Blake in the garage," Mack continued, "but his engine was still warm, and — get this — the car was unlocked. So he's probably upstairs, and hasn't been there long."
Gray exhaled. He hoped that meant they'd be getting some answers soon.
The elevator dinged at long last, and the two men climbed aboard. Mack opened his mouth to say something more, but someone dashed into view just as the doors were closing, shoving himself through the narrowing gap to join them. Unable to speak confidentially, the detectives fell quiet.
When the newcomer got off on the fifth floor, Mack turned halfway in Gray's direction and spoke musingly. "Do you ever have a hard time getting in an elevator now?"
Gray sensed this was not what he'd been about to say a minute ago. "You mean... because of Barton Chan?"
"Yeah."
The younger detective nodded slowly. "Yeah." Unless Gray was truly preoccupied, it was seldom he rode an elevator anymore without thinking about the walls splattered with blood.
Mack shivered. "I hear the DA's still trying to figure that one out."
The two men fell silent again, each caught in reverie, remembering that first case they'd worked together after Gray's return from leave. They both gave a little jump when the bell dinged to indicate their arrival on the nineteenth floor — that sound definitely conjured less than pleasant memories of the Barton Chan killings.
All of that was wiped away as soon as the doors parted, however; the air filled immediately with the sound of a very loud, mostly one-sided yelling match. The detectives followed the sound a remarkable distance, right up to DeLancy's open office door, which showcased the president in heated argument with a man Gray very much suspected was Charles Blake. Judy Fairburn, hovering nervously outside the door, confirmed as much when Gray inquired. He would rather have asked Katy Cogan, but the pretty young woman's desk sat empty.
The two detectives traded a look, then entered the office.
Blake was in the midst of chronicling what sounded like his many years of devoted service to the company, but he broke off mid-sentence and whirled when the two unfamiliar faces entered the room. "Who the hell are you?" he blurted.
The man was in bad shape. He was attired in jeans and a golf shirt, which appeared to be underdressed compared to the rest of the staff, and he was disheveled — his hair a mess, his face flushed, his eyes bloodshot. And he stank to high heaven of liquor.
Both Mack and Gray produced their shields and identified themselves. As Mack pocketed his wallet once more, he asked, "You're Charles Blake?"
"Yeah. Why do you care?"
"Mr. Blake, do you know the whereabouts of your coworker Ed Weiss?"
Blake's eyes flared and he stepped toward Mack to plant a finger in his chest. "That son of a—" He broke off suddenly as he tripped on an office chair, going down hard, breath leaving him in a whoosh. Levering himself to his feet once more, Blake blurted, "Weiss can burn in hell. And you!" he whirled again, even more unsteadily than before, finger now directed at DeLancy. "You Judas, stabbing me in the back, giving him my job, my office." Blake grabbed hold of one of the chairs fronting the desk, and before the detectives could think to stop him, he hurled the chair across the desk at the president. "You can burn too!"
"And that would be assault," Mack said under his breath, matter-of-factly, sounding almost satisfied. Gray knew what he meant, pulling out his handcuffs as the larger detective swept the drunk's legs and planted him face-first on the ground. So far, the NYPD had yet to establish what exactly had happened here yesterday — and whether it was even a crime. It seemed clear that Blake was at the center of it, but without knowing what it was, they had no real grounds for arresting him... But since he'd now thrown a chair at his boss, Mack and Gray had a legally-sound reason for doing exactly that.
"Charles Blake," Mack said while Gray cuffed him, "you're under arrest for assault and battery." As Mack proceeded to read the man his rights, Gray stood and checked that DeLancy was okay. The chair had missed the man but shattered what was probably a very expensive sculpture on the table behind him.
Gray helped Mack drag the now-raving drunk to his feet. "Need help getting him out of here?" he asked.
"Nah, I'll call it in and meet the uniforms downstairs for a handoff, then join you back here." He cut his eyes toward the president then back at Gray. "Plenty for you to do up here." In other words, shake loose the info about who had access to doctor the security logs... along with anything else DeLancy might let slip now that his heart rate was elevated.
Gray nodded his agreement. Mack left with Blake, and Gray waited until the drunk man's screams had faded down the hall a ways before asking DeLancy, "You sure you're alright?"
"Yeah," the other man said, though he was clearly shaken. "You really think he murdered Ed?"
"Do you?" Gray asked, turning the question back on him for the second time today.
Arnold DeLancy shrugged, sitting down, then immediately standing back up again, obviously jittery. "He's always been a hothead. But murder?" He shrugged a second time. DeLancy's state was such that he did seem to have forgotten his resolution not to speak without a lawyer present.
"So he didn't say anything about it?" Gray pressed.
"Who, Charlie? About murder? No. But he clearly knew all about his demotion; that's why he came in here screaming at me."
"When did he find out?"
DeLancy shrugged. "When exactly? I don't know — or even who told him. But he obviously knew by the time he got back in town — from the things he was saying, it sounds like he and Ed had a big argument yesterday."
"So he did see Weiss yesterday."
"Unless... maybe they talked over the phone." DeLancy suggested weakly. He paused. "Do you know for sure yet? Whether... whether Ed is still alive or not?"
"It's not looking good," Gray said. "His wife hasn't heard from him in more than 24 hours now, and the blood we found appears to be a match. We're waiting on DNA verification, though." Actually, he hadn't learned anything new from forensics since the last time he'd spoken with DeLancy — Gray was still waiting for the ME to confirm it was human, much less Weiss's. Playing a hunch, he said, "Of course, even once we establish it's Weiss's blood, I doubt the medical examiner will sign a death certificate anytime soon. Not without an actual body."
He waited for DeLancy to take the bait. If Miss Cogan's paranoia had any merit — if DeLancy himself had been involved in Weiss's death, in hopes of somehow 'cashing in' on it — that death certificate was probably important to his plans. But DeLancy didn't say anything. Instead, he crossed to a server table on the side of his office and started pouring himself a drink.
"Honestly, if we never find a body, we might never know if Weiss is dead," Gray said, pushing a little bit harder. "And the ME might wait as long as seven years before declaring him dead in absentia."
Tossing back his drink, DeLancy slammed the heavy glass down on the server. "Dead or alive, he's not here!" the man thundered. He immediately poured himself another, then tossed that back too. "And if you arrest Charlie for this mess, that means I've lost both of them!" He slammed the glass down a second time before stalking back to his desk.
Interesting. Well, this certainly confirmed what Gray already knew, that Arnold DeLancy wasn't the warm and cuddly type — he cared about his employees, even his executives, only insofar as they affected his bottom line. And unless he was very cagey indeed, it didn't seem as though DeLancy cared whether Weiss was legally dead.
Time for Gray to back off the pressure a bit. "Sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself," he said. "Remember, we don't even know yet if it's Weiss's blood. He could still be alive and well somewhere."
"Do you really believe that?" DeLancy asked, not hopefully but bitterly. "After the way Charlie was acting?"
Gray quirked his lip in a noncommittal expression. "Mr. DeLancy, who ha
s access to your security office? Actual physical access to the room, I mean."
DeLancy blinked at the non sequitur. "Um, execs only — VP and above. Plus the security staff, of course. Why?"
"Because we've confirmed that someone doctored your security logs yesterday." Assuming you were willing to define 'confirmed' as 'ruled out all other possibilities.'
"Then it would probably be..." DeLancy trailed off, uncomfortable.
"Yes," Gray acknowledged, "Mr. Blake does seem the most obvious culprit, if you're telling me he had access. But I need to chase down all the possibilities." Gray had his note-taking app open now. "So, execs and security staff. Other than you and Blake, that would be..." He checked his previous notes. "Jonas Gadding and Vincent Turrell, yes?"
The president sighed. "Right. Plus all three security officers."
"Meaning John Lloyd, Jerry Boyd, and... who's the third, Frank Floyd?"
DeLancy looked confused. "Dipak Chaudhri."
"Naturally," Gray said, adding the name to his list. He could verify the spelling later. "No one else with access? No investors or members of the board?"
"No, that's it," DeLancy confirmed.
"Thanks." Gray had spoken with most of these individuals already, and gotten their alibis; it would be the work of the next few days to verify those alibis, now that he knew they were important. Of course, Gray didn't plan to take DeLancy's word for it that these people were the only ones with access. He'd ask each of them the same question.
"Look, Detective, unless there's anything more you need, can I get back to it? It's sounding like I'll need to hire a new VP, at least interim."
Gray gave the executive a long look, then finally shook his head. "No, thank you for your time."