“We might be here a while,” he said, gesturing at the TV with the remote. “I figured we might as be entertained.”
Renee looked down at her hands.
“If we’re going to be here for a while, can I ask some questions? I want to find out what’s going on.”
Trent pointed the remote at the TV and reduced the volume.
“I don’t know what I can answer, but go ahead.”
Renee picked at a callous on the palm of her right hand.
“What’s going to happen to me?” she asked. “No one’s told me anything, and I’m tired of being schlepped around like I’m somebody’s poor, lost little sister.”
Trent looked down at the desk, his eyebrows arched.
“I don’t think we have a concrete plan yet,” he said. “My guess is that you’ll be put in some sort of protective custody while we figure out what’s going on. After that, I don’t know. SIU has a Russian expert in Cleveland. She’s coming down, and she’ll be able to tell you more.”
Renee nodded. She stared at a point on the wall above Trent’s right shoulder.
“By protective custody, do you mean I’ll be moved to Twiddle–Your–Ballsack, Montana, for the rest of my life?”
Trent chuckled.
“I don’t know,” he said, the smile on his face fading quickly. He rested his elbows on the desk and leaned forward. “It’s possible that the guy who came after you was acting alone, or that Dr. Byram was the real target and you just got in the way. If that’s the case, your life will be back on track in no time.”
“Do you think that’s likely?” she asked.
“I don’t know. There will be an investigation; that’s really all I’m sure about.”
Renee’s hands tightened into fists. She started to speak but stopped when the words threatened to erupt from her mouth before her brain could consider them.
“I don’t need certainty,” she said, finally. “I’ll take an educated guess. When we were in my house, you recognized that guy’s tattoo. You know more than you’re letting on, so please stop holding back on me. Yes or no: will the people who killed Mitch come after me again?”
Trent stared at his hands for a moment, but then he nodded slowly.
“Probably. From what I know about the Russians, they’re not nice people. As long as you’re a threat to them, they’ll keep coming after you.”
Renee breathed deeply. It was probably the first honest answer she had gotten all night. She was in trouble.
“What should I do?” she asked.
“You can help us find out why they came after you. Once we have that information, we might be able to stop them.”
“How am I supposed to do that? I don’t even know any Russians, let alone criminals. I doubt Mitch did, either.”
Renee stood up and started pacing the room. The constant movement kept her mind focused.
“Did you and Mitch work on anything together?” asked Trent. “The Federal government sometimes hires mathematicians. Were you doing anything like that?”
She leaned against the wall.
“No,” she said. She paused and shrugged. “I wasn’t, at least. Mitch might have been, but he never told me about it.”
Trent nodded.
“Were you doing anything outside of work together? Someone considers you two a threat. You must have done something.”
Frustration tied Renee’s guts in a knot.
“Maybe they were really after someone else in my department,” she said. “Rodney has a contract with the US Mint. He’s developing an algorithm for a digital scanner that would detect counterfeit bills.”
“That’s possible,” said Trent, shrugging. “But you two have been the only ones targeted so far.”
Renee pushed off from the wall and started pacing again.
“I don’t know then. Mitch checked some figures for me on an article I’ve been writing, but we’re not working together.”
“What sort of an article was it?” asked Trent.
She started and stopped speaking for a moment, trying to order her thoughts.
“It’s not even an academic article,” she said. “I’m the faculty adviser for the college’s poker club, and my students showed me something interesting enough that I thought I’d write a paper about it.”
“What did they show you?” asked Trent, leaning forward.
“Just a statistical anomaly,” she said. She reached behind her and pulled her hair into a ponytail with a tie from her pocket. “It’s against the college’s network resources policy, but my students play poker online. When I go to their club meetings, we usually work through a couple of hands that they thought were hard. There’s a lot of math in poker, so it’s a good teaching opportunity. As they showed me more and more hands, I started seeing patterns. Do you know what a ‘bad beat’ is?”
“I don’t play poker,” he said.
“Well think about this,” said Renee, nodding. “Imagine the two of us are playing. I don’t know what hand you have, but I know what I’m holding. If I hold a really strong hand, I’ll bet a lot of money. If you hold a really strong hand, you’ll do the same thing. If we both hold strong hands, we’re likely to bet everything we’ve got, but only one of us is going to win. The player who loses has what’s called a bad beat. You with me so far?”
Trent nodded, so she continued.
“The thing is, a real bad beat should only happen once every two–hundred–thousand hands or so. My students saw it happening a lot more than that, though. Something like once in every twenty–five thousand hands. It was also happening more often at higher stakes games than lower stakes games. It was subtle, but the games were rigged. The patterns I saw were impossible in a non–rigged game. I wrote an article on it.”
Trent didn’t move for a moment, but then he leaned back and crossed his arms. He stared at her.
“What sort of proof do you have?”
“I’ve got a huge database of hands. It was so big that I had to reserve time on the college’s supercomputer to crunch the numbers.”
“And how did you get that database?”
“They didn’t know it, but abbotpoker.com gave it to me,” said Renee. “I had one of the computer science professors set up the campus’s network so that from eleven at night to seven in the morning every computer in every lab and office on campus logged onto abbotpoker.com and watched about a hundred games each. Since the computers recorded every hand they saw, I managed to record almost ten thousand hands per computer per hour. Multiply that by the eight hundred computers on campus for six months, and I’ve got a sample of over eleven billion hands.”
Trent didn’t say anything for a moment. His eyes were distant.
“What’s the payoff for doing this?” he asked.
“I don’t have exact figures, but I’d estimate that AbbotPoker made five or six million dollars a month on bad beats when they should have only made a few hundred thousand.”
Trent nodded, his eyes still distant.
“So at five million a month, you discovered that this website was stealing sixty million dollars a year from its customers? That’s the bottom line?”
“That’s the simple way of putting it,” she said.
“What was Dr. Byram’s role in your paper?”
“He verified my math,” said Renee. “There’s been talk about regulating and legalizing online poker, so I thought I might be able to get the story in Businessweek or The Wall Street Journal. Mitch worked with the SEC on Bernard Madoff’s case, so having his name as a contributor couldn’t hurt.”
Trent looked like he was going to say something in response, but the station’s front door opened and cold air blasted through the room before he could. Sheriff Amerson, smiling as usual, walked through the door followed by two men. The older of Sheriff Amerson’s companions had a scar running from his eyebrow to his cheek, and his eyes were as gray and cold as any Renee had ever seen. The sheriff’s younger companion lo
oked like he was about thirty–five and had green eyes and blond hair. He looked like a surfer who had traded in his surfboard for a tie.
“And our saviors have come,” said Amerson. He held his arms out as if he were going to hug Renee and Trent both. He turned and gestured to the two men. “These men are from the FBI, and they’re here to take Dr. Carter into protective custody.”
“Your sheriff here is too generous with his praise,” said the younger man, winking at Renee and stepping toward Trent with his arm outstretched. “Special Agent Victor Stiles. My partner is Special Agent Michael Smith.” He looked from Trent and then to Renee. “And I presume you’re Dr. Carter. Your friend doesn’t look like a Renee to me.”
Renee found herself chuckling despite the situation. It was more relief than anything else.
“You’ve got quite the eye, Agent Stiles,” she said, taking a step forward to shake the agent’s hand. She stopped before getting there, though, as a gust of wind slipped through the station’s open door, carrying with it the same, clean, woody scent she had smelled in Mitch’s office. Her breath caught in her throat, but before she could say anything, Trent stepped in front of her. She didn’t know why he had done that, but she was grateful to have something solid between her and the man who had attacked her earlier that day.
“We were just talking about the FBI,” said Trent. “I’m glad you’re here.”
It was a lie. Renee’s shoulders stiffened, and she took a step back. None of the men in the room seemed to notice.
“We try to help out the locals when we can,” said Agent Stiles. He smiled, but his partner looked emotionless and cold. “Tell you what. You look exhausted, Detective. We’ll take Dr. Carter off your hands so you can get some sleep, okay?”
Agent Stiles clapped Trent on the shoulder.
“That sounds fine,” said Trent, looking over his shoulder at Renee. “Did you have a purse when you came in?”
Renee didn’t know how to answer at first, so she put her hand to her forehead as if she were thinking.
“I think you did,” said Trent before she could speak. He turned toward Agent Stiles. “I’m going to go grab Renee’s purse in the back. While we’re there, we’ll just fill out the transfer papers at one of the desks. Keep us from bumping into each other in the lobby.”
“That’s just fine with us,” said Agent Stiles.
“Do you know where our papers are, Detective?” asked Amerson.
“Probably by your copy machine,” said Trent.
Amerson winked and tapped his forehead.
“Always thinking,” he said. “There should be a stack of common forms on the table beside the copier. If you need anything from me, just let me know.”
Once he finished speaking, Sheriff Amerson turned his attention back to the FBI agents. Trent gestured with his head toward an arched entryway that led deeper into the station. Renee followed him back as the sheriff asked something about the FBI’s cadre of financial analysts.
She passed two small, private offices before rounding a corner and entering a large, open room that smelled like a janitor’s broom closet. Desks were shoved against one another in the center, and posters or bulletin boards lined the walls. Furniture covered nearly every inch of available floor space. The voices in the lobby were muffled.
“One of those men attacked me,” said Renee. “I’m almost sure of it.”
Trent nodded. His breath was short.
“The old guy has a Soviet prison tattoo on his finger. We need to keep going.”
They left the room together and entered a nearby hallway that stopped at a solid steel door. Trent grabbed a key off a ring hanging beside it and unlocked the deadbolt. The hinges squealed as he pulled it open; Renee couldn’t tell for sure, but it sounded like the conversation in the lobby had ceased.
Trent put his hand on the small of her back and led her gently but firmly through the door, pausing only long enough to pull the steel door shut behind them. The room they entered was dank and dark. Renee ran her hand over the walls and felt rough concrete cinder blocks where she had hoped there would be a light switch. It felt like they were about to enter a tomb.
Trent didn’t waste time; he hurried toward an aging steel staircase directly in front of them. The metal creaked and groaned with every one of his steps. He paused and turned, presumably noticing that she hadn’t followed.
“There’s an exit in the basement. We’ve got to get out of here before they realize we’re gone.”
Saturday, September 14. 5:44 a.m
Bluffdale, OH.
The sheriff sat on the front desk with his arms folded across his chest. He was thin and his white shirt hung off him like a tablecloth. He didn’t look as if he had much upper body strength, and from what Anatoly could tell, he didn’t even carry a gun. The sheriff wouldn’t be a problem. Detective Schaefer, on the other hand, would be. He had killed Sasha, so he was ready and willing to use his firearm when necessary. The fact that he seemed relatively unscathed from that encounter spoke volumes about his abilities. Anatoly and Victor would have to take him out quickly.
“I’m a big admirer of the FBI,” said Amerson, sitting on the edge of the front desk. “You’ve got some of the best forensic accountants in the world. I even considered applying when I finished my CPA.”
Victor said something, but Anatoly tuned him out. It was a pointless conversation. They needed to get Dr. Carter and get out. The longer they stayed, the more dangerous the situation became. Competent police officers might already be on their way. Victor and the sheriff talked for a few minutes, but eventually the room grew silent.
Amerson patted his legs with the palms of his hands loudly before standing.
“What do you say we get some coffee?” he asked. “I’ve got a machine in my office.”
Victor yawned.
“I guess I could use a pick–me–up.”
Amerson chuckled.
“You and me both,” he said, walking toward the archway through which Detective Schaefer and Dr. Carter had just passed. Anatoly ran a hand across his face. He was loathe to go to the sheriff’s office—it would take him too far from the exit if something happened—but he knew Amerson would suspect something was wrong if he refused to go. He considered for a moment, but followed Victor down the hall, thinking and planning for contingencies.
If the worst happened, Anatoly knew that he could kill the sheriff with a quick shot to his windpipe. He and Victor might have to sit on his arms and legs to keep them from flailing around, but that was acceptable. If they did it right, neither Detective Schaefer nor Dr. Carter would hear a thing. No matter how he did it, though, the sheriff had seen his last sunset.
Amerson’s office was fastidiously neat and roughly the size of a prison cell. It had no windows, just a metal door painted flat black. As soon as he entered, the sheriff weaved his way past the oak desk in the center of the room toward a metal filing cabinet wedged between two bookcases on the far wall. He flicked the switch on the stainless steel coffeemaker that rested on top of the cabinet before turning and smiling.
“I had this thing set on an automatic timer for eight this morning, but now is as good a time as any,” he said. He gestured to the chairs in front of his desk. “Please have a seat, guys.”
Victor settled into one of the chairs, but Anatoly remained standing. For a moment, the sheriff didn’t say anything.
“Is that your family?” asked Victor, pointing toward a picture on one of the bookshelves. Anatoly squinted so he could make it out. There were four people in the photograph: Amerson, an attractive woman roughly his age and two boys who were probably in their early twenties. The sheriff nodded.
“That’s Debbie and the boys,” he said, sliding his chair back and propping his feet on the desk. “Isaac is going to college next year. Wants to be an accountant like his old man.”
Victor nodded.
“Good profession,” he said.
Anatoly didn’t jo
in into the banter, but he did find it interesting that Amerson identified himself more with accountancy than law enforcement. It helped confirm what he had thought earlier: the sheriff wasn’t a threat. Accountants rarely were.
The sheriff’s current position with his legs on the desk added some difficulty if Anatoly had to strike quickly, but nothing he couldn’t handle. The man’s chin was near his chest, which meant a shot to his windpipe was out. A quick strike to the side of his head would do damage enough, though. The brain can’t take a hit from the side well. It’s like putting a ripe tomato in a tin can and shaking it up. Best–case scenario, it’s going to come out bruised, but more likely, it’ll be mush.
“How long have you been sheriff here?” asked Victor, glancing at Anatoly.
“Not too long,” said Amerson. He slid his feet off the desk and began searching through its drawers. A few moments later, he sat back up with three brown coffee cups in hand. He organized them into a straight row on his desk and filled each with coffee. “Do you guys take milk and sugar in yours? We might have some half–and–half in the fridge in the break room.”
“Black is good,” said Victor, glancing at Anatoly again. “You want anything in yours, Smith?”
Anatoly shook his head. Victor picked up his cup and held it in front of him.
“Here’s to a productive working relationship.”
“Here, here,” said Amerson, picking up his own cup.
With the sheriff’s attention elsewhere, Anatoly began inching around the desk. He stopped when Amerson unexpectedly looked in his direction.
“You’re a quiet fellow, aren’t you?” he asked.
“He’s been sick. Lost his voice last week,” said Victor, quickly. He took a sip of coffee. “Agent Smith may not look like it, but he’s actually a big softie. My kids love him. They crawl on him like a jungle gym. My son thinks he’s Hercules.”
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