by Carter Chris
‘Keller,’ he said, as he answered his phone. ‘LAPD Electronics Unit.’
‘Vince, it’s Detective Robert Hunter from the UVC Unit.’
Hunter and Keller had worked together on only one case, about one and a half years ago, but for some reason, which Garcia called ‘the geek factor’, they had become good friends.
‘Hey, Robert,’ Keller said in a silvery voice that sounded like it should’ve belonged to someone at least twenty years older. ‘What’s up? How have you been?’
‘I’m fine,’ Hunter replied. ‘But I need your help with something.’ Hunter’s tone was firm, which didn’t bother Keller, as he knew that was the detective’s style. It was the urgency in Hunter’s voice that made Keller put his cup of coffee down.
‘What’s going on? What can I do for you?’
Hunter was brief with his explanation.
‘So you need a tracker that can be hidden somewhere inside a leather-bound book?’ Keller asked, once Hunter was done explaining. ‘How thick would you say that the book cover is?’
‘Two, maybe three millimeters, no more.’
‘I don’t think that will be a problem, Robert,’ Keller said, reaching for his coffee once again. ‘Even if we don’t have something that slim and slick, we can create one. How long do we have?’
‘My deadline is five o’clock this afternoon.’
‘Piece of cake,’ Keller said, giving himself a shrug. ‘A simple tracker, one that simply sends out a location beacon, isn’t a very complicated gadget to make, especially with how advanced GPS is nowadays. If you bring the book over to me now.’ He instinctively checked his watch. ‘I’m sure that we can have this tracker fitted and tested by lunchtime.’
‘I’m on my way.’
Fifty-Two
Though some field services operated out of Van Nuys Community Police Station, most of the units that comprised the LAPD Technical Investigation Division, including the Electronics Unit, operated out of the C. Erwin Piper Technical Center (Piper Tech), which was a mere four-minute drive from the Police Administration Building. Hunter and Garcia got there five and a half minutes after Hunter had disconnected from the call.
Architecturally speaking, the main building of the C. Erwin Piper Technical Center wasn’t anything special to look at – an enormous, redbrick, windowless, three-story rectangular structure, considered by many to be a monstrosity, due to its uncanny resemblance to a self-storage facility. Its flat roof housed eighteen helicopter spaces and two helipads, from where the LAPD Air Support Division operated. Just past the large heliport, still on the roof of the main Piper Tech building, and accessible through a ramp on the north side of it, there was an even larger parking lot – for visitors and employees. Garcia parked his car there.
At the main building’s reception lobby, despite displaying their badges, Hunter and Garcia were made to wait while one of the receptionists placed an internal call to the Electronics Unit. Even after getting the all-clear from Keller himself, the two detectives still had to wait for the head engineer to come down to get them.
The offices and labs of the TID’s Electronics Unit were located on the second floor, which they reached via one of the five elevators in a squared foyer to the right of the semi-circular reception desk. After the customary greetings and the short elevator ride, Keller guided the two detectives down a wide corridor and into a room that was about half of the size of Hunter and Garcia’s office, with a desk, a water dispenser, a wall-wide, floor-to-ceiling bookcase and not much else. Three large interconnected monitors took practically all of the space on the desktop. The bookcase looked like it was about to buckle under the weight of so many items – half of it was taken by books and the other half by brown card-board boxes, the contents of which were clearly described on white labels.
‘So let’s have a look at this book you’ve told me about,’ Keller said, closing the office door behind him and indicating the desk. He quickly walked over to it and moved the computer keyboard out of the way to create a little more space.
Hunter retrieved the diary from the opaque evidence bag and placed it on the desk, where the keyboard had been.
From the desk’s top drawer, Keller grabbed a pair of latex gloves, slipped them on, and flipped open the diary cover. He pushed his black-framed glasses up his freckled nose and studied it through magnified eyes that were rounded with interest.
‘You were right,’ he said to Hunter, after a few deliberating seconds. ‘The cover seems to be around three millimeters thick, no more.’
‘Can it be done?’ Garcia asked. ‘Do you guys have a tracker that thin?’
‘The tracker isn’t the problem here,’ Keller replied, now analyzing the inside of the cover, which was lined by a thin leather sheet instead of paper.
His professionalism was second to none. While examining the inside of the cover, not once did his eyes even peek at the diary’s first page. He was asked to check if he could hide a tracker inside the book’s cover. The rest of the pages and its contents were none of his or the Electronic Unit’s concern.
‘The problem is pulling this leather sheet from the cover and then carving out just enough room to slip in a tracker. All of that in such a way that it won’t alter the look and feel of the cover.’
‘Shit,’ Garcia said. ‘How thin a tracker do you have?’
‘That depends,’ Keller replied. ‘How long do you need the tracker to transmit the location beacon for? Is it over twenty-four hours?’
‘No, not at all.’ Garcia firmly shook his head. ‘We’ll have a SWAT team ready to move in as soon as he’s in possession of the book again.’
‘Then it gets a little easier,’ Keller explained. ‘If the tracker doesn’t need an activation button or a sizeable battery, we can come up with one that’s practically paper thin. We’ve done it before, but the best thing for me to do right now is to try to remove this leather sheet and have a look at the flipside of the front cover. Some leather-bound books already have a hollow cover. If that’s the case here and everything else goes as planned, then I’ll probably be able to get everything done in two hours, maybe less.’
‘Everything else goes as planned?’ Garcia again. ‘What everything else?’
‘You said that your deadline is five o’clock this afternoon, right?’
‘That’s correct.’
A quick check of the watch before studying the inside of the cover once again. This time, he ran his fingers over the whole of the leather sheet.
‘The internal leather sheet is glued not stitched to the cover.’ Keller indicated while he spoke. ‘And it looks like the glue has only been applied to the edges of the sheet, not the whole thing. If I’m right, it will make things a lot less complicated to insert a tracker. Maybe a thin but steady vapor jet will be able to melt the glue without leaving any marks on the actual cover or on the leather sheet itself. If that works, regluing the sheet back onto the cover shouldn’t really pose a problem. I’ll get started straight away.’
‘All right,’ Hunter agreed, nodding at Garcia. ‘We still have quite a lot of reading to do, so we’ll shoot back to the PAB. Give me a call if you run into any problems, or when you’re done.’
‘I certainly will.’
Fifty-Three
While Hunter and Garcia saw themselves out of the Piper Tech main building, Vince Keller took the diary down another corridor and into Electronics Lab number two. In there, he placed the book on a large wood workbench and once again flipped the front cover open. He still had his latex gloves on.
From a dispenser on the wall, he ripped a sheet of a special type of protective cling film, large enough to cover the first page of the diary. He carefully placed the cling film over the page and the rest of the book, leaving only the reverse of the front cover exposed.
From the third shelf of a metal cabinet, Keller retrieved a cordless, handheld steam gun that looked like a small kettle, with a long funnel nose and a thumb trigger.
In the bathroom, which
was halfway down the corridor he had come from, Keller filled the steam gun with water and returned to the lab. In there, he placed the gun back on its cradle and switched it on before turning his attention back to the diary on the workbench. He swapped his glasses for a pair of watchmaker’s magnifying glasses and had a long look at the edges of the leather sheet on the reverse of the front cover. Unless the glue used was some sort of special, hardcore, steam-resistant superglue, Keller didn’t think that removing the leather sheet without damaging it would really be a problem, but he didn’t want to take any chances. He ripped another piece of special cling film and placed it over the reverse of the book’s front cover, this time leaving only the top edge of the leather sheet exposed.
Keller returned to the metal cabinet and picked up a medical scalpel. Behind him, the steam gun beeped on its cradle, indicating that the device was ready. Keller picked it up, repositioned himself around the workbench and brought the tip of the gun nozzle to the leftmost corner of the exposed leather sheet edge. He held it about half an inch away and slowly pressed the gun’s trigger. A steady jet of steam launched out of the nozzle, heating the edge of the leather sheet and, consequently, the glue underneath it. As the glue began to dissolve, Keller very cautiously began pushing the tip of the scalpel between the sheet and the book cover. To his surprise, it took only a couple of seconds for the scalpel to penetrate.
Keller let go of the trigger, put down the steam gun, used a tissue to wipe away the condensation, and checked the leather sheet – no damage. He checked the book cover – no damage.
Maybe this would go even more smoothly than he had anticipated.
Keller returned to the steam gun and the scalpel and went back to work. Slowly and very delicately, he restarted the steam jet/scalpel process again. As the glue continued to dissolve and the scalpel penetrated between the sheet and the book cover, he edged left, millimeter by millimeter, without rushing. Three and a half minutes later, Keller had reached the spine of the book. The whole top edge of the leather sheet was now loose.
He had been correct; the diary manufacturers had used glue only at the edges of the sheet.
Keller put down the steam gun and the scalpel and wiped down the condensation from the leather sheet before removing the cling film and repositioning it, leaving only the outside edge exposed. With the steam gun and the scalpel back in his hands, he restarted the process once again, moving from the top of the book cover toward the bottom of it. In some places, the glue showed a little more resistance, so it took Keller a little longer to reach the bottom edge – six minutes and twelve seconds, to be precise.
Now Keller only had to repeat the process one more time – with the bottom edge of the leather sheet – and he would be able to flip the leather sheet open as if it were a page in the diary. He started the process once again, moving from the bottom outside edge to the inside, toward the spine of the book. Three minutes later he was done.
Keller put down the scalpel and the steam gun, wiped away the condensation and swapped his watchmaker’s magnifying glasses for his regular ones.
‘Now let’s see if we can insert a tracker somewhere in here,’ he whispered to himself, removing the special cling film from the flipside of the front cover.
As he flipped the leather sheet over, he paused and frowned.
His stare stayed on the now naked flipside of the book’s front cover for several long seconds.
‘What – the fuck – is this?’
Fifty-Four
Hunter and Garcia had just got back to their office when Captain Blake appeared at their door.
‘It’s all settled,’ she said, addressing Hunter. ‘A SWAT team, together with an SIS one, will be following your every move once you get the call from this freakshow. Not to mention air support. I’m not taking any chances here. Did you get the diary back from the FSD lab?’
‘Yes,’ Hunter replied.
‘Where is it?’ The captain stepped into the office and closed the door behind her.
‘With the TID Electronics Unit,’ came the reply from Garcia.
‘The Electronics Unit?’ Captain Blake’s head jerked back in surprise. ‘Why?’
Garcia gave her a quick explanation.
‘They have a tracker thin enough to fit into the cover of a book?’
‘Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?’ Garcia accepted it. ‘Not that long ago, the only place where you would see something like that would be in the movies, in a Bond film.’
Right then Hunter’s phone rang inside his jacket pocket.
‘Detective Hunter,’ he said as he brought the phone to his right ear. ‘Ultra Violent Crimes Unit.’
‘Robert, it’s Vince. Are you guys back at the PAB?’
Worry immediately colored Hunter’s face. It had only been around twenty minutes since they’d left the Technical Investigation Division at Piper Tech. Twenty minutes was certainly not enough time for the tracker to have already been put in place.
‘Just got here, Vince. Why? Do we have a problem?’
Garcia paused what he was doing and turned to face Hunter.
‘What happened?’ he mouthed the words. ‘What’s going on?’
Hunter gestured for him to give him a second.
‘I’m not sure,’ Keller replied. ‘But you guys need to get back here.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the two of you need to come see this.’
Fifty-Five
This time, Captain Blake joined Hunter and Garcia as they rushed back to the Piper Tech building. During the short ride, Garcia told her about what they’d read in the killer’s diary, the meaning of BFOA, and that, after Hunter’s phone conversation with Mr. Wilson, they were now pretty confident that this killer was indeed ex-military.
‘Jesus!’ the captain gasped. ‘That will complicate things a hell of a lot.’
‘My words exactly,’ Garcia replied.
At the Piper Tech building, they had to go through the same security check as before.
‘We were here less than half an hour ago,’ Garcia argued, his tone revealing his annoyance. ‘You remember us, don’t you?’
‘I do,’ the receptionist confirmed, as she returned her desk phone to its cradle. She was a large woman, with arms as thick as Garcia’s neck. Her menacing eyes sat behind round-framed glasses. ‘But those are my orders. No exceptions.’ Her voice was calm and controlled. ‘I’m sure as detectives you understand the importance of protocol, right? I can lose my job if I don’t follow it.’
Captain Blake was about to pull rank and put an end to the argument when Vince Keller rushed out of the elevator foyer to meet them at reception. Hunter quickly introduced him to Captain Blake before Keller got them through with visitor passes.
This time, the group took the stairs instead of the lift.
‘So what have you got?’ Garcia asked, as they cleared the first flight of stairs up to the second floor.
‘It’s much easier to show you than to explain,’ Keller replied, taking the steps two at a time.
As they got to the second floor, Keller guided everyone through the same corridor they’d been through before, past the small room where they’d had their meeting and into Electronics Lab number two.
As they closed the door behind them, Hunter and Garcia saw the diary sitting on top of a workbench, located toward the end of the room. Its cover was flipped open, exposing its insides together with the diary’s first page. The leather sheet on the inside of the cover was still in place.
‘As I’ve explained before,’ Keller began, as everyone rounded the workbench, ‘what I wanted to do was use a steam gun to melt the glue that held the leather sheet in place, so I could check how difficult it would be to insert a tracker into the cover. That part went smoothly. Within twenty minutes the job was done.’
‘OK, and . . .?’ Garcia asked.
Keller paused and his head angled slightly right. ‘And I guess that I wasn’t really expecting to find anything once I removed the leather sheet
. But that wasn’t quite the case.’ He flipped the leather sheet, exposing the naked flipside of the front cover.
Hunter and Garcia stared at it with confused eyes.
‘What the fuck?’ Garcia craned his neck to get a better view.
Handwritten onto the inside of the front cover, previously hidden by the leather sheet, were four lines of text, all of them showing a strange combination of letters and numbers. The handwriting was identical to that in the diary pages.
3g2uptkl78pq6kufa9m
DOPS1207102375
122001FOBRhino
15052004MNF-I
‘What the hell are those?’ Garcia asked.
‘That’s the million-dollar question,’ Keller replied, leaning shoulder-first against the wall.
‘Those aren’t coordinates again, are they?’ Captain Blake asked Hunter, who shook his head decisively.
‘Coordinates?’ Keller asked, skeptically.
‘Something that had come up as part of this investigation,’ Hunter replied, not wanting to share too many details.
‘So what do you think these are?’ Captain Blake pushed, the question now thrown at everyone.
Garcia was the first to shake his head and shrug.
The captain fixed Hunter with one of her laser stares.
‘If I had to venture a guess,’ he said, the look on his face lacking confidence, ‘I’d say that they’re codes to something, but that’s not really the point here. Whatever these are – this is it.’ He stabbed his index finger onto the workbench. ‘This is the reason why this killer wants his diary back so badly. He needs these. Whatever it is that they are – code words, passwords, coordinates, or whatever – he needs them back.’
While everyone’s attention returned to the four mysterious lines of text, Hunter took out his smartphone and snapped a photo of them.