by Matt Doyle
Half an hour later, I finish triple-checking my notes. If the system takes much longer, I’m gonna have to assume it’s crashed and reboot it. Okay, so there are a lot of files to go through now that I’ve added in all the transcripts and monitoring office data, but this is getting ridiculous. It’s running like it did when I thought that one of my servers had been compromised and I had to move everything to a new one. It turned out I’d just left a couple of things running in the background without realising, causing a major slowdown and recreating a lag that I was led to believe was symptomatic of multiple users accessing the files. And so I no longer play games on my tablet.
I’ll give it until I finish with these. I scroll to the top of the notepad file.
Dean Hollister only seems to use one convenience store for food shopping during the day; a local place called Jensen’s Essentials that sits just off from the industrial estate. I know the place pretty well. It’s a good old-fashioned mom-and-pop place with only one till. Given that, it’s pretty clear that IP address 17C.BBA193.25.39AAC belongs to that particular store. As does the right to claim that it has the best fresh-made pastries this side of the Canadian border.
Online shopping at branded sites all originate from 17C.ACD998.16.16DDA, so it’s most likely that belongs to his home address. If we’re working with the idea that he only has one account, it would also mean that he doesn’t do personal shopping during work hours, which makes him far more job focused than pretty much anyone else I’ve ever met.
The purchases aimed at tech supply retailers are spread across four—no, five IP addresses, which I’m assuming are his offices. It looks like there’s a crossover between the stores used and the real-world addresses the purchases were made from, but that’s not unexpected. He runs multiple companies, so probably just places himself in the office where he’s most needed at the time. That doesn’t prevent him working on things related to one of the others while he’s there. It just puts him on hand to deal with specific projects.
There are a couple of items that come out from the same IP address, around the same time each month, and with no variance in price over both months. Utility bills, tax payments, and a couple of, ahem, specialist website subscriptions. Those will be direct debits, which means that the IP address likely relates to the bank’s servers.
Unless I’m missing something, 13A.CA170.16.49.BBA only appears once, and has only been used to pay Devin.
“Search complete,” the room speakers say. “One full match.”
“Read match and associated address.”
“IP Address: Thirteen, a, dot, c, a, one hundred and seventy, dot, sixteen, dot, forty-nine, b, b, a. Address: 17 Cornick Crescent.”
“But that’s…” I narrow my eyes and save a copy of the notepad file to Lori’s case file. “Computer,” I continue, heading to the kitchen to refill my mug. No milk this time, we’re back in black, thanks to my jumping the case-closing gun. “Open folder, server six, open case files. Subfolder, Redwood Lori.”
The tablet screen flickers and Lori’s case file opens up. I double-tap the additional file folder that Jeremy was kind enough to supply, and open up the in-depth results relating to Eddie Redwood’s last month of virtual world log-ins. One tap of the search bar and a quick flurry of touch screen key presses later, and I have a set of nice little links to the “equipment used” entries running down the side of the screen. It doesn’t take long to confirm that Eddie exclusively logged in from his home address and on one headset only.
I copy the make and model and load up a web search, pasting that into the bar and adding both “tech spec” and “locking” as additional search terms. The company site for the model confirms what I thought: Eddie’s headset is locked by retinal scan as standard.
Going back, I tap the “news” portion of the search engine and change my additional search terms to “retinal scan” and “hacked”. The results don’t show any cases where Eddie’s model has been successfully tampered with. In fact, the only news reports relating to that specific model are a mix of favourable expert reviews and a couple of interviews with the project lead that created it.
The interviews aren’t really interviews in the truest sense of the word; they’re press conference quotes dressed up to run like an interview. Security seems to be the primary topic. Apparently, the team “wanted to avoid a repeat of the unfortunate incident that Mr. Morozov fell victim to.”
Another quick search reveals that Mr. Mihael Morozov, CEO for the Belarusian financial advice company Маразоў і Кінгслі, translated as Morozov and Kingsley, used one of the previous models of the headset and suffered a “large financial loss” as a result of someone within his company hacking the retinal scanner. There are a couple of nice screenshots of the tools used, and a helpful caption confirming that they’re all things you would find in any office or warehouse to complete modern tech projects. The hacker, a Miss D Salisbury, was arrested and charged not only with unlawfully tampering with personal equipment, but with…publishing the personal details of the victim, including the contents of several private files, on The Roots of Eden are Rotten, a blog site to which she was a regular contributor.
I lean back into my chair. Hollister would have the tools, and he did point us to Roots, but is this all a little too neat? “Computer, advanced document content search, server six, open case files. Subfolder, Redwood Lori, subfolder, Virtual Monitoring Data. Search Edward Redwood log in date 17 August and store time as criteria, cross-reference with log-in time for Dean Hollister on the same date.”
“Processing.”
I close my eyes and try to let things fall into place. Eddie logged in for the last time and stayed in one place. That’s not normal for an accidental OD. Devin could have knocked him out, but that would have automatically logged him out. Even the older headsets had that fail-safe in place. Drug-induced paralysis, maybe? But that would have shown up in the tox report that found the Flash7. Unless the PD knew it was Devin, and they wanted to hide his identity…No, Hoove was definitely surprised that Devin was involved, so unless Corporal Devereux was hiding it from him too, this wasn’t a cover-up.
“Search complete.”
That was bizarrely quick. Maybe there’s hope for the thing yet. “Show results on screen and save to new subfolder, folder title, comparison.”
“Processing…complete.”
I pick up the tablet and scan over the data. Dean Hollister logged out of the Virtual World ten minutes before Eddie logged in for the last time. He was in the head offices for Gallant Engineering. Looking at the address, Gallant Engineering is a good forty minutes away from the SSL offices, and in the opposite direction to Eddie’s place.
That means there was no way that Dean Hollister could have been at Eddie’s house when the payment was made. I pick up the papers that Charlie gave me and walk back into my bedroom. I slide open the Currently Working drawer, and chuck them in.
Outside, I can hear some guys shouting. Out of habit, I pull the drawstring and close the blinds, then split two slats with my fingers and glance out. Two guys, street clothes, angry. Probably drunk. They’ll either wander off to a bar or get moved on by one of the local patrols soon, I’m sure…And there they go now, back towards the town. I can’t help thinking there was something vaguely familiar about them. Maybe Lori and I tore into them on our way to Eddie’s earlier. Sidestepping around the bed, I move to the other side of the window and split the blinds again, but the two men are long gone.
“That’s not the mystery you’re trying to solve,” I remind myself. “Stop stalling.”
I walk back to the desk and drop myself into the chair. I wonder…
“Computer. Document content search. Same initial criteria, but cross-reference with log-in time for Gary Locke or Carl Sanders on the same date.”
“Processing…please wait.”
“And we’re back to normal,” I grumble, and the door to my office explodes into the room.
Twenty-Four
&nbs
p; THE SOUND OF the door being blown off its hinges sends a loud ringing through my ears, knocking me off balance enough to topple me from the chair, dragging the paperwork with me. It also kicks my brain into gear, and I realise how little attention I was paying after I pulled the blinds. Two guys. One with fuzzy black hair, one with short ginger spikes. The matching fake tans, dirty white vest tops, and cut-off jean shorts. The two men outside the building weren’t drunks, they were the Paloma Brothers.
I scuttle to the side the moment I hit the floor, coming to my feet just as a bullet hits the space a couple of inches short of where I was. The aim was poor, but the bam of the gunshot rattles through my skull loud enough to leave me shaky. I keep moving, circling around the couch just as the two men strut their way into the room. The only positive to my realisation as to who I’m up against is that the Paloma Brothers are supposed to be a lot easier to deal with than some of the other heavies that you could come across in the city.
They move quickly through the residual smoke from whatever they used to blow the door and spread out, one swinging his gun towards me, and the other backing up to the wall with his own gun in hand but not raised. I drop to the floor, landing behind the couch just as another poorly aimed bullet flies into my wall. I wonder how many more lucky misses I’ll get before they remember how to aim? And would it really hurt them to use silencers?
These two must be the eighth or ninth different version of the pairing that I’ve seen. The Paloma Brothers are essentially a codename for two hired thugs sent out by one of the local underground bosses. They’re rarely actually related, and no one even bothers to pretend that they are anymore. The reason there have been so many different versions of them is that they tend to get themselves killed a lot. Their boss, Allen Fuerza, isn’t anywhere near as big-time as he likes to let on, and his two-man group of crack hitmen are often just random guys that he’s found on the street. Anyone in the know is aware that they’re a joke as an organisation. Even then, two guys with guns and, apparently, explosives, are better prepared than one lady who stupidly left her own gun in the bedroom and her Familiar in another building.
I grab the first thing that comes to hand, an old vase that I found in a box someone left outside the door one day, and pop up just long enough to throw it at Paloma Number One. He raises his gun hand to block it, but before I can move, the ginger-haired Paloma Number Two raises his gun and takes aim, causing me to duck back again, dropping to all fours a fraction of a second before he pulls the trigger.
The bam of the gun is followed immediately by footsteps moving quickly from the back wall to the door side of the couch. So much for an escape route. I hop my legs up, bringing my toes flat to the floor, and launch myself forward, tackling Paloma Number Two. The impact isn’t enough to take him off his feet, but I manage to barrel him back-first into the kitchen counter. He grunts loudly, drops the gun to one hand, and makes a grab for my throat. I grip him around his waist and throw myself to the floor, twisting as I go. It isn’t any sort of well-practiced MMA throw, and it sure as hell isn’t pretty, but it drags Number Two down hard enough to audibly knock the air out of him. I use my near hand to rip the gun from his loosened grip, but before I can aim it, he swings his other hand across, swiping my fingers and sending the weapon spinning across the room. I throw a fist into his face and wince. Okay, so it bounced the back of his head off the floor like I’d intended, but I’m pretty sure that I’ve broken a finger, or at least a knuckle, with that one.
I look up just in time to see Paloma Number One raise both hands and start to take a slow but careful aim at my head. Somewhere at the back of the room, the bedroom window smashes, and a high-speed ball of silver skids through into the three-part main room.
Without stopping, it springs from the floor to the table and up into the air, screeching a loud, angry battle cry. “Caw!”
Bert, his wings now spread wide, clamps onto the side of Number One’s head. The force built up by the speed of his jump snaps the man’s head to the side and sends him crashing to the floor with Bert still clinging on. I look away when he screams and the wet sound of tearing flesh start to mingle. Underneath me, Number Two tries to sit up, and I throw another strike at his head. I’m off balance, and only catch him with a glancing blow, but it’s enough to push him back to the floor. I scramble on top again, regaining my leverage, and lash out with another more-solid blow. Yup. I’ve definitely broken something. On the plus side, Number Two is dribbling blood from between split lips, so I’m pretty sure that I’m winning.
“Search complete,” the room speakers say, and I realise that the smoke has cleared and the screaming has stopped.
“Summarise details,” I growl, keeping my attention on Paloma Number Two. “Were either Gary Locke or Carl Sanders logged in at the same time as Edward Redwood?”
“Subject Carl Sanders’s log-on time is…fifteen minutes prior to Edward Redwood’s log-on time. Virtual Monitoring files confirm that subjects Carl Sanders and Edward Redwood met during session. Do you require further detail?”
“No.” I narrow my eyes. “Bert. Drag him around.”
“Caw,” Bert replies, and hops off Paloma Number One. He brings the body around, and I force the bile back down my throat.
I grab Paloma Number Two’s hair and twist his head around as awkwardly as I can manage. What can I say? My hand hurts, and I’m blaming him. That, and I want to make it clear that I’m in control here. He raises his gaze to the shredded mess that used to be his partner’s face and cries out.
“Who hired you?” I yell over him.
“Dean…Dean Hollister,” he shouts.
I tighten my grip on his hair and crash my other fist into his cheek. “Try again.”
“Crazy fucking bitch,” he sobs.
“Bert,” I say, and the shiny little murder machine walks slowly towards Paloma Number Two.
“I swear,” he whimpers. “He said his name was Dean Hollister.”
I nod to Bert, and he stops, staring menacingly at Number Two. “What did he look like?”
“What?”
I lift his head up and slam it back down into the floor, then repeat myself through gritted teeth. “What. Did. He. Look. Like?”
“I don’t know,” he babbles. “Sorta floppy hair, I guess? It was in a virtual world server. He coulda used a filter to look different. Uh, he talked funny, all stuttery and shit.”
I unclench my jaw and groan inwardly. Filters get picked up quickly these days, so someone wanting to do something in secret wouldn’t bother to use one and would more likely just go with the scanned appearance that the better log-in chairs take. Addicts with homebrew equipment have to build the image themselves, and they tend to get monitored a lot more closely than clearly scanned people. Audio masks are monitored even closer, so I’m certain that this can only be one person: Gary Locke. I knew that there was something off about him.
I snap Paloma Number Two’s head back towards me. “Did he hire anyone else?”
“No.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“No, he didn’t hire anyone else, not from the boss man, definitely. He just told us where the cash was and logged off.”
I tighten my grip. “Was I the only target?”
“Yes, just you.” I narrow my eyes at him, and he starts to panic. “Okay, okay,” he moans. “There was some Tech Shifter chick on Forster Street.”
“He wanted her dead?” I ask, and smack him again.
“Stop fucking hitting me,” he cries, and tries to spit out a tooth. The broken lump of bloodied white only makes it halfway down his chin. “I’m talking, okay? He wanted to kill her himself. We were just there to play transport for the body once he’d finished.”
“Diu,” I roar. “When did he hire you?”
“Like, an hour ago.”
“Bert. One caw for yes, two for no, understand?”
“Caw, caw.”
“Real funny, Bert. While you were running surveillance, did the target menti
on the name, Lori Redwood?”
“Caw.”
“I am such an idiot,” I groan. “I should’ve let her come back here. Bert, were you able to record what was said?”
“Caw.”
“Computer, synch audio system to my phone and dial contact Lori Redwood.”
Silence, then, “Synch complete.” A series of melodious beeps ring out over the room speakers. Ring-ring. Ring-ring. Ring-ring. “The person you are calling is unavailable. If you wish to leave a message, please press one, otherwise, please try again later.”
“Computer, hang up. Bert, did you record any data relating to virtual world sessions that the target entered during the last two hours?”
Bert goes silent, then replies. “Caw.”
“Last question. Have you been recording everything since you came back home, including this conversation?”
“Caw.”
“Good. When the police get here, I want you to play a message for me. Caw to start recording insert file.”
“Caw.”
“Hoove, you better be there listening to this. Bert here’s got recordings of everything that’s happened since he got back. Ask nicely, and he’ll play them. I’ll explain the rest later. If you need me, check the top drawer of my filing cabinet and look up the name Gary Locke. End message.”
I push myself to my feet. “Hey, Paloma. I’m gonna go arrest the guy that hired you. When the police get here, you’re gonna tell them everything. And I mean everything. Where you met him, what he hired you to do, how much you charged, and where he left the money for you. Everything. If you try to run, Bert here’s gonna cut your Achilles’ tendons. If that doesn’t stop you, he’ll go for the arms too.”