by A. R. Case
She didn’t argue.
Chapter six
Jonathan cleaned most of the salt residue off the flash drive with rubbing alcohol. He didn’t know how much had gotten inside it, but it had sat two days in a jar of rice so was pretty dry. He put it back in the rice for a bit while he booted up his mom’s wimpy laptop. It wasn’t good for much other than the occasional homework report and surfing the net. She wouldn’t spring for a newer one with the excuse that “Santa” might get him an actual computer this year. He envied Scott’s system. He had an awe-inspiring Alienware system and used an iPad for school. He was showing it off again today in their Tuesday study hall they had together.
The only reason his mom had gotten a laptop in the first place was because he needed something portable to take to school. They shared it and it sucked because she was constantly logging in on his profile and screwing with his music playlists.
He got online, updated his status, figured out where people were, or were going to be tonight, then logged out. Before plugging the drive in, he made a rollback point and bumped the security on the anti-virus software to high.
As soon as he plugged it in, Ninja pinged a warning. There was an autorun on the drive. Jonathan swapped the extension for .txt and opened it to take a look. He located the .exe files and looked their names up online. When he couldn’t find any warnings about them he created a folder on the drive and copied them there. Then he changed the extensions on them so they wouldn’t trigger. He then scanned the rest of the drive. Luckily, it hadn’t gotten that wet and most of the files were intact. There were a butt-ton of them too. Most of them were written to the drive three days ago and weren’t encrypted. Cool. He could open a few of the more common extensions. Most of them were the same extensions his mom’s accounting software used.
“Jonathan! I need you to come help me!” His mom called from the kitchen. He quickly made a dummy folder and copied all the files from the drive to the folder. It was probably going to take longer than the chores he needed to do so it was cool.
They were just putting away the dishes when the phone rang. His mom tensed, but answered it on the second ring. “Hello?”
She frowned at the phone. Jonathan could hear someone talking loudly on the other end. “I’ve contacted my lawyer. You do not call here, you call her number. Do you have a pen?”
The last time his mom needed a lawyer was when Dad was being a dick. “Is that Dad?” he asked.
His mom shook her head and then looked guilty. She covered the mouthpiece and mouthed the word “Yes.” Then she mouthed, “Did you want to talk to him?”
Jonathan shook his head vigorously. Hell, no. He didn’t want to talk to that asshole ever. He whipped the bird at the phone and his mom mouthed a yell and directed the Mom daggers at him. It was pretty cool she couldn’t yell at him because if she did, dickhead would try to use it against her, so Jonathan got away with it. He didn’t care if it pissed Mom off. He’d whip the bird at the phone, or at his dad every day if he could. If she’d admit it, he was sure she felt like whipping the bird at the phone too. He caught her smiling when she thought he wasn’t looking the last time he did it.
She was repeating the number. “And the name is Carlson, Elizabeth Carlson. That’s all I have to say to you. Contact Elizabeth Carlson. Goodbye.” She hung up the phone carefully, then let out a breath and scrambled to unplug the cord so when dickhead called back he wouldn’t get through.
“How’d he get our number?”
She sighed. “He’s a cop. I suspect the usual way.”
“But it’s unlisted. I mean you pay all that extra to make sure it’s private. That’s illegal, isn’t it?” Jonathan’s voice cracked. He hated it when it did that. It was just getting to the point where it was starting to sound cool, kind of low and stuff, but when he got nervous it cracked still.
“It is against policy, but not illegal for an officer to look up a number.”
“The harassment is illegal though.”
She looked so defeated. “I contacted a lawyer Monday.”
“Good.”
“I also asked if they’d assign you a guardian ad litem, but haven’t heard anything yet.”
“Is he trying for custody again?” His voice cracked again. “I thought that was done!”
“I thought it was too, but apparently he thinks I broke the law when we moved.”
“You notified the courts.”
“And from what I remember when I discussed it with my lawyer there, it was okay because I was granted full custody.” She looked up at him. “When did you start to get taller than me?”
Jonathan laughed. “Last year, remember?”
“It’s going to be okay.” She promised.
Jonathan had heard that before. “I’ll be in my room.”
“Sweetheart…”
“It’s okay Mom, I know you’re trying.”
He went to his room and checked Facebook. Scott wanted to know if he’d come over and work on their project. His dad could drive over. Jonathan typed back that he’d be waiting. The flash drive was done copying the files so he pulled it out and tossed it back into the rice. Then he powered down the laptop.
“Mom, Scott doesn’t have practice tonight and we’ve got that thing for Biology.”
“Oh I forgot about that, did you need a ride?”
“Naw, Scott’s dad is on his way.”
“It’s ‘no’ not ‘naw’ and okay. Are you going to be late?”
“Probably. Can I take clothes for tomorrow so if it’s okay I can stay over?”
His mom glared at him. “You know better than to invite yourself over.”
“But his mom usually asks anyway, it would save time.”
She thought about it for a moment. “Is the rest of your homework done?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, okay, I guess I can do without a man in the house one night.”
Jonathan grinned. “Thanks Mom. You’re the best.”
He rushed to pack, stuffing the laptop in his bag. “Did you need the laptop?” He yelled down the hall.
“No you take it. I’m going to head to the library until they close if you’re not going to be here.”
“Kay.” He looked out the window, Scott’s dad had a shiny red truck and it was pulling up in front of the house. “He’s here.”
She caught him as he rushed out the door. “Love you.”
When he got to Scott’s they got about fifteen minutes of game time before his mom busted them. Then they worked a bit on their project. Jonathan was just finishing his half of the paper when Scott started up the game again. “Let’s kick some zombie butt.”
Seriously, Scott was sometimes too straight-laced. He didn’t swear, played baseball even when it was cold out, and had one of the best video game collections Jonathan had ever seen.
“Wait, before we do, I found a file today. Maybe you know what it is.” In addition to baseball, Scott knew computers; even better than Jonathan. Heck, he knew more about computers than their lab teacher did. It probably helped that both his dad and mom were uber geeks. Jonathan pulled up the folder on the laptop.
“See, the .exe files.”
“You didn’t click on them did you?”
Jonathan raspberried him. “Whatdyathink I’m stupid?”
“I don’t know, I might have just to see what they do.”
“I figured I’d disassemble them to see the code.”
Scott pulled out his alternate machine. Then plugged a cable between Jonathan’s laptop and the machine. “Okay. You copied the whole folder? Geez what is this your mom’s taxes?”
“I dunno, it was on a flash drive I found.”
“Cool.” Scott got lost a minute or more just opening files. Then he whistled. “That’s a lot of cash.”
“Say what?” Jonathan leaned over Scott�
��s shoulder to get a better look. The figures were five and six digits, and that was before the decimal point. “Damn.” He whispered.
“Don’t let Mom hear that.”
“Sorry. Whose is this?”
“There’s company names here. I recognize that one. Dad said they’re a bunch of mobsters.”
“Like real life mobsters?”
Scott shrugged, closed the accounting file and opened his decompiler program. “Let’s see what extracts from this.” He made a copy of the file then ran it through the software, then took the converted text and ran it through another script he wrote himself to extract the text strings from the file.
Jonathan watched the strings of text fly by. “Did that just do what I think it did?”
“What?” Scott said.
“Go back, I think it said something about synchronization.”
Scott scrolled back up the file.
“There.”
“Cool. That’s the ticket. Let me test something. You still got the autorun?”
“In the folder, I put .jon on the extension.”
“Okay, first I’m going to isolate a dummy drive and dump some files there.”
It took him a few minutes to get everything prepped. Then he cracked his fingers and started typing. “Okay, ready, set, ini…” His computer started copying the files from his isolated drive to the home folder where the executable files were.
“That’s lame.” Scott was disappointed.
“What’s lame.”
“It’s just an auto backup.”
“But not all the files copied.” Jonathan observed.
“Just the office docs and photos.”
“Lame. You found someone’s backup.”
“Why couldn’t I find the .exe file online?”
“They wrote it themselves.”
“But why would a programmer not copy their programs?”
Scott looked up from his game controller. “Wait, what?”
“A programmer makes their living by code, that’s what they’d back up. So why none of the program files?”
“Too small for the drive?” Scott suggested.
Jonathan began to get a sick feeling in his stomach. He’d found the drive next to a dead body. What if the dead guy was a spy? That was stupid. Spies didn’t frequent Atlantic City, or did they?
“You gonna play?”
“Would a spy use something like that?”
“Like what.”
Sometimes Scott had the attention span of a gnat. “An auto backup program to copy files without the user knowing.”
“You could just load a Trojan and make a back door.”
“What if the computer isn’t online?” Jonathan felt pretty good about this point.
“Really?” Scott stared at him. The word was laced with sarcasm.
“What?”
“What’s the point of having a computer if you can’t go online. For that matter, if you’re so worried about securing your files, purchase anonymous cloud storage, convert your currency to Bitcoin and encrypt everything. That way if there was a fire or you got a Trojan, you could trash your existing system and start over in minutes. Easy.”
“For you, but what about someone who doesn’t know a lot about computers?”
“They wouldn’t see the Trojan if it’s done right.”
“Well, shit. There goes my spy theory.”
Scott laughed. “Play. And language.” And he handed Jonathan the controller.
Chapter seven
Lisa sat in the middle of a mess. Chris had joined them and was talking with the cops on the scene. Tony was trying his best to arrange a bag for Lisa so she could crash at his place for the night. Staying here wasn’t an option because the front latch was completely ruined. Just by looking at it, it seemed the front latch had been unlocked using a crowbar. Half the door frame was missing and both the door and the frame were chewed by the latch and the lock.
The crime scene tape was across the door and there were still a pair of investigators dusting for prints. They’d let Lisa and Tony in to verify if anything was stolen, but they weren’t allowed to touch anything. Lisa hadn’t made it past the living room slash kitchenette before seeing one of those cheap fair animals, lying unstuffed on the floor. She had picked it up despite the protests around her and then collapsed on her ass.
Tony wanted to pick her up to find a place for her to sit, but the couch was slashed apart and the cushions were half on and half off. The stuffing inside was pulled out and strewn about. There was broken glass everywhere. Some of it came from the vases Lisa used to keep silk flowers in, other pieces came from the hall mirror that had been knocked down.
He struggled with the scene, trying to figure out how all of this had happened in broad daylight. Not a single neighbor had reported noises, and no one outside had seen a thing. Nor was anyone willing to say they’d seen the door standing open. Given the fact that it had taken hours to take care of calls and funeral arrangements and the scene at the morgue, it would have been difficult to decipher exactly how long her place had been exposed.
They must have been watching the place, Tony figured. It was the only explanation why there could be this level of destruction. He guessed they’d seen the cops come. Then Tony arrived to pick her up and then they struck. But it just didn’t make a lot of sense to trash the place.
He tried to think like a criminal. If Ricky had stashed something here and he knew he had time to look, would he have done these things? The stuffing from the couch was under the broken glass of the vase. So they’d searched the obvious places first, moving furniture around, cutting the soft goods, and dumping drawers. Then they moved to the knickknacks and decorations, trashing them quickly because they were running out of time or patience. It was thorough. Almost too thorough, like they still hadn’t found anything. Some of the debris was churned over. Drawer contents in the kitchen had been mixed with the flour and other dry goods on the floor. Every box in the freezer was a soppy, white gluey mess.
They were angry, maybe not at first, but they got angrier as they worked. Angry meant amateurs. Angry meant this wasn’t done yet. Tony knew about anger.
Mills came up to Tony, holding a garbage bag. “Her luggage was trashed, they cut it apart. I found a few shirts and a couple of yoga pants they didn’t cut up.”
“Crap. First Ricky, now this.”
Mills was looking at Lisa, just sitting on the floor, holding the half-destroyed stuffed animal. “It’s related. I’m sure.”
Tony glared at him. “This is your fault, you know.”
Mills skewered him with his eyes. “I didn’t force Ricky to get involved.”
“Really? You think that it makes it okay to fuck with people, fuck with their heads and get them to stick their necks out, just so you can get your shiny gold fucking star for solving a case? You get that fucking commendation or promotion on the backs of people like Ricky, who just wanted something more. Fuck you.”
“Reminiscing much? I read your file, I know the reports say you skipped Prospect and got your cut at sixteen. But I don’t see you wearing colors now. How’d you swing that?”
“What I did is none of your goddamned business.”
“No? You don’t think the FBI isn’t wondering whether you’re still running with the Brigands? You still look like a biker, your brother may trust you with his crews, but we don’t see your name on the masthead. You disappear for weeks on end. That makes you suspect, you know.
“It’s nasty work they do.” he continued. “You don’t think running weapons and drugs up and down the East Coast is a problem? You don’t think that the money changing hands and funneling into Al Qaeda is a problem? It’s the same, and you fucking know it.”
He pointed at Tony’s jacket, where there was a flag patch. “That flag you fly stays free because we
make it our jobs to find people like Ricky who want more, who want out like you supposedly got out. And most of the time, we win and they win. As far as I’m concerned, he might have been a shit for a long time, but right now, he and Lisa over there are the bigger patriots than you are because they’re sacrificing something for their country. You and Chris, you hid, and I think you’re still hiding, behind your dad’s friends. Fuck you.”
Tony moved fast to pin the agent against a wall, but Mills countered and exchanged places, pinning Tony to the wall instead. But Tony spit in his face, “I’m not hiding.”
Mills kept him pinned for a moment, anger running over his features. A uniformed officer approached. “Everything all right over here?”
Mills answered, “Just fine, just butting heads. I’ve got this.” The officer shrugged, but stayed watchful.
Tony held his hands out slowly. “No issues here.” He kept his eyes on Mills and let his anger cool just a little so the officer didn’t haul his ass in. That was the absolute last thing Lisa needed. It didn’t stop him from wanting to re-arrange Mills’ face. It probably showed in his eyes.
Mills leaned in and spoke quietly. “Do you think that this is any different? Do you think this is done? You still walk the walk and you know better. This, here, smells of the same stink your father was into. I know that there is more about you and your brother than that file says. No one helped you like we were trying to do with Ricky, so how’d you get out? What did you do? What sacrifices have you made, I wonder?”
Tony’s hands fell a little bit. His father had been a piece of work. His uncle, Lisa’s father, probably wasn’t quite as bad. Both of them ran on the wrong side of the law, even in Tony’s eyes. Their absence when Tony still wasn’t completely a man and when Chris had just turned 18, dealt a blow to their families that never quite went away. Nothing his dad’s club did, or could still do, would ever make up for the losses they took that year, both just before everything went south and in the aftermath that followed. Mills had the files, he’d seen the paperwork that was official documentation, but he hadn’t lived it. He hadn’t been sixteen trying desperately to be the man of two houses, where grief, guilt and anger lived every day. Tony dropped out of school that year, gave up his chance to get out of everything for Chris, for Lisa, for their moms and mostly for the ones that hadn’t made it that year. Two coffins and three holes, maybe four if you counted Chris’s absence, Tony had stepped in to fill roles, rectify the fallout, or cushion the grief. He became the one that ran the gauntlet between them and the world around them that screamed for blood. He lost those years, but didn’t regret anything he did. He walked a tightrope that up until recently was very thin and fragile. Their family had sort of survived, but was not the same. It sucked being the bad guy and Tony never regretted it because it was the only path that had made sense at the time. “None.” Tony said, knowing it was a lie.