The unknown devil, p.15
The Unknown Devil, page 15
Joey lived closer to Columbia than I did, so I stopped at his house. He frowned when he answered the door and didn't change his expression as we sat and discussed what happened. "Did you see anything before they left the house?" I said.
"Like what?"
"Did one of them get a phone call? Did you see them go online and look something up?"
"No," Joey said, shaking his head. The frown remained in place. "They all went into the kitchen, looked in the fridge and the pantry, and then left."
"Did they talk?" I said.
"Sure, but my cameras don't get audio. I ain't trying to eavesdrop."
Joey brought up one of his extra computers. He was the only person I knew who could match me in terms of technology owned and used. I knew more about how to use it (and misuse it) but Joey owned at least as much of it as I did, and when it came to specialized things like printing, he was way ahead. From his PC, I opened an SSH connection to my server.
Esposito was still in the dark regarding the stripped SSL at his router. I combed through a bunch of captured web traffic and didn't find anything of interest. "What about text messages?" Joey said.
"From his computer?" I said.
"You're the one who says this guy hates technology," Joey said with a shrug. "What happened to his guy's phone you knocked over?"
"Didn't stay knocked over for long."
"So maybe this asshole doesn't trust phones," said Joey. "Maybe he thinks texting from his PC is more secure."
In absence of a better theory, I decided to work with it. It sounded plausible on some level. I added a traffic filter, further narrowing my results to anything using HTTPS and connecting to an SMS device for texting. The filter gave me a slew of results. There was a signal here the whole time, and my initial filter put too much noise in the way. How much time did I already lose?
Joey sat with me as I combed through the captured SMS messages. Swaths of them were unimportant, but then we hit a goldmine. Esposito and one of his cronies exchanged texts not even two hours ago.
Esposito: I think we have a line on the girl.
Crony: How?
Esposito: Looks like she used a credit card again.
Crony: Seriously?
I flashed on the same thought. After I found Anna and Chris the first time, I warned her about doing things like using her credit card again. These people would never learn, and now they endangered poor Brian, too. All he wanted to do was find his brother again. Maybe they were being held captive together.
I kept reading.
Esposito: Different credit card. It was actually her mother's.
Crony: I guess the geek you got paid off for you.
Esposito: He did. I want you to get the asshole who took my money and anyone who's with him. If he doesn't have it or doesn't want to pay, let's see how long he sticks to his greed when other people are involved.
Esposito hired his own hacker. For someone who hated technology, he embraced it in selective ways. It made sense, though. Now I wondered how long my router hack would last. I couldn't count on it long-term.
"Her mother's credit card," Joey said. His frown remained and, if anything, only deepened. "Jesus Christ."
"Just because he picked them up in Columbia doesn't mean they're still in the area," I said. I combed through the rest of the conversation, but Esposito never gave his goon any instructions about where to take Chris, Brian, and Anna. It must have been understood.
"We don't know where they are," Joey said.
"No," I said. "Esposito was out of town for a few years. Now he's back. He'd have to set something up quickly to be able to hold people he's captured."
"One of Tony's old places?"
I shook my head. "No way Tony would go for it."
Joey and I both stared at the monitor, looking for some bolt of inspiration to emerge from the pixels and strike us. Joey relented first. "What now?" he said.
"Not much to do but wait," I said.
"For what?"
"Esposito is a braggart. He'll want to rub this in my face, especially after Delaware."
"So you think he's going to call and taunt you at some point?" Joey said.
"I know he will."
"Better hope he does it before he kills one of these three."
"I am," I said.
Chapter 16
I didn't do waiting well. It's something I've never had the patience for. I can stand by while computer processes take their time and do their things. Those are logical delays, and I know what the results will be. Those, I can handle. Other things, not so much. I have little patience for just waiting, especially when the result is a giant unknown. At this point, I didn't even know if Chris, Brian, and Anna were still alive.
After I left Joey's, I went back to his safehouse. Before, I snooped around the property. Now I needed to look inside. Joey would see me on the cameras and understand. I wouldn't scratch his precious locks. Based on what he described, I didn't expect to find anything, but I was willing to be surprised. I drove to the safehouse, parked across the street and a couple houses down, and surveyed the scene.
The street was as empty and boring as the last time I visited. I got out of the car and did another circuit around the house. As before, nothing. I walked up to the front porch, looked around for miscreants and curious neighbors, saw neither, and got to work. Joey chose good locks. It took me almost two minutes to get past the regular lock, and a little longer for the deadbolt. Every so often, I would knock on the door to keep up appearances for the neighbors. Almost five minutes after I started, I walked into the house.
The alarm was silent. I turned it off via the keypad. It flashed a SYSTEM DISABLED message before returning to its usual blank green screen. Checking houses after people vanished could not be counted among my many talents. Still, I saw it done on TV plenty of times. How hard could it be? The house had a basement, so I started there. Armed with pocket flashlight and gun, I went down the steps.
The stairs opened into a large rec room Joey never did anything with. He didn’t need to; really; the house had two living rooms, and he didn’t live here anyway. The room was at least twenty by ten and being devoid of all but carpet and air was easy to declare empty. I moved on to the extra bedroom. Nothing. Ditto the full bath and laundry room. All that remained was an unfinished storage room.
I stood outside the room and felt for the light switch. I flipped it on. Nothing. I moved to the other side of the doorway, gun at the ready. Leading with the flashlight, I took a tentative step into the room. The flashlight was small but powerful; its LEDs could disorient someone if shone right in their face. The beam lanced through the darkness and showed me the emptiness of the room. Even Joey’s built-in shelves held nothing but a small box of cleaning supplies.
The first floor was equally vacant like the basement. Two living rooms, a dining room, a small study, and a half bath held not even a cricket. Joey said Chris, Brian, and Anna gathered in the kitchen before heading out of the house. I searched the kitchen table, all the cabinets and cupboards, the drawers, and the pantry. I peered under and behind appliances. All I found was nothing.
Brian was a sharp kid. He should have been aware of the stupidity of what Chris and Anna considered. Maybe he left a message somewhere. I went back through the first floor, looking under couch cushions, pulling out desk drawers, and stopping just short of ransacking the place. Still nothing. If I hadn’t known three people occupied this house just a couple hours ago, only their dirty dishes in the sink would have betrayed them.
Expecting to find more of the same, I went upstairs to three bedrooms, two full baths, and a large linen closet. The master bedroom contained a walk-in closet with enough space to fit another bed, along with a sitting room, and a bathroom bigger than my bedroom. I looked inside, under, and behind everything I could and found nothing.
The second bedroom was smaller, about three-quarters the size, with a small walk-in closet. It was as empty of anything useful as the master. Ditto the smallish third bedroom, the second bathroom (I even looked inside the toilet tank), and the linen closet. I couldn’t claim to be surprised by the lack of anything resembling a clue, but I still felt frustrated.
On my way out of the house, I offered a giant shrug to one of the first floor cameras. I turned the alarm back on, locked the bottom lock from the inside, re-locked the deadbolt with my burglar’s tools, and left.
I had given Brian Sellers a burner phone. It wasn’t the latest and greatest model of smartphone, but it could do a few things those phones do. Chief among them, at least for my current interests, was beacon its location. I presumed (or hoped) no one found and took the phone. I also trusted Esposito wasn’t holding Brian somewhere with a cell phone jammer in place. This was my shot in the dark, and I needed it to work.
When I got home, I logged into my computer. I knew the SIM card ID for the phone I gave Brian. I could use software to track its location. The technology, at its best, would be accurate to about a hundred meters, so I wouldn’t know exactly where Brian (and, I could presume, Chris and Anna) was being held, but I would have a general idea. The thought came to me how Brian needed to keep the battery charged. I expected he did. Joey kept a few of the most popular charger types in the safehouse.
If my software didn’t provide a reliable location for Brian’s phone, I would ask Joey to install and run it, too. A second point could make for a more accurate location estimate. I waited as the software ran, checking cell towers for communications. Towers in Baltimore lit up. Esposito hadn’t taken them far. After a few seconds, I had an area: somewhere at the Port of Baltimore.
I sighed. The port was a big place with many warehouses, shipping containers, and vessels in which to hide someone, or three someones. And metal containers could inhibit cell signals. Adding another data point—or two for triangulation—may not get me a more searchable area. I needed to try, though, so I called Joey and told him what I wanted to do.
“You didn’t find anything in the house?” he said.
“Nothing,” I said. “My angle was Brian would have objected to what Chris and Anna wanted to do and left something I could use. No such luck.”
“How do I get this software?”
“I put it on an SFTP server,” I said. I gave Joey the address, confident he would know how to download and install it.
“Ok, I have it running,” Joey said a couple minutes later. “What now?”
I told him the SIM card, how to run the search, and how to combine his results with mine and narrow the area. “It’s working,” Joey said after a few seconds. “Hitting a few towers . . . now focusing on one.”
“I can see it on my screen,” I said.
“But you’re missing out on me narrating the action,” said Joey.
“You’re no Al Michaels,” I said as the program finished. It showed me the same location as before.
“No luck?” Joey said.
“No. The port itself could be the problem. Lots of metal. We may not be able to get any better than this.”
“Now what?”
“No idea,” I said.
“Can you get a warrant?” Rich said. We sat in my living room drinking a couple of beers. An oatmeal stout for Rich and an IPA for me.
“Do they let you apply online?” I said.
Rich rolled his eyes. “This doesn’t sound like a joke.”
“It’s not. And I don’t have any proof, short of an app used to trace the location of a burner cell phone to the port.”
“It’s a big goddamn place,” Rich said.
“Hence, why I wanted some help in looking around.”
“It doesn’t work on guesses.”
“Because I don’t have a warrant?” I said. “Because your system is great and wonderful?”
“It’s not about the system,” Rich said. “It’s not even about getting around the system. The Port of Baltimore is secure. Companies there have their own security. They don’t much like cops with warrants, but they can’t do anything about it. You go down there with your usual unauthorized snooping, even if you have cops with you, and they’re going to bounce you out. And there won’t be anything you could do about it.”
I downed the rest of my beer and looked at Rich. He shook his head. I got myself another IPA from the fridge, then plopped back into my recliner. “So what do I do?” I said. “I can’t just sit here and do nothing.”
Rich took a drink and thought about it. “You said the younger brother has the burner phone?” he said.
“Yeah. He’s the only smart one in the trio.”
“Then reach out to him. You have the signal. The phone is on.”
“I don’t want to risk it,” I said. “It would give away he has the phone.”
“They may already know,” Rich said.
“I’ve thought the same thing.”
“Then did you think the phone might be planted?”
“Meaning what?” I said.
“Meaning they found it and stashed it at the port, hoping you’d discover it’s there. And then when you come and look for it, you find a welcoming committee to meet you.”
I considered the possibility somewhere in the cynical recesses of my brain. My time in Hong Kong gave me plenty of practice with worst-case scenarios, and my experience has colored my worldview ever since. “I tossed the idea around,” I said.
“And?” said Rich.
“And it’s one of the reasons I’d rather wait for Brian to contact me.”
“If he can.”
“If he can,” I said.
It could prove to be a big if.
Later, I settled into an uneasy sleep. Gloria called again after Rich left. I didn’t answer, but I texted her and said it wasn’t a good time with the case. While I liked Gloria, I didn’t want her to come by. To my relief, she stayed away. I would have been bad company anyway. I went to sleep wishing I could do more, knowing I was better off to wait for something else to happen and dreading the eventuality.
I woke up around eight and lay in bed, staring at the ceiling and straining for a good idea. None came. After about fifteen fruitless minutes, I got up, changed into running clothes, and hit Federal Hill Park hard. I pushed myself for over four miles, working in even more sprints than Bobbi Lane and I did. When I finished, I drove to the dojo where I trained and wailed on a punching bag for a while. I drove my fists, elbows, knees, and feet into the bag as if abusing it would provide me an epiphany. All it did was tire me out.
I drove back home, showered, and ate a late (and large) breakfast. I whipped up an omelet, toast, turkey sausage, coffee, and a banana. I earned the calories . While I washed my plate in the sink, my phone rang. The number looked familiar and not in a good way. “Hello?”
“Well, well, well.” Esposito. The fucker probably called to gloat. “I wasn’t sure you’d pick up.”
“Mystery solved,” I said. “What do you want?”
“Seen Brian or Chris lately?” he said. I didn’t answer. “What about Anna?”
“You have them.” I didn’t want to sound too certain and risk burning my compromise of Esposito’s router. I doubted it could last forever, but I didn’t need to lose it right now.
“You’re damn right I do.” Laughter threatened to spill into everything Esposito said. I never wanted to punch him more and wanting to punch him had been a constant condition since our first meeting. “What are you going to do about it?”
“I’m not begging for their lives,” I said.
“No?”
“No.”
“Why’s that?” Esposito said.
“Because you’re an asshole,” I said. “Also, I don’t beg for anything. But mostly because you’re an asshole.”
“You know I could have them killed, right?” he said.
“Come on. If you were going to resort to murder, you’d just do it. Me calling you a name wouldn’t be a factor.”
“You think you have this all figured out?” Esposito said. The lurking laughter vanished from his voice. Now I heard anger replace it. I imagined him getting red-faced, and the mental picture provided me a small measure of satisfaction. I would take little bits of satisfaction where I could get them at this point. “Tell me this: if you’re so fucking smart, where do I have them? Huh?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I wasn’t about to give away knowing anything about the Port of Baltimore.
“That’s right,” Esposito said. “You don’t know. You did all you could to keep them from me, and I ended up with them anyway. Now I have them, and you don’t know shit.”
“Great. I don’t know anything. I’m an ignoramus when it comes to where asshole mobsters hide people. Now what?”
Esposito took a deep breath. It hissed in my ear. I was getting under his skin. While I didn’t think he would hurt or kill anyone based on how our conversation went, I didn’t want to push him too far. He was about as stable as a see-saw.
“I wanted Chris,” Esposito said after a few seconds of deep breathing. He sounded calmer, probably not red-faced anymore. Pity. “You know it. I don’t really need his brother or his girlfriend.”
“You’re going to let them go?” I said.
“I’m going to let one of them go. The girlfriend. I’m keeping the brother to make sure Chris does the right thing.”
“All right,” I said. “What am I supposed to do about it?”
“You know these people,” Esposito said. “They trust you, for whatever it got them. I’ll release the broad to you later today.”
“Her name is Anna.”
“Whatever. You want to pick her up or not?”
“Of course I do,” I said.
“Good,” said Esposito. “I’ll call you later and tell you when and where. Just you. No cops, no feds, no friends. Just you. We’ll be watching. You want to make sure I know this broad’s name, you probably want to keep her alive.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Good. Come alone, then, where and when I tell you.” Esposito hung up.
