Just the Facts, Ma’am

Riley picked Maizie and me up this morning and we went to vote before we got to the office which meant that I missed my espresso this morning. She dropped us off at the office and said, rather cryptically, that she had a couple of new leads that she was following up today. If I needed her I could reach her on her cell phone. She’d prefer if I text messaged her as she’d probably be in the library.

Well, that was okay. As soon as she left, Maizie and I went up to the market and got a cup of coffee at The Eye of Dawn coffee shop. After I’d read the paper we went back to the office. Who was standing outside my door but my old friend Silas Grant. It wasn’t too much of a surprise; I tore down a computer for him a couple of weeks ago and we’ve got a court date on Thursday. We went into the office to chat and Maizie headed for her bed in the corner.

Silas and I go back to our school days under Lars. We called it detective school or Gumshoe U, even though it was a basic undergrad course in criminal investigation. Silas is a good fifteen years younger than I am, but we were always teamed up on the exercises that Lars gave the group. We found that we worked well together, and when Silas joined the FBI’s cybercrimes unit, he became a great source of business for me. Now he works for FINCen which is primarily interested in financial crimes like embezzlement and money laundering. The case we were to go to trial with on Thursday is a botched embezzlement that yielded kiddie porn evidence. It was going to be tough to prove that we were authorized to search for porn on the guy’s computer instead of only evidence of embezzlement. I was interested in how Silas was going to manage the case.

“We’re going to drive a bargain,” Silas said. “The stuff on that guy’s computer is disgusting, and I’d like to nail him. But if we attempt to introduce it as evidence, his lawyer will be all over unlawful seizure of property. At the very least, it could drag out for months before we even got a ruling on the porn stuff. But the guy has heard what happens in jail to those who take advantage of children. He’d be lucky to survive the first year of his sentence. So he’s motivated to keep that information out of court. He can do that by pleading guilty to the embezzlement charges. He’ll do the same jail time, but won’t have the rap in prison.”

“Frankly,” I said, “I think someone should leak the information into the prison once he goes up. He deserves the added benefits.”

Silas laughed and we relaxed in the comfy chairs looking out at the Seattle Aquarium and Puget Sound.

“Well, I tell you, I’m glad I’m chasing money launderers and not child pornographers. It would be hard to deal with that crap every day. It’s bad enough with the money games. I’ve got one I’m working on now that I’d like to put paid to, but it looks like it could go on for months.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I’m investigating a big Seattle holding company. It looks like they could be laundering money. All the signs are there, but I can’t put my finger on where the money is coming from. I know they are on the take from some small time Midwestern hoods, but they simply aren’t big enough operations to handle the volume of cash these guys carry.”

“Sounds like big game,” I said.

“Yeah. If you hear anything about big money moving around Seattle—say maybe while you are attending private parties in a particular penthouse suite—you’ll let me know, won’t you?”

Damn.

I was going to have to talk to Lars about who he gave information to. Silas and I are friends, but I don’t want him mixing in my investigations. I daresay he would feel the same way.

“Frankly, I’ve been trying to get someone in there for months,” Silas continued. “If there’s no conflict of interest with your client, I’d like to piggyback on your assignment.”

“As far as the condo goes, I think I’ve finished there. My quarry isn’t attending at the moment. All I’ve got is a ghost-trail of where he’s been, but not where he is.”

“Well, if there is anyway we can help each other, Dag, you know I’ve always been fair.”

“I’ll keep it in mind, Silas. If I pick up anything I’ll let you know.

Silas left and I started going over my notes on Simon’s 42 fuzzed files. It wasn’t impossible that I’d find something that would help Silas, and I’d surely have to let him know. But I was solving a missing person case, not financial misdeeds.

It was a bit before noon that I had another visitor. This guy was a block of a man carrying a ten year old laptop computer—one from the era when you needed a big lap. I met him in the front office and he set the laptop on Riley’s desk.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

“Broken,” he answered shortly. I couldn’t quite identify the slurred accent on so few words, and he wasn’t volunteering to talk more.

“I don’t repair computers,” I answered. “I can give you the names of a couple of repair shops if you’d like.”

“No,” he said. He seemed to be struggling for words. This hulking man was not used to communicating with people, that much I could tell. “The stuff inside. I want it on a record.”

“A record?” I realized that I was dealing with a man who wasn’t stupid, but didn’t speak English all that well. “You mean a CD?” I reached into Riley’s top drawer and pulled out a CD to show him an example. He nodded his head vigorously. “You want me to get the data off the hard drive and burn it on a CD?” Again he nodded and then shook his head.

“Not burn. Give me.” I nodded this time.

“It’s just an expression,” I answered. “What sort of data am I looking for?” He didn’t seem to understand. “E-mail? Word processing? Spreadsheets?” He nodded at all of them then held up a finger and after struggling for a few minutes shot out another word.

“Favorites.” He grinned as though he had just solved the New York Times Crossword.

“And Favorites,” I affirmed. “Okay. Just fill out this form. I’ll need your name, address, and phone number. Then sign here. This is a release form that says you permit me to copy all the information in your computer for you. My estimate is that it will be about $300 if the computer isn’t too badly damaged. If it looks like it will go over $500, I’ll call you before I proceed. If I can’t recover the data, it will be a $50 service fee for checking it out. I’ll call when the CDs are ready, probably Friday.” While I was talking he busily filled out the form with a meticulous care that I found inconsistent with the slow-talking hulk that could barely hold the pen in his ham-sized fist. He pushed the form toward me and I read off his name.

“Okay, Mr. Oksamma. I’ll need a deposit of $150. Would you like to write a check or credit card?” He reached in his wallet and pulled out two crisp hundred dollar bills and laid them on the desk. Money talks. I reached in my wallet and dug out two twenties and a ten and handed them to him. I signed the receipt and gave that to him. “Thank you for stopping by, Mr. Oksamma,” I repeated. “I’ll call on Friday.”

I picked the computer up, walked into my office, and put it on my desk. My own laptop was the only other thing on my desk as I’d been trying to sort out Simon’s files when he came in. I turned and found that he’d followed me into my office.

“Not until Friday, Mr. Oksamma,” I repeated and pointed to the door. He showed a sign of being slightly startled as he looked carefully around my office, then retreated and headed out through the front door. I breathed a sigh of relief realizing that he could have been aggressive. Always escort the client to the door, I reminded myself. I was too used to having Riley in the front office.

After I assured myself that The Hulk had really gone, I closed my door and opened the vault. It’s a simple thing, really. There’s a remote control on my desk that operates the flat screen TV on the wall opposite. I turned on the TV, and then entered my password on the remote. I hit “channel +” and the latches on the wall next to the bathroom released and that wall panel slid open. I took the huge old laptop into the vault and set it on a shelf, hooked up the usual safeguards and set the system to make a copy of the hard drive. I’d tend to that later. I closed the vault and went back to my original task: finding Simon.

Of the fuzzed files, half a dozen looked like they’d accidentally had the name changed and lost their original extension in the process. There was nothing of significance on them as far as I could tell. But some of the other files were definitely worth a look. These were image files, text that was converted to a bitmap and then variously saved with either word processing or spreadsheet extensions. They don’t open as valid files in the program that matches the extension, and you can’t search for text strings inside the file because the text is just dots in the picture. Finally, there were a few files for which I could not readily identify the creation program type from the file header. Those were going to require a little extra work.

Well, I had something to start with. For the most part, the pictures were what seemed to be random number strings. Things like 3280117605253119201. Each number was followed by a name: Andrea, Dean, Humberto, Melissa. Twenty-one numbers and twenty-one names in twenty-one fuzzed files. The file names themselves looked like they had been generated from the temp files on a computer: ptf4D.doc, _is1D5.xls. There was simply no shape or form to them. I tried following the directory trees and the files were located in a dozen different directories. Simply nothing was forthcoming. Yet there seemed to be a pattern to it all.

Damn.

I had to take a break and get Maizie out for a walk, and then I decided I’d try another tack in my investigation. Something Angel had said Saturday night reminded me of what was missing in my investigation of Simon’s computer. There were no travel arrangements. I checked through the history for his browser that I’d carefully copied and frozen from the day I’d gotten it so it wouldn’t expire after 21 days. No travel websites.

I went back through the credit card billings. There were nowhere near as many airline tickets purchased as there were locations that charges came from. This time, I was going to short-cut the process. I dialed Brenda’s number.

She answered on the first ring and called me by name before I’d said anything.

Damn caller ID.

“So have you finally decided to take me out to dinner?” she purred. “A girl could starve waiting for you to call.” I had to remind myself that things that purred also had sharp claws.

“Brenda, I can’t find Simon’s travel plans for Singapore. What airline was he flying on?” I snapped. I was not engaging on any personal level with her. It was strictly business.

“Airline? Silly boy, he took the plane.” She sounded so smug.

“The plane?” I asked. “You mean he has a private plane?”

“Of course,” she said. “Simon handles a variety of import and export for some of his clients. Since they are usually fairly small quantities of very pricey goods, he uses the jet to transport them. It’s faster through customs than going commercial channels. I thought you were going to own every bit of information about us once you had that laptop.” I ignored the dig. Why hadn’t I found anything about the private plane? I wondered.

“Does Simon fly himself?” I asked.

“Sometimes. Usually for long distance trips he has a private pilot and staff who fly with him. I assume that would be the case on a trip to Singapore.”

After a few more not-too-subtle digs, at my computer competence and a few insertions about the urgency of finding Simon and getting my ass in gear, I managed to get the contact information out of her for the private jet. I hung up a little abruptly when she started in again about taking her out to dinner. That woman is flat-out trouble.

I made the necessary calls and put together a new list of questions and places to investigate. Simon flew the plane himself Thursday with no crew. He had filed a flight plan to Oakland. The management company for Simon’s jet said that he apparently picked up a crew in Oakland because a different pilot had filed a flight plan there with six passengers and crew for Singapore. They had not received word that the plane was back in the U.S. again yet, but that they would certainly let me know when customs contacted them that the flight had returned.

Damn.

If Simon was still in Singapore, or had flown to other locations from there, I could spend the rest of my life looking for him. There had been no charges made to his personal credit cards, nor any ATM withdrawals as far as I could tell in the week and a half he had been missing. Either he was dead, or he was doing a good job of hiding his tracks.

My head was hurting by the time I locked the doors and Maizie and I walked down to catch a cab home to watch election results on TV.

Twenty-one names and numbers. Private Jet. No real evidence that Simon was even on the flight to Singapore.

Maybe he wasn’t.