The Count of Carolina, page 5
part #2 of A Clean Up Crew Series
“Well, full disclosure, I’m still not completely convinced Cole’s right about J.J,” Dan said.
“She’s right,” Wally said.
“How do you know?”
“Evidence. Gut.”
“The hat, you mean?” Dan asked.
Darlene walked to Dan. “I wish the hat were all we had. Can we use a computer?”
“Come on,” Nicole said, leading them to her office.
Dan and Nicole both had their own home offices, and while Dan’s was rather on the dark and manly side of the spectrum, Nicole’s was well lit via a north-facing window and strategically placed artificial sources as well. Her desk was neat and organized, also in contrast to Dan’s, which perpetually looked like he used an immersion blender to sort through his work. The laptop on Nicole’s desk was a new MacBook and it was opened to a website dedicated to shoes.
“Oh! Those are cute!” Darlene said, pointing to a pair of cream-colored high heels with a strap that wound around the ankle. She scrolled down a little and saw that they were priced at $800. “Cheap too!” she joked.
“Here’s the stick,” Wally said, shaking his head at feminine shoe obsession and pulling a flash drive from the pocket of his jeans. Darlene took it and plugged it into one of the USB ports. A moment later, a video loaded.
“Our computer has access to certain security camera feeds here and there,” she said, preparing to push the play arrow in the center of the currently still image.
“And by ‘here and there,’ she means pretty much anywhere in the world,” Wally said. “This is from the TSA camera at DIA.”
Nicole and Dan leaned in to get a better view of the image, which Darlene was able to enlarge to full screen size with no loss of resolution.
“Okay,” she said, pointing to the screen. “There’s you guys and J.J., hat clearly still on her head as she’s removing her shoes. Now your goodbyes. Now she’s through, collecting her belongings and heading down the terminal. Here’s the guy that bumped into Nicole.” She stopped the video as the man turned toward the camera and they got a good shot of his face.
“He looks like my Uncle Al,” Dan said. “My Uncle Al is the most harmless person to ever walk the face of the Earth.”
“I wish to Christ it was your uncle,” said Darlene. “Then I’d be less concerned about what happens next.” She resumed the video and the harmless-looking man could be seen weaving his way through the crowd and catching up to J.J. just before she went out of camera range. They watched him place a hand on her shoulder, followed by J.J. turning toward him. They were too far from the camera to make out her reaction, but soon after, the two of them moved out of the frame.
“We’d already left by then,” Dan said, self-incrimination evident in his voice.
Darlene picked up on this tone and turned to face him. “This is not your fault, Dan. Yours either, Coley.” She hesitated. “In fact, I’m afraid it may be my fault…”
“Dar-Dar, we talked about this,” Wally interrupted.
She turned to her husband, her expression resolute. “I know, Wally. I know. But I’m more and more sure after reviewing a few things before we left.”
Dan’s eyebrows raised a little at the statement. “You ‘reviewed things’ first, and still got here that fast?”
Before Darlene could answer, however, Nicole asked, “What things? What are you talking about?”
“Since you left the other day, I discovered that there may have been some sort of breach in one of the sources I use to collect information and evidence prior to issuing an assignment.”
“So, in addition to video feeds, you also access other sources?” Dan asked, focusing on the problem at hand once again.
“Lots. One of which is the Greenville PD’s database.”
“Is that what you think got hacked?”
“Well, yes and no. I mean, I know it’s been hacked, because I hacked it myself. It was what happened while I was snooping around that concerned me. You see, my system is considerably more secure than most of the places I sometimes enter, and I’ve entered some pretty secure locales. I keep my location well-cloaked and try to find a back door into wherever I’m headed. So I’m very comfortable hitting something as rinky-dink as a small city’s police department. But while I was scouring their files for any mention of your mark, I saw this pop up on my screen.” She closed the video file and opened another, which appeared to be a screenshot of Darlene’s desktop. Superimposed over a police report that she’d accessed was a small black rectangle that contained the words “Well, hello 2604:6000:1515:c157:0:d7bf:d23d:369c! What might you be looking for?”
“Is that your IP address?” Dan asked, pointing to the number.
“My public IP, yes. In order for this person to have gotten that, they had to wade through layers and layers of false IPs, multiple hosts and servers, topped with security so new it doesn’t even have a name yet. So they must be as slick as pig shit is what I’m saying. They’re good.”
“Good is bad,” said Nicole.
“Good is very bad. Obviously, I logged off immediately and redoubled my smoke screen, but I’m afraid now that the damage was already done. That was pretty much confirmed for me today when I ran a videocap of the kindly gentleman’s image through some facial recognition software. I got this…” She clicked another icon from the thumb drive’s list and a dossier-type file opened. At the top was a very professionally done portrait that matched the image on the TSA cam perfectly. The text next to the picture read “Clyde Davis.”
“Hmm. That name means nothing to me,” Cole said. Dan thought he heard a little cryptic tint to her tone, maybe because there were still names attached to Greenville that she would know. But apparently, this wasn’t one.
Darlene scrolled down a bit and pointed to the screen. It read “President, Greater Greenville Chamber of Commerce.”
“Whoa,” Dan and Nicole said simultaneously.
“Wait, the president of the chamber of commerce?” Nicole asked. “That seems a little high profile to be involved in a kidnapping.”
“I’m not certain, but I think, upon doing still more poking around, that he’s been known to fill the role of ‘fixer’ for some of the area’s less scrupulous businessmen.”
“And your mark certainly falls comfortable under the ‘less scrupulous’ heading,” Wally added. “Your man seems very well connected, which is, we think, why he hasn’t been exposed for diddling with the young athletes of Greenville and surrounding areas.”
“Well,” Nicole began, but then fell silent, a better option than breaking down again, she reasoned.
“Hey, wait a minute!” Dan said, pulling his phone from his pocket. “She agreed to this reluctantly and only with my promise that I’d only use it for the direst emergency, which this is starting to feel like.” Dan was mashing app buttons on his phone as he talked. “Yes! It’s working,” he said, his face brightening for a moment. But then as he looked more closely, his countenance fell once more. “Uh-oh.”
“What, what are you looking at?” Nicole asked him through her tears.
Dan held the phone so she could see that he’d opened the “Find Friends” app. There were three names listed—Nicole’s, Tony’s and J.J.’s—and he had, of course, picked the last. The screen showed a map with a flashing icon in motion to indicate the location of J.J.’s phone. It was a map of Greenville, South Carolina. He looked at the clock and realized that even with them stopping off for a meal, there was no way a commercial flight could have gotten to the East Coast that fast. He looked to Wally and Darlene, confused. “How?” was all he managed to say.
“Private jet, clearly,” Wally said. “Have either of you tried calling her, since it seems like they haven’t tossed it away for some reason I can’t fathom?” Wally asked. Dan and Nicole looked at one another with matching expressions of surprise.
“Once I saw the hat lying in the hallway, I pretty much went into panic mode,” Nicole admitted. “So the answer would be no.” She was once again reining in her emotions.
Dan closed the locator app and was ready to dial J.J.’s number, when Wally stopped him. “Not from your phone, Dan. Caller ID and all that.” He handed Dan what was obviously a burner, and Dan dialed, putting the call on speaker. A moment later, a voice answered. It was not J.J.
“Greetings. Jennifer cannot come to the phone right now,” said a young man.
Nicole, her voice, at least, instantly composed, snatched the phone from Dan’s hand. “I see. Not a problem. Could you give me a message for her?”
“Of course,” continued the unknown voice. The man seemed unfazed by the request, but Nicole’s trained ear detected just a trace of change to the tone. “What would you like me to tell her?”
Dan looked at Nicole with a burning intensity that mutely relayed a very clear message. Don’t say anything that might make things worse.
But Nicole calmly replied, “Tell her that her copy of Modern Woman may be late, but it’s on the way.”
The man’s voice, up to this point calm and confident almost to the point of cockiness, now definitely skipped a beat. Finally, he said, “I’m sorry. Could you repeat that?”
Nicole ended the call.
“I’m hoping J.J. was able to hear that,” Darlene said.
Dan looked confused. “It’s a prearranged code,” Nicole told him. “I certainly never planned for either of our kids to be impacted by my work. But just in case I taught them both that message, only in Tony’s case, I say Sports Illustrated. They know that it means ‘Stay calm, I’m coming.’” She turned to Darlene. “Can you get us on a flight today instead of tomorrow?”
Darlene quickly opened a browser and typed in a numerical web address. The page that opened appeared to be some sort of flight booking site, but it was unlike any Dan had ever seen. With a few clicks and a few additional keystrokes, she announced, “There. The Walkers are booked business class on the last flight to Greenville. You have an hour layover in Dallas-Fort Worth. You need to be back to the airport in about two hours.”
Now Nicole was fully in boss-mode. “Call the handler, tell him to be ready to meet tonight, no matter how late.”
“Her,” Darlene said.
“Fine. Tell her to be ready. Dan, we’ll be taking separate cabs from the GSP. You’ll go to the hotel and get us checked in, I’ll be going straight to meet the handler. Dar-Dar, tell her I’ll need lots of hardware. I have a feeling that there are several soon-to-be dead people between me and my daughter, one of which could be my mark. And Dan’s Uncle Al. And whoever the fuck just answered my daughter’s phone.”
Dan’s facial expression looked a lot more like it belonged to the artist formerly known as “Deer-In-The-Headlights Dan” than it did to Two-Gunz.
“GSP?” he asked anyone who would answer. He was rewarded by a simultaneous answer from all three.
“Greenville-Spartanburg.”
Nicole had to smile as she saw the gears turning, knowing in advance what he was going to say next.
“It should just be ‘GS’ then.”
Wally burst out laughing. “Right? But GSP is its official abbreviation. All airports have three letters, and half the time, they don’t make any sense.”
“Irrelevant,” Nicole said, still smiling nonetheless.
“Are you guys packed?” Wally asked.
“For two days now,” Dan answered, pointing a thumb at Nicole to indicate she was the catalyst for early preparation.
“Come on, then. I’ll help you put your bags in the car.”
As the men left, Nicole turned once more to her best friend. Her expression was stern. “We can’t ever be this careless again,” she said. Nicole used the word “we,” but Darlene clearly heard “you.”
“Obviously, Coley. Believe me, no one is more pissed at me than me. But it’s going to be okay. You’ll get J.J. back. Don’t even worry about the fucking mark. Just find your daughter.”
“Alright, listen. I know I’ll get J.J. back. There’s no question about that. And I’m not holding you personally responsible for her abduction. But obviously, we have a bigger problem than I wanted to talk about in front of Dan. They caught you hacking the GPD, yet they kidnapped my daughter.”
“You’re right,” Darlene said, nodding. Clearly, that thought had occurred to her as well. “They would have tried to sniff out who was prowling around, but there’s no good reason that should have led them to you.”
“You’ve maintained protocol, right? Nothing floating around unsecured? No unencrypted files on your server?”
“Nothing.”
“Because I lied when I said I’ve never heard of Clyde Davis.”
“Okay,” Darlene said, drawing the word out to indicate she wanted more information.
“The man the bumped into me, the man who took J.J., is not Clyde Davis.” She leaned over Darlene, who was still seated at the computer, and reopened the security footage, rewinding, then pausing it when she got to the part where the man looked directly into the camera, with perhaps the faintest trace of a smile. “I’ve never seen that face before, but the name is well known to me. Clyde was a scrawny little shit. Always had been. Bullied unmercifully while in school. But the bullying stopped when he gained a very important ally.”
Epiphany painted Darlene’s face.
“Conrad Barker!”
“The one and only. Clyde was always special to him, and was the first person to enjoy Conrad’s gift to the men of Greenville. He’s the only one, besides Conrad himself, that still breathes.”
“But I’m still not making the connection between all those bastards and me, or rather any connection between you and me that they could have made.”
“Which leads me to draw one very ugly conclusion. CUC has a mole.”
Now Darlene’s face clouded with confusion once more. “This all seems tenuous. I mean, yeah, all the pieces come together to a point, but I’m not sure I can buy into the idea of a mole.”
“If there is no e-trail in your system that could be exploited, then they would have to have been able to contact someone who helped them make the connection. I should have known. Anything this sleazy anywhere near Greenville would have to have Conrad’s greasy thumbprint all over it. And…” she added, coming to a sudden realization. “It seems pretty strange that that name would be attached to this face.” She violently poked her finger at the off-center image.
“You lost me.”
“Sorry. I should have said it seems pretty strange that it was in place before your intrusion was detected. It’s as if they already knew you’d be looking.”
“I don’t like my head feeling as fucked up as it does right now.”
“It’s a lot to consider, and it would likely imply that information has been trickling out for a while. Certainly before you assigned me the case. Shit, let’s call a spade a spade. It smacks of a very wide-netted conspiracy, and honestly, we don’t really have time to work through it right now. I have work to do. It looks like when Nick and Jessica fly out of South Carolina, there will be a pile of bodies left behind. And I’m hoping Conrad’s is right on top of the pile.”
“Be careful. I know that’s something you’ve been dreaming about for a long time…”
“Literally,” Nicole said.
“But don’t let him erode your focus.”
“There’s a danger that could happen, but not until Jennifer June is safe. Until I have her back, the focus will be laser-like.”
“Good.”
Dan and Wally walked back in the room. Both men could tell that the women had been discussing something deep and troubling from the traces the conversation left on them, but they had the good sense not to ask any questions.
Nicole walked to Dan. He held his arms out to hold her, but she was already in battle mode. She put his fake ID’s bogus (but functional) credit cards in one of the outstretched hands. “Put Danny away for now, and come on, Sam. We’ve got a plane to catch.”
Dan lowered his arms, picturing himself as a boy leaning in to kiss a girl, only to have her turn her face away. He put the proper ID in his wallet, removed anything that said “Dan Porter” from it, and looked around. “I guess we have a plane to catch,” he said at last to Wally and Darlene.
“I guess you do,” said Wally. “I guess you do.”
6
The Water Is Deep
For Dan Porter, few things were as soporific as flying in a commercial airliner. It didn’t matter what time of day it was, or if the final destination dictated a long or a short flight. Shortly after the landing gear was safely tucked away in the shiny bird’s belly, his eyelids began to flutter, and well before the pilot announced that they had reached their cruising altitude, his breathing was deep and regular, punctuated by the occasional apnea snort.
But that would not be the case this evening. Dan was quite certain that neither he or Nicole would be sleeping any time soon. Darlene was able to get them on an American flight at 7:38 PM, which with the brief layover in Dallas-Fort Worth, had them arriving at GSP just before two in the morning. That was pretty good for last-minute booking, but it still left a lot of time for thinking.
And thinking was dangerous.
What started as innocent, or at least project-at-hand focused, thoughts had already led his mind to imagine things so horrible that, in frustration, he’d finally punched his own leg with a clenched, angry fist. Nicole, of course, reached over and covered his balled-up hand with the warmth and softness of her own.
“I know,” she said. “I keep doing it too. There should be a way to switch off your brain.”
Dan answered absently and automatically. “I suppose there is, but it’s pretty one and done.”
Cole shook her head. “No, I’m not looking for the Big Reboot. Just a little peace and quiet up there. For an hour. An hour would be beautiful.”
They sat quietly for almost exactly sixty seconds, then Dan moved his head close to hers and whispered, “Okay, look. Neither of us is going to be able to stop thinking about her. So let’s just talk about it. What’s your plan? Where do we start?”
