four inch monitors lined up in a row and some program was displayed, running on each screen.
“Dude, this is awesome!” Luke said.
“Nothing but net,” Q said. “I paid for everything but the iPad. That was a Christmas gift from my uncle Bodey.”
Luke walked up to the desk and watched a video running on the screen to the left. A cat was playing a piano while a dog licked himself. He wasn’t sure what it was supposed to represent but it was funny as hell.
“Let’s see the phone,” Q said, his hand held out waiting.
“Will this ruin it?” Luke asked.
“This will make it better,” Q said with a grin. “What exactly do you want out of it?”
“I need you to find out where a text message came from.”
“Ouch!” Q said.
“Problem?”
“We’ll see. A lot of that kind of stuff is encrypted, but I just downloaded this new hack my uncle came up with and it might do the trick. I haven’t even got to use it yet.”
“Is it legal?”
“Define legal.”
“Uh-never mind. I don’t care. I need to know.”
Q took the phone, hooked a USB cable to it and plugged the cable into one of the many computers he had arrayed around the desk.
“Is your uncle a hacker too?” Luke asked.
“No. Better. Bodey’s a systems engineer for CRAY computers. He writes this stuff.”
Luke smiled. “Cool.”
Q loaded up a program and Luke watched as he typed in some commands and a list of calls and phone numbers came up on the screen. He could see Ellie’s number and John’s, along with his own house and various others. Q clicked something and all the text messages came up. Most were from Ellie and, as he saw them, Q turned and grinned at him.
“You and Ellie gettin’ hot and heavy, huh?”
“Just ignore that stuff,” Luke said. “This is the one I need to know about.”
He pointed to the message he had received during the group’s little get together last night. Q read the message and asked, “What town meeting?”
“It’s not important. Can you tell me where this came from. The number shows up only as zeros.”
Q clicked another screen and said, “Yeah, I see that. Whoever made this message didn’t want you to find out who they were, that’s for sure. It’s routed through a special server that people like me use so we can’t be traced.”
“Damn! I thought you’d be able to get it. Oh well.”
“You’re kind of impatient aren’t you?” Q said and then grinned. “I didn’t say I couldn’t get it.” He clicked through a few more screens so fast Luke couldn’t tell what they were and arrived at a screen that held a series of ones and zeros all lined up throughout the whole page.
“This is the binary code the server is using to scramble the cell phone numbers that make the incoming calls.” He clicked through another page and a list of numbers showed up. “Awesome! I’m going to have to tell Bodey this program rocks. The phone number you’re looking for is right here.” He pointed to a ten digit number about halfway down the screen. The area code was not familiar to Luke.
“Can you tell where it’s texting from?”
“I can even do better. I can track where the cell phone is right now.” He opened another program on another screen and typed in the cell number. The screen changed to a busy hourglass and then a map popped up with a blinking icon in the center. Luke bent over his shoulder to look. Nothing on the map looked familiar.
“How can I tell where that is?” Luke asked.
Q zoomed out and Luke could see it was in the state of Indiana. Northern section in a town called Hobart. The blinking icon was not moving.
“It’s stationary,” Q said. “He’s currently staying put. If he was in a car, or walking or something, you would see it move. Does this help?”
“Yeah, at least now I know the number.”
“What’s your e-mail?”
He told him. “Why?”
“I’m going to mail you this program and you can track the phone whenever you want.”
“Sweet!”
Jaxon woke with a killer hangover. After yesterday’s visits with Emory Holt and Victoria, along with reliving the night Michael died, his mind had had enough for one day and he elected to numb it. With Crown Royal. It worked like a charm, but now he was paying for it. His phone rang and he held his head as he looked at the clock. It was 10:00 a.m.
“Shit.” he said, reaching for the phone. “What?”
“Are you up?” Sally asked, a little pity in her voice.
“Yeah. Sorry. I’ll be there in a few.”
“Good. The chief’s looking for us. He wants an update. Holt called him.”
He threw on a tie and grabbed his jacket as he tossed a cup of food in Reverb’s bowl. The dog looked mournfully at him.
“What?” he said. The dog did not have an answer.
Swinging through Starbucks for a quick jolt of caffeine, he made it into the bullpen in twenty minutes. Sally was waiting impatiently.
“I thought you said fifteen minutes,” she said as they walked to the chief’s office.
“Fifteen-twenty-somewhere in there. I made it.”
“Oh God-you need a breath mint. Here. And it’s been twenty five.” She handed him a stick of gum and his stomach revolted as he stuck it in his mouth. He hoped he could keep things down until the meeting was over.
“Nice of you to find time in your busy morning to see me,” Chief Horace Benton said, as they walked in.
“Sorry, Chief,” Jaxon said.
“Sit.”
Sally and Jaxon grabbed chairs and sat in front of the desk. Benton was five years his senior and someone Jaxon actually respected. The man had not brown-nosed his way to the position. He had earned it in the trenches, and that meant a lot to Jaxon. The Chief didn’t seem to be sharing the love this morning, though.
“Why didn’t you discuss the FBI with me? I had to hear from Emory Holt this morning that my two lead investigators visited the J. Edgar Hoover building soliciting the help of the FBI and I was in the dark. Thanks.”
“Sorry Chief, we got a lead and we followed up on it,” Jaxon said.
“Do you want to fill me in or do I need to ask Holt to do that?”
He let Sally do most of the talking since his head and stomach ached. The sunlight streaming in through the window felt like molten gunshots to his head and at one point he had thought the bile in his throat was going to make an appearance that would probably earn him a day without pay. He forced it down, only barely. The Chief was saying something and he had missed some of it.
“The FBI wants to be involved. Holt informs me they have a case that is quite old, but he feels could be the same guy, and if that’s so, the investigation crosses state lines and they want to jump in. I’m inclined to grant them access since we seem to have run into a brick wall in this thing.”
“I don’t want Holt in on it,” Jaxon said.
“Why?”
“We’ve got this thing covered and I told him yesterday we weren’t ready to bring them in. We just needed a little information and they were the best source for it.”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with Victoria, does it? I would be highly disappointed if you put your own personal difficulties before the welfare of the people and children of this county. That’s not happening is it Jaxon?”
