For Mayhem or Madness
Nathan Everett
Other Titles by Nathan Everett
Read excerpts online at www.NathanEverett.com
For Money or Mayhem
Computer forensics detective Dag Hamar is drawn out from the safety of computer code and corporate espionage into the rain-spattered streets of Seattle when his lover’s daughter is kidnapped by a serial killer. When it comes down to only saving one, how can he choose? Followed by For Mayhem or Madness.
For Blood or Money
Computer forensics detectives Dag Hamar and Deb Riley discover secret files and hidden code can be as dangerous as dark alleys and flying bullets as they track a missing man and the billion-dollar fortune that went with him. Nine years after For Mayhem or Madness.
Municipal Blondes
Dag’s intrepid associate, Deb Riley, is on her own as she cracks the mysteriously coded files left behind by Simon. She goes under cover as a master of disguise to reveal the secrets of The Condo where wealthy men meet available women. But the trail leads to Belize, Mexico, and Croatia before she finds the solution. Follows immediately after For Blood or Money.
Stocks & Blondes
There is no time to rest for Deb Riley as her mentor, Lars, convinces her to take on the case of a dead woman and seven running computers. Deb dons a disguise again to become a middle-aged woman settling her cousin’s estate. But will she learn the secret on those computers before she becomes their next victim? Follows immediately after Municipal Blondes.
City Limits
Gee Evars wandered into Rosebud Falls on Independence Day just in time to rescue a toddler from the rushing torrent of the Rose River. And to lose his memory. In an attempt to make Rosebud Falls his home, Gee becomes a local hero and inadvertently leads a revolt that changes the balance of power in the town. But will he ever know who he really is?
Wild Woods
The continuing story of Gee Evars, City Champion of Rosebud Falls. Gee and his crew must find a way to tame the Wild Woods, uncover its secrets, and live to tell the story. Not everyone in this peaceful community wants the truth known. As children who have been trafficked through the Wild Woods begin to show up with no memory, only Gee, the man without a memory, can relate to them and begin to draw them back into a life where they are cared for and protected. Gee’s real work in Rosebud Falls has just begun.
The Gutenberg Rubric
Two rare book librarians race across three continents to find and preserve a legendary book printed by Johannes Gutenberg. Behind them, a trail of bombed libraries draws Homeland Security to launch a worldwide search for biblio-terrorists. Keith and Maddie find love along the way, but will they survive to enjoy it?
The Volunteer
Journey inside the head of a chronically homeless man. In a less politically correct time, he might have been called a hobo. But what keeps him wandering, hitching rides, and eating handouts? Piece together the story through his memories to find what made him volunteer.
Copyright ©2020 by Elder Road Books
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First Print Edition
ISBN 978-1-950183-62-3
{1}
Suicide
MY EYES FOGGED OVER and I raised the can of Rockstar to my lips, slugging down the remains. I shook my head to clear it and went back to watching the lines of code scrolling in front of me. I waited. They were closing in. Four years, seven months, and three days of setting traps and ambushes were coming to an end today. Ferreting out the bastards from their dozens of aliases, isolating them from the innocent, and preparing to detonate the collapse of their foundations had consumed me and I no longer felt completely human.
Not since that night.
John Patterson, the great computer gaming magnate and renowned philanthropist, murdered Andi. He was in a mental hospital where he maintained a mantra of ‘It’s just a game,’ refusing to acknowledge any of the serial murders he’d carried out on vulnerable kids. Including Cali’s best friend, Mel.
As shocked and crippled as I’d been when Andi died, I hadn’t been idle. In those first few months, I sat in my office replaying the events that led to the catastrophic warehouse fire, trying to find the place where I’d made an error. It was like trouble-shooting code. After you’ve been through it so many times, you can’t see a simple typo or misplaced comma.
But nothing appeared to me. There was no procedure, function, or subroutine that would bring her back. No way that Cali would ever forgive me for saving her instead of her mother.
The dead have it easy. They don’t live with the memories.
I began rebuilding. Eventually, I was paid handsomely by EFC for identifying the employee who had been robbing the company for twenty years, and the incompetent boss who turned a blind eye. But like my coworkers at Henderson, the rest of my team at EFC blamed me more than Arnie and Darlene—as if the crime would not have been committed if I hadn’t discovered it.
I called it ‘forest logic.’ I spent hours going over the ground I’d covered in the EFC case with Lars—better than the grief counselor Cora, the child psychologist who had an office just upstairs from mine, recommended. Lars and I came up with the term together. ‘If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear, does it make a sound?’ It seems to follow that in today’s corporate world, if a crime is committed but no one saw it, then it wasn’t really committed. Therefore, if I discover a crime was committed, I am to blame for the crime.
It sounds ridiculous when we present it like that, but observation of human behavior and social practices shows that we blame the victim for the crime. If he hadn’t been walking down that dark alley, he wouldn’t have been mugged. If she hadn’t been drunk, she wouldn’t have been raped. If they’d been friendlier to the sociopath in school, he wouldn’t have killed them all. It’s much easier to blame the victim than to do something about the crime and the criminal.
John Patterson was just another mentally ill middle aged white man who had snapped under the stress of all the good work he was doing. I was to blame for placing the straw that broke the camel’s back when I began investigating him for crimes I thought he had committed.
Of course, people like Cora understood and congratulated me on ending the reign of this predator. She was solicitous and recommended the grief counselor. It was in helping one of her clients that I discovered the trail of the predator, Patterson.
Ernest Davenport, the CEO of Evergreen Financial Corporation, had to admit that I’d saved his company a few million future dollars in embezzlement and corporate espionage. Unfortunately, there was no way to recover the millions that had been taken over the past twenty years. Darlene Alexander, as predicted, had suddenly disappeared from Seattle and from the Internet. Belize or Costa Rica, I assumed. Davenport paid me while simultaneously bemoaning the loss of two ‘great employees.’
People are strange.
Jordan Grant got a job offer from the Feds for his role. He was now an investigator for FinCEN, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. We had a going away party. Lars, Jordan, and me. We tossed back a shot of scotch and wished him good luck at the airport.
I continued to pick up odd jobs. Enhancing computer security here and there. Chasing down a hacker. Clearing a woman’s records when her identity had been ‘stolen.’ Recovering a hard drive that had been soaked in water. Even a trip to Mexico to help bring down a drug kingpin. Life went on.
Cali sent me an invitation to each of her play openings and, as much as it hurt, I attended every one. She’d been scuttled away from her home next door to my apartment building and placed in foster care in Bellevue. She could have returned when she turned eighteen, but by that time she was three months from graduation and decided to finish where she was. She thanked the foster family for letting her stay the added time. I got an invitation to her commencement and it was the first time in all of the times I’d seen her that we talked.
She moved back into the duplex after graduation and we met each Saturday morning at the Analog for coffee all summer. Then she left for UCLA where she’s studying in the School of Theater, Film and Television.
I had no real challenges, so I rebuilt my computer network.
I wasn’t rich, but I didn’t have many expenses. My apartment was one of the few on Capitol Hill that still went for under a thousand a month. My office was a single room in an old house on Fifteenth that the owner told us—his four tenants—would be torn down this winter. I don’t eat much. Don’t drink. Unless you count coffee, Mountain Dew, and Rock Star. I seldom drive my car. I had money to invest in new equipment. I kept one full setup offline. I moved it all into my apartment, which isolated me even more. I manually mirrored the online setup once each week, after scouring and scrubbing my devices to be sure no foreign software or files had been transferred to my system.
It was all part of planning for the future.
And still, Patterson’s ‘non-profit’ empire thrived—beyond threat of legal action.
The people closing in on me now, thinking I was their prey—these people knew and let him get away with it. They were the beneficiaries of his so-called philanthropic endeavors, from which less than a dollar out of every hundred finally worked its way to where it could do some good. The rest lined the pockets of the wealthy, the greedy, and the depraved, making them richer and starving the needy. They were thieves.
And I hate a thief.
Then there were the unwitting collaborators. This empire couldn’t stand on one man’s shoulders. Without the hundreds who paid to play, who helped build the online edifices like the one in which I was currently hiding, who lined the pockets of the wealthy with their own hard-earned cash—without all these, the empire wouldn’t exist. An emperor needs subjects.
There would be collateral damage. But on this battlefield, there were no innocents.
I wiped the sweat out of my eyes and reached for the energy drink again. The can was empty. It was time to act.
Most of those gathered had been called to a meeting, but an increasing crowd of onlookers had also begun to fill the edifice. Using a hundred different names and addresses, I’d sent out game invitations, social invitations, lures of easy money, and business negotiations.
I was waiting for one more person to arrive. So far, I’d managed to stay anonymous within the crowd that was gathering and buzzing with increasing excitement. I could tell some people had recognized others and that relaxed them even more. That was good.
Then I saw her walk in through a back door. She was more cautious than the others, scanning the enormous room with a critical eye. She’d been hiding for four years and covering her tracks for twenty years before that. She was well-practiced at detecting threats and had nearly evaded my discovery entirely. She spotted me.
“You!” I could see her backing out and pulled the trigger.
I like to put complex theories together from scattered bits of data. It’s the way I work. I’ve scanned through the available data on every mass shooting in America in the past hundred years. A lot of people think they only started with millennials and the age of violent video games. That’s not true. There has been an increase, yah sure, ya betcha, but the increase is not out of proportion with the growth of the population. Combined with the highly visible school shootings there have been hundreds of mass murders around the world. I’ve also watched all the offers of solutions across the spectrum from far left to far right. I love the ones that think arming everyone would be a deterrent. That’s almost as good as the ones who promote being friendlier to the sociopaths who will kill them or posting signs that firearms are forbidden.
One thing has become obvious to me. Every mass shooting—and I include anything where there was a likelihood that multiple people would be killed or injured by a single person or duo, and that a single target was not the real objective—has been a suicide mission. One or two have been captured—some even begging police to kill them. All the others died in the act, most by their own hand. Threatening them with death is not a deterrent. That’s what they came here for.
I have a new understanding of them. No sympathy, mind you. I still consider them to be unforgivable murderers. No matter what their issue or cause, it doesn’t excuse their actions. Suicide is the only means they have for not being held accountable.
The difference is that now I count myself among them.
The pounding on my apartment door woke me up. I glanced at my dead cell phone, expecting it to tell me the time. I scooted the curtains next to the bed aside and saw that it was bright daylight out. I wondered if I’d had two hours of sleep or twenty-six. The knocking was repeated and I dragged myself out of bed. I’d lose my damage deposit if they kicked the door in.
An odor of ozone still hung in the air as I passed my fried computers and tablet. All the devices that had been plugged in and online when I committed digital suicide were damaged beyond what even I could repair. I opened the door.
“Dag!” Cali jumped into my arms, still every bit the excitable teenager I’d known for years, despite the fact that she was now twenty-one.
“Hey! Am I late for our date at the Analog?”
“About a day late,” she laughed. “You didn’t even answer the door when I knocked yesterday morning.”
“You knocked? I must have been sounder asleep than I thought.” I set her down and she reached up to feel my beard.
“You need to shave.”
“Wait. What day is it?”
“Sunday. I’m leaving in a couple of hours to drive back to LA.”
“I thought you’d come home to stay,” I said. I turned to the bathroom and looked at my tousled hair and ragged beard. Sunday morning. It must be late. Counting back, that meant I’d been asleep since early Friday morning. Fifty? Fifty-five hours? Well, prior to that, I’d been awake for nearly a week, fueled by my high-caffeine drinks. “I need more than a shave. Head on down to the Analog and I’ll meet you there in twenty minutes.”
“Yeah. You could use a shower,” she said sniffing. “Don’t be long, Dag.” She turned and left the room. I hit the shower.
“Here, I have a little gift for you.” I handed Cali the box and she looked at it, puzzled.
“I have a phone.”
“I know. This is for emergencies. Specifically, if you need to reach me. I’ve programmed my number into it. Text me only. Please don’t use it for anything else.”
“I know your number.”
“That phone is dead. In fact, the account is closed and the cell phone company doesn’t really know I exist anymore.”
“What did you do, Dag?”
“There was an… accident. I was… gaming last week… There was a… power surge. Everything was wiped.”
“Um… I’m just a dumb actress but I know a power surge wouldn’t wipe out your phone number and records at the phone company. What happened, Dag? Really.”
“There’s nothing dumb about you, Cali Marx. There was a cyber-attack and as far as I can tell, nearly every digital record of me was lost. I am a non-entity. I’m not the only ghost out there, either. The last record I saw showed… a lot of people caught in the blast.”
“How many people did you kill, Dag?” I winced.
“What makes you think it was me?”
“How else would you have known to have a new phone set up for me to contact you in an emergency?”
Cali quietly joined me as I disassembled the computer junk in my apartment and made sure there was nothing salvageable. Without being too detailed about either who or how, I told her about taking down the entire Patterson gaming network, including his carefully shrouded Philanthropolis.
Most people, the gamers, just got their games, avatars, and handles erased. Of course, if they were stupid enough to use their gaming handles on other sites and for other purposes, they were hurting a little more. All the funds the scam charities had squirreled away suddenly vanished and organizations who legitimately helped people found they had larger bank balances than they’d had the day before. The bastards that ran the scams found they no longer had bank accounts—not just no charity accounts, but personal accounts, business accounts, corporate accounts. In fact, most would have to dig through years of backups to even find a record that they existed.
Philanthropolis itself was a pile of digital rubble. Patterson’s gaming empire was bankrupt. The people who enabled him to hide in that digital fortress would be working for the next few years trying to rebuild their own identities. I was sure I’d hit some innocents in my scorched earth attack. I was sorry about that. Sorry to lose my own identity in the aftermath, too. Even all my case records from the past seven years were gone. My cloud storage was burned. All the devices connected to the Internet, destroyed. But I went in knowing I wouldn’t survive.
Digital suicide.
{2}
Man’s Best Friend
IT WAS RAINING—which wasn’t unusual for Seattle in November—and I was moving. My timing was impeccable. I’d finally finished repainting everything in my apartment white—as I’d promised Jared when I moved in and covered the room with black wallpaper. I’d sent my bed, desk, and recliner to the Big Blue Truck. They also got all my kitchenware and dishes, my audio system, and my bedding, drapes, and most of my clothes.
Just prior to the destruction of Patterson Gaming Network, I’d completed another little job. I’d been paid handsomely. Movie star handsome. FinCEN, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, had used my services as a computer forensics detective to track down and deactivate an entire Mexican drug cartel. The DEA had previously been unsuccessful in catching them with the dope, so FinCEN moved in and nailed them for money laundering. It was a lot like the IRS nailing Al Capone when no one could pin a murder on him. We moved when the top dog was visiting his underlings in Texas.
The Mexican government had declined the kingpin’s request for intervention and passed on the opportunity to extradite him. With the evidence we had, the Feds had him for twenty to life in financial crimes. We’d heard that a lot of top players in the cartel had died in the battle to become the new leader and the organization had been so fragmented that it was unlikely they would have a serious presence in the market for years.
I decided to visit Mexico City… just to see a little of the country I’d inadvertently helped. Of course, I didn’t provide the Mexican government with the information they didn’t have to make the operation they didn’t launch successful. No. Nor did they pay me a quarter-million non-taxable dollars in Eurodollar Bonds. Those bearer bonds were held in a safe deposit box in Mexico City rented under a different name.
Before the Patterson massacre, I’d withdrawn nearly all my cash from the bank, leaving token amounts in the bank to pay off credit cards. The cash was stuffed in a backpack that I carried with me at all times and never opened.
After Patterson, I had a clean slate. My banking records had been corrupted. My credit cards had all been canceled. My cell phone accounts and even my T1 line were disconnected. Even the electricity in my apartment was turned off at the end of the month. It looked like I got the same treatment as everyone else caught up in the massacre. I was digitally dead. I simply had a faster recovery time by producing paper backups of my records and getting new accounts set up.
I decided it was time to put as much of the past behind me as I could and find a new place to live. That’s what brought me to moving on the first of November in the rain.
I told Mrs. Prior I expected to be here a long time and she made me a great deal on the upstairs apartment—especially when I offered to pay a year’s rent in advance. In cash. She’d managed to convert a huge old house to a duplex with a full one-bedroom apartment upstairs. I arranged to include utilities for the apartment in my rent so I didn’t need to go through the hassle of getting a new utilities account set up.
With the view over Queen Anne, I’d be able to see Mount Rainier to the south and the Olympics in the west. On a clear day. Which today was not. I could barely see the tree in our neighbor’s yard.
Recliner World was the first to arrive with a new chair. It was hard to give up the old one, but I’d had it for twenty years and it had stopped being my favorite place to sit after the last spring broke. The new chair was leather and felt like a body glove when I sank down into it.
I’d just finished hanging my one painting where I’d be able to see it when I sat in the new chair when the Best Buy delivery truck showed up with the new television and stereo system. Mrs. Prior was happy to include cable service as part of my rent.
The Macy’s Home Store truck arrived with my new sofa, kitchen table, chairs, and bed while I was unloading my clothes from the back of the Mustang. The delivery guys were not happy about having to negotiate the narrow stairs with the king-size mattress. But what a bed! I stretched out on it and my full 6'2" frame actually fit.
Then I headed to Target to get bedding. I had no sheets, blankets, or even a dust ruffle that would fit a king size bed. I added dishes, cookware, and utensils. I’d decide tomorrow whether I still needed to go to Ikea. I dreaded that one, but I’d do it if I had to.
When the day was done, I was soaking wet, tired, achy, and cross. The excitement of having a new place had been supplanted by exhaustion and I was eying my new bed with sleep in mind. First, I needed a shower.
It wasn’t a big apartment, but I’d been able to move everything that wasn’t delivered new with two trips in the Mustang. The bath was tucked in on the bedroom side of the galley kitchen and had a shower that was actually big enough for me, the shower head being above the normal height. No tub, so I suppose it really only counted as a three-quarter bath, but tubs are always too short anyway. If I want a soak, I’ll go to the health club. The bedroom was plenty big enough for the necessities of sleeping and dressing with a large closet under the eaves. I had plans for that space that not even Mrs. Prior needed to know about.
The entrance at the top of the stairs opened into the living room that now had a comfortable sectional sofa, new leather recliner, television, stereo, and coffee table. Next to it was a small dinette at which I could comfortably seat four people if I wanted guests. I’d have to improve my cooking skills before that happened. All told, I had more than twice the space I’d had in my little efficiency.
I stepped out of the shower and nearly fell over the little bundle of fur that was sitting outside the stall door waiting for me. I yelped, the dog yelped, and from somewhere outside my door I heard Mrs. Prior yelp. The little black dog ran out of the bathroom and I managed to dry off and grab my robe before I left the bathroom. Curled up in the middle of my bed was possibly the oddest-looking dog I’d ever seen.
“Mr. Hamar?” came Mrs. Prior’s call from the hall. “I think Maizie might have come in while you were moving. Have you seen her?”
“Are you Maizie?” I asked the dog. I swear she nodded. “I think so,” I yelled. “I’ll be right out, Mrs. Prior.” I grabbed a pair of sweats and dressed quickly then turned to the dog. “I take it you’re friendly,” I said sitting on the bed next to Maizie. She crawled up into my lap, licked my face once, and settled back down. Question answered. I picked her up and carried her to the door where Mrs. Prior was waiting on the landing. “Is this the truant?” I asked. Maizie licked my ear again.
Mrs. Prior is a pet psychic. The business card says ‘Pet Communicator.’ The short of it is that she talks to animals and they apparently talk back. The number of animals in my landlady’s part of the house varied from one to twenty depending on who she was working with or rescuing at the time. Unlike what you might think, however, her house was kept immaculately clean, though she sometimes had a stray feather in her hair or a bit of fur on her clothes.
“Oh, there you are, little girl. What do you think you are doing?” She held out her arms for the dog, but Maizie made no move to go to her. In fact, she buried her nose in my armpit. “Really? Have you discussed it with him?”
“Uh… discussed what?”
“Oh. Maizie seems to believe that you have moved here for her. She has claimed you.”
“Wait. You mean the apartment comes with a pet? That wasn’t part of the lease.” I was deciding whether to be upset, though I found myself continuing to pet the dog cuddled in my arms and realized I’d made no move to give her to Mrs. Prior. For her part, my landlady simply looked at me with her eyebrows raised. “I often travel with my work. I could be gone for days at a time. I can’t have a pet. And then there is the office. I don’t plan to work from home. I’ve never had a pet. I don’t know the first thing about keeping a dog. And what is she?”
Cleverly circumventing all my protests, Mrs. Prior went straight to my last question.
“Mr. Hamar, there is a sad thing that still happens in this day. Are you familiar with dog-fighting?”
“It’s illegal.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still going on. Why just a while ago there was a professional athlete arrested for dog-fighting. Very high profile. Even here in Washington, there are cretins who train dogs to kill other dogs. They train them by kidnapping small pets and letting their fighting dogs kill them.”
I bristled at this. I’ve never been a pet owner, but seeing any animal mistreated raises my hackles. I might just have a new mission.
“How does that affect Maizie?”
“She’s a rescue. Or rather her mother was. County animal control, supported by the sheriff’s office, raided a farm outside Carnation a few months ago after finding a bedraggled bite-marked dachshund beside the road. They’d had suspicions before, but the escapee gave them probable cause to move in. They rescued five pets and had to put down four pit bulls that had been so mistreated the officers could not get close. They never found the dachshund’s owner and called me to care for her. As it turned out, she was pregnant. Apparently, the drive to mate had exceeded the drive to kill, at least for a little while. There were only four puppies and when they found out about it, the ASPCA took over and moved the dachshund and three of her puppies to a shelter.”
“Only three of the puppies?”
“They never actually found out about the fourth,” Mrs. Prior said sheepishly.
“So Maizie is a cross between a dachshund and a pit bull?” It boggled the mind.
“I think she’s been waiting here for you.”
“Um… you know, I’m not a big believer in animal communication, Mrs. Prior. No offense. But I really don’t have a lifestyle that is compatible with pet ownership.”
“Well, we’ll say she belongs downstairs then,” she said brightly. “But if you leave your door ajar, I think you’ll have company when you are here. Right, Maizie?”
“I don’t have anything I need to care for a dog,” I said as Maizie wiggled up in my arms and started licking my ear again. Damn!
“I have a leash, food, and bowls at the foot of the stairs. She hasn’t been tagged yet, and by law you’ll need to have her spayed. I just wouldn’t say anything about her parentage if I were you, or that you got her from me. And any time you need to leave for work, Maizie is welcome to stay with me. Of course, Maizie has decided that she is your guard dog and you need her to protect you.”
I looked at the bundle of fur in my arms, maybe fifteen pounds, but only a few months old. Guard dog? I thought. Maizie yipped. It was settled.
I’d just started a new relationship.
{3}
On the Waterfront
THE PATTERSON MASSACRE was the last thing I did from my Capitol Hill apartment. At one time, I’d rented a room in an old house. My office had been the dining room. The living room was the waiting area. Upstairs, three bedrooms housed two counselors and an accountant. We all moved out the same day.
The garage where I kept my Mustang didn’t have much more than room for the car, but I managed to move my fireproof safe into a corner with the help of Eric and I stacked the new equipment that had never been online next to it. Digital files don’t take ‘real world’ space, but if you have to move the media and equipment to read them, it’s a little more difficult.
The next day, a wrecking company arrived and started tearing down the old house. The owner could make more money from a parking lot than he could from our meager rent. By mid-October, there was no sign that I’d ever had an office there.
The first thing I did after I got my new apartment was locate an office space. I’d never had an interest in separating my business and personal life, so my PI license was all I needed to function. I didn’t provide any goods or taxable services, so I didn’t need to file sales tax info. Washington has no personal income tax. Lars cooperated in setting up a shell corporation for DH Investigations that wasn’t tied to me personally. Don’t ask me what magic he worked, but my name didn’t appear anywhere but as a signer on the new checking account.
With a brand new business license and checkbook in hand, I went hunting for a new office. I was drawn almost at once to the Seattle Waterfront.
There are places along Alaskan Way that would make New York and Chicago look like city parks. But not most of it. The section running from the ferry terminal north to the Edgewater Inn was a busy, commercial area that led to the market up the hill. Tourist dollars fed the Waterfront. Unfortunately, the past year had been tough on the area. Disassembling the Alaskan Way Viaduct and digging a tunnel through the area to bury the highway kept traffic congested much farther along the area than just the ferry terminal. Big Bertha had kept the area vibrating with her grinding away at the bedrock nearby and demolition of the viaduct was scheduled to commence soon.
The result was that some businesses along the Waterfront had just closed up for the duration and a few of the property owners were struggling to find renters. That was the case when I found the warehouse on Pier 61.
The warehouse ran flush with the south edge for the full length of the pier. There was enough room on the north side of the warehouse that a semi could back in to be loaded or unloaded. Why they needed a pier was a mystery since there was no water traffic to it any longer. Somewhere in the distant past it had been an active shipping warehouse on the water. The major tenant was a fabric wholesaler. Who knew there was so much demand for bolts of cloth? A secondary import/export business occupied the last third of the pier. They dealt with teak furniture, carvings, Samurai swords, and African drums. In other words, if there was anything that didn’t actually have a use but you wanted, they probably had it.
Like anyplace that had cheap rent and a funky vibe, the artist community discovered it and a half-dozen lofts had been created. Most of those were empty. I got a good deal on a double, not quite at the end of the pier—nine months rent-free and built out to my specs in exchange for a five-year lease at a not-too-exorbitant monthly rate.
Only three things in the build-out required a permit. One was the installation of a high capacity air conditioning unit on the roof. The second was the bathroom plumbing and electrical power I needed. Finally, I required the windows be converted to a floor-to-ceiling wall of glass. After the wiring and plumbing were complete, I acted as my own general contractor for the interior build-out. I hadn’t really reopened for business and wasn’t rushing to reestablish my identity online. So, I spent most of the winter puttering in the office, calling in a handyman here and there when I needed assistance. I even bought some tools that weren’t related to my computers. I had no real identity at the moment, but I had a business license that let me write checks and eventually even get a couple of low limit credit cards. Building out the space took me until February. Maizie was a big help.
After the final inspection, the real work began. I designed my space to conceal my server room, directly below the massive air conditioning unit. The combined total of the reception area and bathroom only took up two-thirds of the total width of my space. It was an optical illusion that made it look like it was the same size when you walked back into the office. I opened up the ceiling of the server room and installed a servo motor that would move a bookshelf in front of the opening to the server room. I could open it with the programmable remote control for the big flat-panel television mounted on the opposite wall. Of course, the television wasn’t required to use the remote to open the panel but justified me having it.
The secret room was cooled directly from the air conditioner and was kept at a constant sixty degrees so the servers I kept buying and installing wouldn’t overheat. The office was wireless but connected to the servers via a virtual private network through my satellite dish. Once I’d fully concealed the server room, walking into my office was like walking into any other business on the pier.
A plain metal desk, chair, and file cabinet sat in the reception area with the restroom door opposite it. A second door led to my inner sanctum. On a clear day, I could see Mount Rainier. On most days, I was thankful to see as far as the aquarium. I furnished it with an antique desk and very comfortable executive chair. I bought a leather sofa that was long enough for me to lie down on and arranged it in such a way that I could see Puget Sound and watch the shipping traffic and the ferries. Looking out over the water made me peaceful. I needed peaceful.
Maizie curled up on my chest helped.
After Andi… died… I found that I couldn’t focus like I had before. Until I decided to go after Patterson in cyberspace, I couldn’t even spend time on the computer. My mind kept drifting and I would come alert to find that an hour or more had passed while I was woolgathering. I woke every morning reaching for her—reaching for something that wasn’t there. Instead of the virtual world of the Internet, I was locked in the virtual world of my own mind. It was a bleak place.
I became obsessed with bringing down the whole empire that I related to Patterson and his crimes. When I was done, there was nothing left of it but rubble. Just up the hill from my office was another gaping pit that marked where a warehouse had once stood—a warehouse he burned when he killed Andi. I vowed I would always remember and fight against his kind.
The fucking son of a bitch. The first thing I did every morning was check the state’s Criminal Justice Division to make sure he was still detained. If he ever got out of the mental hospital, I’d kill him.
He took Andi from me.
Enough with the morbid thoughts. That’s why I now had this huge office with the big windows overlooking beautiful Puget Sound. And an entire computer network to set up and defend.
And I needed a project.
Cue the gorgeous blonde in the short skirt with legs that reached from the floor to heaven. Toss in some romantic yet sinister music. “Someone is following me,” she says breathlessly. “Why the fuck did you lead him here?” I ask.
So much for that fantasy. I watch too many old movies.
Private detective work doesn’t walk through the door on beautiful long legs. You sit in front of a computer and send out twenty emails to former clients reminding them that you are back in business and ready to handle their computer security problems before they occur. When you’ve waited ten minutes with no responses, you grab your cell phone and start calling old friends and acquaintances.
“Lars. How’s it going, Commander?— Just checking to see if you’ve heard anything stirring.— Well, I hardly need an assistant these days. I’m seriously thinking of taking a vacation. Maybe the Cayman Islands.— Sure. If you hear of anything, keep me in mind.” Dead end. But wouldn’t I like to mentor a bright student? Even in my nearly comatose state I knew the answer to that question.
“Frank? How did the install go?— No. Of course, if you need me, but I was wondering about Snoqualmie. Got a contact there I could talk to?— Yes. That’s good. No, of course I won’t tell him about what we did. Client business is confidential.— Take care Deepwater.”
Hmm. That was a solid lead. The new casinos springing up around Washington all had the same issues. Some had them worse than others. It was likely that this one would need help setting up their security with Washington’s ban on on-line gambling. I’d give him a call.
I glanced out the window and saw the clouds lowering for another storm. I could see the rain hitting the water out on the Sound. Rather be at home than here on the pier.
“Maizie, what say we go home,” I said. I think that little dog jumped halfway from the sofa to my desk. She hit the wooden floor with all four paws scrabbling for purchase, rounded the corner of my desk, and made a final leap into my lap.
I might be a curmudgeon, but I have to admit that I like being owned by a dog.
{4}
Play Ball!
I WAS SERIOUSLY giving that vacation to the Cayman Islands some consideration. In fact, anyplace where there was sunshine, white sand, and bikinis. I’d about reached the point where I’d give up the sunshine and white sand if there were still bikinis.
Well, sometimes dreaming things seems to preface them happening.
I’d done a minor job for the Mariners a year ago when someone hacked their ticket system just before the playoffs. I didn’t have any time to spare on the job. There was a significant threat of counterfeit tickets being sold that looked like they came straight from the team’s box office. There wasn’t time to mobilize the FBI. I found the hacker and totally destroyed his operation. Not only did I take down his website, I found all his original files, financial information, and bank accounts. I wiped it all.
The stupid punk actually tried to complain to the Mariners.
He came in. This time the Feds were waiting for him. He went to jail.
You can screw with the government, but don’t mess around with the American League.
It was the Twins that called this time. They had just completed major renovations to their facility in Fort Myers and wanted a full security review of the computer network. Spring training games would start in two weeks and players were onsite. It was a preseason test of their systems as well.
Florida in March. Baseball and bikinis. What could be better?
Ticket scalping is a huge business in Florida during March. The first thing I did when I got to my hotel was go online and get a ticket for that night’s game against the Orioles. There were only a dozen tickets left and I was glad to get one, even though it was $30 plus a $5 delivery fee. When I got to the stadium and paid my $10 to park in a field, I dialed the number I’d been given. The guy said to meet him on the main concourse where the flags were and with a description of me, he flagged me down immediately. He handed me my ticket and I went into the stadium, impressed that the box office delivered tickets out on the mall.
Of course, the stadium was only about two-thirds full.
I’d paid twice the box office price for the ticket I bought and a service charge to boot. But the website had looked official. I thought I was buying direct from the Twins. I’d used a VISA gift card to buy the ticket through a secure verified site that I recognized. But like thousands of other rubes rushing to Florida to get into a game, I’d just bought from a scalper.