Authors: Wayne Batson
The case name “Smiling Jack” had been coined by a blogger and gained momentum by February that same year where it appeared in a
Washington Post
page one banner headline. The murder weapon in each of the photographs had been the same strange blade that I’d seen used on the young redheaded woman.
Nico Mendle, a hobbyist and blogger interested in history’s serial killers, noted that the murder weapon resembled a surgical knife of the kind purportedly used by Jack the Ripper. I clicked on the link and a jpeg of the “Don Rumbelow Blade” taken at the Museum of London in Docklands appeared. It did indeed look similar to the weapon used in the photographs. There was no brass sheath, however. And the cutting edge was four times as long as the weapon used in the Smiling Jack photos. Mendle had noted the ghoulish smiles on the killer and all the victims and coined the phrase “Smiling Jack.”
The door to the business center swung open, startling me, and there stood the old man who had been playing solitaire all morning. The little blonde girl hid behind his leg. I minimized the knife window and turned just in time to hear the old guy say, “Sorry, Carri-boo, we’ll have to come back later.”
Caribou?
That didn’t sound like a very nice thing to call a little girl. I pictured the shaggy reindeer of North America and shrugged.
Over the next hour, I read dozens of articles spanning the next six years and, to the FBI’s credit, the content of the national news spelled out everything just the way Agent LePoast had. The “Smiling Jack” photographs had appeared on thousands of websites. There seemed to be an influx of new blogs dedicated to “the case” every month. And the popular buzz seemed to intensify each October, especially around Halloween.
The investigation was spearheaded by techies who used every trick in their collective Web-crawling bag to trace the originator of the photographs. This proved beyond daunting because so many sites—true crime, missing persons, blogs, voyeurs, social media, and news—had posted some or all of the photos. The FBI focused on the earliest posts and even unofficially enlisted the aid of Homeland Security. But the cyber-trail was a dead end. More like a loop, really. An infinity loop.
The photos’ first posting turned out to be a link from another posting of the photos, one that came chronologically later. One site digitally referred to the other as the originator, which shouldn’t have been possible. But, Smiling Jack—or some associate of his—had found a labyrinth of code to make it work. I made a mental note to find out just how many folks had the technological know-how to pull something like that off. I suspected it might be an uncomfortably high number.
Beyond the “office agents” working on the digital trail, thousands of law enforcement personnel had participated in an international manhunt. A list of “interesting persons” from the web postings had been generated. Slowly, each one had been investigated. The list narrowed until no stone had been left unturned. In the end, no evidence other than the photographs had been uncovered. No missing persons. No bodies. The FBI officially closed the case, and for four years, no other photos surfaced. Until now.
I peeked out of the business center to make sure no one was about to walk in on me. It was all too easy to imagine the old man coming back. If he saw anything in my case, he’d have plenty of questions, especially about my tools. Pressurized air hissed as I opened my silver case. I kept the lid up just long enough to get what I needed, this time, the X-drive.
The Z-Drive, Hal included, was all finesse. It captured all the physical requirements for every kind of identification and recreated them for me. The X-Drive, on the other hand, was the equivalent of a digital bazooka. All muscle. If there was a barrier, the X-drive blew it up. If there was a fire wall, the X-drive knocked it down. If there was a back door or a trapdoor, or any door at all, the X-drive would hack, blast, and gouge until it found a way in. I had two searches in mind for the X-drive this time.
First, I took the original “Smiling Jack” web link, the one that sent the FBI into the infinity loop, and ran the X-Drive on that. Five minutes went by. Ten. Up popped a red error message. This did not bode well. Whoever Smiling Jack really was, he was absolutely brilliant. From what I could tell, it hadn’t so much kept the X-drive out, but rather had let it through…an easy slide but only to useless places. It was like opening a locked door for a pursuer but greasing the floor so that he slid right on by.
Jack, or whoever Jack employed, had written a code that managed to stonewall the X-drive. I’d bet all $934 of my remaining dollars that the FBI wouldn’t be quite as successful.
Law enforcement agencies rarely release all of the details of a case to the press. It was one way to filter crime tips. Anyone who knew something about the case that had not been revealed to the general public would be taken very seriously. Surely the FBI had withheld something. Maybe it wasn’t enough for the FBI to keep the case open, but it might be enough for me. I needed everything they had.
I brought up the FBI home page. Naturally, the ultra powerful, ultra secretive law enforcement agency would keep their internal databases walled off from their public face online. But most webpages, most servers, most anything networked and connected to the Web, had a back door. Garden variety hackers wouldn’t find those back doors. Even Digital Age industrial spies might not find the back door if the system of encryption was sophisticated enough. Fortunately, the X-drive was very good at backdoors.
Five minutes later, thanks to an obscure digital trail—an order of drinking straws for the FBI cafeteria—I had access to one of the Bureau’s mainframes. Cases didn’t have searchable titles like “Smiling Jack,” so I had to find another way. The problem was, the FBI had built-in monitors for sensitive information. They’d created beneficial viruses to trace and capture invading algorithms and domains. The X-drive posted a red bar graphic showing that I had three minutes before my information was captured. If it was, the FBI would know my X-drive’s identifiers. If they back-doored into my X-drive, they would discover some things. And then…they would come looking for me.
As I searched frantically, the red bar graphic continued relentlessly on.
* * *
* * *
* * *
* * *
FBI Special Agent Dee Rezvani began her
vacation
by stepping off a plane at Panama City Beach Airport. The humidity hit her like a wet towel, and she knew immediately that she hadn’t packed enough full changes of clothes.
Welcome to the Florida Panhandle,
she thought, pulling at her blouse so it wouldn’t stick to her back.
Like the flight, she paid for a rental car on her Visa card. Everything had to be on her own dime. Assistant Director Barnes hadn’t left her any choice about that. Rez shrugged and slid up onto the high seat of the Nissan SUV. She’d saved enough money over her seven years in the Bureau to live comfortably without new income for quite a while. She cranked the engine. Six cylinders—decent power. Better than the heap she drove around in D.C.
Even with a decent salary, Rez didn’t treat herself to much. No sprawling condo with pool and tennis privileges. No new car. And, other than an occasional filet mignon from the grocery store, no high-end groceries either. In fact, Rez didn’t allow herself much of anything aside of work.
She had no family, which wasn’t really by choice. Not a lot of friends. No husband or boyfriend, certainly not from the Bureau. The male agents fell into two camps, neither of whom appealed to Rez in the least. Some were too strong: cocky, overpowering, or even slimy. They saw her as an entitlement or achievement, someone to ogle and tell dirty jokes about later. Other agents were too weak: unnerved by her looks or intimidated by her abilities. Rez was looking for a secure man who would love her, respect her, and challenge her. Special Agent Dee Rezvani had hunted and captured dozens of criminals, but she’d yet to get so much as a sniff of the man she really wanted.
Not that she’d spent much time actively looking.
Too busy in school—MS in forensic science, MA in law—led to too busy in career. Through diligence and laser-sharp attention to detail, Rez had risen from recruit to field agent to special agent in just three years. Her work eventually led to the capture of Sid Hain, the killer known as “the Scientist” due to the horrific experiments he’d performed on his victims. Rez had been made a Violent Crimes Division Leader and moved to D.C. where she’d flourished ever since. And that all left little time for personal or romantic life.
Which was why she was taking a vacation to find a serial killer.
Rez sighed, put the SUV in gear, and pulled out of the rental lot. She headed west on Route 98 toward Destin. Vacation or not, she had a suspect for the first time in the Smiling Jack case. His name was Regis Willoughby.
* * *
* * *
* * *
* * *
The X-Drive’s red bar graphic told me I’d already used up two and a half minutes to find any “Smiling Jack” files. I had to search out the web addresses of some of the original blogs to cover the murderous photographs. I figured the FBI tech guys would have scoured those websites for anything useful. They’d have put their findings in a report. They had, and within the first file, I found links to others.
Several thousand others. I’d let my X-drive have at those as soon as I could, but I had to get them all first.
I had all of 30 seconds left to gather information from all those pages. I clicked from link-to-link, frantically clicking link copy commands. The red graphic bar showed me I had just a few seconds. I captured 3 more pages of data and clicked the kill button. The connection was cut. The backdoor trace failed.
I breathed again.
The next order of business: the camera. I doubted the killer left a paper trail purchasing the camera he’d used to take his ghoulish photos. Still, the camera’s history might give me something I could use. I found the Vizica homepage easy enough and then the model. It was a Vizica Sport with an 8 megapixel resolution, 200X zoom, and 50GB built-in memory, enough for thousands and thousands of photographs. The killer had taken only 18. One other problem: the Vizica Sport was virtually waterproof. That explained why the camera still worked.
I removed the battery from the slide hatch on the bottom of the camera and found the serial number. I tried plugging it in to the Vizica website and found I couldn’t get in without a password. I reconnected the X-drive, submitted the web address, and waited for the algorithm to do its thing.
The door opened behind me, and I heard a breathy version of the word, “Dang.” I closed the case with one hand, and saw the old man standing in the doorway with his hands on his hips. He let out a little exasperated sigh. The little blond bounced hopefully by his leg.
“How much longer?” he asked, wearing an I-just-sucked-a-lemon face.
“Some time yet,” I said, keeping my wrath in check. “Why?”
“Well, the third computer’s blinky. I want to get back to my solitaire, and my little Caroline wants to play Cookie Munchers.” He stared at me as if, by sheer force of will, he could make me vanish from existence.
“I have a fair amount of business to attend to,” I said.
“Business? What kind of business?”
The kind of business that is not yours.
But what I actually said was, “I am a headhunter.”
He paused, chewing on the word like a piece of suspect beef. “Oh, like you find people for jobs, that it?”
“Something like that.”
His expression turned slightly triumphant. “Heh, heh, heh, guess I won’t ever be givin’ you a call. Retired. Plenty of time for my granddaughter now.”
And for solitaire,
I thought, turning around. “I’m afraid I’ll be needing this computer for some time.”
“I’m sorry, Carri-boo,” he told the little girl. “Looks like we’ll have to wait some more.” He adjusted the thick framed glasses and scratched the unruly thatch of gray hair near his ear. “Mister, can ye’ at least gimmie a time you’ll be off?”
I took a deep breath. “I wish I could, but my work is a bit…indefinite. You’re perfectly welcome to take the other computer.”
His face morphed back to lemon mode. “I told ye’ already that computer don’t work right.” He muttered something I couldn’t understand, but the little girl gasped, and I saw her hand fly to her lips. Then they both were gone. Maybe now, he’d do something that promoted togetherness with his granddaughter, rather than parking her in front of Cookie Munchers all day.
Back to Vizica. The algorithm battered down the firewall, and I learned that the camera had been shipped to a distributor in April and then to a Walmart just outside of Panama City, Florida…not far from Destin. Not far at all.
Back to the web browser. I needed access to Walmart’s sales records. As I suspected, that information was not normally accessible via the Internet. One of the applications on my X-drive told me that I could, however, access sales through their internal server. I clicked the “GO” button and waited.
And waited. The search and decipher program raised the internal temperature of the X-drive six degrees and took eight minutes to break through. I’d hacked national defense servers faster. Good for Walmart.
What I discovered didn’t give me much, and that didn’t surprise me. The scarlet-colored Vizica Sport had been purchased from the Walmart in July, paid for in cash, and was a part of a larger order that included five other cameras. That worried me.
Next up: the sailboats I had seen that day from the shore. If the camera had been purchased in Panama City and I found it floating just off Destin Beach, it was a good bet that the killer dropped the camera in the Gulf, somewhere in between. Maybe Smiling Jack was a sailor. Maybe he lived on a boat. Maybe the concave walls in the photographs were actually the inner hull of a ship as I suspected. Maybe the killer made a mistake and the camera went overboard.