The 13: Fall (14 page)

Keen clenched his fists. “You did what!”

“What? What are you so jacked up about?”

“There’s no way those boys are going to wait for us. They’re probably storming the place right now!”

“I gave them an explicit order not to move,” she said.

Keene looked at Boz, who was pinching the bridge of his nose.

“See!” he said. “Even he knows!”

“He’s right, Ms. Taylor,” Boz said. “I would be very surprised if they wait.”

“I’m so glad you guys think so highly of the FBI and our protocols,” she said.

The plane dipped and banked hard to the right.

“I guess we’ll find out in a few minutes,” Keene said as the plane began its descent.

On the ground they were met by two men, both wearing off-the-rack suits and black loafers that screamed FED. Though it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, since they were also wearing the standard-issued blue coat with the stenciled FBI on the back. The men introduced themselves as Special Agent Franks and Special Agent Graham and ushered them into the waiting Suburban.

Inside the truck Keene spoke first.

“Give me the sit-rep,” he said.

“Got two guys outside in plainclothes,” Graham answered. “We were told to hold and just observe.”

“And you guys just sat tight? Just like that?”

“Came straight from Director Preston’s office. So yeah, we’re just sitting on it.”

Keene could feel the burn of Taylor’s glare.

“And nobody’s moved?”

“Oh, lots of people moving,” Franks said. “There’s all kinds of electricians and what looks like computer geeks in and out of the place.

Got a power generator outside, and it looks like the place is under renovation.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Taylor said. “The e-mail came from there.”

“Don’t know,” Graham said. “Looks like they’ve had some kind of huge power outage there that fried everything. Don’t know when it happened. But when we showed up, all that was going on.”

“How far out are we?” Boz asked.

“Fifteen minutes,” Franks answered.

“Let’s make it ten,” Keene said.

Outside the Internet café, the group watched as technicians and electrical company personnel moved in and out of the building. Computers were being taken in and out and loaded into and out of a truck. Keene observed for a few seconds before deciding to move.

“It’s obvious that if this is the place that e-mail was sent from, he’s no longer here. Taylor, let’s you and me go see what’s going on.”

“I’m in,” Taylor said, unbuckling her seat belt.

The two exited the vehicle and moved across the street to where the caution tape was draped in front of the café. Taylor pulled her badge and grabbed one of the guys carrying a laptop.

“Hey, Megan Taylor, FBI. Who’s in charge here?”

“What’s the FBI doing here?”

“Guy in charge?” she repeated.

“Over there,” the man said. “Tall guy with glasses.

Keene didn’t wait for Taylor. He stepped over the tape and made his way inside to the man that had just been pointed out to them. He grabbed the man by the arm and started to lead him away from the others.

“My name is Jon Keene,” he said. “Is there someplace we can talk?”

The guy with glasses looked instantly nervous. “What? What’s going on here?”

By that time, Taylor had joined him and produced her badge.

“We’re with the FBI. We just need to ask you some questions,” she said.

“Sure,” the man said. “In here.”

He led them to the back of the room and into what looked like a makeshift office. It had a small door that led to an even smaller desk with two chairs. The chair behind the desk faced a window that looked out into the café.

“This is the manager’s office,” he said. “I try to spend as little time in here as I can, for obvious reasons.”

Keene gave a courteous smile. “Obviously.” He closed the door behind them.

“Something I can do for you two?”

“Do you know the people who use your Internet café?” Taylor asked.

“I know some of them,” the man answered. “But this is a big city. Lots of people. Hard to know everyone.”

“What happened here?” Keene asked.

The man’s nervous look turned to one of disgust and anger. “Some punk uploaded a virus that fried my whole café. Literally!”

“When you say fried …” Keene began.

“I mean fried!” the man said. “Thousands of dollars of damage! Every computer in here lit up like the building got struck by lightning. I’ve never seen anything like it before. I mean, everything started sparking and then smoking and then just
bzzzt
! Gone!” His eyes narrowed. “Hey … what’s going on here?”

“Classified,” Keene said. “You got security cameras here?”

“Of course!” the man said.

“Can we see them?” Taylor asked.

“Nope.”

“What do you mean, nope?” Keene asked.

“I mean, everything was being backed up to hard drives. They’re all gone.”

Keene did little to hide his frustration. Technology was great until something like this happened.

“See anyone unusual this morning?” he asked the man.

The man thought for a minute and said, “Nah, pretty much everyone in here today I’ve seen at least a couple of times.” He nodded his head but then stopped short. “Hey, wait a minute. There was this guy.”

“Who?” Keene and Taylor spoke simultaneously.

“Yeah …” he said. “This guy came in about an hour or so ago. Had a hat on and a hoodie pulled up over his head. I remember ‘cause I was thinking I might need to keep an eye on him.”

“Why’s that?” Keene asked.

“Couple months ago, I had a couple kids come in here acting all weird, just shuffling around. And then just like that”—he snapped his fingers—”they grabbed a couple laptops and booked it outta here. I just thought the guy looked suspicious for a minute. But he just walked over to one of the terminals and started working.”

“So you didn’t pay any attention to him after that?”

“No. Once I saw him sit down and start typing, I let it go. Just figured he was normal.”

“What computer?” Taylor asked.

“That one right there,” the man pointed as one of the technicians was disconnecting the cables to take it away.

Taylor nearly leaped over Keene as she bolted out the door.

“Hey! Wait a second,” she shouted to the guy. “Don’t touch that! FBI!”

The guy stood frozen, as if in a panic.

Keene stepped out of the office and over to the terminal where Taylor was. “We should get it printed.”

“Do you know how many sets of prints are going to be on this keyboard?” she asked rhetorically. “Besides, he wore gloves.”

“Really? And how do you know that?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

Keene realized she was right.

Taylor took the computer from the guy and set it back down at the station. She moved her eyes around like she was looking for someone.

“Hey you, electrician guy.”

The man she spoke to turned and said, “Who me?”

“Yeah, you. How long till you get power back up to this store?”

“Aw man, this place is a mess. Whole junction box is fried. Probably going to take a week, at least.”

“A week!” It was the manager.

“Sorry, man,” the electrician said. “Someone did a real number here.”

“We need to get this to an FBI office,” Taylor said to Keene. They can have an analyst try to recover the hard drive and see if there’s anything on it that will help us.”

“Then let’s do it,” Keene said. He turned to the manager. “We’ll be confiscating this computer. We’ll get you a receipt.”

“Hey,” the manager said. “You can’t just take that. And what’s going on here?”

“We can and just did,” Keene said. “We’ll be in touch if we need anything else.”

As he and Taylor stepped outside, Boz was waiting for them.

“See that, over there?” he said.

“See what?” Keene asked.

“That bank,” Boz answered. “See what’s in front of the bank?”

“The ATM!” Taylor said.

“Surveillance camera,” Keene said. “That’s good. We’ve got a possible description, if that’s what you want to call it. Maybe that camera caught our guy going in or coming out.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Boz said.

“Here,” Taylor said, handing him the computer. “Take this back to the truck. Keene and I will go find out about our camera.”

Boz took the computer and walked back to the truck. Keene and Taylor crossed the street to the bank.

Inside, Keene found the bank manager and told him who they were. Though the manager had questions, Keene couldn’t tell him much. The manager voiced his reluctance but ultimately gave his permission to look at the ATM footage. It, too, Keene learned, was captured digitally, and the feed came directly to the security suite on the second floor. The manager led them to the elevators, swiped his key card, and escorted them to the security suite.

“This is Davies,” he said of the suit in the chair behind the desk. “Formerly a detective with the Chicago PD.”

“Nice to meet you.” Keene shook the man’s hand.

“What can I do for you?” Davies asked.

“We’d like to take a look at the footage from the ATM camera over the last couple hours,” Taylor said.

“Sure,” Davies said. “Let me pull it up over there.” He pointed to a large flat screen on the side wall. It sat in the middle of at least ten other smaller screens. Each one revealed a video feed from somewhere in the bank.

“Nice setup you have here,” Taylor said.

“It’s the cost of doing business,” Davies said.

He punched a couple buttons on the keyboard and the flat screen flicked. In another second, an image of the Internet café across the street came into focus.

“Take it back to three hours ago,” Taylor instructed.

The video came up and started moving forward. Fortunately, there were only two ATM customers during the footage. Even then, the camera was situated so as to allow at least partial view of the front door to the café across the street.

Several minutes of footage passed by in fast motion without any luck.

But at almost two hours into the time code, there he was. A man wearing a ball cap and a hoodie approached the café.

“There!” Keene said. “Slow it down.”

Davies did as he was told and slowed the speed to less than normal.

“Can you zoom in?” Keene asked.

“It’s a fixed camera,” Davies answered. “Best I can do is isolate an image and blow it up. And for all the money they’ve spent putting eyes and ears inside this place, they never touched the ATMs. That camera out there is old. And it’s going to get pixelated fast, depending on how big you blow it up.”

“Perfect,” Keene said. He looked at Taylor. “Just keeps getting better, doesn’t it?”

Davies slowed the video down to almost a complete stop. The man in the hat pulled it low down over his eyes and then pulled the hood up over his hat. He stopped before entering and turned his head, as if to check to see if anyone was paying him notice. As the man turned, Davies stopped the camera just as the man’s full face came into view.

“There!” Taylor said.

The camera froze on what seemed to be a man in his mid-to-late thirties. He appeared to be of medium build and had a scraggly beard.

“Go ahead and blow it up,” Keene said.

“This is actually a good picture,” Davies admitted. “I may be able to give you something here.”

With a few clicks the man’s face filled the screen. The pixilation indicated the camera’s age, but it was still clear enough to get a good look.

“You think that’s him?” Taylor asked.

“I’d bet my life on it,” Keene answered. “Can you print that out for us?” he said to Davies.

“Also,” Taylor said, “can you e-mail it to me? I have some software that may be able to fill in the pixilation.”

“Sure,” he said and clicked a few more buttons then handed Keene the image as it rolled out of the printer next to his desk.

Keene grabbed the photo, shook the man’s hand, and said, “Thanks a bunch. You’ve been very helpful, Detective Davies.”

Davies nodded and said, “Glad I could help.”

   CHAPTER 22