The Schwarzschild Radius (40 page)

olice had Dr. Sartorius under surveillance while waiting for a court order to get into his PC based on the evidence Joules had provided. McKenna had checked on the admissibility of all this. The police couldn’t hack into anyone’s computer without a warrant, but if someone else did the hacking and turned it over to police, it would constitute probable cause.

McKenna recalled how the FBI had arrested Zacarias Moussaoui, the twentieth hijacker, but weren’t allowed to get into his PC until after the 9/11 attacks. It would have been worth it to blow the case on Moussaoui to find out about 9/11. McKenna called Joules.

“I need you to bring everything you have on these men down to the precinct. I need all the downloads. A Suffolk County Police car will be there in a few minutes to pick you up.”

“No need. I’m at Cooper Union downtown.”

“I’ll send an unmarked car.”

A search of Rachel’s dorm had uncovered a camera containing the same photos that were in the email police had received anonymously a few days earlier. So Rachel had sent them. She had stayed overnight in the homeless shelter posing as a runaway. Had she―could she have stayed in the homes of these pedophiles? Could a Columbia kid be that stupid?

Joules placed his laptop on McKenna’s desk. Police were already combing through Rachel’s computer.

“It’s not all decrypted yet, but there’s plenty,” said Joules.

“Brief our Cyber Crimes guys on everything you found,” said McKenna. “They’ll need to copy the downloads and delete the child porn from your computer.”

McKenna had done a quick background check on Joules. Male friends of missing girls were always persons of interest. He didn’t expect what he’d found. The kid had been making contributions to science since he was fourteen, for Christ’s sake. Full ride to Cooper Union. Second place nationwide in that Intel contest.
Just don’t blow it, kid
.

After Joules was done with Cyber Crimes, he came back.

“She left the house around midnight,” said McKenna. “Which is what her alarm clock radio was set to. Any idea who she might be meeting? She just started college, did she mention anything about a boyfriend―you’re not her boyfriend, are you?”

“No, on both counts.”

“She was in the homes of these men, these pedophiles, wasn’t she?”

“She told me she was.”

“When did she tell you that?”

“She called me on Monday asking for help in decrypting the files. I asked her how she got the IP addresses of the computers and she told me she’d planted a RAT on each one.”

“A rat?”

“Remote Administration Tool. It enables you to hack into the machine later and also downloads basic information you’ll need to connect like the external router address and the machine’s IP address.”

“So to place this RAT on the PC she actually had to be there in the house?”

“You don’t have to have physical access―it can be done remotely with a Trojan horse if you can get the target to execute it. But in her case, she was at their homes.”

“I don’t think she was invited there to install a RAT on their PCs. Any idea why she was there in the first place?”

“She just said that some of these men knew Olivia. She was sure about that.”

“Is it possible that she was meeting one of them again―or going to the house of another man?”

“At this point, I’d say anything is possible. She was desperate to find her sister, especially after the Schrodinger girl turned up dead.”

“How many separate PCs did you hack into?”

“Three. But some of these guys might not have PCs or maybe she didn’t get access to them. So there’s no telling how many homes she went to.”

“Did she say she was by herself when she did this―going to these homes?”

“She didn’t say, and I guess I didn’t want to ask.”

After Joules left, McKenna sat there trying to figure out Rachel Wallen.
If she was doing this alone, she was putting out for the pedophiles
, thought McKenna. Looks like her sister was hustling too. What the hell was going on with these kids? Giving sex was like giving out lollipops these days. The good-night kiss was now the good-night blow job.

A few minutes later, a voice came over the intercom.

“That Joules kid is back. He needs to talk to you.”

“Send him in.”

When the boy walked in, he looked at the detective as dispassionately as if he had just figured out another math problem.

“I know who the killer is.”

“Let me get this straight,” said McKenna. “You’re telling me that you connected to Massey’s PC and from Massey’s machine you connected to a second PC?”

“Right,” said Joules.

“Through Massey’s machine?”

“Yes.”

“So the Schrodinger video was actually on the second machine?”

“Right.”

“How do you know this?”

“Just before I accessed the directory that contained the Schrodinger video, the data transfer speed slowed down drastically. I didn’t think much of it until I was walking out of here just now. I looked at the properties of an icon on Massey’s machine that I clicked on before the response time slowed. It’s a login macro that connects to another computer and autofills the ID and password. Everything I captured after that was on another machine. It also explains why some files don’t have Massey as the author if you look at the properties of the files.”

“And whose PC was it on?”

Joules clicked on an email and highlighted the name at the top.

“This guy.”

chara bowed three times before her shrine and said a prayer for safety. She kissed her vihara, wishing she could take this one possession. Now she waited for Tong to tell her to fetch the beer.

When he appeared in the doorway, she extended her hand to receive the money for the last time. He was going to go thirsty today.

Four blocks from the brothel, she flagged down a cab.

“Doi Lo,” she said.

Achara could see the driver checking her out in the mirror. She couldn’t tell if he knew she was a prostitute or if he was just uneasy about getting his fare from a sixteen-year-old. Either way, she didn’t like it. He started to make conversation and she cut him off. The last thing she needed now was to leave any clues. As the familiar part of town receded, she opened the window for some fresh air. Her hand rested on the outline of the passport in her pocket. She took a small number of bills out that she would use to pay the cab. The dollars were secure against her ankles, but the bulges now showed as she sat down. She hadn’t thought of that.

The traffic was horrendous as always and it took over an hour to get to Doi Lo.

“Four-hundred baht,” said the driver.

“That ride was worth only three-hundred.”

“Three-fifty.”

“Three-twenty-five.” She held out the money.

When she exited the cab, she waited for him to vanish from sight, then flagged down another cab. This way, the first driver wouldn’t know her final destination if questioned.

“The airport,” she said.

“Picking someone up?”

“Yes.”

This would take another forty minutes with traffic, and then she would have to elude Tong for another five hours until the flight left.

When Achara didn’t return, Tong summoned all the girls to the front porch. He took out a cane and threatened to beat every girl. No one could tell him anything. Nothing was missing from her room, so she either ran away, or some other pimp had stolen her.

One of the police he employed came up the steps and reported that someone had seen her get into a taxi two blocks away.

He went with the police officer to question the witness.

“What kind of taxi did she get into,” asked the pimp.

“New York Style Taxi,” answered the old man. Tong threw him a hundred baht.

At the dispatch office of the New York Style Taxi Company, Tong paid the dispatcher another hundred baht to find out who had given a ride to a girl of Achara’s description in the last two hours. There was only one driver. He had dropped her off at Doi Lo.

“Show me a map,” he demanded. She had taken the taxi north on 108 to Doi Lo. Who did she know in Doi Lo?

Tong called the police captain and told him to send a police car to his location with three men.

Tong rode in the police car with the siren screaming. They cut through all the traffic and got there in twenty-five minutes. This girl was going to be punished in front of the others, so he would never have this problem again. No one was going to make a fool out of him.