Authors: Thomas Fincham
Lester had Vander Lee’s cell phone hooked up to his laptop and he was using a software program to crack the password protection.
“How long will it take?” Nolan asked.
“I can’t say,” Lester replied. “It could take minutes, hours, or sometimes even days to break into these things.”
Nolan turned to Hyder. “Days?”
“I know Lester can do it quicker, can’t you?” Hyder asked.
Lester shrugged. “Yeah, I’ll try. But you gotta keep your end of the bargain.”
“I will,” Hyder said. “My mom, right now is making your favorite dish—Biryani.”
Lester licked his lips, imagining the smell and texture of the meal.
“In fact, I’ll even throw in a plate of chicken tikka, if you do it even quicker.” Hyder continued.
Lester mouth nearly dropped.
“Is he going to drool?” Nolan asked, looking disgusted.
Lester went back to his work.
Two agonizing hours later Lester said, “I’m in.”
They all huddled around him.
The laptop screen showed the interface of the cell phone. Lester first scrolled through the call logs.
“We might need to verify those telephone numbers later,” Nolan said.
Lester then opened the images folder. Vander Lee had taken random shots of himself and other things, but nothing they could see that might help them.
They scrolled through Vander Lee’s text messages but they, too, were not useful. They were brief and non-specific.
Vander Lee had a lot of applications and games installed on his phone. Lester started checking out the games. “Stay focused, Lester,” Hyder reminded him.
Finally, one application caught Lester’s attention.
“I have this on my phone too,” he said. “It allows you to encrypt notes that you want hidden. For instance, see these odd symbols and text? When decrypted, they will reveal whatever the user was trying to protect.”
“How do we decrypt it?” Hyder asked.
“You need a software program for that,” he said.
“No kidding,” Nolan interjected with heavy sarcasm.
“Where do we get this software?” Hyder asked, ignoring Nolan, feeling like they were so close, but so far at the same time.
“Luckily, I have the software on my laptop,” Lester smiled. “By the way, is the Biryani ready?”
“It will be soon.” Hyder patted Lester on the shoulder. “Once you are done, you can have the entire pot of it.”
Lester hit a few keystrokes and said, “Let the magic begin.” He then hit ‘enter’.
The symbols and images slowly changed one by one until it became readable.
“What is it?” Jessica asked.
“It looks like a username and password,” Lester said.
“But to what?” Hyder asked.
“Wait,” Lester said. He clicked a few screens. More material was slowly revealed.
“The Cloud Network?” Hyder said, looking at the monitor. “What’s that?”
“It’s like an online site where you can store and retrieve data from anywhere in the world.” Lester then went on to the site, entered the username and password, and waited.
An account labeled “Jim Lee” came up.
“It has to be James Vander Lee’s,” Hyder said.
Underneath the account name were several folders. They were labeled WORKING PAPERS, EXHIBITS, WORKSHEETS, SCHEDULES, MEMO, NOTES.
“Open the first folder,” Hyder said.
Lester did. More files came up onto the screen. Lester clicked on one, which launched a new program.
“What are all those calculations?” Jessica asked.
“I don’t know,” Hyder said. “But look at the name at the top corner.”
“A. Hansborough,” Nolan said. His brow furrowed.
“And look at the header,” Hyder said.
“TriGate Management Group,” Jessica replied.
Lester got up. “I’ve done my job. I’m now going upstairs to enjoy my reward.”
This time no one stopped him.
Hyder got behind the laptop and began going through the contents of the folders. At first neither of them had a clue at what they were looking at until they started from the folders labeled MEMO and NOTES, and slowly worked their way through.
It took them a couple of hours to fully grasp the extent of what they had uncovered. When they were done, they sat down, feeling exhausted.
Lester came down to the basement, fully stuffed with Indian food.
“Man, your mom is an amazing cook,” he said. “It was like eating food from heaven.”
Jessica raised an eyebrow. “You’ve been eating the entire time we’ve been downstairs?”
“Not the entire time,” Lester shook his head, correcting her. “I took breaks in between. Hyder’s mom showed me Hyder’s baby photos.”
“I have to see those,” Jessica teased.
“He used to be a cute baby,” Lester said. “I don’t know what happened to him now. It looks like he got deformed as he grew older.”
“Thanks for the compliment,” Hyder said sarcastically.
“You’re welcome, buddy,” Lester said. “So, you guys find anything useful?”
Hyder, Nolan, and Jessica looked at each other.
“What? I’m not part of the group now?” Lester said.
Hyder leaned forward in his chair and said, “Lester, the contents of that laptop could destroy a lot of people’s reputations, not to mention put them behind bars. We are talking about government officials, union representatives, and high-ranking corporate individuals, very important people. And they all are linked to TriGate Management Group.”
“I gotta sit down for this,” Lester said as he grabbed a seat. “Fill me in.”
Hyder cleared his throat. “This is what we think happened. TriGate has been involved in major projects throughout the city. They have built one of the highways. They have worked on the subway system. They have even remodeled the new football stadium. Those documents show that the reason they were awarded those contract was because of bribes.”
“Wow,” Lester said. “And it clearly states that in those documents?”
“Not exactly,” Jessica said. “The upper management at TriGate were using a secret internal accounting code.”
“A what?”
“It was a way for them to hide what they were actually doing.”
“So how were they doing this?”
“When they quoted a project to a potential customer they would allocate ten percent of it to procurement costs, which was actually money provided to individuals to gain the contract,” Hyder said. “These individuals could be civil servants of various government departments, they could be politicians, they could be heads of corporations with vested interest in the projects; anyone who assisted them in winning the contracts was a beneficiary of these payments. TriGate hid these costs from actual customers in their internal spreadsheets, but recouped them by inflating the salaries of those involved in the projects. So the customer never thought they were paying for the bribes, they figured it was part of the cost of the project. To keep track of these payments, they made a note at the bottom of each check they paid them with. We saw scanned copies of checks with the letters PPC written on them.”
“What does ‘PPC’ stand for?” Lester asked.
“Project Procurement Costs.”
“So, who blew the whistle?”
“James Vander Lee,” Hyder said.
“The guy whose phone we hacked into?”
“Precisely. Vander Lee worked as an engineer on several projects for TriGate. He knew something wasn’t on the up and up, so he told an internal auditor about this.”
“Who?”
Hyder turned to Nolan. “Amanda Hansborough,” Nolan said.
“She’s the one whose name I saw on one of the documents, right?” Lester asked.
“Yes,” Nolan replied. “Hansborough started looking into it, and when she got too close, they had her killed.”
Lester’s eyes widened. “No way.”
Hyder nodded. “Vander Lee, afraid for his own life, went silent. But the guilt was too much for him, so to expose what was going on, he told one of his professors.”
“My dad,” Jessica said.
“Freeland was assisting Vander Lee in gathering evidence against TriGate,” Hyder continued. “Together they were going to take the evidence to the authorities, but before they could do that, Freeland was murdered.”
Jessica bit her lip.
Lester scratched his head. “How did TriGate know Jessica’s dad was involved?”
Jessica said, “My dad was very suspicious of technology, he felt the government was listening in on everyone.”
“They are, trust me,” Lester confirmed.
“Anyways,” Jessica continued. “In Vander Lee’s cell phone calendar we noticed a recurring note. It was labeled “Meeting EF in Office”, which I am certain means, ‘meeting Eric Freeland.’ Vander Lee and my dad would meet at the university to discuss the TriGate situation. And if anyone asked, they could say Vander Lee and my dad were having a professor/student discussion.”
Lester stopped her. “Okay, but you still didn’t answer my question: how did they know your dad was involved?”
This time Hyder spoke, “It was indicated in Freeland’s diary. I remembered reading an entry that at first looked like gibberish, but when I looked at it now it makes absolute sense.” Hyder handed a piece of paper to Lester.
Lester read it out loud. “
Received calls many times from XLX Ltd, but too afraid to answer, must stop meeting or else too dangerous, will have to slow down or will end up like auditor, the seeking of the original cannot be done, we have nothing to help us, must become more cautious, eyes are watching, the walls have ears, and life has become more precious…
” Lester looked up. “I don’t get it.”
“Remember, it was Vander Lee who was feeding information to Freeland from inside TriGate. Vander Lee may have sensed that TriGate was suspicious that something was up, or that he may have almost blown his cover. This would explain why he had called Freeland multiple times in one day, perhaps trying to warn him. Vander Lee’s mistake part lead TriGate to focus on Freeland. I think Freeland realized he was under surveillance and that his life was in danger, which would also explain his odd behavior weeks before his murder, so he chose to send pages from his diary to me. He made them cryptic in case they got into TriGate’s hands.”
Lester rubbed his head. “Okay, I get that they were working to expose the corruption, but why not take this stuff—all the contents we found on the laptop—to the police?”
Hyder said, “Read further down.”
Lester read out loud: “
Orginal, original, we need the original, without it we cannot do anything, we have to find it, until then we don’t have anything…
” Lester blinked. “What does it mean?”
Hyder said, “We think Freeland was referring to the original documents, the internal files that, perhaps, Amanda Hansborough had put together. Freeland believed that without them they had no case.”
“But it’s all here,” Lester exclaimed. “We can see copies of it.”
“Yes,
copies
,” Nolan said, “they are not original documents that were signed by Amanda Hansborough.”
“What about the checks?” Lester said. “They were signed by whoever was in-charge and they clearly show at the bottom that internal accounting code you mentioned.”
“Agreed, but TriGate could argue that they were fabricated, forged by their competitors to ruin their reputation. And we now know how high up this sordid mess goes. Who knows if those people will let it see the light of day. I believe (but I could be wrong) that Freeland and Vander Lee were going to use this information to pressure TriGate to reveal the original documents. He mentions this in one of his entries in the diary.” Nolan picked up a sheet and read, “
Today not going well, not knowing what's happening, desire to tell the truth which will make this difficult, maybe tomorrow will meet JVL and will go visit XLX Ltd. and take away the thing that is most important
.” Nolan put the paper down. “When Freeland said they would take away the most important thing from XLX Ltd, which we know is a reference to TriGate, he meant the original file.”
“Do we even know if the original file still exists?” Lester said.
He was met with silence.
“What if the people at TriGate destroyed it?”
“There is a huge possibility that it may be gone now,” Hyder conceded.
“Which puts us in the same situation as Freeland and Vander Lee,” Lester said.
Hyder hated to admit it but he was right. They didn’t have the original and were in no position to do anything.
SIXTY-THREE
The mood in the room was somber.
Hyder felt terrible, not for himself, but for Nolan and Jessica. Jessica had lost a father because he was trying to do the right thing. Nolan had lost a wife because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Maybe it was why now, more than anything, he wanted to expose TriGate, to give Nolan and Jessica some closure. They had been through a lot and they deserved to move on.