Cold Jade (10 page)

M
ack knew
that pornographers were always on the cutting edge of computer technology. They were the ones who had pioneered VHS, then DVDs and then online movies.

And the more deviant they were, the more adept they became at hiding their online activities.

Mack recalled less than a year ago, a child porn ring, all online, had been busted. There had been some twenty-seven thousand subscribers, worldwide to the network.

The only way to catch them was to get a crack in the armor.

And Charles Starkey had provided that glimpse.

“Are you getting his computer?” Mack asked.

Moody nodded.

“We’ve got a team on the way.”

Just then, the door opened, and one of the assistants who’d been ushered out, came back into the conference room.

“Bad news,” he said.

Mack and Moody waited.

“Our team was on the way to Starkey’s house when they pulled over to let fire trucks go by.”

“Oh, Christ.”

The man nodded. “The house went up in flames, with all of Starkey’s family inside.”

“Jesus,” Mack said.

“There’s more.”

“Of course there is,” Moody said.

“A boat in the local marina blew up with a body inside. They think it’s Starkey.”

“
T
hat’s all right
,” Moody said, casually dismissing the demise of Charles Starkey. “We don’t need his physical computer or network to track him.”

Mack realized that Moody was all business. No time for compassion. Maybe that’s what drew her to computers. And the Oakland Raiders.

“Get everyone in here, now,” she barked at the assistant.

Moments later, the room was full of techies listening as Moody barked out orders.

Hopestil Fletcher came to the door and beckoned Mack out.

“The Spencers are not happy,” she said.

“Do you want me to talk to them?” he asked.

“No, I want you to put together a profile of who is behind The Store. It’s got to be one person.”

“I know how to catch him,” Mack said.

“How?”

“Tracking computer files is next to impossible, no matter how good Moody is,” Mack said.

“She’s the best in the world, Mac.”

“I know. But there’s one thing that’s much easier to follow.”

“The money,” Fletcher said.

Mack nodded.

“The odds are the perp is male,” Mack said. “He’s got a history of sex crimes, that probably stopped some time ago. A knack for computers or a history of hacking. And in the last few days, a huge influx of money.”

“I’ve got a team looking already, but I’ll make sure they’re looped into what Moody is doing. How much do you think he’s taken in?”

“Start with five million in the last few days.”

“
W
e’ve got something
,” Moody said.

Fletcher and Mack sat among the techies, looking at the big screen on the wall, with a blizzard of numbers and computer code.

Suddenly, one of the strings was highlighted by Moody.

“This is Starkey’s money going out,” she explained. “It hit first at a bank account in the Caymans. From there it was broken up and sent out into nearly a hundred different amounts, each amount being transferred dozens of times.”

Mack knew they might never find the money, but they could sure as hell follow it.

Moody continued. “However, we figured that the amounts must have regrouped at some point, so we picked two to follow. They ended up back in the Caymans, to an account registered to M. Stohr Enterprises.”

Mack shook his head.

“The Murder Store,” he said.

Moody looked at him oddly, then nodded.

“Here’s the best part,” she continued. “Guess where we tracked it to?”

The hum of the computer equipment was the only sound in the room.

“Right here. Washington, D.C.”

B
ernard Evans felt more
alive than he’d felt when he first became a multi- millionaire.

Even partially hungover, the taste of last night’s scotch still in his mouth, he felt positively electric with a thirst for what would soon happen making him practically jump out of bed.

Evans thought about the money he’d spent, and that it was going to be more than worth it. In fact, he thought about his company’s IPO and how the stock was doing.

He could sell off another batch in a few months and buy another girl.

Which reminded him…

The rules about coming to this place had been very clear. No cell phones. No laptops. Nothing with a wireless connection. Which made sense because there was no Internet service here anyway.

But Evans was a tech geek.

And he had figured that for his own safety, he should have something with him just in case he needed to call someone, like his assistant, in an emergency.

Plus, he needed his protégé Reese Stocker, to be able to reach him in an all-out catastrophe.

So he had broken apart his phone, taken the battery out, and taken apart his travel clock that he favored on business trips.

He’d then placed the components of his phone into the rear compartment of the clock.

The woman, the crazy chick, hadn’t bothered to check. Even though she’d run the bags through an X-ray deal like the security people at airports had.

Now, he reassembled the phone, clicked the battery into place and powered it up. After a few moments, he was pleased to see that the battery was nearly seventy-five percent charged.

He fired up his brokerage account’s app, and checked the balance of his portfolio.

$123 million.

Oh yes, he thought.

He had plenty to make another purchase.

And soon.

So he slid the phone into his pocket and when the scary chick came around, the one who called herself Butterfly, he was ready. But sometimes being with this woman felt like a cold wet blanket thrown on him because he felt like he could tell she despised him for what he was.

At least, that’s what he had initially thought. But now, standing with her, having just looked into her eyes, he realized that what made her so scary was her utter lack of feeling. She didn’t despise him. Because she didn’t really see him as a person. Evans got the feeling that she could reach up and slit his throat and her expression wouldn’t change.

Evans followed her to a walled compound with a security gate.

The woman swiped a card and the door’s lock snicked open.

The area was a wide expanse of lawn with several small cottages spread haphazardly around the area. They were small, like the kind of rustic motel cabins in the country.

The woman walked directly to the cabin the farthest from the door.

Evans felt his heart beating faster as they approached.

The woman got to the cottage and Evans saw that the cabin’s door had the same kind of security system. Butterfly swiped her card again and Evans followed her in.

The girl was sitting on the bed, her hands in her lap.

Evans stopped breathing.

She was everything he’d hoped for.

And more.

T
he FBI’s
rapid response team led the way, followed by Mack and a few other agents, as well as some D.C. cops.

The address was a brownstone near Georgetown.

According to records, the house was owned by a shell corporation called H. Cide Enterprises.

The guy was good at mass murder, not so much at stand-up comedy, Mack thought.

He hung back and watched the armed response team in action. They hit the front door, announced themselves, then used a battering ram to knock the door inward.

The team raced inside and Mack heard what deep down he suspected they might find.

Silence.

When the all-clear was given, Mack entered the building.

It was a beautiful brownstone with lovely hardwood floors, immaculately painted trim and wainscoting.

The ceilings were high, the windows large and beautiful, letting in a tremendous amount of light.

It was also completely empty.

No furniture. No people.

Nothing.

Except for two items in the middle of the living room.

The first was a dead man hanging by the neck from an exposed beam. He was dressed like an office worker on casual Friday. Khakis and a dress shirt. He was in his socks with a pair of penny loafers beneath him.

Judging by his face and the odor in the room, he had been dead for at least several days.

The other item sat on the floor next to the dead man, a dozen feet or so from the breathtaking marble fireplace.

A complex system of hard drives. They were all connected and Mack watched the blinking green and yellow lights on a sophisticated display.

Mack’s phone buzzed and he answered as crime scene techs began arriving and taking control of the room.

It was Hopestil Fletcher.

“His name is Terry Piechura,” she said. “Moody tracked him down. He was a hacker turned investor. Very wealthy but with an almost invisible past. All we know right now is that he and a woman named Chloe Jamison were charged as juveniles with a series of escalating crimes and then they both disappeared.

“She’s the Collector,” Mack said without hesitation. “The janitor who snatched Rebecca Spencer was a woman. It’s got to be her. And judging by the setup here–“

He paused.

“Mack?” Fletcher asked.

“How did Moody track him down so fast?” he asked.

“What the hell does that mean?” Fletcher said. “She’s the best we’ve got in cyber crimes. She’s a genius.”

Mack shook his head.

“Have her double-check the trail that led her to this guy. Did any of it recently come online?”

He heard Fletcher sigh.

“What is it, Mack?”

Mack walked away from the room and back out onto the street. “Listen, I’ve tracked these guys all my life. They don’t commit suicide. They just don’t. Sure, there has been a case or two, but ninety-nine percent of the time, they don’t.”

He thought back to some of his cases.

“ They see themselves as victims, forced to kill by other people,” he continued. “There is no guilt. No fear of prison.”

“So you’re saying this is a set-up?” Fletcher said.

As he spoke the words, he suddenly realized how strong his conviction was.

“Yes, it absolutely is.”

B
ernard Evans’ hands
were shaking he was so excited.

The girl was beautiful. Better and sexier than anything he could have imagined.

“Hello,” he said.

She looked at him, her face set in stone.

He approached her, saw the table in the next room with his favorite bottle of scotch, and some assorted toys, including a riding crop, handcuffs, ball gags, cock rings, butt plugs and nipple clamps.

Evans felt himself getting hard.

He approached the beautiful girl and placed his hand along her cheek.

She looked up at him, her face meek. Her eyes terrified.

She was warm.

And then he slapped her.

It was a quick backhand that rocked the girl’s head and snapped her neck backward.

Evans went to the table and poured himself some scotch.

He was going to take his time with this one.

Get every penny’s worth.

M
ack was back
in Moody’s workspace. There was a big picture of Einstein with the tagline “Think Different” and the Apple logo.

“I’ve got a team rechecking the information that led us to Piechura,” she said. “In the meantime, I’m focusing on finding that girl.”

“Good. I have a feeling both avenues will lead us to her,” Mack said.

“The best way in was through Starkey’s system. From there, it was easy to crack the first layers. But after that, things got quite a bit more complicated.”

Mack pulled a chair up next to Moody’s elaborate workstation.

“We’re crawling the trail,” she said.

“How?” Mack asked.

“It’s too complicated for me to thoroughly explain. Let me put it this way, whoever built this system knew what they were doing. They created millions of dead ends and false paths so that no one could find out where the money ends up. Now, some bright young man years back invented these things called spiders, in cyber form, that do nothing other than scurry along all of these paths, looking for daylight, so to speak. Most spiders would never be able to find their way through this. But since we’re part of the government and we actually employ the best hackers in the world, we don’t have ordinary spiders. We have super spiders.”

“Super spiders,” Mack echoed.

“Yes. There are several species of super spider employed by the FBI. Each breed does something a little bit differently than the others. I mentioned that most of them were designed to chase down blind leads.”

“Yes,” Mack said.

“Well, there is another kind that instead of hunting, is a little bit more of a gatherer.”

“What does it gather?”

“To keep it simple, I’ll call them data points,” Moody explained. “Basically, as the other spiders rule out some of the dead ends, these gatherers then go about throwing a cyber ring around the remaining possibilities and look for shared data, in pattern form. The more points that coincide, the clearer the pattern. In this case, one pattern seems to have become clear.”

“What’s the pattern?”

“Cell phones.”

Mack was surprised. He hadn’t expected something as mundane as cell phones to be a key discovery in an intense cyber hunt.

Moody nodded. “I won’t explain the algorithm because it would take hours, but basically at the same time some of these switchbacks were activated, a corresponding activity almost always followed suit, via cell phones.”

“So who do the phones belong to?”

“It’s not that easy,” Moody said. “They are no longer in service. Probably disposable. But while we can’t say who they were, we can say where.”

She turned to a map and pointed to Colorado.

“Right here.”

It took only a moment to realize that she was pointing to nearly the exact same spot on the map where the bodies had been found.