The Senator: A Blake Jordan Thriller (17 page)

The young man pressed a button and I felt the revolving door lock release. A few seconds later and Jami and I were inside the lobby. “I’m Agent Jordan, this is Agent Davis. We need your help with locating a man – Hispanic, late thirties, facial hair. He works overnight shifts as a janitor. You may have seen him leaving late at night or returning around eight in the morning.” The man looked confused.

“A janitor?” I noticed that he was biting his lip as he slowly shook his head. “I don’t know who that is,” he said. I could tell by his body language that he was keeping something from me.

“You don’t know or you don’t want to tell me?” The man didn’t say anything.

“Why are you lying to me? What do you now about this man?” He took a step back.

“I was told not to give out any information on our tenants. This is a private residence.” I took a step closer to him.

“Do you think it’s strange that a janitor would live here?” The man didn’t respond. “Do you know why there’s a curfew in place right now?” I asked.

“Of course, because of the kidnapping.”

“We’re trying to find the kidnapper. He might be here, in your building.” He again shook his head and looked away, then he looked at Jami.

“Look, I just open the door for residents when I see them walk up. I don’t want to get involved in whatever it is you’re doing here.”

“What we’re doing is trying to find the man who kidnapped a United States senator – who will be executed very soon unless we stop him. It’s too late for you not to get involved. Tell us what you know,” I said.

The doorman looked at Jami then back at me before speaking again.

“I saw the man you described once or twice. He keeps very odd hours. I don’t know his name or which condo he lives in, but I do know who you’re talking about. I haven’t seen him in a while.”

“How long is a while?”

“A few weeks, but again, I really don’t know a lot about the guy. I don’t even know his name, like I told you.” I looked at Jami who I could tell had more questions for the man.

“There’s a keycard reader outside. That unlocks the revolving door if a resident approaches before you can let them in?” The young man nodded. “How many readers are there and where are they located?” Jami asked.

“Just the one outside and a reader on every floor to access the hallway where the residents live.”

“How many residents live here?” I asked.

“I don’t know, a couple hundred maybe? I’m not sure.” I crossed my arms.

“I need to know who hasn’t used their keycard in the last twenty-four hours.”

“How would I know that? I’ve only been here for a few hours now and I don’t know the other doormen. And our schedules change all the time. I can only tell you who I’ve seen since I’ve been here at four.”

“I want access to your card reader system. Where is it?”

“Listen, I don’t know how all of that works, there’s a computer system, but I don’t know how to run it.”

“Then we’re going to learn together. Take us there now and I want you to log us in,” I said. The man stared at Jami and me. I could tell he didn’t want t0 have anything to do with this. I put my right hand on my gun. I hated using intimidation. It was out of character for me, but we were running out of time.

“Sorry, I’m not going to do that,” he said. I let go of my gun and grabbed the man with both hands and threw him up against the wall.

“Log us in now!” I yelled. My heart was racing and I was breathing hard. The man was still defiant. I held him against the wall and brought my right hand up and made a fist. “I said now!” I yelled and Jami grabbed my arm and held me back.

“Alright, I’ll take you there. I’ll log you in.”

The doorman led Jami and me down a hallway and unlocked the door to a small office. Once inside, we found a computer and the young man sat down and logged in. “Okay, this is where I go to clock in and out and check my work email. It’s a small company, we all share the same computer,” he said.

“Let me take over,” Jami said as she switched places with the man and started searching for the program.

“Okay, I think I found it.” Jami accessed the program and saw that there were a number of options, including creating a new keycard, troubleshooting the system, and reporting.

“Go to reporting,” I said. But the system stopped her from moving from the main screen without a password.

“Do you know the password?” she asked the man.

“No, I’ve never used this system. I was trained once, but haven’t touched it since.” I looked around the room.

“Did you get a training manual?” The man walked over to a cubby and shuffled some things around and pulled something out and handed it to me.

“Here’s what they gave me.” I flipped through until I got to the section on accessing the system.

“Okay, it says the username is your RACF ID. What is that?”

“UIZ1,” he answered.

“Password is first initial plus last initial plus the last five of your SSN.” The man looked at Jami.

“CL74956,” he said as Jami entered in the credentials.

“I’m in. Blake, how do you run a report?” Jami asked after entering the reporting section.

“We want to run it by usage, so run it by date last active. For timeframe use the last twenty-four hours.” Jami typed in the report requirements and ran it.

“There’s twenty-seven results, Blake.” The doorman looked at us.

“Is it because of the curfew?” he asked.

“Okay, run it by last seventy-two hours.” Jami reran the report with the revised requirements.

“Now I’m only seeing three results. Two women and a man. The woman is in suite 910, then a man and woman both from suite 706.” I stepped closer to look at the screen.

“Do you know a Barbara Nichols in suite 910?” I asked the doorman.

“Yes, I know her. I helped take her luggage out to a cab a few days ago, said she was traveling to Florida to visit some family.”

“What about Anita and Victor Perez in suite 706?” He looked at the screen.

“I don’t know them,” he said. I put a hand up to my ear.

“Morgan, can you do a reverse search on 180 Pearson, suite 706?” Morgan responded immediately.

“Looking now, Blake.” A few seconds later and he had something. “I found an Anita Perez, just turned 65 over the summer. Purchased a condo at 180 Pearson in July. I’m doing a crosscheck against her retirement benefits and bank account, I’m going to need a few minutes.” I turned to Jami.

“Can we find out when their keycards were created?” Jami pointed to the screen.

“There’s a timestamp right here, Anita’s was created three months ago and Victor’s keycard was added about a month ago.”

“Looks like she started receiving her retirement benefits, but hasn’t cashed her check from this month yet,” Morgan said.

“Something’s not adding up. Who the hell is Victor Perez?” I asked.

“I don’t see the name associated with Anita in any way,” Morgan responded. “He’s not a beneficiary and not related from what I can see.” Jami navigated back to the main screen.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m going to create a keycard for suite 706.” She looked at the doorman. “Where do you keep the card stock?”

“I don’t know, like I said I’ve never had to do this, usually the residents are good about not losing them. When new people move in, someone just updates the cardholder name, I guess.” He looked around and started opening drawers and finally found a stack of blank keycards and handed one of them to Jami.

She inserted one of the blank cards into the reader located next to the computer and hit reprint on Victor Perez’s keycard. It disappeared into the reader and a second later, popped back out and Jami grabbed it.

“It looks like Anita’s keycard stopped working the day that Victor’s was created,” Jami said to me.

“It’s not adding up,” I said. “Sounds like the man may have forced her to get him access and has been staying in her home.” Jami looked at me.

“If so, then what did he do to the woman?”

I shrugged my shoulders and held my hand up to my ear again. “Morgan, can you run a lookup on Victor Perez?” He responded a few seconds later.

“Blake, there’s over a hundred just in Chicago alone. I’m going to need more than that to perform a proper search.” I looked at the young man.

“Is there a cardholder profile that we could look up? Maybe we can get an SSN or a driver’s license?” He shook his head no.

“How do you know?” Jami asked the doorman before he realized what he had just done. Jami looked at the usage report again. “Wait a second. Victor’s keycard was created by user UIZ1. That’s you.”

The man started to run and I tackled him and slammed him up against the door. “You lied to us!” I yelled.

“I’m not involved, I swear. But, I did create the keycard. I remember them walking down to the lobby a few weeks ago, I’ll tell you everything that happened, just don’t arrest me.” I let go of the man.

“Start talking.”

“Okay. Early one morning after I started my shift, the lady came downstairs with the man you’ve described. She introduced herself as Anita Perez from suite 706 and said she was going to be going out of town for a while and she couldn’t find her keycard, she thought she had lost it. I shook the man’s hand, trying to figure out who he was. The lady said that he was her son and that he’d be staying at her place while she was gone. I created a reprint and volunteered to create an additional card for her son. You’re not supposed to share keycards, it’s one per person. He was reluctant at first but gave me his name.
Victor
.”

“You haven’t seen the woman since?” I asked.

“No, not since that day. I haven’t given it much thought.”

“Morgan, we might be dealing with a squatter in 706, can you access the city’s power and water usage for the suite over the last few days? I want to know what we might be dealing with before we go inside.”

“How do we get to the seventh floor, where’s the elevator?” Jami asked.

“There are two, straight back. You’ll need that keycard to get onto the floor though, you can use the same one that you reprinted to get into suite 706.”

“Alright, electricity’s being used, there was a drop in usage but it’s still active,” Morgan said. “Same thing with water, very minimal usage, almost nonexistent. Maybe from an icemaker, but I can’t be sure, Blake.”

Jami turned to me. “Sounds like nobody’s been in the suite for a few days now, it should be clear.” I looked at the doorman.

“Is there anything we’re missing? Anything else we should know about?” The man crossed his arms.

“No, I don’t think so. What are you going to do with me?”

“Let’s head up,” I said to Jami and we walked outside of the small office. I stopped the doorman from leaving. “Give me your cell phone,” I said and the man took it out of his pocket and handed it over. I yanked the phone from one of the desks inside the office and took it out with me. “You’re staying here.”

I closed the door behind me and positioned a nearby chair against the doorknob. “You can’t do this!” the man yelled from inside the room.

“Blake, what are you doing?” Jami asked.

“We can’t trust him. I’m not taking him upstairs with us and if we leave him here and he calls CPD, we’ll have a mess to deal with. You take the north elevator and I’ll take this one,” I said when we got to the first elevator. “If he’s here, I don’t want to lose him.” Jami nodded.

“I’ll wait for you when I get to the floor.”

“I’m here,” I said to Jami through my earpiece when I arrived at the seventh floor.

“Copy,” I responded as I jogged down the hallway that stretched the perimeter of the floor that had two entry points, one on the east side and one on the west. When I found Jami, she was holding her Glock 17. I grabbed my 22.

“You ready?” I asked.

“Ready.” Jami pulled the keycard she had created from a front pants pocket and swiped it against the reader and we saw the light change from red to green. I grabbed the handle and turned it, then pushed the door open. Jami went in and I followed right behind her. The hallway was empty.

Jami looked at the suite numbers on the floor. We were standing in between suites 748 and 749 across the hall. “It must be on the opposite side,” I said and we started to pick up speed. I thought about David Mitchell’s apartment on the Gold Coast. It was nothing compared to this place. There were ornate decorations along the wall and the partially-tiled floor looked expensive.
Millionaires
, I thought to myself.

We slowed down when we got close to suite 706 and stopped outside of the doorway. We didn’t have enough time to ask Morgan to look into the floor plan of the suite. But it would have been nice to have known what we were getting ourselves into ahead of time.

“You take the left side and I’ll take the right,” I said and Jami nodded in agreement.

I held my Glock and pointed it to the floor as I waited on Jami to swipe the keycard and push the door in with her foot. As soon as it swung open, I turned and ran inside and heard Jami follow me in.

“Federal agents,” I said loud enough to be heard inside the condo while trying to keep my voice down to not alarm any of the other residents. There was nobody in the living room so I entered the bedroom and it was clear.

Jami walked through the kitchen and entered the office and I heard her go into the bathroom. That was clear, too. Victor Perez wasn’t here. “All clear,” I heard Jami say before she joined me in the living room.

The condo was filled with expensive antiques that looked like old family heirlooms while at the same time it was decked out with a huge flat screen TV and modern furniture. The entire east side of the condo had windows that stretched the entire length of the wall and overlooked the buildings of downtown and Lake Michigan. The sky was growing darker by the minute and reminded me that we were running out of time.

“Blake, Mallory is asking for an update,” I heard Morgan say through my earpiece.

“He’s not here, neither is Anita Perez. We’re going to search the home and see if we can figure out who this guy is.” Jami had already started going through some of the belongings.

“How long was this guy staying here?” she asked.

“At least a month. I wonder what he did with the old lady.” I looked around, trying to figure out where I should start. Jami was in the living room going through some papers that were stacked on the coffee table. “I’ll check out the bedroom, then let’s go through the office together,” I said.

There wasn’t much to go through. The closet had a few of Victor’s clothes in a small section next to the woman’s dresses that took up most of the closet area. The bed was made and there weren’t any personal effects on or anywhere inside the dresser. I went through every drawer. All I found was Anita’s jewelry.

I walked out of the bedroom and passed through the living room. Jami was just wrapping up and looked like she was ready to join me in the office to look around. I noticed that the front door was wide open still.

“I’ll get the door,” I said and walked over to shut it closed when a woman appeared and startled me. I reflexively put my right hand on my gun.

“Is Anita back home yet?” the lady said to me.

“Who are you?”

“Sandra, I live in 705 across the hall. Is Anita okay? Are you the police?” I motioned for her to enter.

“Come inside,” I said and the woman walked inside the residence.