“I already told you,” Max said. “People in that neighborhood make a habit of not seeing things. And even if someone picked up the telephone, who would listen? A teenage kid died of an overdose. Case closed.”
Jack felt the rage building inside of him again and wanted very badly to put his fist through a piece of Max’s equipment. He knew that the same thing would eventually be said about Bob Copeland’s death. In the end it would be blamed on misadventure in the City by the Bay, a drunk wandering off the beaten path, then everyone would forget about the guy.
Case closed.
“Anyway,” Max said, “back to our parking sticker.”
She stabbed a key and the video image froze. Shifting her hand to a small dial next to her keyboard, she carefully rotated it and stepped backward through several frames until she found the cleanest-and clearest-of the lot.
“So then I doubled the magnification,” she said, punching another key.
The image doubled in size and Max adjusted the frame, centering the Escalade’s windshield on the screen. Everything was bigger, all right, but it was also a lot fuzzier, and it still wasn’t big enough to make out what was printed on the parking sticker.
“Anyone feel the sudden need for Lasik surgery?” Tony asked.
“Like I said to Jack last night, real life isn’t like the cop shows on TV. We can’t just zoom in on a pin head and read the inscription written across it. There’s a little thing called pixilation that gets in the way. The more we magnify the image, the worse it gets. Especially when it originates on video.”
Jack nodded. “Video shot on a cell phone, no less.”
She punched another key and the image zoomed in even closer, now centering the parking sticker in the middle of the screen. All Jack could see was an unidentifiable black-and-white mass that could have been just about anything.
“So,” he said to her, “is that your not-so-subtle way of telling us this is a bust?”
Max shook her head. “I didn’t call you here to waste your time. We’re fortunate enough to live in a day and age when there are a lot of technical geniuses out there, doing what they can to fix problems like this.”
“Meaning what?” Tony asked.
“Meaning I have software that can help. We’ll never be able to get this sticker to the point it can be read, but we can do a lot better than this. ”
Jack huffed impatiently. “How about we get to the bottom line already? Do you have something solid or not?”
Max arched an eyebrow at him. “No need to get snippy, Mr. Hatfield. I know you’re hurting, but believe it or not, I’m trying to help.”
Jack sighed. “Sorry, Max. I just want to know who these assholes are.”
“We all do,” Max said, then punched another key.
The screen went blank for a moment, then the image returned, the black blobs starting to shift a bit and take on shape. They gradually grew sharper, but even if he squinted at it, Jack still felt as if he were looking at a Rorschach ink blot behind a wall of pebbled glass.
Tony said, “Looks to me like your technowizards need another trip to the drawing board.”
“Be patient,” Max told him. “I’m not done yet.”
She hit a few more keys, typed in some numbers, and the image continued to shift, taking on more form and substance. When she was done, they were still blobs, but the blobs were defined enough to make a bit more sense out of them. A few nearly discernible numbers, the letters B and C, and “Is that some kind of animal?” Tony asked, pointing to the left side of the screen.
“That was my thought,” Max told him. “And I’m afraid this is about the best we’re gonna get out of this image.”
“So it is a bust,” Jack said. “We’ve got nothing.”
Max sighed. “Is that what I have to look forward to when I grow up? Zero optimism?”
“Honey, I hate to break it to you,” Tony said with a suggestive leer, “but you’re already grown-up.”
Max rolled her eyes. “Oh my God, there are two of you.” She looked at him. “You know, you’re supposed to call a doctor if that thing lasts longer than four hours.”
Tony’s jaw dropped slightly. A man without a comeback. He wasn’t used to Max’s quick wit.
Despite himself, Jack laughed as Max gestured to the screen.
“Here’s the thing,” she said. “That may not look like much to us, but a computer looks at it differently than we do. I’m pretty sure there’s enough here for an image recognition program to find a match.”
“Pretty sure?” Jack said.
“As sure as I can be about this stuff. I took the liberty of sending a copy of this to a friend of mine, an MIT grad who has some state-of-the-art recognition software-stuff he’s developing himself-and he’s promised to e-mail me the minute he finds something.”
“So how does this software work?”
“Without pounding you over the head with a lot of technical details, it interprets the pixels as numerical data, looks for patterns and sequences, then scours the Internet and several image databases, searching for the same or similar data.”
“I think I’ll stick to boat repairs,” Tony said.
“It’s not as complicated as it sounds.”
“When I was your age, young lady, we barely had ATMs. And I still haven’t gotten used to those.”
Jack laughed again, but he knew Tony was only half kidding. It was a miracle the guy had a cell phone, considering his aversion to anything you couldn’t fix with a torque wrench.
Max was about to respond when her computer dinged and a pop-up with a winged envelope appeared on-screen.
“Speak of the devil,” she said, then clicked on the envelope and quickly scanned the e-mail. “Looks like we’re in business, gentlemen. He found a match.”
She clicked again, opening the e-mail attachment, and a new image filled the screen. Jack frowned, thinking there must be some mistake.
“This can’t be right,” he said quietly.
It was a black-and-white rendering of a lion and a unicorn flanking a coat of arms. The lion was wearing a crown.
The image was one that Jack was all too familiar with.
It was the seal of the British embassy.
16
Jack stared at the two images side by side-the blowup and the e-mail attachment-and the only conclusion he could draw from this was that the parking sticker had come from the local British consulate. And that raised more questions than it answered.
“How accurate is your friend’s software?” he asked.
Max gestured toward the screen. “Pretty damn accurate, I’d say.”
Tony nodded. “That’s definitely a match.”
“So whoever drives that Escalade works for the San Francisco BC?”
“Unless it was stolen,” Max said.
Jack shook his head. “I doubt it. And judging by the guy in the sunglasses, we aren’t talking about office drones.” He looked at Tony. “What do you think? Consulate security?”
“Hard to say. Could be full-on Security Services. MI6 or special ops. I trained with some of those guys in the eighties and I can tell you firsthand they mean business.”
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Jack said. “Why would the Brits be involved in this?”
“Maybe these guys are freelancing, borrowed the company car,” Tony suggested.
Jack thought about this, then looked at Max. “How are your friend’s hacking skills?”
“Nonexistent,” she told him. “He’s strictly a software tech.”
“What about that guy you said you dated a few years ago? Made a living hacking college transcripts.”
“Dave Karras? Genius and loser, all rolled into one. Why do you think I dumped him?”
“You still have his number?”
It took Max a moment to realize what Jack was asking of her, and her expression soured. “Uh-uh, no way. Not gonna happen.”
“Come on, Max, I want to see what we can find out about these guys.”
She shook her head. “Forget it, Jack. I’m not contacting that freak.”
“Not even for me?”
Max turned to Tony. “You want to help me out here, stud?”