“That sounds like something that dumbass would pull,” the officer in charge said.
“I take it Dalton was a problem.”
“Some guys are born failures; Dalton aspired to it. He’s been arrested for every stupid thing you can imagine. Never met a bad idea that he didn’t like.”
“What about the mother?”
“Carrie’s also got a record, mostly petty stuff.”
“She told us that Dalton was the mastermind.”
“That sounds about right. I need to speak with your partner.”
Lancaster led the officers into the living room. Carrie hadn’t moved from her chair, and was now wearing plastic handcuffs. The miserable expression on her face suggested that she was having second thoughts about not playing ball with them. Beth was typing a message on her cell phone. She hit “Send” and put the phone away. She’d pinned her badge to her shirt to let everyone know who was in charge.
“I’m Special Agent Daniels,” she said. “Your timing is impeccable.”
“Why is that, ma’am?” the officer in charge asked.
“Because my partner and I are about to rip this place apart, and we can’t do that while Carrie is present,” she said. “Please take her to a cruiser, and hold her until we’re done.”
The officer in charge spent a moment processing this.
“You’re throwing us out?” he asked.
“In a manner of speaking, yes. This is an FBI investigation until I turn the reins over to you. Am I making myself clear?”
“Loud and clear. Would it be okay if we had a look at Dalton?”
“I don’t see why not.”
Lancaster led the officers behind the desk. Dalton’s blood now covered a large swath of the floor, and one of the cops accidentally stepped in it. His partners laughed under their breath while he cleaned his shoe with a tissue. Cops in rural areas didn’t see much in the way of real crime, and as a result, had little experience in dealing with the serious stuff. Beth was wise to send them outside.
The officers took Carrie off their hands. Lancaster stood at the front door, prepared to lock it once they were outside. The officer in charge lingered behind.
“You did this town a favor shooting that dumb bastard,” he said.
“Glad to be of service,” Lancaster said.
“Why was Dalton filming guests? Was he in the porn business?”
Lancaster hesitated. For all he knew, the Sokolovs were paying the local cops to look the other way, and the question was designed to see how much he knew.
“I have no idea,” he said.
Back in the living room, he found Beth studying her phone.
“The director of the FBI’s Jacksonville office is sending a forensics team to help us out,” Beth said. “Let’s see if we can find Dalton’s computer or his cell phone. The Sokolovs’ contact info should be stored on one of his devices.”
“He’s probably carrying his cell phone,” he said.
“Then we’ll start there,” Beth said.
They got behind the counter. Lancaster hopped over the pool of blood, and stood behind the dead man. Sticking his hands beneath Dalton’s armpits, he lifted him off the floor while Beth searched his pockets. A cracked leather wallet landed on the counter.
“That’s all he’s carrying,” she said.
She dumped out the wallet’s contents. It contained several thousand dollars in crisp hundreds and a driver’s license, but no credit cards.
“Dalton did all his business in cash,” she said.
“He’s probably also using burner phones,” Lancaster said.
“We still need to find his cell phone. We’ll start on the ground floor, and work our way through the rooms. It has to be here somewhere.”
“I’ve got a better idea. I’ll be right back.”
Lancaster went outside to find the four officers on the lawn, shooting the breeze. Carrie sat in the back of the cruiser with the windows shut and the engine running, enjoying the nice cool air conditioning courtesy of taxpayer dollars. Yanking open the back door, he told her to get out. When she refused, he dragged her out.
“You’re hurting me,” she said.
“No, I’m not. Stand still.”
Her eyes were filled with venom. “I’m going to make you pay for killing my boy. Just you wait.”
“Is that a threat?”
“You can take it to the bank, mister. I’m going to rip your heart out.”
Her dress pockets produced nothing of value. He made her climb back into the cruiser. She was not done with him.
“You think I’m kidding? I can hurt you and that FBI lady in ways you never dreamed of,” she said.
He slammed the door in her face. The officers were watching with curious looks.
“Where’s her purse?” he asked.
“It’s on the front seat,” one of them said.
He retrieved Carrie’s purse off the front passenger seat. Her cell phone lay inside, the battery dying. It wasn’t password protected, and as he walked up the path, he scrolled through her contacts, and pulled up her son’s cell phone number.
Beth awaited him in the living room. He showed her Carrie’s phone and placed a call to Dalton’s cell phone.
“You’re brilliant,” she said.
“I’m just smarter than I look. The call is going through. Listen.”
The sound of a man belting out a country and western song came from the rear of the inn. They followed the music to a small, windowless office with a schoolhouse desk, and a cheap folding chair. Dalton’s cell phone sat on the desk, the ringtone Garth Brooks’s “Friends in Low Places.”
“Nice work,” she said.
Dalton’s laptop also sat on the desk, and Beth attempted to access the hard drive. In the right-hand corner of the screen appeared a blue padlock icon.
“It’s encrypted,” she said dejectedly.
She went into Dalton’s emails and discovered that his history had been scrubbed, and that his contacts file was empty.
“There’s nothing here. Any luck with the phone?”
The cell phone had little in the way of stored information. It was a bare-bones device used for calls and texts only.
“It’s a burner. There’s nothing of value on it,” he said.
They searched the office. Underneath the table was a shoebox filled with cheap phones. They powered them up, hoping that Dalton had gotten careless, and left a scrap of information that might prove helpful in their investigation.
No luck. Each device had been scrubbed clean.
“Another dead end,” Beth said.
She tossed the burner in her hand back into the box. Criminal investigations were solved by tireless resolve, but along the way you needed to catch a break. The gods of fortune were not smiling down on them.
“Someone told me that the FBI employs hackers who can break into encrypted devices,” he said. “Is that true?”
“Yes, we do. But it’s off the record.”
“Why?”
“Many criminals use an algorithm called AES to hide information on their devices. Our government also uses AES to protect sensitive information. If an FBI hacker broke into a criminal’s device that had AES, and the information was used in court, we’d have to explain how the hacking was done, and that would jeopardize national security. To avoid that, our guys work in secret, and the bad guys never know they’ve been hacked.”
“Let me guess. You sneak the laptop out of the evidence room, and your guys hack its hard drive. Then you put it back, and hope no one notices.”
“That’s exactly what we do.”
“No one’s ever caught you?”
“Nope. We do it over the weekend. Works like a charm.”