Play To Kill

    'In an hour.' Harley grabbed a manila folder off the counter by the stove and slid it over to Annie. 'In the meantime, Roadrunner and I did a little surfing on some of the websites the Feebs red-flagged for us at the seminar. This came off one of them this morning'

    Annie opened the folder and pulled out a photo. 'Oh Lord, is this a real dead person?'

    Roadrunner shrugged. 'No way to tell. We scanned it for Photoshop-type alterations and couldn't find any, but that doesn't mean it wasn't staged and posed. Heck, we did that for the Serial Killer Detective game and even the cops thought it was the real thing. We called Smith to have the thing pulled and passed to Cyber Crimes and the recruited geeks, but it doesn't look good. The ISPs are shifting too fast to trace.'

    'Just like the posts of the five city murders,' Roadrunner said.

    Grace shrugged. 'That doesn't make this one real. The fetish and porn sites get better at hiding every day. Some of those networks are so sophisticated they make the military's system look bad.'

    Annie passed the photo to Grace as if it were a poison mushroom. 'Real or not, this is sick. Somebody has to stop this.'

    Grace nodded. 'That would be us.'

Chapter Six

    When the doorbell rang at 9:05 a.m., Harley Davidson was out of his chair like an ICBM, cruising fast to intercept the Federal bogeyman at his front door.

    'For God's sake, Harley, settle down,' Annie sniped behind him. 'You're as jittery as a long-tailed cat under a rocking chair. He's going to think you're on meth.'

    Harley shot her a nasty look over his shoulder. 'Don't mention drugs,' he whispered.

    'You have unequivocally lost your mind. There isn't even a bottle of aspirin in your medicine cabinet, you idiot, and, last time I checked, possessing multivitamins wasn't a felony.'

    Harley made a face, then pulled open the big double doors. John Smith was wearing the standard-issue blue suit and an all-business countenance. He had a craggy face that hadn't aged well, making him look a little scary and a lot older than the mandatory retirement age of fifty-seven. 'Good morning, Mr. Davidson.' His eyes drifted down to the empty beer bottle in Harley's hand, but he didn't comment. Harley hated that about cops and Feds - their eyes were always too damn busy.

    Harley jerked his thumb down the broad hall. 'We're in the breakfast room, looking at some of the crap we pulled off those red-flagged sites you turned us on to.'

    Smith stepped inside and followed what looked like a mountain of leather to a room where the others waited around a table. 'Good morning, Ms. MacBride, Ms. Belinsky, Mr. Roadrunner.'

    The two women nodded from their chairs, but the man in the body stocking jumped up, smiled, and actually shook Smith's hand. It was like stepping into a circle of reserved adults who just happened to own a cocker spaniel puppy. 'Just Roadrunner,' he said, grinning. 'Mr.: Roadrunner. Jeez, that's funny. You want some coffee?'

    'Thank you, no, I've had breakfast. Once again, on behalf of the Bureau, I'd like to thank you for your generous offer of help.'

    Grace had to concentrate to keep from rolling her eyes. Everything Feds said sounded like it came off a script. She nodded an acknowledgment. 'Shall we go up to the office and get started?'

    'There are a few ground rules to cover before we do that…'

    You got that right,' Harley interrupted. 'So let's get it all on the table. We break more laws in one day than any hacker at that seminar breaks in a year. Developing the software you want is no problem; but if we're going to try to trace these guys, we're going to have to break a ton more just to get started, and I'm not about to do that with you looking over our shoulders so somewhere down the road you can testify against us.'

    Smith nodded. 'Understood.'

    'I don't think you get how fast we could rack up a few hundred years on our sentences for -' Harley stopped and blinked. 'What do you mean, understood,?'

    'I am not here to interfere with your work. My role here is primarily to liaise between you, Washington, and other law enforcement agencies, to keep you briefed on new developments, and to make suggestions as to the direction of your work as I see fit. I am also required to stay with these files at all times' - he patted his briefcase - 'and when I leave for the day, I will take them with me. There is sensitive, classified information about Cyber Crimes' procedures that under no circumstances are you to copy to your hard drives.'

    'We work strange hours, Agent Smith,' Grace said. 'Sometimes around the clock.'

    'I'm prepared to be on duty twenty-four hours a day, if necessary. I will be as unobtrusive as possible, but I will be present.'

    Annie smiled at him sweetly. 'How computer savvy are you?'

    'Fairly.'

    'Well, then you know that any one of us could copy these files right under your nose.'

    He nodded. 'I know that. I'm asking you not to. Those files contain detailed records of the tracking formulas we've developed over the last several months…'

    'Did any of them work?' Grace asked.

    'Uh… no…'

    'Then why on earth would we want to download them?'

    A muscle in Smith's jaw tightened. 'For one thing, to give you a template of things that have already been tried so you don't waste time. More importantly, having this information on another computer system just increases the odds of a breach.'

    'No one hacks into our stuff,' Harley grumbled.

    'That may be, but if we limit the computers this information is on, any breach will be easier to trace.'

    Annie gave him the kind of sweet smile you gave to the mentally deficient. 'So, the criminals you tapped at the seminar to do your dirty work for you aren't getting a look- see at this stuff?'

    Smith's spine straightened imperceptibly. Apparently the Feds didn't mind encouraging law-breaking when it suited their purpose; they just didn't like to hear it spoken aloud.

    'Oh, come on. Let's cut to the chase here. You've got posts of real live murders the FBI can't track, at least not legally, because the servers are registered in countries where U.S. access is denied. So what do you do? You call in a bunch of salivating hackers and tell them that if they try to access these foreign server accounts they will be in violation of international law. Good grief. Talk about dragging a slab of bacon in front of a bunch of wild dogs.'

    'I can assure you that was not the Bureau's intention.'

    Yeah, right. And these eyelashes are real. The point is, we don't give a gnat's ass about your text files. Don't even have to look them over. But if you want us to write software that differentiates real murders from staged ones, we need to download the videos of those bodies in the five cities.'

    'I am not authorized to give you permission to do that.'

    Harley moved the mass of his body a step closer to Smith. To his credit, the smaller man held his ground. We're going to download the videos. Are you going to fink us out?'

    It took Smith a minute to remember what jink meant. He had to go back several decades. 'I do not believe you will do that.'

    'I just told you we're going to do that.'

    Yes you did. But in my opinion, that was bravado. I do not think it was sincere; therefore I will not report it.'

    Annie tucked her hands into her hips and tapped a toe on the marble floor. Agent Smith watched the toe moving up and down, mesmerized. 'I can't decide if your instructions are to handle us just like those other poor fools at the seminar, or if you might actually be a good guy.'