“This is not an inquisition, Mr. Kelly. Omnibus is designed to catalog.”
“I know. Catalog. Not evaluate.”
Teen smiled. “That’s correct.”
“So no one ever followed up with Randolph?”
“I doubt anyone even knows about the Omnibus notations except for myself and the young girl from Northwestern.”
“Randolph doesn’t know?”
“Certainly not. He’d blow his stack if he knew anyone was poking around his personal papers.”
“Let’s go,” I said, and stood up. Teen got up with me.
“Where are we going?”
“To Randolph’s office.”
“To do what?”
“Poke around his personal papers.”
“You sure that’s a good idea?”
“Not really. But it might be.”
My volunteer thought about it. Then she led the way out of the break room and up the front stairs. She nodded and smiled at a half-dozen staff members we passed along the way. Finally she stopped at the closed door to Lawrence Randolph’s empty office. Inside was the price of admission. To life beyond the front desk and a daily set of marching orders. To getting past men who nourished their egos on the carcasses of those who were polite enough to serve. To a seat at the table-some sort of table-any sort of table. It was a price the volunteer was apparently willing to pay. Perhaps even eager. Teen gave me a final look, took a deep breath, and pushed the door open. A half hour later, I had what I needed. I sat Teen down, told her who I was and what I suspected. At least, some of it. Then I called Hubert.
CHAPTER 40
S o show me how this works.”
Hubert Russell met me at the Starbucks on North and Wells, two blocks removed from the historical society. It was a little past noon. I had a black coffee and my laptop open. Hubert sipped at a vanilla skim latte and was at the wheel.
“Pretty simple,” Hubert said. “I’ve loaded my program onto your hard drive. Now I click on the icon and put it into active mode.”
Hubert moved the cursor over a skull and crossbones blinking on my screen.
“Nice icon, Hubert.”
The kid smiled. My Mac began to whir, then whine.
“Warming up,” Hubert said.
We got a soft beep. My screen went black for a moment and then re-formed with a single bar graph fluctuating on-screen.
“See that graph?”
“I do.”
“That represents signal strength. Means there is one person in range of us who is using a WiFi connection.”
I looked across the mostly empty coffee shop at Teen. She waved and continued to tap away at her laptop.
“Well, we know who that is.”
“That’s right,” Hubert said. “Now if I click on the graph, watch what happens.”
Hubert clicked. Bits of information began to fly across the screen.
“As we speak, your computer is sucking Teen’s dry. Copying all her files, programs, passwords, e-mails. Everything.”
“And she doesn’t even know it,” I said.
“Look at her.”
I did. Teen waved again and smiled. I motioned for her to come over. She shut down her laptop and the graph disappeared on my screen.
“How much of her hard drive did you get?” I said.
Hubert began to open up files taken off Teen’s computer.
“Actually, we got all of it. With this program the poach usually takes less than twenty seconds. See, what happens is there’s a flaw in the router that lets you go WiFi. I drop in a decoy and trick the computer into thinking it’s talking to itself. When really-”
I held up a hand.
“Enough, Hubert. I believe.”
I wanted to pat him on the head but thought better of it. Instead, I checked my watch as Teen drew up a chair.
“What time does he come in?” I said.
“He’s in here just about every day around one,” Teen said. “Says he likes to get some ‘alone time’ out of the office.”
“Always brings his laptop?”
Teen nodded.
“Okay. Teen, you and I are out of here. Hubert, you sit tight and wait for our boy. You got the picture I gave you?”
Hubert showed it to me.
“Good. When he fires up his laptop and jumps online, you take it all.”
“No problem.”
The kid from Land Records winked. Teen giggled. Then the volunteer and I walked out of the Starbucks and down Wells Street. I stopped at the Up Down Tobacco Shop and bought a couple of Montecristos. Then we moved over to Topo Gigio’s and had a beautiful lunch. Hubert joined us an hour later for tiramisu. As did the entire contents of Lawrence Randolph’s laptop.
CHAPTER 41
R achel Swenson and Vince Rodriguez agreed to meet me at my office. It was a little after eight p.m. Neither was entirely sure why they were there. But they both showed up and that was enough for now.
“What is it that couldn’t wait?” Rodriguez said.
“Take a look for yourself.”
I threw the Sheehan’s Masters had given me across the desk. Rodriguez took a look at the book while Rachel read Taylor’s note. It had been two days, and no one had heard a thing from Dan Masters or Janet Woods.
“The binding’s been sliced open.” The detective ran his hand along the book’s spine.
“You noticed that.”
Rodriguez slanted his face up and across the room. “What did you take out of there?”
I couldn’t tell them about that. Not yet, anyway. Still, I needed their help, which made matters difficult.
“Rachel, I need to ask you a favor. Actually, I’m going to need favors from both of you.”
Rachel passed Taylor’s note across to the detective, along with a look that told me it might be a long hard swim upstream.
“What do you need?” she said.
“You remember the prints I told you about? The ones I was going to compare to the break-in at my flat?”
Rachel nodded. I pulled out a sheet of paper and slipped it across my desk.
“The detective here ran them for me.”
Rachel ignored the report. “Just tell me what it says, Michael.”
“The partial has only six points of identification. All six matched a print on the set I sent over.”
Rodriguez grunted from his hard-backed chair in the corner.
“I told you it doesn’t matter,” Rachel said. “The match means nothing. You need at least nine points for it to hold up in court.”
I lifted a hand.
“Hear me out,” I said. “Two weeks ago a man walked into the Chicago Historical Society. Asked a volunteer named Teen for a look at their Sheehan’s first edition.”
“How many people ask to see that book?” Rodriguez said.
“Exactly. Anyway, the volunteer is a nice lady. Do-gooder from the North Shore. Tells me this man was dangerous looking. Didn’t think much of it at the time. Then I realized how the phrase translates out of white-upper-middle-class American speak.”
“And dangerous looking means?” Rachel said.
“Black. I went back and double-checked with our volunteer. The guy was black and big.”
“Let me guess,” Rachel said. “Our suspect on the print happens to be black.”
“And he has a history of breaking and entering. Not to mention violent assault.”
“I assume you showed his photo to your volunteer friend?” Rodriguez said.
“Along with six others. Took her all of five seconds to pick him out.”
I threw a picture across the desk. It was a news photo from Mitchell Kincaid’s rally. Behind Kincaid and to his left was his head of security, an angry young man named James Bratton. Big and black-and the man who shot Rachel Swenson with a rubber bullet in the middle of the night.
“I saw Bratton on the news,” I said. “At the Kincaid rally last week. Didn’t register at first. Then it did. It was ten years ago. I was still a uniform. Arrested him for B and E and assault. He used a crowbar to crank open the first-floor window of an old lady’s home on the West Side. Punched her once or twice and took some costume jewelry and cash. Less than a hundred bucks. He pled out and took six months. Records were sealed because he was only seventeen.”