Scavenger Hunt Ch. 02

"Oh, I'd definitely bang her if I had the chance." I said, causing Donovan Wakefield to laugh out loud.

Todd said "The guy you're calling 'Tom Allison' interviewed here as 'Mark Jacobs', about a month after Irene Rearden did. You'll see it in the notes in the file, that she seemed pretty sharp but we couldn't confirm some details of her past, so we backed off. And with him, he did not do very well in the interviews, and his biography was an obvious backstop when we started really digging into it."

I said "I'll let Muscone know. This is very helpful stuff; I appreciate it."

A moment later Donovan Wakefield said "Okay, they're cracked. I dumped all their data into the computer, and our team will analyze it. And here's your jump drive with the app." He handed me a jump drive.

I said "Are these guys more than they appear to be? Anything you can give me on them?"

Donovan said "We're not sure yet, sir. Dr. Fredricson got really interested when she heard Michael Carlena's name, so she authorized me to come crack the phones in exchange for getting a copy of the data in them. And that Carlos Rojas is a really nasty guy within the Salvadorian gangs. Why he is messing with a gang of young armed robbers who act like their crime sprees are some kind of joyride, I don't know..."

Meanwhile, Melina said quietly to Teresa "How are your boys doing?"

"Very well." Teresa replied. Knowing that Doug was Melina and Todd's biological son, Teresa said "Doug is doing very well in school, both in his grades and his social skills. He must take after his dad." Melina gave a brief, pursed smile at that.

Teresa continued: "Little Jack Burke is being a real handful. He can be charming when he wants to, and he's usually manipulative then. And he becomes a bully when he doesn't get his way, but both Doug and Mike stand up to him. His birthday is on October 15th, by the way." Melina nodded.

Teresa said "Melina, if you ever want to see Doug, spend some time with him, just let me know. You are his mother, of course."

"Thanks." said Melina, looking faintly sad. "But he has a better mother than me now." Teresa was surprised at the compliment she'd just received, but didn't show it...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

As we were driving back to Police Headquarters, Teresa said "If Melina is not already fucking Donovan, she soon will be. I saw the glances they were giving each other. Didn't think he was her type, though."

I said "In terms of husbands, I was her type when she married me, and Daniel is her type now. Unless she has me totally fooled, she's in love with Daniel. As to her types for physical sex, Donovan is right in her wheelhouse. He's very fit, handsome... and young. She likes 'em young."

"And hung." Teresa said. "And yes, I made some observations of Donovan's package."

"I'll take your word for that." I said. "Sooo, this case just gets more and more interesting by the hour..."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Arriving back at Headquarters, Teresa and I took the cellphones to Intel Branch. Lieutenant Myron Milton was also in the room. I said "The passcodes have been cracked. But if you download the data, download it only to a computer that's not connected, then check carefully for any trojans or other malware."

"Wilco, sir." said Myron. As the others began working on the phones, I brought Myron to my office and gave him the jump drive.

"I got this from Donovan Wakefield, but don't tell anybody that." I said. "He said it has an app that can get into cellphones. Check it out, and be more than skeptical of its motives; in other words, make sure it's clean and friendly. If it is, then we have a great new tool in our toolbox, like that $30 million decryption program you and Mary pur-loinnned."

"I'll check it out, sir." said Myron, whose face showed obvious delight at the what that app potentially could do for us...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

After scanning in copies of the contents of the folder Todd gave me, I called Jack Muscone and we agreed to meet at the Cop Bar for lunch. We gathered at 11:30am, with Tanya and Teresa also in attendance. To my surprise, my wife Laura was already there. We sat at 'her' table in the otherwise-empty back 'Command Room'.

"You've got huge 'probable cause' to set up that surveillance now." I said as I handed the folder to Jack Muscone, and explained its contents.

"This'll help a lot." Muscone replied. "And I've already opened a case on the 'Apple Grove Four', as we're calling them, and gotten warrants to start the surveillance on them. We rented the duplex apartment across the street from theirs. Julius Jefferson and Tracy Stone are there now, and Steve Gable and Christy Cassidy will come in Friday and stay the weekend."

"Cool beans." I said. "Anything new on them, the Apple Grove Four?"

Muscone said "A little bit. Stubbs & Wheaton Venture Capital, LLC is a small but very well funded venture capital company. They're incorporated in Nevada, so I'll have to go through hoops of legal steel to find out the names behind them, and that'll attract attention, as well."

Muscone: "What I've been able to find out is that they specialize in funding nanotechnology development. But here's the rub: every successful company they've filed proper papers for funding, has eventually been bought out by one of the Big Boy companies, most often MegaTech Industries. A few that went bankrupt had their assets seized by Stubbs & Wheaton, and whatever they developed was sold off to one of Big Boys."

"That fits." I said, almost absentmindedly.

"What?" Muscone said, peering at me. "What did you say?"

I said "I said it fits the pattern I'm seeing. And before the Iron Wolf asks, here's my 'edumacated' guess: the Apple Grove Four are a Freelance Team of operatives, and Stubbs & Wheaton have them on retainer, for lack of a better term. That explains why the Apple Grove Four's bank account gets steady and regular deposits, and also why their real identities are off the grid."

Me: "Their missions range from investigating a young company to determine if they're worth investing in, to possibly infiltrating that company, stealing its technology, and selling the technology to the Big Boys. That may be why they tried to get one of their own hired into BOW Enterprises, to steal Todd's technology. And we'll have to ask Craig Reynolds if they made overtures to him that were rejected, or if there were some suspicious attempts to infiltrate him and get at his technology."

Me: "And they may be hired for other things, as well. I believe they were in Apple Grove to stop Craig Reynolds from selling his technology to Todd Burke, and they were less than twelve hours too late to stop the deal. And if that deal had not yet happened, and since Lisa Baker did fail to kill him, they might well have killed him, or kidnapped Jenny and/or their kids."

Laura said "Well done, Darling! Not much gets past you, though it was fortuitous that it was also your high school reunion year too."

When we (especially me) looked at her strangely, she said to everyone: "That group reminded me of many little teams I put together in the Science & Technology Directorate of the CIA over the years. They'd go in and steal data and technology, or sabotage it like what has been done to Iran's nuclear program from time to time over the years. And Don just connected the specific dots related to this group."

"So what do you want us to do now?" Jack asked.

"Just keep doing what you're doing." Laura said. "Watch them, see what they do. I'll be doing some things from a different angle..."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

3:00pm, Wednesday, October 6th. The Chief, Teresa and I went into Classroom 'E'. Already there were Captain Michaels, Lieutenants Myron Milton and Christopher Purvis, Corporal Penny Scott, Detective Sidney Plant, and 'Team Theo'.

"O-kayyyy," I said as I sat down. "Who wants to get this party started?"

Lt. Purvis said "Corporal Scott has worked hard on this, so why don't you give us your report, Corporal?" I was inwardly pleased with Purvis taking the time and making the effort to praise his subordinate in front of me.

"Thank you, sir." Penny Scott said appreciatively. "Okay, when a burner is activated, an ID name can be put in. In the case of these phones, Peter Segui's burner is named 'SHHotel1', Michael Carlena's is 'SHHotel2', Maribel Isadora's is 'SHHotel4', and I'll bet any FBI Agent a hundred dollars that Carlos Rojas's phone, if we could find it, would be 'SHHotel3'."

Myron Milton said most very cattily: "The FBI Agents would be dumb enough to bet against you on that." Teresa Croyle nodded most very vigorously in agreement.

"Now, now." admonished Chief Moynahan. "And seriously, do not ever say something like that in the presence of Deputy Chief Mus-connnne." I nodded vigorously in agreement.

I motioned for Penny to continue, and she did: "Their email addresses are the same as the names, using Hotmail: 'SHHotel1@hotmail.com', and so on." (Author's note: As far as I know, that is not a real email, but please don't try it.)

Penny: "There are emails from another address, 'SHLimaH@hotmail.com', that went to all four of our perps's emails. The only words in some of those emails were 'Mission Assigned'. They were sent a day before the robberies. Then a day or two after a robbery, they'd get an email that said either "Mission Accomplished' or 'Mission Failed'. The 'Accomplished' emails came after robberies we know of that succeeded. The 'Failed' emails came after attempts we think were called off, or that we didn't know about at all."

Penny: "Segui's regular email in his regular phone has none of those names, and is likely not the fifth number that was calling his burner phone. We are speculating that 'SHLimaH' is the fifth phone number we have. Only Segui's burner 'SHHotel1' sent emails to the 'SHLimaH'address. When he did, very shortly afterwards the phone would receive phone calls from the fifth phone number. Those calls would last anywhere from three minutes to a full half hour."

Penny: "All of our perps were sending videos to the email address 'SHVHotel@hotmail.com', and also uploading them to an OnlyFans site, which is called 'SHOC3'. It's private, and any applications to join must be approved. We've set up six dummy accounts, with backstops as consumers of porn, and applied to join. But none of them were accepted."

I said "I strongly suspect that you have be pre-approved to get accepted. I would also imagine that six attempts by outsiders to get into the site means that the site is going to be shut down and scrubbed soon. Okay, keep going."

Penny: "All of the email messages are seemingly innocuous. Some times, some dates, but no locations of anything mentioned, at all. And very little interpersonal communications between them. Of course, they can just talk on the phones if they want to do that. I'll turn it over to Sidney Plant, now."

"Thank you." said Detective Sidney Plant. "I've been concentrating on Peter Segui's (air quotes) 'normal' cellphone, and also Michael Carlena's. First, neither of those cellphones have ever called nor contacted the other's. Second, neither of these phones have touched the burner phones, and they've never sent nor received any emails, none at all, to each other nor to the other emails we've learned the identities of."

Sidney: "Third and last, I'm still plowing through the numbers and emails that we've obtained from the phones and emails. There's a lot more of them, so it'll take more time."

I said " Lieutenant Purvis, you need to give Mr. Plant here more resources to get that done a lot more quickly. That's not a knock on you, Sidney; obviously those phones will have a lot more data in them. So you take one of them, and hand off the other one."

"Anything else?" asked Chief Moynahan.


"Just this, sir." said Penny Scott. "Like you and Commander Troy, Chief, I was in the military. The words 'hotel' and 'lima' just strike me as being the phonetic alphabet the military uses. You know, 'alpha', 'bravo', 'charlie', 'delta', 'echo' for 'a', 'b', 'c', 'd', and 'e', and so on."

"Yezzzzz," said the Chief. "I a-greeeee. Mister Crowbar?"

"Yes sir, I agree with that." I said. "Good call, Corporal Scott. I will also add that the letters 'SH' are common to all the cellphone ID and email addresses, as well as the 'SHOC' in the OnlyFans account name. I'm not sure what it all means right now, but it's a cluuuuuue to what this gang and its parent organization are about..."

Part 6 - Data Deep Dive

"This is Bettina Wurtzburg, KXTC Channel Two News!" shouted the redheaded MILF reporterette at 7:00am, Friday, October 8th,. "Tensions rise as Budget negotiations begin!"

After the hard-charging intro music, Bettina began: "It will be a critical week for the Town & County Public Safety Department as its Budget is presented to the Town & County Assembly beginning Monday morning. The Public Safety submission will be followed by the Education Budget presentation, and then the Assembly will begin its process of negotiating the overall Budget for the Town & County. Let's go to trusted reporter Amber Harris for more on this crucial process. Amber!"

"That's right, Bettina!" said the height-challenged, athletic blonde from the roof of the building at Riverside and College, with Police Headquarters in her distant background. "Chief Deputy Sheriff Cindy Ross will be making her first appearance in her current job to present the Budget. Also being required to appear before the Assembly are Deputy Police Chief Tanya P. Muscone, Assistant Fire Chief Lew Stockton, Assistant EMS Chief Zoe Singer, and Acting Public Health Officer Stella Waters."

Amber: "As you know, Bettina, Chief Deputy Ross was forced to retire from the TCPD and take the job in the Sheriff's Department under unexplained and suspicious circumstances, denying the People of the County the information they have the right to know. And Deputy Chief Muscone is a paraplegic, but has been given exemptions from meeting the physical requirements of a TCPD Officer. Back to you, Bettina!"

"Thank you, Amber!" Bettina said happily. "That was trusted reporter Amber Harris with that important information. And now let's go to respected political reporter Carl Lemay for more on this story. Carl!"

"That's right, Bettina!" said the slender black reporter, appearing in an expensive suit from the same roof of the building at Riverside and College, with City Hall in his background. "Both Assembly and Council Democrats are making demands upon the Public Safety Department, but are in some disagreement about exactly what should be done."

Lemay: "Some Assembly and Council members, including Cori Bowman and Aaron Rashid of the Assembly and Kelly Carnes and Edgar Silas of the Council, are continuing to demand that the Assembly defund the Police entirely. However, other Democrats, including Assembly members Patricia Chang and Omar Alexander and Councilpersons Sheila Sorrells and Susan Weston, aren't going that far. They are demanding that the Town & County Police accept and submit to proposed Federal guidelines for Police reform, and also name someone to the Internal Affairs leader position."

The feed went to a split-screen of Lemay and Bettina. She said "Carl, the Democrats are in the minority in both the Assembly and Council. Is there anything, anything at all, that they can do to get any of their reasonable requests met? Or will the Republicans just run roughshod over them, like they have been in the Council meetings?"

"That's a great question, Bettina." Lemay replied, showing his asskissing skills. "Several sources that spoke to me on condition of anonymity told me that the Democrats have several procedural tools they can use to force Republicans to meet them at the negotiating table. They also believe that if the Republicans don't negotiate in good faith, and if they refuse to do anything to stop the systemic Police brutality of Commander Donald Troy and his Stormtroopers against People of Color, it will give more impetus to the potential lawsuit to force equal representation on the Town & County Council..."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"But the Assembly is already equal-representation without regard to the City Limits line." lamented Lt. Commander Teresa Croyle to the television monitor as she, Sheriff Griswold, Assistant District Attorney Paulina Patterson, Me, Chief Moynahan, Deputy Chief Tanya P. Muscone, and Chief Deputy Cindy Ross drank coffee as we watched the propaganda-cast in the Chief's Conference Room.

I replied "What, are you actually thinking KXTC will allow facts to get in the way of their agenda-driven narrative?"

Teresa said "I was thinking more about the actual issue than KXTC's dishonest, disingenuous reporting of it."

"I get what you're saying." growled Sheriff Griswold. "And the answer is the threat regarding the Council more than the Assembly."

Teresa: "And I'll add to it that if the Democrats do make that threat, the Republicans can just point to the fact that in an equal-district County without regard to the Town borders, Republicans hold a majority."

I said "That was because of some gerrymandering. Blacks were stuffed into huge majorities in some districts, giving white Republicans advantage in other districts. If Democrats get to redraw the lines, they can do the same thing in reverse, and make sure that Democrats win more districts. As it is, the Republican margin is razor-thin."

"And it won't matter, anyway." Cindy Ross said. "They're going to sue over the Council structure no matter what... especially if they don't get majorities in the Council or Assembly in the next Election next year. So if the Republicans are stupid enough to believe the Democrats will keep their word over any agreements, they they'll get exactly what they deserve."

Seeing us all looking at her, she said "What? Did I say something we don't already know?"

Tanya said "You really think they'll do it, for sure?" Cindy's platinum blonde head nodded vigorously.

"I do, too." Teresa said.

"Meeee threeeee." Chief Moynahan said agreeably. "What about yoooo, Mister Crowbarrrr?"

"Ehhh... it's complicated, sir." I said. "Don't forget the 'poison pill' that we put in the Charter... any structural change forces plebiscites in the Town and the outside County to separate again. The Black Community believes that if the Town is on its own, it means more Black influence and definite Democrat majorities. And I can't see any way the County doesn't vote to re-separate from the Town, especially if they think Town Democrats will have hegemony over them as a result of redistricting."

Paulina said "They could do away with that if they win in Court. And the State Legislature can just do away with that provision if they combine counties like they're threatening to do."

I said "And then it's lawsuit city all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, because the Charter was passed by a vote of the People, not of any Legislature. At the least, new precedents will be set."

Tanya said "All that is what it is. What I'm waiting for Bettina to explain is why a paraplegic can't make a good presentation to the Assembly. And my oh-so-generous exemptions come from being a Captain or higher in the TCPD... exemptions every LEO in this room has."

I replied "What, are you actually thinking KXTC will allow facts to get in the way of their agenda-driven narrative?"

"What was their agenda for having Amber bring up all that old crap up about Cindy and Tanya?" Paulina asked.

"Simply to cause them, and all of us, pain." I replied. "Just pure hate. Par for the course for KXTC Channel Two News..."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The KFXU Fox University Sunrise show had one item of interest. Catrina Pierce interviewed Town & County Assembly member Ryan Paulson, who was as 'Establishment' as a Republican could possibly be. Asked if there would be compromise over the Budget, Paulson said "We are going to pass a Budget that fully funds the Police, period, end of story. We feel we have no reason nor need to negotiate with the Democrats nor submit to their demands for budget-busting Socialist spending..."