Time Flies Ch. 03

This story is part of an ongoing series. The chronological order of my stories is listed in WifeWatchman's biography.

Feedback and constructive criticism is very much appreciated, and I encourage feedback for ideas.

This story contains graphic scenes, language and actions that might be extremely offensive to some people. These scenes, words and actions are used only for the literary purposes of this story. The author does not condone murder, racism, racial language, violence, rape or violence against women, and any depictions of any of these in this story should not be construed as acceptance of the above.

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Part 11 - Codes and Conspiracies

5:00pm, Thursday, January 9th. The Chief and I met in the Main Conference Room with the leadership of my Detective Corps, which comprised of Captain Perlman, Lieutenant Mary Milton, Lieutenant Jerome Davis, and Lieutenant Micah Rudistan.

"We got the pay data under a warrant." Mary Milton said. "The janitors, like every other employee of the University, including the Head Professor of the Psychology Department, must submit a written, signed form with their hours, and have it signed off, every week. In the case of Dr. Fredricson, her assistant fills it out, Laura signs it, and the University President's Finance Officer signs off on it on behalf of the University President."

Mary: "In Fisher's case, Hamm himself approved the forms, and it looks like he himself may have been filling them out. The handwriting curiously matches his own pay submissions. And Fisher was the only employee in the Sanitation Department like that."

Mary: "Hamm's finances are very interesting, as well. He's got a lot of cash deposits of between $7000-9000, making him very eligible to be looked at by the IRS for attempting to avoid the $10,000 threshold. He put a lot of that money into an investment account... a legitimate one with one of the big brokerage firms... but not all of it. He eats at expensive restaurants, buys rounds at parties at bars, and his car is not cheap... Cadillac Escalade, tricked-up with bulletproof glass and tires."

"Sounds like the Commander's vehicle." said Tanya with a twinkle in her eye and a wicked grin.

"I know what I need mine for." I replied. "What does a Manager of the Sanitation Department need that for? Is he afraid the Wildcats or State Tech janitors are gonna come for him?"

"Exactly, sir." said Rudistan with a jovial grin. "We don't have everything yet, but I think we're moving in the right di-rec-tion for a drug co-nnec-tion."

"Stop that." I said. "You're making too much sense, Mr. Rudistan. Seriously, yeah, it looks like Hamm is a person of interest, but we don't have anything connecting him to Fisher's murder yet... or do we?"

"No sir," said Mary, "but we have even more potential drug connections... past history. Hamm was a student here at the University, and was busted not once but twice for drug possession. My Intel people dug deep into that, and found out the original charges in both cases was possession in quantities that showed intent to distribute, but the charges were reduced both times. Not pled down, but simply reduced."

Mary: "Hamm had a DUI two years after graduating from School, and got a $500 fine. Four years ago, he was charged with misdemeanor possession of marijuana, and my Intel guys dug deep and found that in reality he was busted with a hundred pounds of weed, again plenty enough to make a felony distribution charge, but the charges were reduced. Not pled down, but reduced." The Chief emitted a long, low whistle at hearing that.

"Was he busted on Campus with these drugs?" I asked.

"Yes, for the busts when he was a student." Mary said. "But the DUI was in Coltrane County, and the more recent pot bust was in the City."

*KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK*

The door opened to reveal Lt. Myron Milton. The Chief had him come in, and he sat down next to his wife.

"Sir," said Myron, "we got into Fisher's cellphone. He had some photos on it that might be helpful, including some taken the afternoon of his death... at Southpoint Mall. But more importantly, he had 38 texts, all incoming, none outgoing. We hit the senders, and came up with four distinct phone numbers, all burner phones bought at different locations."

"Okay, let's see the texts." I said. Myron plugged his laptop in, and texts began showing up on the monitor. "These are the last seven texts. There are 31 more just like it from earlier months."

08112 72735 32273 32936 28360 21215 20270
28112 72728 27273 33636 28360 11301 12120
27112 72827 28272 93636 31360 11215 20300
27112 72827 34273 22731 29310 11215 20280
28112 72828 32272 92836 31360 11215 20290
17112 72829 36273 02936 33360 21215 20290
28113 62736 34273 13031 30360 11301 12120

"Wow." I said. "Looks like I've got a long weekend ahead of me."

"No sir." said Myron. "We've already cracked it."

"Great!" I said. "How?"

"We have a new program that aids in cracking encrypted codes." Myron said. "And part of that grant money 'R.C. Christian' gave to us went to buying a supercomputer array that can crunch a lot of data very fast. Nowhere near what the Federal Government can do, but a couple million dollars can buy a lot, these days."

I grinned. "I'll take your word for that. It's good we have it. And how much did you pay for the program itself?" Myron and Mary suddenly got quiet, and looked like they'd been caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

"Okay," I said, "if you had bought it instead of stealing it off a Federal Government computer, what would it have cost?"

"Thirty million dollars, sir." Myron 'confessed'.

"Oh my goodness." said the Chief.

"If anyone asks," I said to everyone, "we bought this and lost the receipt. And when they say it takes a Federal Agent to buy it, tell them I did it. At least I'm an FBI Consultant, so I can't be charged with impersonating a Federal Officer."

"And when they arrrrest yoooo, Mr. Crowbar?" asked the Chief.

"You don't need me any more, Chief." I said. "You've got a 30-million-dollar decryption program to solve everything." Everyone laughed, and Tanya burst out into uncontrollable laughter at that.

"It would take a lot more than 30 million dollars to replace yooooo, Mr. Crowbar." said the Chief. "Sooooo, Mr. Millll-ton, what did our pur-loinnnnned program get us to-dayyyyy?"

"The first part was fairly easy, sir." said Myron. "Since the last digit in the every group was zero, it dropped the zero and regrouped into sets of two." He brought up another screen:

08 11 27 27 35 32 27 33 29 36 28 36 02 12 15 20 27
28 11 27 27 28 27 27 33 36 36 28 36 01 13 01 12 12
29 11 27 28 27 28 27 29 36 36 31 36 01 12 15 20 30
20 11 27 28 27 34 27 32 27 31 29 31 01 12 15 20 28
28 11 27 28 28 32 27 29 28 36 31 36 01 12 15 20 29
17 11 27 28 29 36 27 30 29 36 33 36 02 12 15 20 29
28 11 36 27 36 34 27 31 30 31 30 36 01 13 01 12 12

Myron: "The program recognized that there is no number higher than 36. That suggests 26 letters of the alphabet and ten numerals. So it first tried the ol' 'A=1, B=2' iteration, and so on, with '27'=1, '28'=2, and so on to '36'=0. And we think that it hit a home run on the first pitch."

"How does it know '27' is '1'?" I asked. "Couldn't '27' be '0' and '36' be '9'?"

Myron said "If you'll bear with me, sir, that'll be explained in just a second." Myron did not like his narratives to be interrupted, and I'd just committed the sin. So I nodded and let him go on. He said "This is what came out."

h k 1 1 0 6 1 7 3 0 2 0 b l o t 1
2 k 1 1 2 1 1 7 0 0 2 0 a m a l l
3 k 1 2 1 2 1 3 0 0 5 0 b l o t 4
t k 1 2 1 8 1 6 1 5 3 5 a l o t 2
1 k 1 2 2 6 1 3 2 0 5 0 a l o t 3
q k 1 2 3 0 1 4 3 0 7 0 b l o t 3
2 k 0 1 0 8 1 5 4 5 4 0 a m a l l

Myron: "You can see the words 'mall' and 'blot', so we suspended the algorithm to look at this. At this point, we have to help the program with human brain power. The world 'mall' is pretty self-evident, but we had to guess if that's 'a lot' and 'b lot', or just 'lot' followed by the numbers."

Myron: "The first guess is that 'a mall' doesn't make sense, so we separated that first letter, getting this:

h k 1 1 0 6 1 7 3 0 2 0 b lot 1
2 k 1 1 2 1 1 7 0 0 2 0 a mall
3 k 1 2 1 2 1 3 0 0 5 0 b lot 4
t k 1 2 1 8 1 6 1 5 3 5 a lot 2
1 k 1 2 2 6 1 3 2 0 5 0 a lot 3
q k 1 2 3 0 1 4 3 0 7 0 b lot 3
2 k 0 1 0 8 1 5 4 5 4 0 a mall

"So we took a shot," said Myron, "and told the computer that. We also noted that the second letter is 'k' in every message, so we grouped the first two letters. We inputted that and started up the algorithm again, and the computer decided that the next 8 numbers were possibly dates and times, to wit."

hk 1106 1730 20 b lot1
2k 1121 1700 20 a mall
3k 1212 1300 50 b lot4
tk 1218 1615 35 a lot2
1k 1226 1320 50 a lot3
qk 1230 1430 70 b lot3
2k 0108 1545 40 a mall

"Ahhh." I said in a high falsetto voice, then continue: "I'll bet 'k' stands for 'kilo'. These are drug orders. 'qk' is 'quarter kilo', 'hk' is 'half kilo', 'tk' is 'three-quarter kilo'. Upwards from there, the orders would be in full kilo blocks."

"What if they want a kilo and a half?" asked Tanya.

"Ma'am," said Lt. Rudistan, "once buyers want more than one key, they usually are buying whole bricks. A kilo is a lot, and runs in the tens of thousands of dollars."

"And three kilos?" I said. "That's a lot of weight in one order. So that suggests the next four numerals are dates. They went from November 21st through the Thanksgiving holiday, and needed a 3 kilo resupply on December 12th. And they under-ordered, and asked for an extra quarter-kilo four days after getting just one kilo on December 26th."

"See?" drawled the Chief. "You are still good for something, Mr. Crowbar." Everyone chucked again as a red crowbar was waved in the Chief's general direction.

"And that's why '36' is zero." I said. "Makes a lot more sense in the next block, which must be the meeting times."

"Yes sir, that's what the computer surmised." said Myron. "It saw the blocks of '36's and guessed first that they were the zeros. And with the dates and times, that looks to be right. These guys aren't gonna say a meeting is at eleven minutes after the hour."

Mary said "What we don't know is what those two block numbers and the 'a' and 'b' stand for."

Myron replied: "When we put 'em together into one group, we get this."

hk 1106 1730 20b lot1
2k 1121 1700 20a mall
3k 1212 1300 50b lot4
tk 1218 1615 35a lot2
1k 1226 1320 50a lot3
qk 1230 1430 70b lot3
2k 0108 1545 40a mall

"Parking lot spaces?" guessed Jerome Davis.

"Or apartment numbers?" asked Captain Perlman.

"Theorizing without sufficient data, are we now?" I asked. "Seriously... Myron, you and your team have done great getting us to this point. But let's not go overboard. For example, I doubt they'd get so granular in their message to say which parking space, when just the lot is likely to be sufficient. And I just made the bad job of assuming that 'lot' is a parking lot, but I'm surmising that the last message is the one that led Fisher to his death. And he was found not far from Southpoint Mall, and his car at the mall, n'est pas?."

I continued: "And having gotten this far, we can do a lot with this data. For example, I'm sure you're trying to trace the burner phones that sent these texts to Fisher's phone?"

"Yes sir." said Myron. "But there is one problem, sir. It would make more sense for each text to be a day or two before the meeting dates, but these aren't. They were sent to this phone in groups of between 8 and 12 texts at a time. Each group was from different burner phones."

"So when he changed burners," I said, "he sent the texts on that burner to his own cellphone. Now why do that?" My musings were on the verge of becoming a reverie.

Finally, I said: "There's something else we can do, also. Myron, if you can trace the burners that sent the texts to Fisher's phone, see if you can see what was sent to those burners. And to those burners and from what burners. And come see me in my office after this meeting. Okay, anything else?"

Lt. Jerome Davis said "My guys went by the Campus Police Headquarters, and I understand the Intel people accessed their databases. There are no records, at all, of Fisher being arrested, nor of any sting operations against him. He's totally a ghost, as far as they're concerned."

"There's nothing in the SBI-NTF databases, either." I said. "Which means absolutely nothing, knowing how poorly they keep records. Okay, one thing I need for Intel to find out is who Hamm associates with. Friends, dates, everything. Someone was helping him reduce his criminal record, and I need to know who..."

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

Myron and Mary Milton followed me into my office after the meeting. After we sat down, I turned on the bug killer and said "Myron, this is one of those things you can say 'no' to, but should you choose to accept it, I'd like you to ping James Hamm's cell phone location. It's likely at his home. What I really am hoping to see is that he really is as dumb as he has been acting, and he'll use a burner phone from the same location his regular one is at."

"I'll be glad to do it, sir," Myron said, "but what do we do if he really does do that? We'll have to have some kind of probable cause to get a warrant."

I replied: "You and Mary can legally dive into research on the cellphones that sent something to Carl Fishers cellphone, and keep working back. If... and I admit it's a big 'if'... but if one of those burners can ultimately be shown to have a connection to Hamm's burner, we'll work backwards, and say we have the other phone, and want to research the burner that 'hey, presto!' ends up being Hamm's burner phone. And then we show the burner's location, and work backward to Hamm from there."

"And once we have that, sir?" Mary asked.

"Then we get a warrant for Hamm's cellphone and the burner, if we can find it." I said. "And if we can find text with codes like the ones found on Fisher's phone on anything related to Hamm? We'll have enough for a warrant to bring Hamm back in on suspicion in the murder case..."

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

6:30pm, Thursday, January 9th. It was too cold to sit on the deck of the Cop Bar, even with fires in the pots, so we sat in the back Command Room and had beef nachos and beer. Teresa was there already, at the near end of the table, and somewhat to my surprise, Cindy was sitting to her right.

"How's the murder case going?" Teresa asked as I sat down to Cindy's right.

"Not bad." I said. "That new Intel Branch is really paying off for us. We still need Myron's help on some of the hardware issues and things like tracing cellphones, but the Intel people are like vacuum cleaners when it comes to getting data. They just suck up anything out there."

*Whirrrrrrrrrrr*

"Thank you sir!" Tanya said as she drove up, with Jack Muscone in tow. "I think they're doing a great job, too!"

"And it was your idea." I said. "Worthy of a commendation, fer sure."

Jack sat down at the far end of the table, to my right, and Tanya to Teresa's left. As my Angels talked amongst themselves, I asked Jack "Didn't bring Dwight Stevens with you?"

"I invited him, but he said he has a meeting." Jack said. "But I'm not an Agency of the Weak Minded, either. He and Fred Merkle and others are working your Fisher murder case, but from the Federal drug angle."

"They find anything new?" I asked.

"No," said Jack, "but I'm worried that Dwight is not telling me everything he knows, and everything he is doing."

"He doesn't trust me, does he?" I asked, a bit acerbically.

Jack said "I don't think he ever got over the Marcie Harper case, and how you handled it." (Author's note: 'Schoolhouse Rock'.) "I've told him a number of times that he not only should trust you, he should let you make his job easier, like I let you make my job easier." I chuckled at that one.

"Well," I said, "I am trying to be patient with him, knowing that I didn't give him a lot of reason to trust me during the Harper case. And it's a double edged sword. You and Karina White and Owen Lange have taken my side, and the Swamp Frogs like Robin Isley and Curtis Halsey really came after you. Good and honest Agents are probably wary of me, because helping me can make them targets. But at some point, Jack, Stevens has to make a decision to trust me or not. And I'm not waiting forever for him to figure it out."

"I hear you." said Muscone. "As to this case, I did a little private digging, and I found out that Stevens and especially Fred Merkle have invested a good bit of time in the drug aspects of this case, as has their boss, DEA SAC Rutherford Lyndon. For right or for wrong, I think they're worried that you're going to screw up their investigations."

"I'd be able to try a lot harder to not do that," I said, "if they'd just tell me where the land mines for them are. And something else bothers me, Jack... we found Carlton Bellows very quickly, and very easily. I simply cannot believe that the DEA did not know of his double identity before he was murdered."

"And this where we come full circle to me wondering what they're not telling me." said Jack. "I agree that they should've easily found that. And maybe they did."

I nodded, then said "There's something else I need to know. Was Carl Fisher, either as Fisher or as Bellows, an Agent or truly a C.I.? And ditto that for James Hamm. His actions are those of either a guilty man... or a man trying to keep his cover and operation as an operative. I need to know which."

"I'll see what I can find out." said Jack.

We turned to talk to the others. Cindy said "You guys need to come to the Country Music Palace tomorrow night. Trace Brown is performing, and we're going to start the Line Dance competition. Groups of 12 are competing.

"Are you can Callie forming a group?" I asked.

Cindy said "No. Trace, Callie, and I are the judges. Free beer, dontcha know."

I pointed my thumb at Muscone and said "We'll have to get this guy some proper clothing. All he has in his closet are matching FBI-issue suits, shirts, and ties."

"Hey, I'm not Martin Nash!" protested Jack. Everyone laughed, then realized I'd gone into a reverie...

Part 12 - Double Coverage

"This is Bettina Wurtzburg, KXTC Channel Two News!" shouted the redheaded MILF reporterette at 7:00am, Friday, January 10th, from the top of the building at Riverside and College, on the southwest corner of Courthouse Square, with the State Office Building in the background. "Another blow for Donald Troy in the Courts!"

Bettina began: "After Judge Patrick R. Folsom dismissed a lawsuit by the Social Justice group Citizens for Secular Atheism against Donald Troy's entity that held a Christian concert on public grounds on Christmas Eve, Appellate Judge Leahy overruled Folsom's decision and ordered that the lawsuit could continue. Commander Troy's attorney Mike G. Todd immediately filed an appeal to the State Supreme Court."

Bettina: "And there has been no progress by the Town & County Police in the murder of Carlton Fisher. Channel Two News has learned that Mr. Fisher was an employee of the University Sanitation Department. Police used excessive force in arresting the Department's Manager, but Judge Harry R. Nance dismissed all charges against the Manager, who has not been charged nor implicated in the murder, and whose name we are withholding to protect his identity and reputation."

Bettina: "And in State news, the State House is moving inexorably towards impeaching deeply unpopular Governor Val Jared on a wide variety of charges, the worst being Abuse of Power. We have with us Dr. Adam S. Keller of the City University Rodham Foundation for Social and Political Change. Dr. Keller, shouldn't Governor Jared just resign before the Legislature impeaches and convicts him of these blatant and obvious charges?"