Devil's Corner Read online

  “You sure you don’t want to come in?” Vicki asked. “I’m feeling very domestic. I could make you a quick dinner.”

  “How would you explain me to your boyfriend?”

  “Oh, right. I forgot.” Vicki wasn’t used to coming home to anything but bills.

  “I’m wiped out, anyway. I’m gonna go home and make myself a nice chef salad.”

  “Didn’t you have that for lunch?”

  “If it comes in a glass, it ain’t a salad.”

  Vicki had noticed Reheema shopping with a sharp eye on prices at the Acme. “Can I ask what you’re doing for money?”

  “Using the same green as you.”

  “You can’t have much, after being in the FDC so long.” Vicki was choosing her words carefully, especially because she was responsible for putting Reheema there. “And you have to pay bills, get the utilities on. You need infrastructure, right?”

  “I’m okay for a while. After we’re done, I’m gonna get a job.”

  “Not at Bennye’s.”

  “God, no.”

  “Can I lend you some money?”

  “No, I’m fine.” Reheema stiffened, and Vicki regretted it instantly.

  “Okay, just let me know. See you tomorrow morning, later, like nine, after Dan goes to work?”

  “Fine.”

  “I’ll let you know anything I find out.”

  “Good.” Reheema faced front, nodding.

  “Bye.” Vicki got out of the Sunbird, retrieved her groceries from the backseat, and closed the door with a final slam, feeling oddly as if she had lost something.

  A friend.

  Or her innocence.

  Vicki opened her front door on to a grinning Dan Malloy, standing on her front step in the frigid night, dripping calico cat, the animal’s black-and-orange legs draped over his arm. “Well!”

  “Zoe, we’re home!”

  Vicki laughed. “Come in, it’s cold. How’d you get her here?”

  “Cab. She loved it. She has caviar tastes.” Dan stepped inside, then leaned over the cat and kissed Vicki, his mouth an intriguing mix of cold and warm. She kissed him back, then again, and then another time, before they parted.

  “Wow.” Vicki closed the front door.

  “I agree.”

  “I could get used to this.”

  “You’ll have to, until I get new furniture.” Dan looked her over with a smile. “You know, as good as you look right now, you’d look better in bed.”

  “Thank you.” Vicki had showered, which made her feel almost human again in fresh jeans, a pink cashmere sweater, and no sunglasses. “Come into the kitchen and see your surprise.”

  “I’m getting a surprise?”

  “Of course.” Only because I’m so smooth.

  “Look around, Zoe.” Dan set down his briefcase and cat, and followed Vicki into the dining room. “Does the surprise involve you naked?”

  “No.”

  “In a nurse’s outfit?’

  “No.”

  “A nun’s habit?”

  “That’s so wrong, Malloy.” Vicki reached the kitchen, and in the middle of the floor sat a pink plastic litter box, filled with gourmet litter and its own little scoop, resting casually against the side of the tray. “Romantic, huh?”

  “Terrific! Thank you!” Dan grinned, pulling her to him and holding her close, and she could feel the cold air clinging to the scratchy wool of his topcoat. “I didn’t know they sold litter boxes at Neiman Marcus.”

  Oops. “Uh, no, they don’t. I didn’t get the litter box there. I got it from the Acme, where I got groceries for dinner.”

  “Oh, nice.” Dan released her to slide out of his topcoat and put it on the back of the kitchen chair. “What am I making?”

  “Hey, I’m making it. We’re having filet mignon, with onions and baked potatoes. It’ll be ready in a minute. I’m Martha Stewart, preincarceration.”

  “Funny, I don’t smell anything.”

  D’oh! Vicki crossed to the oven and turned it on. “Okay, so we won’t be eating in a minute.”

  Dan smiled. “Doesn’t matter. What’d you get at Neiman Marcus?”

  Eek. “Nothing. So what happened at the big meeting? Did you go?”

  “Yes.” Dan’s expression changed, suddenly troubled. “Did you see the news, Vick? The shooting at Toys ‘R’ Us? Seven people killed, three of them kids, and they say a fourth might not make it. It’s disgusting.”

  “Horrible.”

  “They should hang that guy. And one was Jamal Browning, shot dead.”

  No, really? “I heard that on TV. Jackson’s boyfriend. Incredible.”

  “Don’t worry, they’re gonna get the guy. They already ID’ed him.”

  “How?”

  “You’re not gonna believe this. At the end of the business day, somebody sent us a photo of the shooter.” Dan reached excitedly inside his jacket pocket and pulled out the photo she’d taken. “Look.”

  Vicki looked at the photo as if she’d never seen it before, which wasn’t easy. “Somebody sent this to us?” And was she wearing Exxon sunglasses or Chanel?

  “Dropped it off at the office. FBI, ATF, everybody got a copy, like manna from heaven. The FBI thinks somebody from the neighborhood took it and they’re too afraid of retaliation to come forward.”

  The FBI are geniuses. “Probably.”

  “I’d be afraid, too. What kind of man guns down kids in a Toys ‘R’ Us? They coulda hit Browning anywhere, if that’s who they were after. It’s true scum who does something like that.”

  Vicki nodded.

  “Anyway, it’s damn lucky they took the photo, though. The cops had no flash on the shooter. The Toys ‘R’ Us surveillance cameras were pointing at the wrong side of the truck, and the eyewitnesses were so freaked out, their descriptions were all over the place. Philly police couldn’t even get a composite they had faith in. Then this came in.”

  Damn, I’m good. “So who is he and what are they doing about it?”

  “His name’s Bill Toner. He has a record of bush-league crack dealing and ag assault, in Kensington. Philly put an APB out on him, with his last known address.” Dan eyed the photo. “Dude’s ugly as sin. A cold, cold killer.”

  “So Toner killed Browning?” Vicki fake-mulled it over. “Do they know why?”

  “Not yet.” Dan shook his head. “Or at least they’re not saying so in an open meeting, with Strauss there.”

  “Strauss was there? Was Bale?”

  “Yep.”

  “The triumvirate.” Vicki would have felt left out if she hadn’t been doing something more important. Like their jobs.

  “I missed you today.” Dan smiled, set the photo on the table, and reached for her, drawing her close. He didn’t feel so cold anymore, his chest warm and strong, and Vicki pressed herself against him, his loosened tie silky on her cheek. She felt guilty deceiving him, but if he knew what she’d been doing, he’d try to stop her. She accepted his embrace, and the real, solid comfort it afforded, after the awful afternoon.

  “It looked horrible, on TV. These poor people, getting shot.”

  “I know, I saw it, too. These are real bad guys. Dangerous guys.” Dan’s voice softened, and Vicki felt the reverberation within his chest as he spoke. “Problem is, you shoulda seen this meeting. The Toys ‘R’ Us shooting threw a major wrench into the works. The mayor’s on the phone, the city’s in an uproar. Then the chamber of commerce starts screaming. Everybody’s running around like a chicken and you could see it happen. It was like a tide shifting. I watched Morty go to the back burner.”

  “Why?” Vicki asked, stricken. “Browning’s murder is related to Morty’s. These things are of a piece, they have to be.”

  “Doesn’t matter now.” Dan frowned in disappointment, too. “Now it’s about innocent people being killed while they shop, you can see that. Strauss has to shift priorities to the safety of shopping in the city, to babies and kids getting shot up on the evening news. You can’t blame the
man.”

  “But the CI was Browning’s girlfriend and she got killed when his coke was stolen. Maybe somebody from the Toner crew, if not Toner himself, is trying to take over Browning’s operation.”

  Dan nodded. “I’m not saying they won’t follow up on that, but jurisdiction is still a live issue, unfortunately, and Toys ‘R’ Us is an emergency. The situation is acute, and we’re in triage. The murder of an ATF agent and a druggy girlfriend in a stash house will not get the same attention as kids shot up when they’re at a Toys ‘R’ Us. They’re already pulling uniforms off the street.”

  No! “But Morty’s life matters and so does hers. And what about her baby?” Vicki felt like the case was slipping away. “If you fix one, you fix the other, don’t you see? They can’t let Morty go!”

  “Wait, there was one thing, hold on, I’ll get it.” Dan left the kitchen and returned with his briefcase, set it on the chair, and slid some papers out. “Look.” He put the papers down on the kitchen table, next to the place setting.

  Vicki came over. The papers were charts of first names and numbers in computer printing. The names ran down the left side of the chart, the numbers, ten digits, ran down the middle, and then after that was a second column of numbers. After a minute, she recognized the ten-digit numbers in the middle as phone numbers because they all began with 215, the area code for Philly. Vicki asked, “A list of phone calls?”

  “Yes. It’s called a Call Frequency Chart. It’s fascinating. ATF developed the software program that generates it, for HIDTAs.”

  “HIDTAs?”

  “High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas. It’s a task force within the agency, and ATF assigned the investigation of Morty’s murder to them. They specialize in drug operations with an especially high level of violence.”

  Gulp. “And what does HIDTA do, exactly?”

  “Investigate, tap, surveille, you know, get the info for search and arrest warrants, in the most dangerous cases.” Dan returned to studying the charts. “HIDTA has developed its own program for investigations of cell phones. You see, dealers have to communicate with each other all the time, and they use Nextel phones or cell phones. It’s very mechanical, the drug business.”

  Vicki had thought the same thing, when she and Reheema were following the dealers the past two days. It was almost primitive.

  “HIDTA starts with a normal cell phone, one that’s seized, let’s say, during a search. They call that the ‘known phone.’ They analyze the data in it, like the directory, and figure out the phone numbers associated with each person called. You follow?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then they subpoena the records for the known phone, over a long period of time, and they load all the information about the calls into the computer. The program they wrote generates a Call Frequency Chart. That is, it makes a record of how often the owner of the known phone calls certain numbers.” Dan ran a fingernail across the first line of the list. “This first page is a sample, and you can see the first name on this list is Lik, which they tell me is the nickname for Malik.”

  “Okay.”

  “Lik’s number is this one, and the chart shows that the owner of this phone called Lik’s number the most frequently of all other calls, in a month’s time. The column on the far right is the number of times the owner of the phone called Lik in a month, which is 354. You can look down the chart at the first three people the owner called the most. Lik, Tay, and Two. See? He called them 354, 322, and 310 times, respectively.”

  Vicki did.

  “Now, they tell me that drug dealers change cell phones all the time. They use ‘burnout phones’ or ‘drop phones,’ they call them. Let’s say the owner of the phone, the bad guy, drops this phone. He throws it away to avoid the cops.”

  “Okay.”

  “The problem used to be that when the bad guy discarded a phone, all the investigation of his activity and calls were gone, and HIDTA would have to start over again. No more.” Dan went to the next sheet of numbers. “Now they can figure out which cell phone he picks up next, using this software.”

  “How?”

  “Because, as a logical matter, he tends to call the same set of people he called before, at the same frequency. See this second chart? This new caller called Lik’s number ten times that day. HIDTA does the same thing for the other people called, Tay and Two, and they do it over a long period of time, to enhance the reliability of their conclusion. The odds are that it’s the same person making those calls, regardless of which phone he uses. Correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “So then we can reason backward, and say that therefore, the bad guy is now using this cell phone. We can figure out that that’s his new cell number and pick up activity on the new phone, losing no time on the investigation. In other words, the fact that they change phones doesn’t defeat us.”

  “Great.”

  “Now this software has other applications for investigations. For example, what they told us at the meeting is that your cell phone, with the blue daisies” — Dan smiled — “is currently being used by a known mid-level drug dealer. His name is Ray James.”

  “What?” Vicki was astonished. “How do they know that?”

  “Here’s his chart, but it’s only for a few days, so it’s not rock-solid by any means.” Dan set two charts side by side. “But see? They had Ray James’s known phone from a previous arrest, and they did a Call Frequency Chart for him on the known phone. Then, because they knew your cell number, they began a Call Frequency Chart for your phone after it was stolen.”

  “So they tapped my cell phone?”

  “No, they don’t have to tap the phone to get this. They just can get a pen register, a record of calls made by the phone, as opposed to actually listening in to the call.”

  “Okay.”

  “So now they load your Call Frequency Report into the computer and ask it for a match, and it comes up with Ray James. In other words, Mr. James, who used to use this known phone” — Dan pointed to the chart on the left — “is now using your phone, because his old Call Frequency Chart matches the one for your phone, on the right.”

  “My God.” Vicki’s eyes widened. “So they know Ray James killed Reheema’s mother!”

  “Not yet.”

  “But they go and pick him up and question him about the murder, don’t they?” Vicki was so tempted to call Reheema, but she couldn’t. “Either he killed her or he knows who did!”

  “Slow down. They don’t do that yet. Why are you getting so excited?”

  “But it was only days ago! It’s most likely him! Ray James could be the guy with the gravelly voice, that we both talked to!”

  “Vick.” Dan smiled and held up a warning hand. “Settle down. You know better than that.”

  “I do?”

  “Yes, you do. Think about it, calmly. All it means is that Ray James has the phone from somebody who might know that. Or that Ray James found the phone in a Dumpster or on the street. Or that he bought it from somebody who bought it from somebody else who found it on the street after the killer threw it there.” Dan cocked his head, his blue eyes tired. “All we really know for sure is that Ray James has your cell phone.”

  “We can still ask the man, can’t we?”

  “Not consistent with that pesky Constitution, we can’t. ATF can’t, and they won’t.” Dan laughed. “This is way too soon to be sure, and they don’t show their hand until they have the goods. You should know that they would need to show a judge at least a few months of calls to establish probable cause.” Dan smiled. “So your phone is hard at work for the common good.”

  “So what will they do about Ray James?”

  “Try to learn more about him, build their case, record his calls. Do it right.”

  “He has a record?”

  “Ag assault, firearms, possession and distribution, the works. His record’s in my briefcase; they gave us all copies. They’ll follow up, it’s just a question of time. You know how they investigate. Mor
ty was the most methodical agent I knew.”

  Morty. Vicki tried to simmer down. “Ray James doesn’t bring us any closer to Morty’s killer.”

  “Not really, no.”

  “And he’s on the back burner.”

  “For the time being. Then the heat will die down, but they won’t forget about him. I won’t let them.” Dan began to gather his charts. “But we have been told to deal with Toys ‘R’ Us, top priority. I put a press release together for Strauss. There’s a conference at eleven tomorrow. Everybody’s gonna be there, from the mayor on down.” Dan put the charts into his briefcase. “Plus, I forgot, they do have the one other guy, a loose end. This guy who was with Browning. They said they’ll track him down when they get the chance.”

  “What guy? The guy who got shot, that one? I thought he was killed.”

  “No, not that one, another one. Tall guy, walked out of the store with Browning. The FBI thinks he mighta helped set him up for the kill. They’re lookin’ for him everywhere.”

  Huh? “I didn’t see him on TV.”

  “He’s there, walking with Browning. They picked him up on the surveillance cameras at Toys ‘R’ Us. He had some kinda cap on and they only got his back.”

  Oh no.

  “Tall guy, black, that’s it. He ran when the shooting started.”

  Reheema.

  “And they’re looking for a car that was waiting for him. They got a shot of it on the surveillance camera. He was working with another guy and he ran to him and the car when the shooting started.”

  That would be me. “Could they ID the other guy?”

  “No. Short white guy. The FBI thinks this new gang is multiracial. Gives you hope, doesn’t it?”