Fair Warning

24

He waited until it was dark.

He loved the silence of the Tesla. The car was like him. It moved swiftly and stealthily. Nobody heard him coming. He pulled to the curb a block from the house on Capistrano and got out, silently closing the door behind him. He pulled the hood of the black nylon runner’s shell up over his head. He already wore a clear plastic mask that distorted his facial features to better guard against identification should there be a camera in the neighborhood that picked him up. Everybody had motion-activated cameras around their homes these days. It made his work difficult.

He carefully moved down the street, staying tucked into the shadows and out of the circles of illumination created by the streetlights. He had a small black duffel bag he kept tight against his body and under his arm. He finally reached the side yard of the target house and slipped into its backyard through an unlocked gate.

The house was dark but the oval-shaped pool was lighted — most likely on a timer — and cast a shimmering glow into the house through a row of sliding glass doors. There were no curtains. He checked each of the sliders and found them locked. He then used a small pry bar from the duffel on the bottom of the center door to raise it up and out of its track. He carefully lifted it out and onto the concrete patio surface. This created a slight popping sound. He remained still, squatting next to the door and waiting to see if the disturbance had triggered an alarm or alerted anyone.

No lights came on. No one checked the living room. He got up and slid the door open along the rough concrete surface, then entered the house.

No one was home. A room-by-room search of the house determined that there were three bedrooms where no one was sleeping. Thinking it possible that he had indeed awakened someone by popping the slider and that they were hiding somewhere sent him through the house in a more thorough search that again produced no occupants, hiding or otherwise.

But the second search led him to the garage, which he found had been converted into a laboratory. He realized that what he had found here was the lab support for Dirty4. He set to work examining the equipment and the notebooks left on a worktable, as well as data marked on hanging whiteboards and a calendar.

There was also a desktop computer. When he pressed the space bar, he learned that it was thumbprint protected.

He reached into his duffel for the roll of clear duct tape he kept among his tools and bindings. Leaving the garage, he walked through a TV room and found a powder room — the closest bathroom to the lab. He flicked on the light and peeled two three-inch segments of tape off the roll. He put one down on the sink counter with the sticky side up, then carefully and lightly applied the second to the top of the toilet’s plastic flush handle. Raising the tape, he looked at it from an oblique angle. He had lifted a print. He could tell it was big enough to be a thumb.

He put the tape down on top of the other segment, locking the print between the plastic. He then returned to the lab and sat at the computer. He took off a rubber glove and wrapped the plastic containing the captured print against his own thumb. He pressed it down on the desktop’s reader square and the computer’s screen activated. He was in.

He put his glove back on and began moving through the files on the desktop. He had no idea where the homeowner was but there was plenty on the computer for him to look through and attempt to understand. His study went on for hours and only ended after dawn, when he heard a car pull into the driveway on the other side of the garage door.

He was alerted but did not bother to hide. He quickly prepared for the homeowner, then turned off the lights in the lab and waited.

Soon he heard footsteps in the house and then the rattle of a set of keys being dropped on a table or counter. He noted this sound, thinking that he might need those keys and the car that was parked outside. He hated to part with the Tesla but he might not be able to risk returning to it through the neighborhood in daylight. He had not planned to be in the house past dawn and now the quick escape might be the best escape.

The overhead lights in the lab came on and a man took five steps into the room before stopping short when he noticed the intruder sitting at the lab table.

“Who the fuck are you?” he said. “What do you want?”

The seated man pointed at him.

“You’re the one who calls himself the Hammer, aren’t you?” he asked.

“Listen to me,” Hammond said. “I work for the LAPD and I don’t know how you got in here but you need to get the fuck out right now.”

Hammond pulled a cell phone from his pocket.

“I’m calling the police,” he said.

“You do and they will know all about your little side business of selling female data on the dark web,” the intruder said. “Particular female data. You don’t want that, do you?”

Hammond put his phone back into his pocket.

“Who are you?” he asked again.

“You sent me an email,” the intruder said. “An archaic method of communication. It was fair warning about a reporter from FairWarning. Jack McEvoy?”

Hammond’s face had started to turn pale as he understood his situation.

“You’re the Shrike,” he said.

“Yes, and we need to talk,” the intruder said. “I want you to sit in that chair there.”

He pointed to a chair he had prepared for Hammond. It was a wooden chair he had taken from one end of a table in the kitchen. He chose it because it had armrests to which he had attached zip ties, each with a very wide loop.

Hammond didn’t move.

“Please,” the intruder said. “I won’t ask you again.”

Hammond tentatively went to the chair and sat down.

“Put your hands through the plastic loops and then pull the tabs tight around your wrists,” the intruder said.

“I’m not going to do that,” Hammond said. “You want to talk, we can talk — I’m on your side here. We sent you that email to alert you. As a warning. But I’m not going to tie myself up in my own house.”

The Shrike smiled at Hammond’s resistance and spoke in a tone that suggested that Hammond was being a bit of a nuisance.

“You’re going to do it or I’m going to go over there and snap your neck like a twig,” he said.

Hammond looked at him, blinked once, and then started putting his left hand through the loop on the armchair.

“Now pull the tab tight.”

Hammond pulled the loop closed around his wrist, not even having to be told to make it tighter.

“Now the other.”

Hammond put his right hand through the loop.

“How do I tighten this one? I can’t reach it.”

“Bend down and use your teeth.”

Hammond did as he was told and then looked up at his captor. He waved his hands to show he was securely locked to the arms of the chair.

“Okay, now what?”

“Do you think I would bind you if I meant to harm you?”

“I don’t know what you would do.”

“Think about it. If I wanted to hurt you it would have already been done. But now we can comfortably talk.”

“I’m not comfortable at all.”

“Well, I am. And so now we can talk.”

“Talk about what?”

“The email you sent about this reporter — how did you know to send it to me?”

“See, that’s the thing. This is why you don’t have to worry about me. I don’t know who you are. We just have the email you used when you joined the site. That’s it. No way of knowing who you are, so this—”

He shook his arms against the plastic bindings.

“—is completely unnecessary. Really. I mean it.”

The Shrike stared at him for a long moment, then got up and went to a printer that was on a table in the corner. He pulled a stack of documents out of the printer tray. He had been printing things through the night that had caught his interest on the lab’s computer.

He returned to his seat and held the stack on his lap.

“You miss the point,” he said without looking up from the documents. “How did you arrive at the decision to send me an email?”

“Well,” Hammond said. “You were the only one who downloaded the ones who died.”

“At Dirty4.”

“Yes, at the site.”

“That is a problem. Your site promises full anonymity, but now you are saying you identified me through my interactions on the site. That is disappointing.”

“No, wait, we did not identify you. That’s what I’m saying. Right now I could not tell you your name to save my life. We looked for anybody who had downloaded details about those whores who got killed. There was only one client. You. We sent the email in good faith. To warn you because you have a reporter on your trail. That’s it.”

The Shrike nodded as if accepting the explanation. He had noticed that Hammond was becoming more animated as his fear grew, and that was a problem because his wrists would chafe against the plastic bindings and that would leave marks.

“I’m curious about something,” he said conversationally.

“What?” Hammond asked.

“Your operation is magnificent. How are you able to take the DRD4 samples and link them back to each woman’s ID? I understand just about everything else but that — and that’s the beauty of this whole thing.”

Hammond nodded in agreement.

“Well, that’s proprietary but I’ll tell you. We totally own GT23’s database, only they don’t know it. We got inside. Complete access.”

“How?”

“We actually encrypted a DNA sample with a Trojan-horse virus and sent it in like everybody else does. Once in, the sample was reduced to code and it activated and we were in their mainframe. Complete backdoor access to their data. I’m a second-tier buyer of their DNA. I buy it, isolate the DRD4 carriers we want, and match the serial number that comes on every sample to the flesh-and-blood bitch we then list on the site.”

“That’s genius.”

“We think so.”

“Who is ‘we,’ by the way?”

Hammond hesitated, but for only a second.

“Uh, I have a partner. I’m DNA and he’s digital. He runs the site. I give him what he needs. We split the cash that comes in.”

“Sounds like a perfect partnership. What’s his name?”

“Uh, he doesn’t want to—”

“Roger Vogel, correct?”

“How do you know that name?”

“I know a lot because I’ve been here all night. Your records are not encrypted. Your computer security is a joke.”

Hammond did not answer.

“So where can I find Roger Vogel to ask him for more details of your operation?”

“I don’t know. He sort of comes and goes. He’s a private guy and we sort of lead separate lives. We were roommates once. In college. But since then we don’t see each other in person too much. In fact, I don’t even know where the guy lives.”

The Shrike nodded. Hammond’s refusal to give up his partner was admirable but hardly a problem. During the night he had read numerous deleted emails still in the desktop’s memory. Posing as Hammond, he had then sent a message to Vogel setting up a meeting for later in the day. Vogel had responded and agreed.

It was now time to end this. He got up and started to walk toward Hammond. He saw his captive’s arms tense and push against the bindings on his wrists.

The Shrike held up a hand to calm him as he approached.

“Just relax,” he said. “Nothing to worry about. Not anymore.”

He walked behind Hammond, wondering how different this would be. He had never actually done this to a man. He quickly leaned down and wrapped his powerful arms around Hammond’s head and neck, his left hand coming around and over his mouth so there would be no noise.

Hammond’s muffled cries of “No!” died in his hand and soon there was the deeply fulfilling snap of bone, cartilage, and muscle twisting to the extreme limit. Hammond’s last breath flowed hotly through his fingers.