Cafe Underground Presents

PHACKER

Book 3     --    Chapter 1
The Detective Andi Wicksham Series, by RL Bell

Copyright © 1997 RL BELL

Andi Wicksham's INVESTIGATORY SERVICES

Chapter 1

        Andi Wicksham, owner of Investigatory Services, was taking a two-hour manager's-lunch with a friend. Her friend Sonny wore a yellow head-scarf that leaked casual strands of bleached-white hair and a pair of oversized, cut-off overalls over a tastefully paint-spattered tee shirt. They walked through Portland's summer warmth to the Underground Cafe--Andi ordered green chili and shredded chicken soup with a small Caesar salad and Sonny the Garden Burger ala chef's whim for Tuesday.
        Her burger came with thick, sweet teriyaki sauce and pickled ginger. "No questioning who's in the kitchen today..." she quipped.
        An answer wasn't expected--it could only be Shawn. Andi rolled her eyes and spooned a kernel of hominy and a thick shred of chicken from her bowl.
        Sonny peered under the toasted bun. "...so Paco told the editor there were three publishers waiting and the guy caved in." She bit into her burger and dribbled teriyaki sauce down her chin.
        "Were there?" Andi asked through a mouthful of lettuce.
        "Were there what?" Sonny wiped at the sauce with her napkin and took a sip of tea.
        "Other editors...?"
        "Yeah...he's hot property..." Sonny seemed bored with the subject and the conversation drifted.
        They split a caramel-fudge mousse desert and downed the last of their iced teas. Tingling-warm sun rays pierced the warm breeze blowing from the Eastern Oregon plateau. The usual, sporadic packs of traffic coursed SE 50th--at the corner two girls talked animatedly while waiting for a break in the traffic. Down a block, in front of the hardware store, there was shouting, the slam of a car door and the squeal of a drag race start.
        A candy-apple red pickup with a roll bar and fog lights streaked towards them--gas peddle floored and the engine roaring. Andi could see the passenger's face tighten to a grimace as he looked back over his shoulder toward the hardware store. The driver's gloved hand tugged the steering wheel, careening the truck across the center line and around a slow turning car. She met his eyes a brief second just before they came abreast, then he too looked back through the rear window.
        The girls were mid-street when the truck arrived, one child dove from its' path, the other froze. The truck jerked as the driver attempted a last minute swerve--fish-tailing wildly, knocking the girl, like a rag doll, hard against the curb to Andi's left. The other screamed "Gina..." and kept screaming as the truck roared down the street and Andi and Sonny ran to help.
        A crowd gathered, police and ambulance were called, but there was little to do but comfort the child still screaming. Sonny and Andi gave statements to the police and waited as the child's body was bagged.
        Andi had glimpsed the three letters of the license plate--SQT. She thought the first number was an 8.
        She was certain there were two people in the cab--both males, both clean-shaven and pale, in their thirties; probably Euro-American--dark clothes. Another witness thought there were three--one man reported only the driver; but the same man as Andi--medium brown hair, dark eyes and gaunt physique.
        Sonny had been watching the kids, not the truck. She gave her brief statement and was told to go home.
        Uniformed officers drove Andi to the station to work on computer sketches. "Thicker chin? Longer nose?" She watched images form and reform, still in shock over what she'd seen--hardly believing how the truck had sped away after mowing down the child.


        Back in her office an hour later, she focused on work. Early summer had brought a rash of missing persons, mostly adolescents, running from childhood in the time-honored human tradition. Andi usually discouraged distraught parents from retaining her on their first contact. Those persisting, she took on, letting them pay for making the same phone calls and flyer efforts they could do themselves for free. Flyers were like milk cartons--almost entirely futile, she told clients that up-front, but it was something everyone of them expected.
        Paying money seemed balm to parental guilt and was probably easier than taking time out of a busy schedule.
        She and Lena had their usual scattering of summonses to serve--mostly the ones that the sheriffs gave up on, ones that took more than a simple visit. There were three open cases for lawyers trying to track down witnesses, two others were accident cases. She'd just closed two for business people looking into business partners and one rather nasty divorce.
        All their cases passed through her hands, but her hyper-active office manager Lena, admittedly, did most of the paper work. They'd turned a tidy profit since Lena joined--and now she demanded a junior-partner's share. Andi plodded through the files stacked on her desk, only occasionally glancing to the window. Lena was probably worth a full partner's portion--she'd have to deal with that soon enough.


        It was about four-thirty that afternoon that she got the call from Ramirez, her old friend turned police detective.
        "Wicksham...you witnessed the hit and run this afternoon..."
        Andi shut her eyes. "On 50th? ...get the guy?"
        "I need to talk...I'm down the street from there...you know the convenience store at Division?"
        "Now?" Andi complained.
        "I'm waiting." he abruptly hung up, leaving her with the phone at her ear and questions at the tip of her tongue.
        She growled a curse, smiled to Lena, said "See you tomorrow...lock up..." grabbed her coat and stalked down the stairs to her car. She'd go on home after Ramirez. There wasn't much she could tell beyond what she'd given in her statement.
        She pulled to curb across from the convenience store. Half a block up, beside the hardware store, a convention of police cars flashed white, blue and red, crime-scene barrier-streamers were already strung.
        Ramirez stepped from a unmarked car as she pulled up. Andi sauntered up but looked beyond him, watching the activity behind the tape.
        Andi asked dryly "What's the big deal, Ramirez?" No candy apple red pickup was parked on the street.
        Ramirez tucked papers back into a folder. "I've read your statement. You saw the guys in the truck?"
        Andi nodded.
        "There's a body inside...office next to the Hardware store. Coroner's first guess is mid-afternoon, but it could have been morning. It's messy. How's your stomach? Want to go inside?" Ramirez turned his head to three-quarters and gazed evenly into Andi's eyes.
        "Messy?" she asked, in a moment of apprehension, but met his eyes.
        "A knife...victim's tied...tortured. Forensics hasn't been in yet Wicksham...touch nothing..." He held up a finger in warning.
        Andi steeled herself as they ducked under the barricade. Ramirez escorted her past the officer at the door. FAMILY INVESTMENTS said a sign. The tiny first room held a chair and desk and a low table with magazines. The back room held a desk and table with two big computers--one of the keyboards dangled to the floor at the end of its' cord.
        The body lay half naked in a pool of blood, shirtless, trouser legs slit and laying askew to expose the legs, one of which bent unnaturally up at the knee. A young Asian man, his arms were bound behind him with electrical cord tied twice around each wrist and knotted securely, his mouth taped shut, his eyes were open as if reading something leaned against the wall.
        There were gashes across his chest and wounds where knives had been driven deeply into his ankles and shoulders, part of the scalp had been slit and pulled away from the skull and the abdomen was slit wide enough to emit a loop of intestine. Andi stepped closer, caught by a strange fascination, fought the urgency to gag from the odor of bile, and urine and excrement. His hands had been mangled, fingernails torn, a finger broken, the ankles red-brown with blood from being pounded upon.
        "He was tortured, but his mouth was taped so he couldn't tell anything..." Andi noted flatly.
        Ramirez looked down at the body. "Funny, huh?" he snorted tiredly.
        Another officer called Ramirez back to the front room leaving Andi there alone. A hush seemed to shake the room. She felt an inner coldness at the sweet smell of death; there was no spirit within the flesh, she could feel void--before her was an empty shell. She made her way out a minute later.
        The usual police and coroner personnel swarmed about, videos and photos and a portable table with evidence bags and fingerprint kits readied for use after the first wave ebbed. Once photographed, the body was inspected and removed, and the site left to forensic technicians.
        Andi felt weak, her skin was clammy despite the obvious warmth. Was it the red pickup driver's work?
        Ramirez turned to her. "...recognize him?" He glanced back toward the room with the body.
        "Not driver or passenger..." Andi stated flatly. "I'm sure..."
        "Shit..." Ramirez stomped and shook his head. He took her by the arm and led her back out to the street.
        Andi knew better than to ask questions--crime scenes were officious turf. She could wait--he'd tell what he could out of earshot.
        "...coffee later?" she asked hopefully.
        "Not a chance...this'll take until late." He made a face. "I do the work, but it's Max's case." He shook his head to heaven. "...I'm a team player..." He caught Andi's eye and looked away. "Coroner's report tomorrow and lab work then and two days from now. Maybe after...tomorrow or the next day." His shoulders bowed and his eyes stared steely from wrinkled sockets.
        "The hit and run connected?"
        "No comment..." he pursed his lips and gave her a hopeless look. "The partial license number you got still's being traced..."
        Andi was on the verge of another question when he reached a restraining hand and said, "Later..."
        She nodded, returned to her car and drove slowly home.
        The afternoon had gotten worse when she thought it couldn't have. She couldn't face food--it would be enough to sleep without nightmares. It was time for a walk--if she was lucky she'd pass no friends and strangers would ignore her.


        Eight-thirty the next morning, Lena was already at her telephone when Andi came in with a newspaper. She'd been unable to shake the image of the tortured body from its ledge at the edge of her consciousness.
        "Morning..." Lena mouthed silently, nodding, phone to ear, taking notes; she returned her attention to her call.
        Andi crossed to her desk. Outside, landscapers were getting an early start, a flat bed with four large, root-bundled trees reclining on each other--creeping up the street followed by a smaller truck with a extendable crane and a fifth arboreal bundle. The trees were in full, grey-green leaf and billowed high and wide despite their greater limbs being tied. There was a disorienting incongruity to trees flowing up the street. Andi smiled, swung back to her desk and looked through the paper for the murder.
        "So, what did Ramirez want?" Lena spun around and hung up the phone in a single movement.
        Andi stared across her desk blankly. "It was gross...a body a block down from the accident... blood, tortured--bound and sliced up. Ramirez thought it might have been one of the guys in the truck, but this guy was Asian with longer, black hair." She let out a deep breath and held out her hands, "It was real bad." she said quietly, "...bad."
        There was a small box below the fold on the front page. A little headline saying "MYSTERIOUS DEATH," there were two paragraphs and a invitation to turn to page thirteen. Andi flipped through to the rest of the article.
        "Poor baby..." Lena consoled.
        Andi looked up dismally. "I can't get rid of the image of this guy screaming though his mouth was taped...they'd cut his Achilles tendon, dug knives into shoulder joints...it made me sick."
        The article didn't give much more than that a body had been found, mysterious circumstances, possible foul play--investigation pending.
        Possible foul play--call that understatement. Her stomach churned as the image of the body replayed before her.
        "I think we need to get coffee..." Lena rose to her feet, but held Andi's eyes with a question.
        "I don't want to talk about it." Andi muttered emphatically. "I just wanted to tell you." She didn't get up, but hadn't said no to getting coffee.
        Lena tried playing mother hen, shooing Andi with flapping wings. "Just a short one, get out of the office...not a single word about blood...when we come back these vibes’l be gone."
        Andi looked down at her watch and shook her head impatiently. "No, I'm OK. Let me get something done...work'll feel better than talking." She looked appealingly up to Lena.
        Lena shrugged. "Sure, why not...?" As she slipped back into her chair, her phone rang. She rolled her eyes and reached.
        Andi looked down at her desk and chewed lightly her lip. The report for an auto parts franchise on a prospective new member lay atop her in pile. She glanced down each page, reading about a sentence every couple paragraphs to reacquaint herself with the case, then paged through the addenda before flipping to the end to give final consideration to the bill.
        When Lena first came to the firm she prodded their pricing up to a mid-scale bracket--arguing each case. Then she fell to typing invoices without asking, leaving Andi to challenge her. She'd billed the case more strictly than Andi would have, utilizing what she called a "rich-jerk factor" to subsidize the discounts they gave worthy causes.
        It was fair; they'd done three investigations for this client so far, so their price was in the ballpark. Andi stuffed the report into its' accompanying envelope and tossed it in the basket of mail. She'd just pulled the next file from her pending pile when the telephone rang.
        Andi glanced over, Lena was busy on the other line, her back to Andi, her head bobbing to some inner rhythm. Andi took a breath and picked up the phone.
        "Wicksham here." she answered evenly.
        "It's Ramirez...thought you might like to know that the red truck was found. It was reported missing yesterday morning, the owner's African-American and at work so he’s completely cleared. Forensic's going over it with their finest comb, but it would be a long shot to find anything. You saw gloves on the guys?"
        "The driver..." Andi didn't know whether or not she wanted to risk remembering the body by asking questions about it. "It was like a mob hit in a B-grade movie."
        Ramirez sighed. "She was seven...the kid was just a kid and the parents average types...no flashy lives, nothing but a couple parking tickets. The truck scum were looking back over their shoulders, not up ahead." He was obviously reading through a report as he talked.
        "Yeah..." It seemed a wrong-place-wrong-time accident.
        Ramirez shifted gears. "Your hit and run guys weren't in the hardware store. No neighbors remembered the truck as a regular. Two officers went door to door and nobody'd even seen it."
        "Where does that leave you?"
        "With a hit and run only connected to the murder by a thread." Ramirez sounded apologetic. "A temporal coincidence..."
        "Anything else?" Andi asked dejectedly.
        "Descriptions of the office occupants from landlord and hardware clerks. Young males--one tall with dark hair, maybe Hispanic, three others, one Asian two Euro. The Asian was our victim, two of the other three could have been in our red truck. Young hip, maybe with facial hair--could be your pair...could be anybody." His voice betrayed a discouraged tiredness.
        "Thanks for calling..." Andi extended. “Any chance....”
        "Probably not. Yeah...well, I'll see ya...maybe a coffee or lunch this week?"
        "Why not? Thanks again." She left it at that. Pushing for a time would only pressure him. It could wait. She lowered the phone slowly and then dropped it the last half-inch just to hear it clatter.
        She shut her eyes a moment, then picked up the folder and began again at the beginning.
        Two files later the phone rang again. Lena was typing, but picked grabbed it before the first cry finished, one hand holding it to her ear as her other hand finished typing. "Investigatory services...yes ma'am...yes...for that you'd have to talk to Ms. Wicksham..." she turned to catch Andi's eye. "...yes, if you'll hold please..." Lena punched the hold button on their new telephones and said, "A Sandi Trafino, some advertising agency..."
        Andi picked up her receiver and said, "Andi Wicksham, Ms. Trafino...how can I help you?"
        "Hello? Ms. Wicksham? I was given your name by a business associate and would like to discuss a problem with you. My nephew has disappeared and...it's complicated...would you like me to make an appointment?" Straight-forward, without embarrassment.
        "How old was your nephew?" Andi decided she didn't need to pad her accounts with another fruitless search.
        "...twenty..." The question seemed to take her off-guard.
        "How long he been gone? Young people get itchy feet."
        "Since Thursday evening..."
        "...reported him missing?"
        "This morning on the phone. The police asked me to bring a photo and fill out forms...they said they could put a bulletin out Wednesday...they said he could be fishing."
        "You don't think so?" Andi asked.
        Trafino snorted. "Gene? ...certainly not fishing. And he was in the middle of something he took seriously....two months ago he noticed somebody entering our computers...he'd tracked them down. I don't think he'd leave in the middle of that..."
        "Your nephew tracked a hacker?" Andi asked doubtfully.
        "My nephew Eugene is um...rather special with computers..." Her voice trailed into an embarrassed murmur. "Maybe it would be better if we met...I could pay you for your time."
        The magic words. "Sure Ms. Trafino, here or there? Let me get my appointment book."
        "Here, if you could. Let's see...would this afternoon be possible?" The "possible" trailed upward in pitch.
        "Two o'clock?" Andi responded immediately.
        "Two? Two is fine. I was told it could get expensive, but that you were honest." Her voice was laced with apprehension.
        "I charge a daily fee, with a retainer you replenish if you want to continue...for this meeting why don't we say a flat fifty and I'll pick up my travel time." For fifty she could afford to sit and listen for an hour or two if what Trafino really needed was someone to spill her anguish to.
        "Fine." she said without hesitation, "Two o'clock." The phone hung quiet a moment then clicked as she hung up.
        Andi wrote the appointment in her calendar, glanced at her watch and looked up at Lena. "Want to do that coffee now?"
        
        
        
        At two o'clock Andi delivered herself to the third floor offices of Berg & Trafino. The offices appeared to take up most of the floor. An open ceilinged expanse divided roughly into cubicals on the far side with a tables of displays set on three sides of the space before the door. Slick cardboard cutouts splashing Nike and Mitsubishi logos waited like an open portfolio. Banners and signs hung from the ceiling with a pterodactyl and assorted mobiles. Across that open area nested the obvious desk of the receptionist. Andi smiled and waded through the visual clamor.
        "Andi Wicksham for Ms. Trafino." she told the brightly colored creature behind the desk. The woman's hair was a cotton candy pink, braided tight to her scalp and hung with brightly colored beads and fetishes. Her face had an angular, androgenous look and she wore turquoise slacks with a yellow kinte cloth blouse--a fake-leopard skin coat hung on the chair behind her. Her ethnic coloring and features were hard to pigeon-hole and her style was far from the corporate look one might expect from a firm courting Nike and Mitsubishi.
        "Yes ma'am, Ms. Trafino is expecting you." There was nothing slacker in the woman's professional demeanor. She swept up from her chair with an easy smile and led, in a provocative walk, to the open door of an office in the corner.
        Andi followed speechless and gawking as she was ushered on through.
        "Andi Wicksham, Sandi..." the exotic woman announced demurely.
        Andi met the dark eyes of the woman rising to her feet beyond the desk and was only half conscious of the receptionist efficiently closing the door behind her.
        She was waved with a smile into a brocade upholstered chair. Sandi Trafino was medium build, maybe forty, with prematurely graying hair that hung in a long pageboy and bangs. Her face was angular, with a strong Italian nose set-off by high cheek bones. She wore a cream colored blouse and mid-calf brown skirt, reading glasses hanging around her neck over a splashy red-print scarf. The office had two walls of windows, one looking out over a rooftop and the other onto the building across the street.
        "Thank you so much for making time for me Ms. Wicksham." the woman said graciously. "Would you like anything...water, coffee?" Trafino sat down as she offered, leaving Andi thinking the offer was only a formality.
        "No, thanks...quite a reception you offer." Andi turned look at the door behind her.
        Trafino smiled a wry smile. "It's one of the ways we stand out from our competition. Eileen has a masters in marketing and is one of our top account executives, but likes the drama of the front desk...she sizes up clients before defenses are up. I think of them as being softened a bit before I make my pitch."
        Andi nodded appreciatively.
        Trafino shrugged and smiled ironically. "It's sales and it works...what can I say?" She turned a warm smile on Andi and leaned her elbows on the desk. Her lipstick was a tasteful creamed maroon.
        "Your nephew?" Andi prompted.
        "Exactly...he was arrested at seventeen for hacking into NATO facilities in Brussels and France. Before that, at thirteen for unauthorized telephone use. He's my brother's child. Never violent or hostile, but he's always been hard to control. Both his parents dead, no siblings..."
        Andi nodded quietly. She took a few notes; glancing down for only a moment before looking up again to the well sculpted face of Sandi Trafino. "Do you realize that--statistically--there isn't much chance of finding him? I don't want to lead you to false hopes." She sat back quietly. This was the moment of decision--better for her to back out now than go halfway.
        Trafino waved her hands in the air. "I feel responsible...whatever trouble he's in is related to his job here."
        "His name?" Andi was satisfied with her answer--and it seemed she could afford it.
        "Gene, Gene Trafino. Eugene really, but..."
        Andi nodded. "I'll need to get into his apartment."
        "Eileen can give you his address, but I've never been there...and I don't have a key."
        Andi shrugged. "Know anyone who might?"
        "No..." Trafino answered curtly.
        It wasn't much of a starting point. Andi scowled to herself. "So...tell me something about him."
        "He's been working here as part of his probation...doing well. Regular, polite, not a problem...maybe eccentric, but no problem in our organization ..." Trafino rolled her eyes and waved that last away. "Anyway, he told me on June fourth...I looked it up in my work journal...somebody was hacking into our system. He wanted to put up fire walls and isolate our more sensitive files. I told him `yes of course.' It was his job after all...a week later he told of setting traps in files the hacker would want. He started spending nights here. It was all quite an exciting game for him--being on the other side of the coin, so to speak." Sandi Trafino paused to take a breath and Andi dropped her hands to her lap to flex her fingers.
        "Well, a couple of weeks later he said he caught the intruders--he'd traced them back, right to their computers."
        Trafino looked proud, Andi pretended that she understood. Trafino continued. "You know how hackers work? Routing through a chain of phone number to avoid tracing? In one line of an exchange and out another, from city to city?"
        "I've read about it..." Andi replied uneasily.
        "...of course," Ms. Trafino interrupted. "...its a world unto itself. Anyway, Gene traced him back, like hide and seek, setting up alarms here and there until he could slip a hidden program that would send back an e-mail. Once he found the hacker, he started hacking back. I should have stepped in--I suppose it was illegal, certainly beyond the limits of his probation, but it seemed so right, so fair..." She raised her chin and glanced at Andi for approval. "...it seemed a good thing for him to have to fight against the sort of thing