James Swain - Bad News Travels

No luck. Each device had been scrubbed clean.

“Another dead end,” Beth said.

She tossed the burner in her hand back into the box. Criminal investigations were solved by tireless resolve, but along the way you needed to catch a break. The gods of fortune were not smiling down on them.

“Someone told me that the FBI employs hackers who can break into encrypted devices,” he said. “Is that true?”

“Yes, we do. But it’s off the record.”

“Why?”

“Many criminals use an algorithm called AES to hide information on their devices. Our government also uses AES to protect sensitive information. If an FBI hacker broke into a criminal’s device that had AES, and the information was used in court, we’d have to explain how the hacking was done, and that would jeopardize national security. To avoid that, our guys work in secret, and the bad guys never know they’ve been hacked.”

“Let me guess. You sneak the laptop out of the evidence room, and your guys hack its hard drive. Then you put it back, and hope no one notices.”

“That’s exactly what we do.”

“No one’s ever caught you?”

“Nope. We do it over the weekend. Works like a charm.”

“Can you hack Dalton’s computer this way?”

“I can try. I’d have to put in an official request, and explain why it’s necessary. I’d have to prove that I’ve exhausted all other options.”

“How long would that take?”

“About a week.”

“That long?”

“That’s fast for the bureau, Jon.”

He didn’t like it. Too many things could happen in a week. A smart defense attorney could get the case thrown out by a judge over a technicality, or the laptop could get damaged while being handled by the cops.

But he didn’t say anything. Using FBI hackers was their last resort, and they needed to run with it. Beth got a text, telling her the Jacksonville team had arrived.

“I better go meet them,” she said. “Would you mind cleaning up?”

“Not at all.”

As he put the burners back into the cardboard box, he wondered if they’d missed anything. Perhaps a scrap of paper in Dalton’s wallet held a clue, or there was a notebook in his bedroom. It was a big house, and they needed to turn it upside down.

The burner Beth had tossed in frustration lay in pieces inside the box. The back of the burner had popped off, and exposed the electronics. A tiny object behind the wires caught his eye. It was coin-shaped, and painted black to avoid detection.

“Whoa,” he said to himself.

He removed the broken burner for a closer look. The coin-shaped object looked like a transmitting device, which made no sense. Dalton was using burners so his activities couldn’t be traced, and would have never willingly had a transmitting device installed into one of them.

Maybe Dalton hadn’t known about it. Maybe the Sokolovs had given him the burner with the transmitting device so they could keep tabs on him.

The object was soldered to the burner, and he used his fingernail to pry it free. It was the size of a quarter, and twice as thick. He scratched away the paint. The manufacturer’s insignia — a calligraphic capital C — stared back at him.

Now he was really confused. The company was called Callyo; it made some of the most advanced mobile tracking technology in the world, and worked exclusively with law enforcement agencies. The Sokolovs weren’t the ones monitoring Dalton. They couldn’t have gotten their hands on these devices, or gained access to the technology needed to make them work.

It was the cops who were monitoring Dalton.

Daniels found Jon hunched over the desk upon returning. Instead of cleaning up, he had taken apart the burners, and neatly laid the pieces across the desk.

“You’re not going to believe this,” he said without looking up.

“Try me,” she said.

“Each one of these burners is equipped with a Callyo transmitting device,” he said. “How well do you know Director Rojas?”

“I just met her today.”

“Do you trust her?”

“I do. Why do you ask?”

“Someone was monitoring Dalton, and my bet says it was the Jacksonville office of the FBI. They somehow got these burners into Dalton’s hands and were tracking him.”

She examined one of the burners and found the transmitter hidden behind the wiring. There were a variety of mobile tracking devices used by law enforcement to monitor criminal behavior. Callyo was unique in that it had been created to monitor human traffickers, the information it gathered invaluable in sending traffickers to prison.

“Let me ask her,” she said.

Daniels returned to the living room. Rojas was overseeing an agent taking photographs of Dalton’s corpse, and did not see her approach. Daniels pulled her to the side, and handed her one of Dalton’s burners. Rojas immediately spotted the transmitter.

“Are you running an operation here?” Daniels asked.

Rojas shook her head. “Not mine.”

“Then whose operation is it? The transmitter is made by a company called Callyo, and is only sold to law enforcement agencies. You familiar with these guys?”

“I’ve heard of them. Their technology helps catch traffickers.”

“That’s right. This looks like a cheap burner, but it’s actually a sophisticated digital phone. Every call or electronic communication that’s made off this phone is sent to the cloud, and is logged into a database with a date and time attached to it. It also records the caller’s latitude and longitude and attaches it to the log. You can’t do any of these things with a burner, which is why traffickers use them.”

“That must be great in court.”

“The data is overwhelming. Whenever I’ve used it, I’ve gotten a conviction.”

“If it’s only available to law enforcement agencies, then the Florida Department of Law Enforcement must be running the operation.”

“Wouldn’t they have let you know?”

“That’s the rule. I guess it got broken here.”

“This operation has been going on for a while.”

“Really? What led you to that conclusion?”

“My partner found ten burners in a cardboard box beneath Dalton’s desk. Most traffickers use a burner for a month, then buy a new one.”

Rojas made a face. Human trafficking cases fell under the FBI’s jurisdiction, and the FDLE could not legally conduct an investigation without informing the bureau, and keeping them regularly apprised of their progress.

“Would you call your contact at the FDLE? I need to see the data they have on Dalton,” Daniels said.

Rojas pulled out her cell phone, and made the call. She was steaming, and looked angry enough to bite the head off a live chicken.

“My pleasure,” she said.

The call was a short one.

“The director of the FDLE’s Jacksonville office swears to me on a stack of Bibles that they aren’t running surveillance on Dalton,” Rojas said, putting her phone away. “He was surprised when I told him how long the operation has been going on.”

“Could another FDLE office be running the sting?”

“Those guys are very careful about not treading on each other’s turf,” Rojas said. “I would say that the answer is no. He did mention the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and wondered if it might be their operation through Team Adam.”

“I didn’t know that Team Adam ran covert operations,” Daniels said. “I’ve worked with them in the past, and they’ve always been transparent.”

“That’s been my experience as well,” Rojas said. “My guy at FDLE said there’s an ex-cop out of Fort Lauderdale who’s a member of Team Adam who has a reputation for not playing by the rules some of the time. He thinks this guy might be responsible.”