Shades of Mercy, page 7
“No one comes to mind?” the woman asked. “Nobody you’ve arrested, sent to prison? No one from your time in the Army?”
Beck scrolled through the names and faces in his mental Rolodex. “You’re asking if I have any enemies?”
She shook her head. “Not necessarily. Could be a friend. That message was clearly meant to find its way to you, Sheriff, so I guess I’m asking why in the hell that might possibly be. I mean, you happen to know both the victim and perhaps the hacker as well. That’s strange, don’t you think?”
Beck noticed Maddox studying him, searching for clues. He was, after all, a cop in his own right. Beck’s mind raced back to the events of last winter. Was there a connection to this hacker? Was Jesse Roy’s bull some kind of warning? His eyes turned back to the blonde. “A friend would most likely reach out to me directly. Either way, to the best of my knowledge, I don’t know anyone with these capabilities.” He looked at Tuffy. “Have we ever run across somebody like this?”
“It’s not like we’re Silicon Valley here,” she answered. “Not a bunch of computer nerds running around.”
Maddox sat back in his chair. “Okay, maybe you don’t know him, but like you said, he knows you. What is he trying to tell you?”
Beck shrugged. “At this point, maybe he’s trying to tell me he doesn’t think much of Jesse Roy.”
The woman leaned in. “Mr. Roy is an old friend, yes?”
Christ. They’re probably already into my Army file and everything else. “Yes, and as I told Agent Maddox the other day, we’re looking into him.”
“As are we, Sheriff,” Maddox said. “But we need to look fast. We can’t afford for this to happen again, and it’s drawing all the worst kinds of attention, if you get my drift.” He and the NSA woman stood up from the table.
Beck stared up at them. “We could have had this discussion over the phone, Ed. Why come all the way out here?”
“I needed to see your face,” the blonde said, answering for him.
Beck took a moment before getting to his feet. “And what did my face tell you?”
She examined it again, his face. “You know more than you’re saying.”
“Well,” said Beck, the corners of his mouth expanding outward. “Nobody likes a chatterbox.” They would be looking for points of intersection between him and Jesse Roy and would not be above making them up if they weren’t self-evident. “It’s a big county,” he told them. “We’ll work as quickly as we can. Meantime, can you give us any information on the RPA, anything that might help us determine who the hacker might be?”
The blonde shook her head. “I’m afraid we can’t.”
Tuffy got out of her chair. “Not big on team sports?”
“The data suggests,” said Maddox, “it was someone within a twenty-mile radius of the Roy ranch.”
Beck’s head tilted. “A twenty-mile radius is oddly specific. Are you referring to radar data?”
“No,” the blonde said, rebuking Maddox with her eyes.
Beck frowned. This was about as easy as trying to pick fly shit out of pepper. He had been out of the Army for a few years now, and sometimes he forgot how arduous conversations could be when classified things were being discussed. “So, stealth drone. No radar track.”
Maddox looked at the NSA lady, then back to Beck. “No comment.”
Beck set his eyes on the woman. “Since the NSA is involved, can you at least confirm this incident involved breaching one of our satellites for GPS or other targeting information?”
“We cannot,” she answered. “And nobody said I was with the NSA.”
Beck chuckled. “And Al Pacino is not the brother of cappuccino.” He shrugged. “Some things are obvious.”
As they walked through the office, Beck scanned his brain for possible suspects. There was the kid at the County Clerk’s office who helped them identify a penetration of the voter system last year, but he wasn’t a hacker. X-Files might have some contacts in the hacker community, but it was unlikely any of them were working out of Lincoln County or would know Jesse Roy. If only I could ask 0DayMei.
He followed them out. Before they reached the government SUVs and the squad of special operators, Maddox turned to him. “Honestly, Sheriff, I don’t know what any of this means, but as you can see, it’s already getting the attention of some people very high up on the food chain. Whatever you can do to help us identify this person would be much appreciated. The alternative, I’m afraid, isn’t good.”
That was Maddox’s way of confirming they were looking into him. The government would start pulling his life apart, piece by piece, looking for the thinnest tendril that might stretch far enough to wrap itself around a hacker. He could see the sympathy in Maddox’s expression, and Beck decided he was too nice a guy for this job. And way too nice to be a cop. This case might be the end of him. Of both of them if Beck couldn’t figure it out. “What’s the alternative?”
“That it happens again. If it does, these people in your parking lot will turn this county upside down. It will get ugly. Fast.”
“Can’t you ground your drones until you figure this out?”
“You know it’s not that simple. These birds are flying all over the world. Technically, the satellites can be hacked from anywhere.”
Now Beck appreciated why the kill squad was here. Someone in the Pentagon, probably a whole room of people, were shitting their britches right now. Special Ops was here to find the hacker and shut him down, quickly and quietly. He decided to ask Maddox the same question he asked X-Files. “What kind of equipment would a person need to do this?”
“I’m told he would need a laptop.”
Beck called after Maddox as he approached the vehicles and their trained assassin occupants. “This is my jurisdiction, Ed. If you find whomever is responsible for this before I do, you need to call me before you—or they—take any action. Are we clear?”
Maddox held out his hand. “Crystal, Sheriff. And I trust I’ll be your first call should you locate him before we do.”
“That door only swings one way,” Beck said as they shook. “But you’ll definitely be on my short list.”
CHAPTER 10
Beck drove so fast he didn’t even notice the silver Hyundai coming the other way, or the Asian man behind the wheel. When he pulled onto Hansen Street in Panaca and the home of Albert and Ellen Berg, the EMS guys had covered the body already and were about to load it.
He toggled the siren off. “Sit tight,” he told Columbo, with a quick glance in the rearview mirror. The dog wasn’t there. Beck twisted around and found him curled into a ball on the floor, somehow sleeping again. He left his narcoleptic deputy in peace and got out of the truck, signaling Stan Leavitt, the senior EMT, to hold up.
“Which one?” he asked, coming around to the rear of the ambulance.
Stan always had a toothpick twirling in his mouth. “Hey, Sheriff. Ellen Berg, God help her. Only forty-eight years old.”
Beck didn’t know the Bergs well, which was to say he didn’t know if they had kids, didn’t know where they vacationed or what card games they liked to play. He knew they ran the Panaca Market a block away, but that was it. He motioned for the senior EMT to unzip the body bag. “Overdose?”
“Looks like. Neighbors said they saw her outside wandering around in a stupor in her underwear like she was drunk. Then she collapsed in the road. Cyanosis, respiratory failure, all the signs of opioids.”
Stan drew back the sheet from Ellen Berg’s round and swollen face, bloodied from colliding with the pavement. Beck stepped up next to her. “Fentanyl?”
“Good bet, considering how fast she went down. We got here ten minutes later. One of them tried to do CPR. He didn’t know what he was doing, but he tried. Probably didn’t matter. We took over but it was too late. Gave her the Narcan, but that was no bueno. No sign of what she took. She didn’t have anything on her.”
Beck turned sharply around, didn’t want to look at her anymore. “Mr. Berg?”
Stan motioned toward the house. “Someone called him at the market. He’s inside with Arshal.” He and the junior EMT then lifted the gurney and slid it into the patient compartment of the ambulance.
“Thanks, Stan.”
Beck walked into the house, the expansive entryway adorned with crosses, paintings, figurines, and other Christian symbols. He found Mr. Berg sitting on the sofa in the living room, crying and being comforted by a woman of similar age, probably a neighbor. Arshal Jessup came in from a hallway and motioned for Beck to follow. In the kitchen, the silver-haired deputy showed him two empty pill bottles.
“Old prescriptions,” he said, his gravelly voice the result of three separate battles with thyroid cancer. “Both for Vicodin, both empty. Husband says she hasn’t been on the stuff for six months or so because she couldn’t get it from the doc anymore. She told him she had weened herself off and was only taking Tylenol now.”
It was a common refrain. “Old injury?”
Arshal had been on the job for forty years, had worked for Pop for thirty. He was tall and lean and mean-looking, and he had Beck’s undying respect. “From a car accident three years ago down near Ash Meadows. She got rear-ended by a semi in a construction zone. Guy didn’t slow down fast enough. I handled the call at the time. She was lucky to make it. Fire Department had to use one of those big can openers to pry her out of the car.”
“Jaws of Life?”
The old cowboy slid his bifocals down the long bridge of his nose and glowered at his boss. “That’s what I said, isn’t it?”
“How was Eagle Valley? Catch anything?”
Arshal’s face lit up. “Couple of nice rainbows, some really nice largemouth bass.”
“Good,” Beck said. “Fish fry at your house. So where are the drugs?”
“I’ve checked here. Nothing. Was about to ask Albert if I could check the bedroom, but he’s pretty torn up. They were high school sweethearts, married right after, two grown kids, two grandkids.”
That news was like a swift kick in the genitals, making Beck sick and furious at the same time. A minute after getting Albert’s permission, they were searching the main bedroom. Beck eventually found what he was looking for inside the bedroom closet, stuffed into the toe of one of the deceased’s many pairs of snakeskin boots. The pills were in a Ziploc bag, and there were seven of them left. They were stamped with the same M30 markings he’d seen a few nights earlier. “Weapons of mass destruction. Same stuff I found in Cash’s room.”
Arshal walked over and took the bag from his boss, holding it by a corner and placing it inside a clear evidence bag. “Probably a long shot, but we’ll dust it for prints anyway. Maybe we’ll get lucky.” When they walked back into the living room, Arshal didn’t show Albert Berg the pills they had found, and Beck understood why. It would serve no purpose.
Beck was holding a laptop computer he had also found in the bedroom. “Albert? Did Mrs. Berg use this computer?”
Albert dabbed at his tears. “More than me. She was always on the Facebook,” he said with a quick laugh. “I only used it to keep the store’s books.”
“Would you mind if I had someone look it over? Maybe she was communicating with the person who sold her … whatever she was taking.”
Albert’s shoulders rose toward his ears. “Take it. I don’t care. I don’t want to run the damn market without her, anyway.”
“Is there a password?”
“TheLordismyShepherd,” he replied. “Uppercase T, L, and S.”
Beck felt the rage in his chest, searching like bad heartburn for a way out. A wife, mother, and grandmother wiped out in a single moment. He and the old deputy moved outside. “Arshal, I want everybody on this. We need to get the word out. Maybe put an announcement in the paper. We need to find out who is selling this stuff. Someone in this county has to know. Knock on every door. Tell people if they’re buying any kind of pills off the street, there’s a good chance they are going to die from it.”
“You want me to take that?” asked Arshal, pointing to the laptop in Beck’s hands.
He shook his head. “I’ll take it. Got an idea.” Back in the truck, he called Brinley on her cell. “Where are you?”
“The Youth Center,” she said.
“You mentioned this kid the other day who’s locked up there. Mercy, I think. Said she was gifted. Gifted in what way?”
“Huge tech freak.”
“Like in computers?”
“No,” she laughed. “Like in LEGOs.”
“I’m on my way. Don’t go anywhere, and tell Dan I need to speak to her.”
“Okay,” she said, “but you’re taking me to lunch after.”
CHAPTER 11
Beck had been to the Lincoln County Youth Center a few times and mostly knew the superintendent, Dan Whiteside, from their Saturday softball league. He liked the scenery of the place, sprawling over many acres on mountain foothills and gentle slopes, a calming setting for some of the state’s most troubled children. The center housed about a hundred and forty kids from twelve to eighteen years of age, boys and girls. The man who ran it was a retired state trooper, and like many state employees, Dan jumped agencies when he needed a change that wouldn’t take him out of Nevada’s retirement system. He’d actually played two years with the Denver Broncos as a defensive back before tearing up his knees but had always struck Beck as more of a teddy bear than someone whose job it was to kill a wide receiver.
Brinley was waiting for Beck between the two sets of glass doors at the entrance to the administration building, but it was Columbo she traded kisses with. Beck only got a lanyard with a visitor’s badge over his head. The receptionist buzzed them in and two more doors opened automatically. They entered a long hallway. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” she asked.
“We had another overdose death. Ellen Berg in Panaca.”
Brinley stopped in her tracks and bent over at the waist. “Ellen from the market? Albert’s wife?”
Beck thought for a moment that she was going to be sick. “Same pills Cash Conrad was taking. Pretty sure anyway.” He held up the leather satchel carrying the Bergs’ laptop computer. “Hoping your whiz kid can get something off this thing that can tell me who she was buying from.”
Brinley stood up and hugged herself. “The market supplies our food here. Did you know that?”
Beck pulled her in close and spoke quietly into her ear. “I had no idea. Sorry.”
The hallway emptied into a foyer that resembled a nurse’s station in a hospital, with offices arrayed behind it in a semicircle. The one on the far left belonged to Dan, and as they entered, they found the superintendent carefully placing potato chips inside his roast beef sandwich.
“Hey, Beck,” he said, getting up from his chair and wiping his hand on his slacks. They shook. Dan noticed Columbo, his face brightening. “Who’s this?”
“Name’s Columbo. Bo, say hi to Dan.” The dog obeyed without hesitation, moving around the desk and placing his forelegs over Dan’s thighs.
“Wow,” Dan said. “He likes me.”
Columbo lifted up higher, rising on his haunches, his long nose passing over the top of the desk. “He likes potato chips,” Beck said. “And sleep, apparently.”
Dan could see Brinley was visibly upset. “Hey, what’s going on? You okay?”
“Dan, Ellen Berg died this morning,” she said.
Dan grabbed both sides of his face and looked at Beck, who told him about the overdose and Cash Conrad, and the fact that fentanyl was making the opioid crisis that much worse in Lincoln County. “I’ll get out to see Albert after we’re done,” he told Beck, shaking his head. “Fucking opioids, excuse my French. Half the kids here used to be addicted to them. But Ellen Berg? She’s been working with the center since before I got here. I can’t believe it. I didn’t even know she had a problem.”
“Neither did her husband,” said Beck. “At least, he thought she was over it.”
“Is that why you’re here? I thought you wanted to speak to one of our members.”
Having smelled the entirety of Dan’s office, Columbo came over and sat down on Brin’s feet.
“I do, Dan,” Beck said, pulling the laptop out of the bag. “I’m in need of some technical support, and Brinley tells me you’ve got somebody here who’s a savant with these things.”
Dan rocked back in his top-of-the-line office chair, built to support his 250 pounds, and ran his thumbs under his waistline. Then he bobbed his colossal noggin. “Mercy Vaughn. She’s definitely a savant, but I’m afraid we restrict her access to computers. It’s why she’s here, Beck.”
Beck shook his head slightly. “I’m in a bind, Dan. I need to know how Ellen Berg was getting her drugs. Can you at least tell me about this girl?”
The big man shifted his jaw back and forth several times, framing his response carefully. “Well, she’s a special circumstance. She’s sixteen and brilliant. And I mean brilliant. Tests off the charts. Been here about seven months, a model citizen really, no disciplinary issues, which is rare.” He looked to Brinley and then back to Beck. “She comes from a single-parent family that was broken from the word go. Her mom was an addict, a convicted felon who disappeared when Mercy was eight years old. The term at risk doesn’t begin to cover it.”
Beck had seen this picture a hundred times, mostly from runaways who found their way to Lincoln County. “Eight years old. So, she was in the system after that.”
Dan pushed his plate to one side of the desk. “One foster family after another. You can do the math. She did some things, got sent here. Does that help?”
“Too soon to tell. Just how good is she with computers?”
“When she was about twelve, she started committing online theft. Picked up the skills in school apparently and even used their computers. Started with credit cards. She figured out how to get them fraudulently over the internet and then used them to purchase things. Graduated quickly to more serious cybercrimes. Began selling the passwords of online games and their licenses to other kids, which is apparently a lucrative business. Moved on to creating fake IDs which were so good you couldn’t tell the difference between them and the real ones. She was fourteen when she got caught, and that was only because a competitor ratted her out. But she kept going. It escalated from there.”
