SK01 - Waist Deep (18 page)

“But possible.”

Adam shook his head.
“Not with my equipment.”

“Your stuff’s not good enough?”

“The hardware, sure.
I can search faster than
ninety-nine percent
of the public.
It’s software that’s the problem.
And access.”

“Access?”

Adam sighed again.
“Look, you’re asking me to run an Internet-wide search for ISPs that originate in River City.
Then you want me to find one specific site out of those thousands of sites, maybe tens of thousands.
And
then
you want to know who the owner of the site is and I’m sure you’ll want to know how to find that guy, too, right?”

I nodded.

He shook his head.
“Even just looking for public information, that search is prohibitively broad, man.
On top of that, a lot of sites and owner information is routed through other sites half a world away.
And encrypted, too.
Encryption is a bear.”

“Couldn’t you narrow the search?
Look for only pornography sites?”

Adam considered.
“Yeah, I could, but I’d run the risk of filtering out the very site you’re looking for.”

“She’ll be using a stage name,” I said.
“I’m sure of it.”

“What name?”

“Star.”

He shrugged.
“Okay, that helps a little, but we’re still talking about a huge project here.”

“Needle in a haystack?” I asked, a little sourly.

“A needle in a stack of needles,” Adam said, just as sourly.
“A stack the size of
Montana
.”

It was my turn to sigh.

Adam stared at me for a long while, although it felt more like he was staring through me.
He did that sometimes, when he was deep in thought and I was part of the thing he was thinking about.
It wasn’t particularly subtle.

After a minute, he broke his gaze and scratched beneath his nose.
“Okay,” he said.
“Here’s the thing.
I might have access to stronger searchware.”

“You might?”

“Yeah.
Might
.”

“What kind of access?”

He looked over his shoulder and around the Rocket.
A pair of old women
had wandered in and
were at the counter, but other
than
that the place was empty.
He motioned me to lean in and I did.

“The thing is, with this Homeland Security push since Nine-Eleven, the feds are partnering up with local law enforcement on some things.
One of those things is computer technology.
We got some money last yea
r to upgrade all my systems. W
hen we did that, the feds wired in the capability for me to tap into their network.”
He looked around again, as if he expected FBI stormtroopers to charge our table.

“What for?”

“Homeland security.
Terrorist stuff.”

“You can just use their network whenever you want?”
Maybe this would be easy after all.

He shook his head.
“No.
No way.
I have to call in and get a special password every time.
And they don’t just give it to me.
I have to give them a reason.
Tell them what I’m investigating.”

“If you had their software, could you do this search?”

“It’s still my search software that links up with theirs.
But it’s their access that’s the key.”
He shrugged.
“And I’d probably need to use their decrypter, too.”

“But could you find—”

“Yeah
,” he said
.
“
Probably.”

I leaned back.
“Will you?”

Adam sat for a while again, staring at me and through me at the same time.

I waited.

When he sighed, I knew the answer was yes.

“I’ll tell them I got a tip that a local site was showing child pornography.
That’s what it
technically
is, if she’s
sixteen
,” he said.
“They’ll want a case number, but I can stall on that.
I’ll tell them that I wanted to see if there was any merit to the tip before bringing in an investigator.
I’ve done it before with a tip on a marijuana grow.”

“How’s that?”

“I did an account check.
A guy on welfare was supposed to have over $80,000 in his account.
I did a surreptitious check on his account.”

“Surreptitious?
You mean illegal?”

He shrugged.
“Just a little bit funny.”

“Like what you’re going to do for me?”

“No,” he said.
“I suppose this is okay.
But if I find the site and she’s there, I have to file a report.
I’ll tell you what I find out, but I’ve got to file the report.”

I understood.
If he didn’t file the report, it would look like he was just cruising under-age porn for his own purposes.

“That’s okay,” I said.
“Hell, reference the runaway report on Kris when you file the porn report.
I just want to know who the guy is.”

“I know.
But with that information, the detective sergeant will assign the case
. With that obvious of a lead, t
hey’ll
jump on it right away and
do a search warrant on his place.”

He was right.
The Sex Crimes Unit was aggressive, as they should be.
But that aggressive stance was going to get in my way now.

“What if you didn’t write the report for a day?” I asked, looking at him pointedly.
“Or if it sat in your out box for a couple of shifts?”

“What if I was a moron?” Adam shot back.
He rubbed his hands together, thinking.
Then he said, “I guess I’d probably have to run a confirmation check on the site identification before I wrote the report.
And I could wait
until the end of the
day to write the report.”

“Thanks,” I said.

He shook his head ruefully.
“I’m still going to look like a screw-up.”

“No, you won’t.
You’ll look like a busy guy, that’s all.”

“Crawford will chew my ass.”

Lieutenant Crawford was the commander of the Major Crimes Unit, which the Sex
Crimes
Unit fell under.
He was a bit of a bastard.

“Crawford has no right chewing your ass,” I told him.
“He’ll bitch to your sergeant
.
Your sergeant will chew your ass.
That’s the chain of command.”

“I’m glad to see civilian life hasn’t diminished your understanding of proper police procedure,” Adam said.
“But Crawford believes the chain of command is a one-way street and only runs upward.
He’ll be in my office, chewing my ass for being a moron and not getting the report in immediately.
Then I’ll tell my sergeant about the ass-chewing.
My
sergeant will go bitch to everybody but Lieutenant Crawford about it. He’ll still hear about it, but
won’t care a bit.
And the world will continue to turn.
That’
s how the chain of command really works.”

I didn’t answer.
He was right.
I
tried to see Adam’s sergeant
in Crawford’s office barking at the fat balding jerk with his droopy cop mustache as he sat chewing on his unlit cigar.
But I couldn’t.

I remembered Crawford very well.
He’d been in Major Crimes when I was on the job.
I’d worked under his command while on light duty after my shooting.
He hadn’t exactly welcomed me with open arms.
And
when the Amy Dugger case broke…
well, it got worse.

“I can’t believe he’s still got that command,” I said.
“How long has he been there?
T
welve, thirteen
years?
That many years in one command is too long.”

Adam nodded and shrugged at the same time.
“He gets results.”

I snorted.
“His detectives get results.
He gets the credit.”

“And he doesn’t promote,” Adam said.
“I heard that last go
round, he turned down a promotion to
c
aptain
.”

“That can’t be.”

“That’s the rumor.”

“That’s like a
twenty percent
pay raise,” I said.
“At least.
Plus, the power.”

Adam turns his palms up.
“What can I say?
The rumor is that he turned it down because he already makes that much in overtime, anyway.
And he likes being on the TV news every time something terrible happens.”

“Who made captain instead?”

“No one.”

“How’s that?”

“It was Captain
Reott
who was going to retire that opened up the spot.
When Crawford turned it down, someone went to
Reott
and convinced him not to retire until the promotional list expired.”

“Why?”

“Because Hart was next on the list to promote to
captain
.”

I understood then.
Lieutenant Hart had been a prick when I was on the job and I doubted anything had changed.
The difference between him and Crawford was like the difference between a bull and a snake.
Crawford came right at you and you knew where you stood.
Hart was always coiled in the grass, waiting.
Even the brass didn’t want him to be a
captain
.
They’d stuck him in Internal Affairs years ago, while I was still working, and he’d been there ever since.