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I like to read my spam email, because as a somewhat reformed hacker I’m always interested in how bad operators can manipulate online data. I admired the ingenuity of whoever came up with the idea to email all your friends, telling them you’ve been robbed in a foreign country and need their help to get home. I wondered at the gullibility of anyone who’d consider helping that Nigerian prince get his funds out of his country.
But the bitcoin email I got one Saturday morning in early September, which my ISP didn’t flag as spam, was a twist I’d never heard of before.
Bitcoin is a digital currency, created about ten years ago by an anonymous computer genius. You could buy bitcoins using physical currency, or you could earn them by helping to process transactions from other users. Then you could use your capital to buy goods and services online.
A single bitcoin was currently worth somewhere near a thousand dollars. The way one accesses one’s hoard of bitcoins is through an address at one of the bitcoin exchanges. It contains a string of alphanumeric characters, but can also be represented as a scannable QR code.
The address is supposed to be unique and secure, but there have been several big cases of theft, and some exchanges have suspended users due to suspected criminal activity. The person emailing me, who identified himself as GrayMarketGary, had had his account suspended and needed the help of another bitcoin user to retrieve the money he had there.
If I would allow him to use my address, he’d reward me with ten percent of what he had in his account – according to him, over a hundred thousand dollars’ worth.
It smelled like scam to me. If his account was suspended, there was no way using mine would help him get his money out. Either he didn’t know that, or he was trying to get access to my funds, which were pretty minuscule. I’d only dabbled in bitcoin, earning myself a few dozen millibitcoins, or mBTCs, by doing processing work a few years before when I was unemployed and had lots of time on my hands. I hadn’t checked lately but my stash was probably worth no more than a few dollars.
From the header for the email, I got the IP address it had been sent from, and then used a geolocation program to figure out where in the physical world the address was located. I was stunned to discover it read 418 Main Street in Stewart’s Crossing, PA.
So this scammer was right in my hometown. Interesting. I’d come back to town after the demise of my marriage and a year-long stint in the California prison system for a stupendous hack I’d committed on the three major credit bureaus. Since then I’d tried to keep my nose clean, though occasionally I couldn’t resist snooping online, always in the service of a greater good. Or so I justified my actions.
I was curious about another cyber-criminal living close to me. It was a gorgeous day, my live-in girlfriend was out taking photographs, and I had nothing on my agenda, so I decided to take Rochester for a long walk into the center of town. We’d stop at the Chocolate Ear café and sit outside with a café mocha for me and one of Gail’s homemade dog biscuits for Rochester. And if we happened to pass by the address on Main Street—well, that would be coincidence, wouldn’t it?
Rochester relished any chance to get out into the fresh air, and once we passed the guardhouse at the entrance to River Bend, the community where we lived tucked into an elbow of the Delaware River, he realized we were going for a long walk, and jumped around joyfully, like a demented kangaroo.
“Okay, calm down, puppy,” I said, tugging on his leash. “We have a long walk ahead of us and you don’t want to get tired out too quickly.”
As if that would happen. Rochester had an endless supply of energy, especially when the outdoors was involved. He was about eighty pounds of fur, lolling tongue and wagging tail, his coat a honey gold. The top of his head was as soft as cotton, the straight hair on his back a bit coarser, with occasional whorls I loved to tease with my fingers.
We strolled up to Main Street and turned south, toward the Chocolate Ear. Traffic buzzed along beside us, the ubiquitous SUVs that had replaced the station wagons of my youth, moms ferrying their kids to sports practice or dance class. An older couple on a three-wheeled motorcycle, the woman’s long white hair blowing in the wind. Delivery trucks, a van from the Church of the Apostolic Revival, dark-skinned faces peering out the windows like we were caged animals on display.
The buildings along Main Street are a mix of colonial era stone houses and old Victorians, with more modern houses and stores filling the gaps. As we walked, I passed a few landmarks of my childhood. The florist where I used to buy my mother a single carnation, usually because I was apologizing for something. The five-and-dime where I bought penny candy with the leftovers of my allowance was now a doctor’s office but I could still remember the display cases filled with wax lips, Turkish taffy, and chocolate cigars and cigarettes in colorful boxes.
While Rochester sniffed and peed, ignorant of my personal history, I scanned for the scammer’s address. I was so busy snooping that when he pulled hard on his leash the loop slipped out of my hand, and he was off, chasing a tiger-striped cat down the sidewalk.
“Rochester!” I called, to no avail. When he thinks another animal wants to play, there’s no stopping him. My only hope was that the cat would come to a quick halt, raise its back like a Halloween silhouette and hiss, and that Rochester would take the hint.
Instead the cat kept going. I took off after them, but their four legs allowed them both to move a lot faster than my two. The cat jumped up onto the porch of one of the Victorians, then darted through the front door, which was partially open.
Rochester was right behind it.
“Oh, crap!” I hurried up to the Victorian a moment later and bounded up the steps. I knocked on the door. “Hello?”
No answer. From inside I could hear the clicking of Rochester’s toenails on the wooden floor. “Rochester!” I called in a low voice. “Come here now!”
He didn’t respond. I pushed the door open a little farther and called out again. “Hello? Anyone home?”
The cat meowed, and Rochester woofed. Was that my invitation? There was no way I was going to be able to retrieve my dog without going inside.
I stepped into a gloomy foyer. One of those constant-flowing water bowls for dogs and cats was right inside, though it was empty of water. I heard the rumble of rap music with a deep bass line coming from an open door to my right, and I stepped over to it.
The door led into a room that had been fitted out as an office, with a desk made of a wooden door laid over a pair of short file cabinets. A laptop computer was open on the top, and it appeared that the music was coming from its speakers.
The cat was perched on top of the desk beside the laptop, sitting up on its hind legs. Rochester sat in a similar position on the floor facing it. The cat’s empty food bowl rested underneath a pair of windows that looked out at the house next door. On the wall I spotted a couple of framed photos of a dark-haired guy in his late teens or early twenties with the tiger-striped cat on his lap.
“Rochester! You are a very bad dog!” I tried to grab his leash, but he scurried under the desk. The cat meowed and pawed at the laptop.
I moved around to the back of the desk and noticed that the screen saver was dissolving after the cat had touched the keyboard. A series of computations filled the screen—a series that I recognized.
The laptop was running software to analyze a bitcoin block chain – verifying someone else’s transaction as a way to earn bitcoins for the laptop’s owner.
I hadn’t checked the address to the house as I charged in, but it must be where the email sent to me had originated. What were the odds that two people on Main Street in Stewart’s Crossing were part of the bitcoin network?
But where was the spammer? Why had he disappeared, leaving his front door open and his computer running? From the faint pong wafting through the room it smelled like the cat’s litter box hadn’t been changed in a while, and there was no food or water for the poor thing.
Was that why the cat had lured Rochester and me inside? So we could give it the food and water it was missing?
I hesitated. It was quite possible that the spammer was in the house somewhere, and had just been too caught up in his work to take care of the cat.
But something about the loving way the guy looked at the cat in the photos, its elegant pink collar, all the toys on the floor, made me think that wasn’t the case.
So I did what I should have done before I even stepped into the house – I called my friend Rick.
Rick Stemper and I had known each other in high school, when we’d been lab partners in chemistry class, but we hadn’t become friends until I’d returned to Stewart’s Crossing. He was a detective with the Stewart’s Crossing Police Department, and Rochester and I had occasionally gotten involved in his cases, because my goofy golden seemed to have a nose for crime.
When Rick answered, I explained the situation. “I don’t want to leave without giving the cat some food and water, but there’s something spooky about this house and I’m afraid to touch anything.”
“For once you’re thinking like an intelligent adult. Take the dog back outside and wait for me. I’m at the station now, and I’ll be there in about five minutes.”
Rochester wasn’t willing to leave, splaying his paws, and the cat meowed anxiously, but I managed to drag the dog out to the porch. We sat on the front step, with my hand through Rochester’s collar. The cat stayed just inside the front door, watching us closely.
The police station was only a couple of blocks away, at the corner of Main and Hill Streets, so he approached on foot. Rochester barked a couple of welcoming woofs as Rick stepped up onto the porch.
“No one’s home?” he asked.
“Nobody answered me,” I said. “But I didn’t go anywhere other than into the office. I think this is just a first-floor apartment, so there may be somebody upstairs.”
“Wait here.”
He announced himself at the door, and when he got no answer he walked inside. The cat trailed behind him, and I sat on the step with Rochester by my side, my hand remaining gripped on his collar.
About five minutes later, Rick came back out to the porch. “Nobody home. And it does look kind of suspicious, like the guy ran out in the middle of what he was doing. You know what that stuff is on his computer screen?”
“Bitcoin.” I changed my grip from Rochester’s collar to his leash, stood up and explained about the spam email I’d gotten, how I’d tracked it to the house.
“You’re sure the story you fed me about the cat is true?” he asked. “You didn’t just go inside to snoop around because of the email you got?”
Rochester strained to go back into the house. “Swear to God,” I said. “What are you going to do?”
Rick sighed. “This is not a police case, Steve.”
“Did you look around in there? See all the pictures of the guy and his cat, the certificate on the wall from the cat’s breeder? This is not someone who would run off and leave his cat without food and water.”
“Yes, I saw that. And I sympathize. But I don’t have any authority here.”
“What about the cat? Can I at least give it some food and water?”
“You’re a private citizen. I can’t do anything to stop you. But if I were you, I’d do it and then get out. The guy who lives here is going to come back eventually. And he probably won’t appreciate your snooping around.”
I disagreed. If anything happened to me, I’d be happy if someone looked after Rochester. “But what if he doesn’t? What if something happened to him?”
“Again. Not a police case. At least not until someone who knows him actually reports that he’s missing.”
He stepped down to the sidewalk. “I’ve got to get back to the station. Act like the smart guy I know you are, Steve.”
He turned his back and began walking away. Yeah, I was a smart guy, and I knew I shouldn’t get involved. I wasn’t even a cat lover. But I couldn’t let someone’s prized pet go hungry.
I let go of Rochester’s leash and he scampered back into the house. I followed him inside, and found the kitchen. The cat followed me, with Rochester right behind her. A plaque was hung above the sink that read “Shere Khan Rules Here,” with a drawing of the tiger I recognized from the animated movie of Kipling’s The Jungle Book, which I’d seen as a kid.
“Is that your name?” I asked the cat, who wound her way through my legs. “Shere Khan?” She meowed, which I took for a yes.
Her coat was the same orange as the tiger, with dark stripes around her body, and her muzzle and ears were white. She was a beautiful specimen of her breed, whatever it was, and probably quite valuable.
I found a bag of cat food branded by a reality TV chef. Rochester sprawled out in the doorway of the kitchen, and he and Shere Khan watched as I poured dry food into a bowl and then put it down for her. Rochester watched her while she ate and I replaced the water container by the front door. Then I squinched up my nose as I emptied the litter into the trash, sealed the bag up and took it out to the can in the back yard. Then I replaced it with clean stuff.
So Shere Khan was taken care of. But what about her owner? Could I find out where he’d gone by snooping around his laptop?
Of course Rick would frown on that. But this guy wasn’t exactly a model citizen, and in my mind the kind of criminal activity he’d been engaging in could have gotten him into trouble.
The kind of trouble I was very familiar with.
After all, who better to help a scammer than a hacker? I went back into the office and sat down at the desk. My fingers tingled with that old familiar anticipation, the yen to go poking into somewhere I didn’t belong.
Within a few minutes I knew his real name – Jordan Campo. I knew that he rented the first-floor apartment through a management company, that he had grown up in South Philadelphia, and that he was a student at Bucks County Community College, where he was studying computer science. That he had bought Shere Khan as a kitten from a breeder of Bengal cats.
And that he had been diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome and had a prescription for Risperdal to treat symptoms of irritability.
I knew a little about the syndrome – that people with it had trouble relating to others and responding to social cues, and that they were often obsessed with one or more topics, like dinosaurs or baseball.
Jordan Campo appeared to be obsessed with bitcoin. He had dozens of file folders on his laptop, filled with PDFs and Word documents and Excel spreadsheets, all of them relating to bitcoin. He belonged to a dozen online groups that discussed the topic, and had paid several different entrepreneurs for training. Somewhere along the way he’d picked up the idea that he could scam other bitcoin users, and in one of the spreadsheets I found my name, email, and bitcoin address.
“Son of a bitch,” I said out loud, and Rochester looked up from his place on the floor beside me. Shere Khan was across the room on a gold velvet pillow and she didn’t react.
I looked at the clock and realized I’d been in Jordan Campo’s house for nearly three hours and I was no closer to figuring out what had happened to him. But this had become personal now, because he knew things about me, and I wasn’t going to let him get away with that.
I thought there might be a clue in his emails, but he had password-protected the account and I couldn’t hack into it without the tools I had on my laptop at home. I wrote down everything about the account on a piece of paper.
I found a couple of loose keys in the desk drawer, and discovered that one of them locked the front door. I left Shere Khan with more food, water, and clean litter and let myself and Rochester out, locking the door and pocketing the key. I’d come back and check on the cat in a day or two.
Rochester didn’t seem willing to leave Shere Khan behind, but I tugged on his leash and once he was outside he was happy to keep on sniffing the bushes and dead branches along Main Street as we walked to the Chocolate Ear.
I hooked his leash around the leg of one of the wrought-iron chairs on the sidewalk in front of the café and went inside. Gail, a cheerful blonde in her late twenties, was behind the counter, and she greeted me warmly. “How’s your day going?” she asked, as she began to make my café mocha.
“Kind of weird.” I told her about Rochester chasing the cat into the old Victorian. “The poor cat had no food, no water, and a nasty litter box. No wonder she was outside looking for help.”
“Nobody was there at all?”
Gail was a Bucks County native, too, so I thought she’d also have seen the pictures my social studies teacher had shown us of Pompeii, the way it looked like time just stopped in the middle of everything.
She nodded and handed me my coffee.
“That’s what it reminded me of. Like he just stepped out for a minute but never came back.”
“That is spooky. Did you ever find out his name?”
“Jordan Campo,” I said. “You know him?”
“There’s a guy named Jordan who comes in sometimes. Kind of odd. He never looks you in the eye.”
“Sounds like the same guy. I think maybe he has Asperger’s. But he’s a computer genius.”
“Yeah, Mindy says she sees him at the community college sometimes and he’s always staring at his phone. One day she saw him walk into a tree because he was so involved.”
Mindy was Gail’s part-time worker, a teenager who took college classes and changed her major every semester so she never seemed to make much progress. She sounded like a good match for Jordan Campo.
“You know, that explains something,” Gail said. “I’ve noticed that Jordan comes in on a weird sort of schedule. Sometimes he’s here early in the morning, and sometimes not until late afternoon. That’s probably because he has college classes.” She pursed her lips. “Come to think of it, he hasn’t been around for a few days. You think maybe he went on a spur of the minute vacation?”
“I can’t imagine he’d leave the cat high and dry like that.” I looked out the front window to where Rochester sat at attention, waiting for my return – and his treat. “You have any dog biscuits today?”
“I do. I’m experimenting with a new recipe, one that uses beef-flavored baby food. You’ll have to tell me what Rochester thinks.”
She used a pair of tongs to pull a biscuit out of the case and put it in a paper bag. “I’m sure he’ll love it,” I said. “He is my baby, which means he gets a lot of treats.”
That reminded me of Jordan Campo and his pampered pussycat. I paid for the coffee and the biscuit and carried them both outside. While Rochester chewed noisily, spilling crumbs on the sidewalk, I thought about what might have happened to Jordan. Was he on the run from someone else he’d tried to scam? Dead? Or had he simply spaced out?
I came up with no good ideas, and finally finished my coffee and began to walk back home with Rochester. We passed the old Victorian, but there was no sign of activity inside and I didn’t need to check in on Shere Khan, so we continued without stopping.
When we got home, I pulled the stepladder from the garage and propped it up in the second-floor hallway. With Rochester at my feet, watching intently, I climbed up, pushed aside the access panel for the attic, and felt around for my other laptop computer.
The computer had once belonged to my next-door neighbor, Caroline Kelly, who was Rochester’s original owner. After she was murdered, I installed a set of illegal hacking tools on her laptop and used them to trace her life. With the help of the big golden, I was able to direct Rick to her killer.
Since then, I’d used those tools occasionally to help Rick when there were clues to be found online, in protected places that conscientious police officer couldn’t go. This was one of those times, I thought, as I stepped down the ladder with the laptop in one hand. I was sure that Jordan’s disappearance was linked to the spam emails he was sending, and that meant I needed to hack into his email account and see where the trail led me.
I set up the laptop on the butcher-block kitchen table. I didn’t know enough about Jordan or his life to guess at his email password, so instead I opened a password-cracker program and plugged in the few pieces of information I could find – his birthday, his cat’s name, and so on.
The software would generate potential passwords based on that information, and then go on to more random choices until it finally broke into Jordan’s account. That could take hours, maybe even days, but it had never failed me.
Lili came in while I was sitting at the kitchen table watching the software work. I could tell she recognized the battered old laptop and had an idea what I was doing. “What’s up?” she asked.
She sat on the other side of the table, and Rochester came over to nose her.
I told her about the cat and the spammer.
“If he loves the cat as much as you say, there’s no way he’d have left her alone for so long,” she said. “You think you can find him?”
“I don’t know. Missing persons are out of my range of expertise. But I’m going to give it a try.”
“Could he be dead?”
I shrugged. “It’s a possibility. But Rick said there haven’t been any unidentified bodies in town lately.”
She snorted. “Lately.”
“I do think he’s in trouble. And I kind of feel like I need to help him.”
“Because he tried to scam you?”
Was I just interested in revenge? Well, a little. I wanted to show Jordan who was the better computer geek. But there was more.
“People helped me when I was in trouble,” I said, feeling my way through the ideas percolating in my brain. “I see myself in him, at least a little bit. You know, using some skills without realizing how deep I was getting in. And yeah, I admit, I want to show I’m smarter than he is. Don’t try to scam a scammer.”
“You were never a scammer. You did what you did because you thought it was right.”
“That’s what I always tell myself.”
I’d gotten in trouble when my wife at the time suffered a second miscarriage. After the first, she’d engaged in a thousands of dollars of retail therapy which had nearly bankrupted us, and to prevent a recurrence I’d hacked into the three major credit bureaus and put flags on her accounts to prevent her from making big charges.
Because I could.
And because it was easier than confronting the pain we both felt. Unfortunately, I’d gotten caught, and convicted, and sent to prison. My marriage, which was already on shaky ground, had ended, and once I was paroled I’d returned to Stewart’s Crossing to start over again.
My hubris had cost me a lot. I hoped there was a way I could help Jordan Campo, if he was still alive, see the error of his ways and use his talents for something more legitimate.
It wasn’t until Sunday afternoon that the password cracker software dinged to let me know that it had broken into Jordan’s email account. I poured myself a big glass of ice water and sat down at the laptop, flexing my fingers and feeling that old thrill rush through me. I was pretty sure that Jordan felt something similar if someone responded to his bitcoin spam.
No messages had been sent from his account for four days by then, though his inbox was flooded with messages from failure daemons and the regular detritus of anyone’s account – offers to enlarge his penis, to lower his cholesterol, to vacation at insider prices or subscribe to magazines at big discounts.
Amongst all the garbage, I found a number of personal messages. His mother wanted to know why he wasn’t returning her phone calls. “I’m worried about you, sweetie,” she wrote. “Please call me.”
Further evidence that he’d dropped off the face of the earth. I wondered if I should contact her and ask her to report Jordan’s disappearance to the police, so that Rick could investigate. But how would I explain that I’d found her? Oh, by the way, I broke into your son’s house to feed his cat and then hacked into his email account.
Not a conversation I wanted to have.
I kept reading. One of his classmates had emailed with information on what he’d missed in his comparative operating systems class and remind him they had a group project to work on.
Maybe I could approach the professor? Or Jordan’s classmate? I put those ideas aside and kept reading. I finally found someone who’d fallen for Jordan’s scheme, and I read through a couple of messages where Jordan, under his GrayMarketGary ID, corresponded with his victim, who signed his emails as Leo and used an email account called letthelionroar@gmail.com.
It appeared that Jordan went into Leo’s bitcoin account and cleaned it out, and Leo began sending increasingly threatening emails, demanding the money back. “You don’t know who you’re messing with, bro,” the last message in the chain read. “I will hunt you down and seriously hurt you.”
Well, that was a smoking gun if I’d ever seen one.
It appeared that Jordan had ignored that message, dated four days before, along with all the other demands. I kept reading but there were no more clues in the email chain. I tried Googling Leo’s email address, and the prefix he used, hoping he might have used the same one on social media, but came up with nothing there, too.
I was staring ahead in frustration when Rochester came up to me, his big plumy tail wagging. In his enthusiasm, he knocked over a picture Lili had left on the coffee table.
Fortunately the glass didn’t break. I picked it up and looked at it. It was one Lili had taken with the camera in her cell phone, a photo of Rochester caught in mid-leap. I loved that picture, and I’d posted it to my Facebook account.
I scratched Rochester under his chin as I looked at the picture. Did Jordan have any other social media accounts, where I might find other clues? Maybe he was on Instagram or Pinterest.
I got Rochester a biscuit from the kitchen, told him he was a good boy, and then got busy online. Eventually I found that Jordan had an Instagram account. Most of the photos were of his cat—sleeping, playing with a toy, sprawled on its back waiting for a belly rub. The most recent photo, however, was the one that interested me.
It was an image of a pile of gold coins with the distinctive bitcoin logo, spikes from the top and bottom of the B so that it looked like a modified dollar sign. In the caption Jordan had written “i am king of bitcoin! just scored big from clueless cat.”
I figured he was bragging about his theft of the bitcoins from Leo, aka letthelionroar. I wasn’t that familiar with Instagram, so I Googled for instructions on viewing someone’s followers. I followed the steps and saw a list of all those who were following Jordan – only about a dozen people.
One, however, was named Leonardo Campo.
Could he be Leo, the lion who was angry at Jordan? Why would Jordan scam someone in his own family? Did his Asperger’s prevent him from understanding the social consequence? Not to mention that with his threats, Leo seemed pretty unhappy with Jordan.
Unlike Jordan, Leonardo Campo was very active on social media, posting pictures on Instagram and Facebook of himself out partying with lots of lovely ladies and good-times buddies. He and his pals were fond of Philadelphia Phillies T-shirts, gold chains, and backwards ball caps.
He didn’t look like the kind of guy who’d be investing in bitcoins, though. He worked for a company that imported food from Italy, with an office on 9th Street in South Philly, which I recognized as being in the neighborhood of the Italian Market, where I’d often shopped when I was in the city.
Digging a little deeper, I discovered that he’d been indicted as part of a health insurance fraud scheme two years before, though the charges had been dropped due to some procedural errors.
It was time to call Rick again.
I established that he wasn’t busy, and I could come over, though I’d be particularly welcome if I brought some beer with me. I detoured past the grocery in the center of Stewart’s Crossing where I left Rochester in the car for a minute while I ran in and picked up a six-pack of Dogfish Head Firefly Ale, a bag of chips and a jar of salsa.
“What’s so important?” Rick asked, as I walked in. Rochester charged past me to romp with Rascal as I followed Rick to the kitchen.
“I’ve been doing some digging on Jordan Campo,” I said.
“You find him yet?”
“Nope. But I might have a lead on what happened to him.”
Rick poured the salsa into a bowl and uncapped a couple of beers. I ripped open the bag of chips and we sat across from each other at the table in his kitchen. It hadn’t been changed much since the house was built in the fifties; he’d put in a new fridge, oven and dishwasher, but the Formica cabinets were original, as was the big stainless steel sink and the brown and tan patterned linoleum floor. It was a comfortable room and I liked hanging out there.
I told him what I’d discovered about Leo Campo. “You think his cousin did something to him?” Rick asked, when I was finished.
“Maybe. You know anything about a big health care fraud case in Philly last year?” I explained that I’d found Leo among the list of defendants.
“That was a Mafia case, Steve,” he said. “You’re dabbling in dangerous waters.”
“Which is why I coming to you.”
He groaned. “What am I supposed to do with this information? Remember, we don’t even have a missing person’s report on Jordan Campo yet.”
“Suppose I give you Jordan’s mother’s name and phone number. You call her up because you’re investigating a possible email scam. I reported it to you, after all.”
“And?”
“You see if she’s been in contact with him. If she’s worried, maybe you can get her to report he’s missing.”
“But I’m not investigating the scam.”
“Sure you are. I reported it to you, right? You went to the suspect’s home and found evidence that indicated he had disappeared.”
“But what’s the crime? Sending you the email?”
“I can give you the evidence that shows he stole from this guy.”
He shook his head. “You ever heard of the doctrine ‘fruit of the poisoned tree’? Means anything you acquired illegally can’t be used in a court case.”
“I can show you Jordan’s Instagram account, where he put up that picture that indicates he stole from someone. That’s out there in the public domain, right? You could just say that you were following up on my speculation and found evidence that Jordan might have committed a crime.”
“This is all pretty sketchy,” he said.
“At least bring it to your chief tomorrow.” I held up my hand to tick off the points. “Local resident appears to be missing, because he left his front door open and his cherished cat alone without food or water.”
A second finger. “Another resident provided you with information that indicates the missing man may be involved in criminal activity.”
Third finger. “He may also have connections to the Philadelphia Mafia—because someone of the same last name, one of his social media connections, was arrested in a Mafia case last year.”
I sat back. “That should at least give you enough reason to call his mother.”
“All right. I’ll give it a shot.”
We ate some chips and salsa, drank our beers, and talked about a bunch of other things, and then I drove Rochester back home.
The next afternoon I was at work when Rick called. “I got a little leeway from the chief, and I called Campo’s mother. She’s really upset because he hasn’t been in touch for nearly a week. And she agreed that he’d never leave the cat alone. She drove up from Philadelphia to pick up the cat and I met her at Campo’s house. She confirmed that Leonardo Campo is Jordan’s cousin, but she’s divorced from the father and hasn’t had anything to do with his family in years. She did say that she thought Leo’s mother was connected to the Mafia, but nobody ever said anything specific.”
Rochester sat up beside my desk. One of the reasons I’d taken the job I had, managing a conference center for Eastern College, was because I could bring the dog with me to work.
“So what are you going to do now?” I asked Rick.
“Start asking questions. See if I can get hold of the cousin.”
“Be careful.”
“This isn’t my first time at the rodeo, Steve. I know the drill.”
He hung up, but I wasn’t satisfied. I didn’t want my best friend getting into the middle of some Mafia investigation on my say-so.
I left work early and Rochester and I drove back to Stewart’s Crossing, but instead of going straight home, I parked in the lot of the Wawa convenience store, a couple of blocks from Jordan Campo’s house. It was still light, the sky a brilliant blue studded with puffy cumulous clouds. I hooked up Rochester’s leash and we walked toward the old Victorian as the wind danced restlessly in the tops of the red, gold and orange maples and elms beside us, wafting down dead leaves in our path.
The front door of the Victorian was locked up, and Rick told me he’d passed the key over to Jordan’s mother. So Rochester and I walked into the back yard. I hoped there would be a clue there that might indicate what had happened to Jordan.
The properties along this stretch of Main Street were narrow but deep, most of them stretching all the way back to the Delaware Canal. Rochester and I often walked on the towpath on the other side of the canal, but I’d never snooped into any of these yards.
We walked around behind the Victorian, where a rear entrance led to a staircase up to the apartments on the second floor. A single car was parked there, an old Toyota sedan. I pulled up my notes on my phone and ID’d the license plate as belonging to Jordan’s car.
A screen of trees stood between the parking area and the river, and Rochester strained forward eagerly. I hoped that whoever lived on the second floor was out or wouldn’t care that we were snooping around the yard.
As we walked toward the trees and the canal beyond, Rochester pulled and pulled and I worried that he’d picked up the scent of something – Jordan Campo’s body? But he stopped at the base a small tree and began to sniff.
The lowest branch of the tree was broken, as if someone had pushed past it. I was examining the break to see if I could figure out how recent it was when Rochester sat on his hind legs and woofed once.
“What is it, boy?”
I looked down at the ground and saw the glint of something gold. Leaning down, I pushed away some dead leaves and found a thick gold chain on the ground, the clasp broken.
“Good boy,” I said, scratching behind Rochester’s ears. I picked up the heavy chain. How had it ended up back here? Had someone been fighting, perhaps Jordan and a captor, and the chain broke in the fracas?
I remembered the photos I’d seen of Leo Campo and all the gold chains he wore, and my pulse quickened. I scanned the area for more evidence of a fight, and I spotted some scuff marks in the dirt. It looked almost as if someone had been dragged along.
Once I had the gold chain in my pocket, Rochester was eager to move on. We followed the scuff marks as well as we could, my heart sinking. They led to the canal, where it was possible whoever was dragging Jordan could have tossed him in.
But then, a few feet from the water’s edge, the trail changed direction. We followed, both of us with our eyes to the ground, and I didn’t see the old warehouse ahead of us until we were almost there.
It was a small building, with a ruined dock behind it that had once accepted deliveries from a mule barge along the canal, a century or more before. The sign on the wall was old and faded and I had no idea if the building was still in use or not.
Except for what looked like a very new padlock on the door.
I figured that my experience had finally started making me act smarter. I called Rick and asked him to meet me there.
“Why?”
“Just an idea. Humor me, please?”
“I’ll be there in five. Don’t do anything stupid.”
I agreed, and Rochester and I walked carefully around the perimeter of the building. It was a single story, with a peaked roof, no windows to peer into.
When Rick arrived, Rochester was eager to see him, jumping up to get petted. “Come for a walk with me,” I said.
I showed Rick the scuff marks outside the warehouse door, and we followed the intermittent trail back to the yard behind the Victorian. I showed him the gold chain I’d found and explained what I thought had happened.
“Is this enough for you to get a search warrant?” I asked. “You have a missing guy, and a trail that leads from his yard to the warehouse.”
“Probably. But I want you and the dog to go home. Don’t get in any more trouble.”
I was about to agree with him when a pickup on extra-big tires pulled into the driveway of the Victorian. With my hand tight on Rochester’s leash, I followed Rick into the cover of the trees and watched as a big man got out.
“I think that’s Leo Campo,” I whispered to Rick. “I recognize him from his social media pictures.”
Rochester sprawled at our feet as we watched Leo leave his car, carrying a bag of takeout food, and head down the path toward the warehouse. If he was taking burgers with him, then either Jordan was still alive, or Leo liked dining with the dead.
“I could tell you to stay here but I know you won’t,” Rick whispered to me. “Just be very quiet.”
We stayed where we were until Leo was almost out of sight, then hurried after him. We stopped beside a garden shed in the next yard and watched as Leo walked up to the warehouse and unlocked the padlock. He walked inside and shut the door behind him.
Rick called for police backup, and we waited outside the warehouse until a cruiser pulled up on Main Street and two uniformed officers joined us.
Rick walked up to the door and rapped loudly. “Police, Mr. Campo. Come out with your hands up.”
We waited a couple of beats, and then suddenly the door burst open and Leo Campo came running out, low and hard like a linebacker. He knocked Rick over and sprinted past the two uniforms, who took off after him.
I rushed up to Rick and helped him up. “You OK?”
“Yeah. Let’s see what’s inside.”
He kicked the door open wider and we walked inside. The room was dark, and I pulled out my phone and engaged the flashlight app.
Ahead of us, Jordan Campo was tied to a wooden chair with a long rope. One hand was free and he was eating a cheeseburger. He looked questioningly at us. “Where’s Leo?”
“He’s gone, Mr. Campo,” Rick said. “Let me get you untied.”
“Thanks. I really have to pee.”
I sniffed the air, which smelled a lot like Jordan’s house with the nasty cat litter box. “Rochester and I will wait outside,” I said, tugging my dog with me. A couple of minutes later, Rick walked outside with Jordan, asking him questions.
He displayed the lack of affect I expected from someone with Asperger’s, and I was glad it was up to Rick to question him and figure out what was going on. He admitted that he’d scammed his cousin out of about ten thousand dollars’ worth of bitcoins. “Then he figured out it was me and came after me, wanting the coins back.”
“What did you do?”
“I denied having them. He went off on this tirade, that the coins belonged to his boss, who was using them to move money around from overseas. He told me I would be in big trouble if his boss found out. Like I cared. Then he said his boss was this big Mafia guy, not someone I wanted to mess with. He left me here to stew around and maybe change my mind.”
“You’re coming with me,” Rick said to Jordan.
“I have to get home to Shere Khan. She’ll be missing me.”
“Your mom took care of the cat. After you give me your statement we’ll call her and get her to bring the cat back up here.”
Rick looked at me. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
I knew when I was being dismissed. I walked Rochester back to the Wawa parking lot, then drove home, where Lili was in the kitchen fixing dinner. “How was your day?” she asked, as I kissed her cheek.
“Interesting. Let me do something first, and then I’ll tell you all about it.”
I got the stepladder from the garage and carried it upstairs, opening the access panel in the ceiling and replacing the laptop with my hacking tools. As I did, I remembered a Chinese proverb I’d heard somewhere long before. “He who rides the tiger finds it difficult to dismount.”
It was a good way of looking at my own habit, I thought. I had been riding the hacking tiger for years, and though I’d learned to temper my habit a bit, I was still finding it very hard to dismount completely. I hoped Jordan Campo would have better luck.
