Chapter Fifty-Four

The single bedroom of Kevin’s apartment had been converted into what he called his “Command Center.” Electronic components, soldering guns, swivel-mounted magnifying glasses, wires, tools, and multiple working computer systems. The rest of the apartment seemed to simultaneously be very normal and yet very wrong. It took Baxter a moment to realize why, but when he made the connection, it made perfect sense. The kitchen and living room contained all the normal items: refrigerator, table, couch, television, coffee table. What the rooms lacked was a single decoration or photograph. The walls were beige and bare. All in all, Kevin’s domicile reminded Baxter of a well-kept crackhouse.

Unlike the rest of the apartment, movie posters adorned the walls of Kevin’s Command Center. Beneath the posters, a metal cage lined the interior walls of the former bedroom. Kevin explained that it was a Faraday cage and went on to describe the importance of the countermeasure. At which time, Baxter zoned out for a moment.

After completing his spiel, Kevin led them to the living room, pulled the blanket and pillow off his gray suede couch and said, “Please, sit. Would you like a refreshment?” Kevin spoke in a clipped, unnatural tone, like a waiter on his first day, as if he were reading from a script.

Baxter dropped onto the couch and put his feet up on the coffee table. He said, “I’d love a Fresca or something like that, if you have it.”

Kevin was silent a moment, his face hidden behind the shroud of his hood. Finally, he said, “All I have is coffee, Jolt Cola, and bottled water.”

“Don’t worry about it, little buddy. Have a seat. Let’s communicado.”

Kevin reluctantly sat on the edge of the coffee table, his hooded face only a couple of feet from the couch. Baxter said, “Are you sure you don’t want to just sit between us?”

Kevin seemed to consider this.

Baxter shook his head and continued, “Never mind that. Remember a couple weeks back when you were telling me about how you had hacked into all of the bus cameras, and that you are basically big brother, and how you were sure that the government was using those cameras against us.”

“Right. They claim that all the extra cameras are because they’re beta testing some type of automation software, but I don’t buy that for a second. These asshats basically have mobile surveillance vans traveling all over the city.”

“I read in the paper it had something to do with insurance liabilities.”

Kevin said, “What’s ‘The Paper?’ I’m not familiar with that group.”

“The newspaper.”

“I didn’t know they still made those.”

With a roll of his eyes, Baxter said, “Kids these days. Anyway, doesn’t really matter. Important thing is that I want to exploit those mobile surveillance vans for my own gain.”

Kevin didn’t seem to be following.

“I want you to help me use their system to save a young woman’s life. So I just got one question for you, Kevmeister, are you ready to be a hero today?”

Kevin shrugged. “I guess. What do you wanna see?”

Fifteen minutes later, Kevin had accessed the transit authority video systems and recalled the archived footage from the night Corin Campbell went missing. Unfortunately, the video from the bus nearest Corin’s house showed nothing of interest.

Staring at one of Kevin’s massive flat screen monitors, Baxter said, “Can you pull up a street map with the Muni lines over the top?”

Kevin, sitting in his command chair in front of the four twenty-seven inch screens, said, “No problem.” A few seconds later the map appeared on the screen.

Leaning close, Baxter studied the different colored lines. “Can you print this out for me?”

“I don’t have a printer. What’s the point anymore? If you have a coupon or something, you can just show it to the cashier on your phone.”

“Kids. No worries. I’ll make do.” After a moment of staring at the map, he said, “We know that Corin’s car wasn’t there. So whoever took her must have also taken the car. If we trace back the cameras, and we map that out, and we kind of think fourth dimensionally, then I ascertain that we could track his path with the car and then maybe find a bus that intersected with them. We could get lucky. But what bus do we need to check next?”

Kevin said, “While you were yammering on, I pulled up the exact hexadecimal color of Corin Campbell’s car. Now I’m going to run a search through all the archive footage from that time period searching for that specific color. We’ll get a lot of false positives, but if I narrow those results by geographic area, that will give us the best chance of finding her car on the footage.”

With a nod, Baxter replied, “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but it sounds beautiful.”

“The search is running now.”

A few moments later, after having sorted through a couple of false positives, Kevin said, “And there is Corin Campbell’s car.” He pulled the video up on the screens and added, “This is all the footage they caught.”

The video played on, showing Corin’s car as it passed one of the city’s electric trolleybuses. Baxter studied the video, searching for any reflections or views into the car, but unfortunately, all the angles were wrong. They didn’t have a clear shot of who was driving.

“Can you replay that again? This time in slow motion.”

The video played at a slower speed. Baxter watched again and said, “Stop it there.”

Pointing to a spot on the monitor, he said, “Can you zoom in here and enhance?”

Kevin complied, and when he was finished, they had a clear picture of a man’s hand reaching across the car to close the glovebox.

But, more importantly, the hand was inked with a very distinctive tattoo.

Baxter, slapping his hands together excitedly, said, “There it is, dos compadres. Bingo, bango, bongo. Now, all we have to do is take this down to a Kinkos or Staples or something, get a printout, and head over to see my old partner.”

Kevin said, “Absolutely not. No cops. I have a strict no police policy. It was in the waivers that you two signed.”

Having mostly just hung back, taking it all in, Jenny asked, “Why do we need the cops anyway?”

Baxter said, “It’s time we get the proper authorities involved. We’ve proven that there’s more to this case than just a missing person, and we’ve given the cops a great lead. I’ve earned my pay and done my duty. And now it’s time for the cops to step in and do their thing. Plus, I need Detective Ferrera to run that crazy tattoo through the database. With a little luck, we may have a suspect in custody this time tomorrow.”

“How about I run the image of the tattoo against all social media photos in the San Francisco area?” Kevin asked. “Then we’ll have the guy’s name and know everything about him.”

Jenny said, “You can do that? How? Do you pull all the images and run some kind of pixel recognition for the tattoo?”

“Something like that. Who’s asking? Are you affiliated officially or unofficially to any kind of law enforcement agency?”

Jenny raised an eyebrow and looked at Baxter. He said, “Take it easy there, Kevieronymus Bosch. Go ahead and run your search.”

“It’ll take a few minutes,” the young computer expert said, still eyeing Jenny cautiously from beneath his hood.

“We’ll wait,” Baxter said as he walked over to the one item in Kevin’s living room that wasn’t a cookie-cutter bare necessity. It was an old record player hooked up to a new sound system. A stack of worn records sat beneath the record player’s stand. Baxter mused, “I’m gonna take a minute to explore your record collection, Kevin.”

“Those are sorted and alphabetized by genre and band name.”

“You just go do your thing. I’ll put them back exactly as I found them.”

Sorting through the stack of timeworn records, Baxter was careful to keep them in the same order. It wasn’t long before he found a nice Hendrix album and placed it on the turntable. Moving the needle into place, he closed his eyes and listened to Jimi sing about castles made of sand.

Jenny came up beside him and said, “Funny that we may catch that woman’s killer based on some tattoo.”

“We don’t know she’s dead. There’s always hope. But I certainly wouldn’t envy the torment she’s endured if she’s still alive after all this time.”

“That’s one heck of a creepy tattoo. It was like the bottom half of some mangled skull.”

“Yeah, it seems somehow familiar to me, but I can’t quite place it. Speaking of tattoos, what’s with your new ink?”

“Noticed that, huh?”

“I’m a detective.”

She rolled up her sleeve and displayed her wrist. The new tattoo was small, barely larger than a half dollar in size, but intricate. The artist clearly had tremendous talent. The swirls and flourishes of ink, which were now outlined in irritated skin, depicted a Yin Yang symbol. Only the emblem was composed of the images of a white and black dog.

Admiring the artistry, Baxter said, “It’s gorgeous. What was the thinking behind it? What’s its significance?”

Jenny stared out the window as she bobbed her head along with Jimi. “My grandmother used to tell me that we all have two dogs inside us. A white dog and a black dog, good and evil, love and fear, that kind of thing. She would say that the one who survives will be the one we choose to feed.”

“I like that. Think I’m going to steal it. Next time you hear it, just go along with me and pretend like I made it up.”

She punched him in the arm and shook her head. “Do you really like the tattoo?”

“I think it may be my new favorite,” he said with a big smile, showing off his dimples.

Kevin stepped back into the room and said, “I know this sounds crazy, but I don’t think this guy has a social media account. And he apparently doesn’t have any friends who take pictures either.”

Baxter shrugged. “Why is that so strange? I don’t have a Facebook or Tweeter account.”

Jenny curled her lip and looked him up and down. “Yes, you do. You’re always posting on there about your blog stuff.”

“Damnit, Kevarino, I told you not to do that.”

“It’s a requirement for the blog. It’s not like I’m using it to pick up chicks.”

“I don’t like having my name and face on stuff that isn’t me. I don’t even know the username and password for my own accounts.”

“I programmed them to all be accessible through your cell phone.”

Baxter shook his head. “I barely know how to answer that thing.”

“But you texted me directions earlier. How did you do that if you can’t work your phone?” Jenny asked.

“I saw your message come in, and I saw that my phone sent you the directions you wanted.”

“Your phone doesn’t just do that.”

Kevin cleared his throat. “I thought you knew all this, Bax. I’ve been handling that kind of thing for you for a while now. I manage your calendar, help with tech stuff, read your messages. I—”

Holding up a hand to stop his pale young friend, Baxter said, “So you responded to Jenny’s message for me, and you’ve been monitoring all my phone conversations.”

“Just doing my part to help out.”

“Stop helping me, Kevin. We’re going to have a long talk about this later, but for now, it looks like I have no choice but to go see a cop about a tattoo.”

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