DARCY GAINES AND I sat across from each other at the Dudley Café, about a twenty-minute walk from police headquarters at 1 Schroeder. She said she was here and not in Brighton because it was one of those magical days when she got to give a progress report to the commissioner.
“They’re pretty proud of their micro-roasted coffee here,” she said.
“What does that even mean?” I said.
“They roast it in smaller batches,” she said. “Trust me on this. I’m a cop. We know things that civilians like you don’t.”
I had called her cell when I knew she’d be up and told her about the voicemail from Lisa. Or someone saying she was Lisa, except for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why someone would leave that message if she weren’t Lisa Morneau. I told her that the call had likely been placed by a burner phone. She’d told me to meet her and bring my phone with me. I told her I wasn’t sure anybody had to be told that anymore, and that I was more likely to leave the house without lip balm. Or my gun.
Now we both had cups of coffee in front of us. She told me to try the challah French toast if I hadn’t eaten yet. I politely declined, telling her I wasn’t sure challah would improve French toast any more than micro-roasting could improve a good cup of coffee.
She put out her hand.
“Your phone,” she said. “Don’t make me shoot you.”
She was in uniform. It was becoming harder and harder for me to think of her out of uniform. She was all cop, and always had been. I believed she would have been a star whatever lane she’d chosen at BPD. Human trafficking had become her crusade. I wondered if her name being in the papers as often as it was, and Darcy being on television as often as she had been, helped her with her bosses. Or maybe made them see her as some kind of threat.
Men seeing a strong woman as a threat.
Where had I heard that one before?
She held my phone in the palm of her hand, swiped it, then tapped it. The next thing we both heard was the woman who’d identified herself as Lisa.
“She sounds legit scared,” Darcy said.
“It has to be her,” I said.
“But you’ve never heard her voice.”
“Nope.”
“But if she is as scared as she sounds, why wouldn’t she tell you where she was so you could go find her?” Darcy said.
“I’ll ask her, first chance I get,” I said. “Is there any kind of techy voodoo you guys have that might be able to track where the call came from?”
She’d had plenty of cases, she said, that involved search warrants and subpoenas and VOIP devices. I asked what a VOIP was. She said, “Voice over Internet protocols.”
“Oh,” I said, “that VOIP.”
Then she was telling me about devices, even burners, registering with provider services, and enabling the provider to locate IP addresses.
“You know what an IP address is, right?” Darcy said.
“I’m not a complete idiot,” I said, “as long as you don’t go too fast.”
She said, “When a call is placed, the device has to connect to the provider’s network. Then it’s routed through a proxy server, which then figures out where the other end of the call is located. Then the call is sent across the net to you.”
She grinned.
“Still with me?” she said.
“Barely,” I said.
“Only the VOIP knows the IP address of the phone that placed the call,” Darcy said.
“Does that mean you can figure out the general area from which the call was placed?” I said. “Like pinging it after the fact?”
“I honestly don’t know if that’s possible without a search warrant or a subpoena,” she said. “But I can ask.”
“Can you ask someone who doesn’t talk?” I said.
“This is me you’re talking to,” she said.
“Sorry,” I said.
“You obviously forgot we’re practically partners again,” she said.
“Got a lot on my plate,” I said.
“Not challah French toast,” she said.
Then she said, “I’m gonna need to take your phone with me to VOIPville for a few hours. You actually caught a break that I’m at headquarters today. You okay leaving it with me?”
“Gonna have to be.”
She finished her coffee, pocketed my phone, stood up. She had paid for the coffee this time.
“By the way?” she said. “Anything in your phone that might embarrass you?”
“Would you count shirtless pics of the guy who played Black Panther?” I said.
“Hope they’re some I don’t have,” Darcy said, and left me there, phoneless.