Deadly Stillwater

The whiteboard was getting full. He had more pieces to work with now, although he still wasn’t sure what the puzzle really looked like. It was like you needed an answer key. Perhaps somewhere in all the paper and electronic data, they would find it.

“What are you thinking?” Sally asked, putting her arm lightly on his lower back.

“That if we can find just one solid piece, the dominos will fall. We just need one little thing,” He said optimistically. “One good name or a little connection between names and it will all come together.”

Of course, any optimism he felt dissipated when he turned around. The more they dug into the civil files of Lyman’s firm, the harder it all became. The sheer volume of what they were looking at would have been daunting if they had a week, let alone twelve hours. Class-action cases involved thousands of names, and that was just the plaintiffs. Then there were all of the witnesses, family members, and experts on Lyman’s side of the cases, not to mention the defendants, experts, and executives on the defense side. Then there were the sexual harassment, discrimination, and personal-injury type cases, with thousands more names involved. And it wasn’t enough just to have a name. This was Minnesota. By its very nature, any class-action case involved multiple Johnsons, Petersons, Andersons, Swansons, or Ericksons. Consequently, you needed a date of birth, address or addresses, occupations, social security numbers, and any other piece of information to specifically identify and ultimately find these people. To harvest the names, the attorneys, paralegals, and secretaries were going through the computer and paper files one by one. In the paper files alone, it required scanning the correspondence and pleadings, not to mention trying to speed-read two-hundred-page deposition transcripts for people not mentioned elsewhere in the correspondence or pleadings files. There was no analysis taking place. They were simply pulling names and entering them into a database that Hagen had created. If something popped on a name, they would then go deep into the file.

Hagen was talking to Scheifelbein at police headquarters, his head crooked sideways, cradling the phone as his fingers pounded at lightning speed across the keyboard. Scheifelbein was tapping into the various FBI Systems. Mac walked over to take a look, and Hagen pulled the phone away from his ear.

“Barry’s getting me access to the database you already have, plus social Security, IRS, INS, NCIC, and even state and federal penal systems.”

“Don’t get any ideas,” Mac said crossly, more worried about the appearance of a felon accessing social security numbers than of Hagen actually trying anything.

Hagen shot him a dirty look back. “I’m out of the can in six months. I’m not gonna fuck that up.” He turned back to the task at hand. “In about an hour, I’ll have this thing running so we can run every name we get through the system. If these guys have a connection to anyone on the chief’s list, we’ll find it.” The computer magician turned back to his monitor and frantically typed while simultaneously carrying on a conversation with Scheifelbein. Hagen looked like a pig in shit as he worked away, cigarette burning in an ashtray and three coffee cups littering his work area. Mac walked back to the whiteboard. The phone call was coming at 6:00 PM so they had a little more than twelve hours. He worked the board over, making notations, drawing arrows between items, jotting down questions and theories, circling, checking and underlining items. As he ran out of space, he used sticky notes attaching them to the sides and then adding an easel for more space.

He put the markers down on the board’s tray and stood for ten minutes, his eyes fixed on the whiteboard, soaking in all the information and letting it marinate in his mind. Sooner or later it would all come into focus, or at least he kept telling himself that. If it didn’t they would have to rely on Burton’s plan when it came time to pay the ransom.

He was deep in thought when a voice bellowed from the hallway. “Mac!”

He turned to see Summer Plantagenate rushing into the room, pointing her cell phone at him, an agitated look on her face.

“What’s up? He asked.

“It’s the off-site storage,” the willowy blonde replied. “We’re having some issues with access.”

“What?” Mac replied exasperated. “Why? I mean, don’t you have a pass code or something? Aren’t those places on a key-coded system?”

“We do and it is. The issue is that the security guy working won’t let anymore than one person to get back to the files,” Summer answered, shaking her head. “At that rate…”

“…We’ll be screwed,” Mac finished.

“Can we get a hold of the owner, a supervisor, something like that?”

“During normal business hours perhaps, but we’re not yet to normal work hours and on top of that it’s a holiday.”

“How about getting a home number?”

“Our people asked. The guard wasn’t helpful.”

“Where the heck is this place?”