Read Online Uncaged by John Sandford, Michele Cook - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: John Sandford, Michele Cook
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the floor but also obscuring what one person might say to another farther down the hall; conversations would not be easily overheard.
The furnishings on Sync’s floor were expensive and well chosen, but basically functional. On the top floor, everything was richer.Instead of wall-to-wall carpet, there were chestnut floors covered with handsome Turkish carpets, tasteful pieces of furniture in walnut, and English and Japanese antiques scattered here and there.
Stewart, the attorney, emerged from the next door down as they got to Cartwell’s office. She was a tall, thin woman of forty who ran triathlons and wore hawkish black glasses, but then went soft with gauzy knee-length dresses. She nodded and said, “Gentlemen.”
“I’m not entirely sure of that,” Harmon said.
Stewart smiled and said, “I’m not either, Harmon, but I thought I’d give you the benefit of the doubt.”
Sync asked, “Will Armie buy in?”
Stewart said, “I’d be shocked if he didn’t, after the research that we’ve done. He does not want to go away.”
Stewart led the way in. Cartwell’s outer office was large and quiet, with soft gray wallpaper dotted with California impressionist paintings of the seacoast and mountains; the air was touched with the scent of pine. Two secretaries sat out in the open, both looking at computer screens; an executive assistant worked in her own small office at the far end, behind a glass window, and got up to meet them and take them to the inner sanctum.
Micah Cartwell was seated at a long table cluttered with paper, a few family keepsakes, and a big computer screen. Six more screens were sunk in the wall behind him, showing worldwide stock market activity and news feeds from the United States, Europe, and Asia. All had been muted.
When they came in, Cartwell stood and said, “Hey, team,” then looked at his watch. “Armie’s at the outer gate, we’ve only got five or six minutes.”
“We won’t need more than that,” Sync said. “We haven’t found the thumb drives or the dog, but Harmon’s got some lines on the group that has them.”
Cartwell said, “Let’s sit down,” and gestured to a group of couches and chairs near a window looking out on the Pacific. The day was clear, and they could see a rusty freighter headed toward San Francisco. When they were seated, Cartwell asked Harmon, “What kind of lines?”
“They’re careful, but we found out that one of the people with them is a kid named Danny Davidson, just out of high school. We got lucky two days ago and found a charge slip on one of his parent’s Visa cards for a prepaid phone he bought at a Best Buy. It specified the time of purchase, and from that, we were able to get to the phone, and the number. It’s a cheap throwaway phone, not a smartphone, and doesn’t have a GPS signal—the best we can do is track which cell tower his call originates at. They’re in Southern California at the moment, in the Los Angeles area, moving between L.A. and San Diego. They’ve made occasional jumps as far away as Albuquerque, Phoenix, and down to Baja. They move every few days. The problem is, every cell tower will cover several hundred thousand people down there, because the population is so dense. When the kid makes a call, our team heads to the area, but there are so many people around that they’re impossible to spot, and they may even be long gone.”
“Are you tracking who gets the calls?” Cartwell asked.
“Of course. But he doesn’t make many, and most of them are to friends up in Oregon, or his family, which doesn’t help. We are building some predictive models.”
“Explain that,” Stewart said.
Harmon nodded. “When he makes a call, we can see the pointof origin. We look at where they’ve been, and where they go from each place we know they’ve been, and then we try to predict where they’ll go next. Getting inside their thinking. The more moves we record, the better we get. Eventually, we’ll have a team
The furnishings on Sync’s floor were expensive and well chosen, but basically functional. On the top floor, everything was richer.Instead of wall-to-wall carpet, there were chestnut floors covered with handsome Turkish carpets, tasteful pieces of furniture in walnut, and English and Japanese antiques scattered here and there.
Stewart, the attorney, emerged from the next door down as they got to Cartwell’s office. She was a tall, thin woman of forty who ran triathlons and wore hawkish black glasses, but then went soft with gauzy knee-length dresses. She nodded and said, “Gentlemen.”
“I’m not entirely sure of that,” Harmon said.
Stewart smiled and said, “I’m not either, Harmon, but I thought I’d give you the benefit of the doubt.”
Sync asked, “Will Armie buy in?”
Stewart said, “I’d be shocked if he didn’t, after the research that we’ve done. He does not want to go away.”
Stewart led the way in. Cartwell’s outer office was large and quiet, with soft gray wallpaper dotted with California impressionist paintings of the seacoast and mountains; the air was touched with the scent of pine. Two secretaries sat out in the open, both looking at computer screens; an executive assistant worked in her own small office at the far end, behind a glass window, and got up to meet them and take them to the inner sanctum.
Micah Cartwell was seated at a long table cluttered with paper, a few family keepsakes, and a big computer screen. Six more screens were sunk in the wall behind him, showing worldwide stock market activity and news feeds from the United States, Europe, and Asia. All had been muted.
When they came in, Cartwell stood and said, “Hey, team,” then looked at his watch. “Armie’s at the outer gate, we’ve only got five or six minutes.”
“We won’t need more than that,” Sync said. “We haven’t found the thumb drives or the dog, but Harmon’s got some lines on the group that has them.”
Cartwell said, “Let’s sit down,” and gestured to a group of couches and chairs near a window looking out on the Pacific. The day was clear, and they could see a rusty freighter headed toward San Francisco. When they were seated, Cartwell asked Harmon, “What kind of lines?”
“They’re careful, but we found out that one of the people with them is a kid named Danny Davidson, just out of high school. We got lucky two days ago and found a charge slip on one of his parent’s Visa cards for a prepaid phone he bought at a Best Buy. It specified the time of purchase, and from that, we were able to get to the phone, and the number. It’s a cheap throwaway phone, not a smartphone, and doesn’t have a GPS signal—the best we can do is track which cell tower his call originates at. They’re in Southern California at the moment, in the Los Angeles area, moving between L.A. and San Diego. They’ve made occasional jumps as far away as Albuquerque, Phoenix, and down to Baja. They move every few days. The problem is, every cell tower will cover several hundred thousand people down there, because the population is so dense. When the kid makes a call, our team heads to the area, but there are so many people around that they’re impossible to spot, and they may even be long gone.”
“Are you tracking who gets the calls?” Cartwell asked.
“Of course. But he doesn’t make many, and most of them are to friends up in Oregon, or his family, which doesn’t help. We are building some predictive models.”
“Explain that,” Stewart said.
Harmon nodded. “When he makes a call, we can see the pointof origin. We look at where they’ve been, and where they go from each place we know they’ve been, and then we try to predict where they’ll go next. Getting inside their thinking. The more moves we record, the better we get. Eventually, we’ll have a team
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