Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #1: Books 1-4 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [classic children's novels txt] 📗

“We are here at the invitation of the local PD, Mr…”

“Major. Major Payne.”

“Major Payne, we are investigating a homicide in New York, and one of the victims had links with San Francisco. May we…?”

I gestured at the chairs opposite his desk. Dehan didn’t wait for a reply. She pulled out a chair and sat. I followed suit. He handed back our badges.

“What has this to do with the Hyatt Regency?”

“We believe one of your guests may have been one of the last people to see her alive.”

“And what do you want from me?”

“We would like to contact that guest.”

“Out of the question.”

Dehan scowled at him. “You could be harboring a criminal, Major Payne.”

“In the first place,” he snapped at her, like he was telling a private to drop and give him twenty, “you are outside your jurisdiction! In the second place, all you have is that you think our guest might have been one of several people who saw your victim! Third, I have no obligation whatsoever to give you private and confidential information unless you have a court order!”

“All we are asking for, Major, is a little cooperation, and we will undertake to be very discreet. The guest is not at your hotel at present, as far as we are aware. The events we are talking about occurred two years ago.”

“What you are asking for, Detective, is the address of one of our guests. And I am not going to give you that without a court order. If you have enough evidence to convince a judge, then he will give you that order and I will give you the information. If you haven’t, he won’t and neither shall I. Now, you are wasting my time, and your own. I think it is time you left. You are not welcome here.”

Sometimes you come across a person in life who, if there were any natural justice in the universe, you would be allowed to smack in the mouth, drop into a turbo blender, and feed to your cat. But there is not natural justice in the universe. We have to make our own, and sometimes it doesn’t work out. You just have to smile and take it.

I smiled sweetly and said, “Thanks for your time, Major. I know you did your best.”

We stood and I reached for the door. Dehan hesitated and stopped. “Major, I just have one last question.”

He sighed and looked at her.

She went on. “How come—when you were promoted to major—how come you didn’t change your name? I mean, Captain Payne I get, but Major? Major Payne? Seriously…?”

He gave her a look like a one-eyed cat licking piss off a nettle and snarled, “Get the hell out of here.”

As we crossed the vast lobby back toward the door, she gave me a look that was almost frightening. “I am going to bust this son of a bitch.”

“How are you going to do that, Dehan?”

“Just watch me.”

When we got outside, the sky had turned crimson over the rooftops and night was closing in from the east. As I crossed the sidewalk and opened the driver’s door, she said, “Pop the trunk.” I did as I was told, and she pulled out her laptop. She climbed in next to me and said, “Stay here for a bit, will you?”

She switched on the computer. I watched her a moment, then asked, “What are you doing?”

“I’m going to hack the son of a bitch.”

I was surprised and my face said so. “You can do that?”

“It’s not as hard as you might think.” She typed for a bit, muttering, “When you’re not a dinosaur. First we put the wireless card in monitor mode…” She typed some more, “Then I need to start airodump-ng.”

“Airodumping?”

“Yeah… Okay!” She showed me the screen. It had gone black, and there were several columns of numbers and codes.

She squinted. “See, this one has the lowest value, so I’m going to guess that’s our boy. Now I need to break the WPA2 encryption… and I am in his network.”

“You are?”

“Yeah. I am going to lock onto his AP—” She was typing again as she spoke. “—and capture his password hash. I’ll force him to reauthenticate by bumping him off his AP with a deauthenticate sent with the airoreplay-ng command…”

“Airoreplaying?”

“Uh-huh…” She wasn’t listening, but after a few moments, she smiled. “Okay, Stone, let’s go eat. It may take a few hours, but when we get back we will have his WPA2 password and we’ll be inside his network.”

“What does that mean?”

She had a big, stupid grin on her face as she climbed out of the car and raised her hand to hail a cab.

“It means we can check every guest they’ve had for the past however many years they have been computerized.” A yellow cab had pulled up in front of her.

“Oh…”

I locked the Mustang and followed her into the cab.

We ended up at the Osso Steakhouse—good seafood and large slabs of meat. It was about right for what we both needed. We worked our way through a couple of dishes of mussels with an ice-cold Chardonnay and then two medium-rare eight-ounce steaks with french fries and no damned salad. With that, we had a superb Convento San Francisco. We followed the steak with a cheese board, espresso, and Bushmills in a cognac glass, no ice. We didn’t talk much. We just ate and drank and smiled.

Not bad for a Tuesday evening.

It was a mild, pleasant evening, and only a mile to walk back, downhill along California Street. She walked with her hands in her pockets, staring at her boots. I enjoyed looking around at one of the prettiest cities in the world.

“You know what’s doing my