Chapter 38
THIRTY-EIGHT
Sandra sent Dana a quick text to expect a friend of hers to show up. She told her he was a Metropolitan PD detective by the name of Eric Birch. Dana fired back a quick response.
Okay, all is moving along over here. Not to worry.
Sandra returned inside the vehicle. She wanted to try reaching the hostage takers again, but just calling for the sake of calling wouldn’t move things along either. It was always best to be armed with an edge.
“I’ve got something.” Brice sat back and pointed at Feeney’s laptop in front of him.
“Already?” She failed to keep the skepticism out of her voice.
“I’m a miracle worker. What can I say?” Brice boasted.
“With a little help from over there.” Monica smiled and pointed at Luis.
“Hey, don’t give my secret weapon away,” Brice said. “But, yeah, Luis got the laptop unlocked.”
Sandra looked at Luis. “Well done.”
Luis shrugged. “I took some computer training.”
“Just say it how it is, you’re a hacker,” Kreiger said with a smile.
It was a pleasant switch to see Kreiger happy.
“A novice white hat at best, but I only use my powers for good.” Luis blushed at his self-praise.
“Happy you’re on our side. All right, so what did you find?” She gestured toward her colleague.
“Feeney bookmarked a website called Fat Cats. It’s a forum with chat rooms for people to voice their complaints against big companies, corporate America,” Brice said.
“It sounds like less of a coincidence that our shot caller referred to the people in the boardroom as ‘fat cats licking up cream,’” Sandra said.
“Agreed. One of the chat rooms is specifically for people who owe money to Founders Hospital. Feeney has an account with the site, the logon parameters autofill in, and her handle is Drained Dry. She interacted with three other members in this chat room, responding to their comments, and they hers. Their handles are Alaya Princess, Broken Bridge, and Angry1111.”
It didn’t take effort to do the math on that. “Four people. That can’t be a coincidence either.”
Neal shook his head. “And that first one you mentioned, Brice, would likely be a woman. By process of elimination, Alaya Princess could be who is holed up in that boardroom.”
“I can get a warrant rolling and submit the request to the website to release their information,” Gibson volunteered.
Kreiger pointed at Gibson. “Get on that ASAP.”
The information officer got on the phone.
“I don’t like the sound of Broken Bridge, as in there’s no going back,” Monica weighed in. “Does he plan on walking away from today?”
Sandra kept her thoughts to herself, as it was far too early to voice her theory. But to her that sounded like a name a mature man would give himself, rather than a twentysomething. The rash action taken by the man on the fourth floor could support what Monica just suggested.
“Let’s hope they all do,” Neal said. “We don’t need anyone going out in a blaze of glory and taking people with them.”
Brice glanced at Sandra, and she caught the message in his eyes. He wasn’t one for hyperbole. “Going back to the website, from the look of it, private messaging isn’t an option.”
“So we still don’t know how they conspired today,” Sandra said. “Assuming these four are the ones inside.”
“Which I’d say the chances of are pretty good,” Neal offered.
Sandra nodded.
“Right, so this leaves us to figure out how they communicated,” Brice began. “Now, there is one concerning comment in the forum from Alaya Princess. ‘Someone needs to take a stand. Who’s with me?’”
“It’s a call to action. She’s looking for help,” Sandra said. “It also explains why Carmen Feeney and the shot caller didn’t admit to being friends with the others. They were people brought together by a shared purpose.”
“We’re still waiting on Feeney’s phone records, but what about email on her laptop?” Monica asked. “Any stand out?”
“Nope, I looked in there first,” Brice said.
“They could have been deleted, and they started communicating over the phone.” Sandra turned to Neal. “Speaking of, where are we with Feeney’s phone records?”
“I’ll follow up on that,” Neal told her and pulled out his phone to put the call through.
“Save yourself the trouble,” Gibson blurted out, just after ending his call to a judge about the website. “The report for Feeney’s call history just came in. Give me a few minutes to look it over…”
Everyone in the vehicle remained silent, and Sandra debated contacting the shot caller and using the name Alaya. But until she had proof that she was the woman in that room, it was best not to go that route.
“All right. We might have something,” Gibson said.
“Obviously, I can’t see the content, but Feeney had a conversation with three other people.
Let me see if I can find out who the numbers are registered to.
” He typed on his computer. A few moments later, he was saying, “Shane Perkins, Tom Sparling, and a third number that’s a burner. Doesn’t appear to be in service now.”
Sandra would wager it belonged to the shot caller on the eighth floor.
“Perkins is twenty-six, single, works for a dot com company,” Gibson said.
“That confirms what we thought. He’s a techie,” Brice said.
“Next of kin?” Neal asked. “Possibly someone who died recently?”
“Looks like his mother is still alive, and he has, or I should say had, a brother but he’s showing as deceased nine months ago,” Gibson said.
“That could be where his motive started, but what’s his recent trigger?” Monica asked.
“Assuming he’s one of the people from that Fat Cats forum, he could have gone there already angry and hurt, only to have his feelings validated,” Sandra began. “This empowered him and incited him to act.”
“Well, the site does seem to radicalize people,” Brice said. “One chat room on there is called ‘What you’d like to do…’, and it encourages people to share revenge schemes.”
“Then it needs to be shut down. It preys on vulnerable people, and instead of giving them a healthy environment to heal and find belonging, it fosters violence,” Sandra said.
Brice bobbed his head. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“So what’s the story on this Sparling fella?” Neal asked Gibson.
He punched on the keyboard again. “Fifty-six, widower. It looks like he lost his wife, Mable, of thirty years, eight months ago.”
“That’s three of the four who have lost someone they loved and who blame Founders Hospital,” Sandra summarized.
“Like I said before. We’ve all lost people, but it doesn’t give anyone the right to do what they’re doing,” Kreiger said.
“On that point we agree, but grief can outweigh logic. Then add financial stress…” Sandra was curious if Kreiger had ever lost someone he’d truly cared about, though.
It took away reason and rationale. It might have been between eight and ten months since the hostage takers lost their loved ones, but those wounds would still be fresh.
Anyone forced to carry on without their person could testify to that. “Any next of kin for Sparling?”
“It looks like his wife had a daughter when she was a teenager. Her name’s Trudy Hall, currently thirty-five,” Gibson said.
“And her birth father?” Neal asked.
“Deceased,” Gibson shared stoically.
“Well, I’ll get search warrants in place and have officers dispatched to the homes of Perkins and Sparling, also have them talk with family and friends,” Neal said. “Gibson, let me know the minute we have access to the website. We need the shot caller’s identity and background ASAP.”
“I’m going to try Perkins’s cell phone,” Sandra said and got in position to do that.
She listened to the line ring several times before her call was flipped to voicemail with a generalized robotic greeting.
She hung up and tried him again. This time it went right to voicemail. “He just turned his phone off.”
“Then we’re three for three, four really considering the woman on the eighth floor isn’t talkative,” Kreiger said.
Sandra could feel the team coordinator was getting restless.
If she couldn’t get someone inside to talk soon and surrender, things were bound to get worse before they got better.
At least she had an edge to work with the shot caller.
She had the names for her three buddies now.
Whether or not the woman knew their real names didn’t matter.
But there were two sides to sharing that information.
It might make the shot caller feel they were moving in on her, and push her to do something drastic.
Or it would help her see that there was no way out of this but to surrender.
It wouldn’t be long before they knew all about her too.
Sandra would give the strategy some more thought before she did anything.