Wire-Pulling Pt. 01

As soon as the passenger door was closed, they drove off. Fairfield had looked up the positions of all the firehouses and police stations in the area and knew exactly which route they would take to reach the condo. This way, he was able to leave the area without being spotted. During the entire drive, Dallas sat next to him, not moving a muscle while his face was as white as a ghost. Obviously, Fairfield's words had the desired effect. Now it was time to push Dallas in the right direction.

"Try to get a grip and decide what you want," Fairfield said after he had stopped the car in front of Dallas's home. "This isn't the amateur league anymore. Mistakes can happen, but not as frequently as they seem to happen to you, and only if the person responsible is man enough to fix them. Now get out!"

Still not saying a word, Dallas got out of the car and walked into his house. Fairfield contemplated whether he handled the younger man too harshly. His worries did not come from a place of empathy for the man, but were rather born from concern over him. It wouldn't be completely outside the realm of possibility that Dallas turned out to be so incompetent he surrendered himself into police custody and told them about what had happened tonight.

Before he left, Fairfield had called one of his surveillance teams to keep an eye on Dallas.

Chapter 2

I barely slept last night. I kept tossing and turning throughout the night, as memories of my past life plagued me. And, whenever I shot awake, my mind just wouldn't stop revolving around everything Tim and I found out the day before, and the possibility of finally repaying that bastard for everything he did. But what really wouldn't let me rest were the implications of what we had discovered.

What did we know for sure?

We knew that someone falsified evidence of my mother's affair. We knew that someone was willing to pay a lot of money to make this happen, since surveilling someone over such a long time was not cheap.

What could I safely assume?

It simply didn't make sense for my mother to try and steal that insider information from the Senator. As I pointed out to Breston, she could've walked away with A LOT more than four million dollars, had she just divorced him. So, whoever was behind this had access to the senator's locked-away business documents. Since I didn't deem the man capable of pulling this off himself, he probably hired someone to complete this framing job.

So, the real question was: Whose leg was I going to piss on by investigating all of this?

Realizing that it was futile to try and get any more sleep, I decided to look into that gigolo they had used to frame my mother. I got out of bed, started my computer, and, while I waited for it to finish its startup routine, looked over all the information Breston had supplied regarding Carver. When I then looked up his address, however, all the results I found were online articles from Austin's local news agencies. When I clicked on the first result, I felt my stomach drop.

- - -

AUSTIN, Texas - Austin firefighters responded to a house fire in the 8800 block of Black Oak Street near Anderson Mill.

AFD says they completed their search and, unfortunately, one person, who is believed to be the owner of the home, was sleeping inside when the fire caused the roof to partially collapse. There was a multi-agency response. The preliminary report by AFD fire investigators indicates the cause to be a cable fire caused by a faulty fuse box, as several of the fuses had seemingly been bypassed using car parts.

- - -

It took me several minutes, during which I had to force myself to keep my breathing under control, before I could pull myself away from the monitor by leaning back in my chair. Sure, it could very well have been an actual accident. I had read in Breston's report that Carver was indeed a car mechanic, so the car parts in the breaker box weren't a completely outrageous claim.

It was clear to me that I had to rethink my plans. What little plans I had so far, that is. It wasn't just Carver who was gone now. The condo's bedroom, which was the "crime scene" of my mother's supposed affair, was also gone. All the evidence and clues that might have pointed to the whole thing being staged were gone.

The next thing I realized was that, if Carver's death wasn't an accident, and I found a way to prove this, it could cast serious doubt onto the allegations against my mother. The timing of her lover's involuntary departure, right when we found out that he had lied about the duration of their affair, was too striking. Especially since she was in custody when the fire started, so it would be hard to spin this as her trying to get rid of witnesses.

Before I could actually come to any real conclusions about which further steps would now be necessary, however, my doorbell rang. I looked at the clock and, wondering who would want to disturb me at ten a.m. on a Sunday, got up to open the door. Before I had a chance, though, I heard a key being inserted into the lock and the door open.

"YO, PAUL!" I heard Tim's voice shout out from the hallway and instantly got an annoyed look on my face. "I know this is your apartment and all, but please don't be naked right now. I see enough of that in the gym's locker room."

As he finished that sentence, he stumbled into my living room covering his eyes with one hand, while his other hand was holding a box full of electronics.

"It's okay, Tim. You can look. Though, given how you - once again - just waltzed in here, maybe I should draw blank anyway," I mused.

"Yeah, sorry about that, but we kinda need to talk. Though..." He paused to place the box with the electronic devices and cables on my dining table and pulled out his phone, before turning off the lights in the room and drawing the curtains shut. "...that'll have to wait until we checked the apartment."

"Check for what?" I asked with a raised eyebrow at his antics.

"Cameras. Pull out your company phone." I decided not to question him. He liked to take the piss and crack weird jokes, but he's not the type to pull pranks, and certainly not when it came to his work. "Use the front-facing camera like you're taking a selfie to check around."

"Tim? How's that gonna reveal any cameras?"

"Most surveillance cameras have an infrared LED for night vision. The camera on the backside of your company phone has one as well. The one on the front doesn't. Look."

As he explained it, he stepped next to me and pointed his phone downwards so, looking at the display, we saw our faces as well as my smoke detector that was glued to the ceiling above us. Around the center of said smoke detector, right where the slots in the housing were, we could see a bright and almost white dot. When I looked up at the ceiling, there was no such dot visible in the smoke detector.

"You're shitting me," I breathed out.

"Don't freak out, yet. Almost all modern smoke detectors have an infrared or ultraviolet LED in combination with a photodiode. That's how they work. They detect when the particles in the smoke scatter that light. We'll need to take them apart to be sure, but, as long as you only see one bright dot through your phone, it's unlikely someone put a camera in there. Unless they replaced the whole thing with a fake housing that only contains a camera. But now you know what to look for."

I nodded and got to work in my bedroom while he continued in my living room. After about half an hour of diligent search, we took off all the smoke detectors and took them apart to be absolutely sure that the LEDs we saw actually belonged to a smoke detector. That's when I heard the doorbell again, but this time the person on the other side waited for me to open the door.

To my surprise, it was Bill!

"Boss! What're you doing here?" I asked perplexed and a little overwhelmed by everything that was happening this morning.

"Morning Paul," he slightly lifted a paper holder containing two cups of Starbucks coffee, as if to say 'I bring gifts'.

I stepped aside to let him enter and led him into my kitchen area, where he stopped in his tracks upon seeing Tim tinkering with my smoke detectors. Interestingly, he just sighed before shaking his head.

"Morning, Kid. Should've known you'd already be here," Bill mumbled before taking a seat at the small table.

"Mornin' Boss," Tim greeted him without taking his eyes off his work.

"I take it you both watched the news?" Bill commented in a resigned voice, pointing a finger at the devices Tim was putting back together.

"Hm," was Tim's comment, and the indifference of that sound took me aback.

"Wait. You know?" I asked, perplexed. "How!?"

"Uh... well..." For the first time since he sat down, his hands stopped working. "After you left yesterday, I set up something like a Google Alert. So, when the first report about the fire was published, my phone woke me up. And, given how we know that your mom was framed using hidden cameras..." His voice trailed off as he gestured towards his phone, telling me why he saw the need to check the apartment before we could talk.

"Neither this Vic's name nor address has made its way to the press, though," Bill commented, and Tim suddenly got visibly uncomfortable.

"I said 'something like a Google Alert', didn't I?" he defended himself, causing Bill to shake his head in disapproval. Whatever he was talking about, Bill seemed to have an idea, and it probably wasn't entirely legal.

"I appreciate the sentiment, Tim, but I only met with Breston for the first time yesterday. I doubt I could already have a target on my back," I chuckled, though that stopped when I noticed Bill's facial expression.

"Mind filling me in on what you boys found out so far?" he asked, and, after a few short seconds of contemplation, I nodded and told him everything. After all, these two people were probably the ones I trusted the most in my life.

I spent about fifteen minutes relating everything I knew, while Bill sat with a stoic face perfectly devoid of emotion. Though, it seemed like the wrinkles and crevices in his face deepened a little more the further I got in my report. When I finished, he just sighed.

"Paul... I don't think I can talk you out of this, can I?"

That confused me.

"No," I replied in determination. "I honestly don't care about the woman rotting in jail. But this is just too good of a chance to finally get one over that bastard, and I'm not letting it go. Why would you even ask that?"

"Because I'd prefer someone I don't care about to get himself killed while working this case," Bill replied with a sad smile that almost shocked me. "Listen to me. Why do you think your mother is in jail right now?"

"Either someone wanted to get rid of her, or they were trying to paint her family in a bad light," I responded, to which Tim nodded in approval.

"Sure," Bill nodded just like Tim had before. "Not what I was talking about, though. I wasn't asking about their motive, but trying to point out how far they are willing to go. Someone threw millions of dollars out the window to get this done, and now they most likely killed someone to hide evidence. What does that tell us about the people in charge of this?"

"That they're ruthless?" I tried, but Bill slammed his hand onto the table in a sudden burst of anger, making both Tim and me jump a little.

"No! It tells you that they stand to lose something. Think, you two idiots! They didn't even know for sure whether you and that lawyer would find anything. They didn't have the time to bug your place. They might have followed the lawyer here and listened in on your conversation with a dish antenna or something, but he didn't tell you anything that wasn't already included in the case files. The actual discovery of the forged photographs was made at the Kid's place. And I know his office, there are no outside windows since the paranoid little shit bricked them up when he basically turned the room into a Faraday cage. They couldn't have learned what you two talked about, meaning they killed someone just in case!"

"Well... couldn't they have done it so they won't have to pay him?" Tim quipped, though Bill wouldn't have any of it.

"Kid, they gave away four million dollars just to make it look like his mother was paid for the bank intel. You think they would then rather murder someone than pay the few dozen grand he was probably waiting for?" Hearing that, Tim conceded the point with a shrug. "Also, this tells you that whoever is behind this is well organized. You're up against multiple opponents, while your stepfather is probably just the one paying them."

"What makes you so sure he was killed in the first place, though?" I had to ask.

"AH!" Tim suddenly called out before he dug his hands into the box he showed up with and, from underneath all the electronics, produced a small binder.

"What's this?" Bill eyed him in suspicion.

"This..." Tim said in a triumphant voice before dropping the file onto the table and opening it. "...is the AFD Chief investigator's preliminary report about the fire that killed Carver."

I watched Bill's eyes grow just as big as mine.

"How the hell did you get that!?" I asked incredulously.

"What did you do?" Bill asked with an almost threat in his voice as his expression darkened.

"Calm down, I didn't break any laws or hack into anything," Tim smirked. "Except Betty."

"You... what? What's Betty?"

"Betty is the Chief Investigators secretary," Tim shrugged. "Was on the phone with her for almost an hour. Not the sharpest tool in the shed, I have to say. The whole call, I kept imagining her as that peroxide blonde with fake fingernails just long enough to stop her from typing properly, but who got hired anyway because of her two massive..."

"Get to the point, Kid!" Bill sighed in annoyed resignation.

"Right. Sorry." Tim paused for a second to look at the report and compose himself. "Betty is not exactly a sucker for protocol and regulations, so, using the tricks Micheal taught me,..." At this point, Bill looked up at the ceiling while mumbling something unintelligible. "...it was relatively easy to talk her into mailing it to me after I claimed to work for the insurance company. According to the report, the fire pattern points to it starting in the bedroom where Carver was sleeping. They found a burst whisky bottle in the area that was burned worst, so they believe that acted as an accelerant. But... since the coroner is a little flooded at the moment, it'll take them a few days to check whether he actually drank any of it. So, there's no way to tell if someone helped that fire along."

"What about the source of the fire?" Bill asked.

"The fire's origin seems to be..." His finger ran over the lines of the paper in a searching manner. "Ah, started at the bedside table. They suspect faulty wiring in the lamp. When they checked the fuse box, they discovered that he had bridged the breaker using a faulty 450Amp safety fuse usually found in motorhomes."

Bill looked thoughtful for a minute before shaking his head.

"So... Carver accidentally pours a bottle of whisky over the only lamp with faulty wiring, that is plugged into the only socket in the house that is secured by a faulty fuse, right when you boys find out that he lied about the details of his involvement with Paul's mother? With this timing, I don't buy that. I'd say, whoever is behind this scheme went over their evidence one more time because they learned about the lawyer contacting you. Then they discovered the same mistake you found and did the only sensible thing to stop anyone from following up on that lead."

I didn't like it, but he had a point.

"Did you just call the possible murder of an accomplice the 'sensible thing to do'?" Tim asked, sounding almost impressed.

"Kid, I've been around long enough to know that most people are greedy and selfish. Everybody has their price, and the less attached they are to a potential target, the lower that price turns out to be. Nowadays, you can order a hit on someone for two hundred bucks and a bottle of booze, if you're okay with the result being messy. So, right now, if I can't talk you out of this, we need to talk about your safety."

"Ah!" Tim called out again as if he remembered something, before grabbing the box he brought with him and pulling a small wireless camera out of it. "I thought, maybe, we wire up your apartment and then move you into my old one downstairs."

After he said that, he gave Bill and me a questioning look, while the both of us blinked at him.

"You still have your own apartment?" Bill finally asked.

"Yeah. Remember how our landlord demanded a six-month advance on my rent because I was still a minor when I originally signed the lease and the prick thought I'd bail on him after wrecking the place?" Tim asked him back, and I saw understanding light up in Bill's eyes, accompanied by a small grin. "Well, I gave him that advance but then still paid my rent monthly, even after I eventually turned eighteen, just to prove him wrong and tell him to fuck himself without saying it out loud, so my rent was always six months ahead. Now, after I moved back home three months ago, I kinda neglected to look for someone to take over the lease. You know, in case things don't work out with my mom and all. So... it's still paid up 'till the end of November."

I hadn't even considered that as a possibility, but, now that he laid it all out, it made sense. The main reason why I connected with our IT Monkey, despite him being fifteen when he started working in our firm, was that he, too, had a shit pair of neglectful parents. I never told him the peculiarities of my own upbringing, but we still bonded when I tried to help him out and vouched for him with my/our landlord so he could get away from those people. While I don't know the details of what happened since then, he recently somehow managed to reconnect with his family and ultimately moved back in with them. I guess he wanted to keep the apartment as a kind of insurance policy, so he knew he could always leave again should things turn sideways again.

"I like the idea, Kid." Bill was still grinning when he said that. "Though, I seem to remember you ranting for an hour straight about how wireless cameras are crap."

"And that statement still stands!" Tim pointed his finger at our boss. "But we only need to transmit the signal one floor down, so chances of the baddies picking it up and using it for themselves are slim. And in the unlikely event of a neighbor stumbling upon the signal, they'll only get a feed of his apartment instead of Paul running around in the buff after one of his half-hour showers or something."

"That... was an oddly specific example we will talk about another time," I commented drily before turning my attention towards Bill. "What do you think?"

To my surprise, the slight grin was gone from Bill's face as he contemplated my question. Tim and I both shared a questioning look as we watched him for a good minute before he finally sighed and spoke up.

"On one hand, I like the idea of having a surveillance station so close by. It'll allow us to lure them in, in case they keep tabs on you. They'd see you still enter the same building as you always do, making it less likely for them to find out you moved. And, if they really were to come after you and break into your apartment, we would be close by to apprehend them." Then he paused for a moment, before releasing another sigh. "On the other hand, I don't like the idea of you trying to apprehend them in the first place."

"What? Why?"

"Paul... I already told you that these people are not to be taken lightly. Yes, you don't necessarily need a pro assassin to get a hit done on someone, but, considering everything else that has happened in this case so far,... I'm convinced these guys are professionals."