“That wasn’t easy,” he says. He sounds utterly thrilled.
“Did you find him?”
Harry doesn’t answer. Instead, he tells me a long and complicated tale about how All_BS used Skype to make some kind of VoIP call, not through a phone, but through a tablet. It’s hard to trace a telephone number, but not as hard to track an application’s user. “This is how even the best criminals get caught,” he tells me. “They are so careful—until they’re not.”
“So you did find him?”
“Like I said. It wasn’t easy. The tablet was registered to this guy Allen DeForrest.”
“So that’s him?”
“I don’t think so,” Harry says. “When I dug a bit deeper, this DeForrest had a huge online profile. He’s all over Facebook and Instagram, lots of pictures and status updates. I figured our guy would be more secretive. But I had this feeling. So I dug up more on DeForrest and discovered where he worked. He’s a pit boss at the Continental Casino.”
“What’s a pit boss?”
“It’s like a manager, but you’re missing the point, Cody. It’s at a casino. Your hunch was right! It’s not in Las Vegas, but Laughlin, Nevada, which is like a poor man’s Vegas.”
“But you said you didn’t think it was the DeForrest guy.”
“Right. I still don’t. For one, I thought that your guy, with all his fancy encryption methods, would be more careful than to use his own device. And second, we’re looking for a Smith, right? So I hacked into the employee records at the Continental Casino and looked for people with the last name Smith. As you might’ve guessed, there were a lot of them. But only a couple of B. Smiths.”
“B?”
“All_BS.”
“I thought that meant all bullshit.”
“I did too. And it might. But guys like this, who are doing bad things and keeping it secret, sometimes they still want to brag about it somehow. So I wondered if BS weren’t his initials, especially since we already know his last name is Smith.” He pauses. “So I checked. There are only three B. Smiths employed by the casino. Bernadette. Becky.” He stops. “And Bradford.”
The hair on the back of my neck stands up. “Bradford?”
“Bradford Smith. Age fifty-two. Works in the Continental Casino. There’s more. I looked up his Internet history and found that he pays for the premium broadband package, but, unlike the DeForrest guy, he leaves a very light online footprint. Fits the profile.”
“So that’s him?”
“Might be.”
“How do we know for sure?”
“Would you recognize his voice?”
Our one and only phone call. Brief, but indelible. “I think so.”
“Good. I got a phone number for his actual cell phone. We can call on a blocked line and conference you in. If we get voice mail, you listen to his outgoing message. If he answers, I’ll pose as a telemarketer, and you stay quiet. Either way, you can confirm his voice.”
“That’s all we have to do?”
“Yep. Hang up, and I’ll call you back and patch you in.”
“Now? Won’t he get suspicious?”