Dear Wife(58)

MARCUS

The Pine Bluff PD’s computer forensics unit is crammed in the lower back end of the building, in a windowless room that could do double duty as a broom closet. Jade, the unit’s sole employee, can barely move around the computers and monitors and the giant industrial-strength air conditioner shoved in one corner, blowing icy air over the overheated electronics. If Jade minds the cramped quarters or the frigid temps, she doesn’t complain. This job is a million times better than prison, which is where she was headed after she hacked her way into a national security program run out of Little Rock.

I rap a knuckle on the door frame, and Jade swivels in her chair. “Move some shit around and have a seat,” she says, gesturing to a chair piled three feet high, with files and unopened mail and a ratty pair of rain boots covered in mud. “I’m almost done here.”

Jade’s dishwater hair is shoved into a neat ponytail I’ve never seen her go without, her bangs hanging in frizzy chunks over glasses that were purchased last century. She’s wearing her usual uniform, a holdover from the eighties—mom jeans, an oversize sweater and giant neon earrings made of plastic. If I stopped her on the street, I’d think she was a schoolteacher or maybe a librarian, until she said something. She has the mouth of a sailor and the speech patterns of someone half her age.

I dump the junk on the floor and pull the chair closer to the desk. Six monitors are stacked up the wall on the other side of Jade’s head, and I try to make sense of what I’m seeing. Long lines of computer code crawling across the screens. Jade called me down here with promises of news of Jeffrey, but now that I’m here, I’m going to need a little additional help.

“What the hell is all this?”

“Magic,” Jade says, tapping the enter key. Somewhere under her desk, a printer whirrs to life.

She spins around, and her lips, coated in an unflattering coral, widen into a smile. “Okay, so first of all, we totally lucked out that Jeffrey’s cell phone account is with Verizon. Compared to all the others, they’re a breeze to get into.”

“Legally, I assume.”

“Well, duh. Arkansas, remember? No warrant necessary, especially once the folks at Verizon heard Sabine’s name. They didn’t push back, not even a little bit.”

There’s a but coming. I wait.

“Before you get too jazzed, I want to warn you that geographic location isn’t always one hundred percent accurate. Like, if we see your guy in a strip mall, for example, we won’t know if he’s in the coffee shop on one end or the dollar store on the other, or maybe even in the apartment complex next door.”

I think about the scenario Jeffrey stitched together for the afternoon his wife disappeared. Lunch at an Italian restaurant in Little Rock, followed by an hour, maybe more of alone time on the river. I don’t need Jade’s pings to be exact, only close enough to verify he was where he said he was—or not, and I’m betting on not. Jeffrey doesn’t strike me as the introspective type. A hundred bucks says he was somewhere else entirely.

“How close can you get?”

Jade shrugs. “Depends on the phone. Not all GPS chips are created equal, if you know what I mean. But even with an older model phone with a crappy chip, if your guy was, say, reading a book on a park bench by the river, we might get a ping that makes it look like he was standing knee-deep in the water, but at least we’d know he was where he said he was.”

“Was he?”

She grins. “No, he was not.”

That little shit. A familiar heat pulses in my chest, and my hands tighten into fists. This case might turn out to be a hell of a lot easier than I thought it would be.

“Are you familiar with microcells?” she asks, and I shake my head. “A microcell is a little box the cell phone companies install in order to augment service in busy places. Places like parking garages and shopping malls and office high-rises. Think of it like a mini cellular tower inside a building where you otherwise wouldn’t have the best reception. Microcells record highly precise location data. As long as your phone is on, I can see where you are, down sometimes to a few feet.”

“Are you saying what I think you are?”

“I don’t know. Do you think I’m suggesting he was in a building with a microcell?” She gives me a saucy smile. “Because he was.”

I want to reach across the desk, grab her by the ears and plant one on her. That two-hour hole in Jeffrey’s day? History.

She whips a paper from the printer, slaps it to the desk and flips it around so I can see. A map of Little Rock, covered in time stamps. She taps a finger to one, smack in the middle of the airport.

“I started at twelve o’clock, right before his plane landed in Little Rock, and tracked him until 6:00 p.m., two hours after the neighbor said she spotted him pulling into his driveway in Pine Bluff. The time stamps on this map are every ten minutes, but if you need me to narrow the time gap, I can do that. It’ll just take me a few minutes to print you a new one.”

“Walk me through this one first, and then I’ll decide.” I scan the paper, taking in the time stamps. “Looks like he was at the airport until quarter to one.”

“Correct—12:48 p.m., to be precise. He gets into a car, then heads west on 440 to 30 North. Just over the river, he takes exit 141B.” She taps the spot with a short-clipped nail.