General Fiction posted November 20, 2024 Chapters:  ...4 5 -6- 


A trip to Kevin's apartment

A chapter in the book The Devil Fights Back

The Devil Fights Back - Ch. 6

by Jim Wile




Background
Three intrepid women team up to conquer medical challenges.
Recap of Chapter 5: Dana reflects on what a good time she had talking to Fran, although she suspects she isn’t an IT security consultant, but a cop or a Fed instead. She also wonders about Fran’s out-of-nowhere question about Glyptophan. We learn that Dana didn’t share all she knew about it, as she thinks back on a recent visit by a vice president of her pharmaceutical company. He had instructed her to tell her sales reps to essentially lie about it and tear it down because of the economic threat it poses to their company if successful. Dana is very conflicted about this.
 
We then switch to Marie who has decided to accept Julia’s invitation to the christening of her grandson, Johnny. She plans to stay with Julia and have it out about their estrangement from each other 13 years ago. She expects Julia to apologize to her for the hurtful things she said at the time, and perhaps then they can put it behind them.
 
 

Chapter 6
 
 
Fran
 
 
At 7:30 AM, I parked my car half a block down from the apartment building in downtown Charlotte, where Kevin Glazer lived. The residents parked in a lot next door, and I had already spotted his car when I drove through it a few minutes ago. I would wait until he left for work before going up to his apartment and breaking in.

Brittany Edwards, who worked at the patent office, had made a number of calls in the intervening months since that first time, so I figured this was now a routine thing. She was probably stealing patent info regularly for Kevin, and he would need a secure way to get it to his accomplice wherever that might be.

I was hoping to find a satellite phone in his apartment, with which he would receive his instructions and send his stolen data. Satellite phone calls are capable of being highly encrypted and are much more secure than cellular calls. I was also hoping to find the Dipraxa files somewhere on his computer.

Fortunately, I didn’t have too long to wait for Kevin to leave for work, and I observed his car drive out of the lot a few minutes after 8:00. I was wearing a jacket that advertised an appliance repair company, and I carried a toolbox, pretending to be there to repair an appliance, should anyone see me in the hall in front of the door to his apartment. I also brought a laptop with me that I’d secreted beneath my jacket.

I had a set of lockpicks in the toolbox and was able to pick the lock and let myself in within just a few minutes. I was interrupted twice by residents leaving for work, but when I would hear a door open, I simply stopped working on the lock and would knock on the door as if there for a repair.

Once inside, I looked around the apartment. It was huge. Beautifully furnished, with an industrial feel to it, it was definitely a high-end, man’s apartment. It had a home theater with expensive electronics and even a golf simulator in one corner.

I found his home office with his desktop computer, and, searching through the desk, I found what I was looking for—a sat phone. I was immensely relieved.

I needed to access the call log on the phone, and I used the laptop to download it via a USB cable. I had brought a variety of USB cable types with me for this reason. I found the right one, made the connection, and performed the transfer.

Next, I needed to copy the contents of his computer’s hard drive or SSD drive to my laptop to see if Patty and I could locate the Dipraxa files. That would be the most incriminating evidence I could find.

Copying the contents of his storage device would entail breaking into his computer. Fortunately, it was an older one that didn’t use biometric authentication such as fingerprinting, face, or voice recognition; it simply needed a 4-digit PIN to gain access. This could be anything, but Kevin was 60 and old-school and probably used the same PIN for everything.

I looked through his desk for a list or file of login information. Sure enough, in his bottom desk drawer, I found a card file containing user IDs and passwords for a number of websites. There was nothing written down for the computer itself, but after looking at a few of the cards in the file, I detected a pattern he sometimes used to generate passwords.

He would take the company name, capitalizing the first character, append a 4-digit number (the same number on every one—probably the PIN number he uses for everything), and then a special character—either an exclamation point or a question mark—to complete the password. For example: Amazon4178! Not a bad way, really, to help you remember passwords, though certainly not very secure.

I was sure the 4-digit number would be the one he used to unlock his computer. I entered 4178 and voila; I was in. Oh, Kevin, I thought, shaking my head.
 
I used a different USB cable to connect his computer to mine and initiated the file transfer from his SSD drive. This took some time. Meanwhile, I traipsed around the apartment. He had some expensive stuff. His home theater contained a state-of-the-art 80-inch QLED TV and some very sophisticated-looking sound equipment. His Scandinavian-style furniture looked new and very modern. Kevin obviously had money now, very likely from the sale of the Dipraxa files to a buyer from who knows where? Hopefully, the sat phone data would reveal that.

The data file transfer to my laptop was done in 20 minutes, so I packed everything up, put the sat phone back where I found it, and headed out.

This had been much easier than I anticipated—not worth all the worrying I did about it. I still needed to verify that the proof was now on my laptop, and I would need Patty Mattson’s help. This would be enough to take to Lou D’Onofrio. It would clear my name from suspicion and Brian’s too, and it would end my suspension. I would let Lou deal with the legal ramifications of how I got the incriminating data and let him worry about nailing Kevin.

When I paid Patty another visit to help me determine what I had, I had to fill her in on a few details about my activities today. She was able to find files containing the name Dipraxa in an encrypted folder. We looked at a few of them, and it became clear this was part of the patent package Brian had sent to the USPTO when he filed his patent. Perfecto!

She was also able to view the call log from the sat phone. There were not that many calls on it, and as a result of its infrequent use, the log went as far back as the end of the task force where Dipraxa was used. The calls began a couple weeks later. Due to the encryption, Patty couldn’t decipher the specific numbers the calls were from and to, but she could determine that the source and destination were somewhere in China. A heavy weight settled on my chest with this news.

China is the world’s leading producer of illegal drugs like fentanyl. China is also our number one enemy. The drugs they produce are smuggled from there into Mexico and then to the US. This is what I now believe was happening with Dipraxa.

“Patty, I can’t thank you enough for assisting me in this. You’ve just helped me and Brian protect our good names and probably saved our careers.”

“Oh, Sweetie, what are friends for? Ah’m glad ah was able to help you find what you were looking for. Ah couldn’t bear their thinking you were complicit in this. Or Brian either. Now you go and nail that guy who’s the real culprit.”

“I’ll be bringing this to my boss tomorrow and hopefully get my gun and creds back. Couldn’t have done it without you, my dear.”

“Oh, bless your heart.”

I gave her a hug, and we said goodbye.
 
 
 

I called Lou when I got back to the hotel after leaving Patty’s office.

“Lou, I’ve got the proof that exonerates me and my brother and nails the guy responsible.”

“Oh yeah? What took you so long?”

I was speechless for a moment.

“Francine, I knew you would jump right on it. I don’t know why I bother giving you orders; you never obey them.”

“Well, occasionally I’ve been known to—”

“It’s more than occasionally, but we don’t need to quibble about that right now. Do you have physical proof?”

“More like digital proof.”

“Who was it?”

“Kevin Glazer.”

Lou paused for a few beats. “I guess I’m not that surprised. He’s certainly a more likely candidate than you. Alright, bring it in tomorrow at 9:00, and I’ll take a look at it.”

“Thanks, Lou. I think we have a bigger problem, though, but we can discuss it when I see you tomorrow.”

“Tell me now.”

“You’ve seen how psychologically addictive Dipraxa can be from when we used it on our captive. It was the same for my brother when he experimented on himself. The problem is that Kevin sold the Dipraxa patent information to China—our number one enemy in the world. I think this has now become a matter of national security. I’m sure their intent is to spread this as widely as possible among our population. As addictive and disabling as it is, this country will eventually come to a complete standstill as a large portion of the population will be in complete thrall to this drug. The euphoria it produces, as described to me by Brian, is like no other and borders on feeling like a non-stop orgasm. Not quite as intense, but somewhat. I think this would spell the end of the US.”

“We’re in deep shit, aren’t we? Alright, we’ll discuss this further tomorrow. I think we’ll get central headquarters in on this as well, and you can define the problem to them. Francine, good work. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

When I got off the phone with Lou, I realized I had dodged a bullet. It’s a good thing I found the incriminating evidence, or this suspension might have become permanent. Finally relaxed about my immediate situation, though not so much about the long-term implications, I decided to give Dana Padgett a call as I told her I would yesterday.

We agreed to meet for dinner in the restaurant at 7:00. It was 4:30 now, and I was beat. I hadn’t slept much last night for worrying, and it caught up with me. I decided to nap for a couple of hours back at the hotel.

Mike is away on a mission now, and the only reason I’m staying at a hotel since I live here in Charlotte is because my hardwood floors are currently being refinished, and I had to remain out of the house for at least 48 hours. I’ll be checking out and going back home tomorrow, but I’m happy to have met Dana through this experience and look forward to meeting her again for dinner. Who knows? I might even find out a little more about Big Pharma’s plans concerning Glyptophan.
 




CHARACTERS



Fran Pekarsky: One of three narrators of the story. She is an FBI agent from the North Carolina field office in Charlotte.

Dana Padgett: One of three narrators of the story. She is the assistant marketing director for a Big Pharma company.

Brian Kendrick: Fran's younger brother. He is the inventor of Dipraxa and Glyptophan.

Julia Kendrick: Brian's wife.

Dr. Marie Schmidt: Julia's mother.

Cedric (aka Cecil): The doorman at the apartment house where Marie lives.

Lou D'Onofrio: Fran's boss at the FBI.

Thing-1 and Thing-2: Two agents from the FBI's Inspection Division, the FBI equivalent of Internal Affairs.

Kevin Glazer: Fellow FBI agent whom Fran suspects is a mole who stole the formula for Dipraxa.

Patty Mattson: A hacker friend of Fran's.

Brittany Edwards: Kevin Glazer's contact at the patent office where she is stealing secrets for him.
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