1st Case - James Patterson Page 0,36

overlaid with swaths of green in different shades, from darker to lighter. The biggest dark patch emanated from Boston, with several others concentrated around various population centers.

“Darker green indicates a denser saturation,” Zack said. “Lighter green down to white means less, or none at all. In total, we’re estimating that the app has landed on approximately 12,300,000 devices around the Northeast. Primarily cell phones. That’s as of thirty minutes ago.”

“I’m sorry, did you say twelve million?” someone asked. It was the same question I had. That number seemed unfathomable, considering the relatively short amount of time the app had been in play.

Zack nodded. “That’s right. Twelve point three million and growing fast. This morning, the number was eleven point nine mil.”

He tapped out a command on his laptop and the screen displays jumped to a similar graphic but with smaller clusters of every shade on the map.

“Here’s a simulation of what we’ve seen over the course of the last week,” he said. Then he hit another key to set the program into motion.

A time sequencer ran across the bottom of the screen while the clusters darkened and grew over the course of a seven-day period. It was like watching a biological virus spreading out of control.

“How are you doing this?” I asked. I didn’t know if I was supposed to be inserting myself, but I couldn’t help it.

Zack eye-checked Keats before he answered. “One of our DC analysts found a way in,” he said. “Not by following the app directly to individual users, but with a surrogate marker at the ISP level that allows us to see where it’s landing.”

“So you can’t tell who’s opening it, versus leaving it dormant on their systems?” someone from Philly asked.

“That’s right,” Zack said. “That’s one of the limitations. Anything more specific than that is coming through Keats’s team, which you already heard about.”

Keats picked it up from there.

“Obviously, they’re casting a very wide net in the name of picking up just a few victims,” he said. “If there’s good news, that’s it. And all of those incidents have been consolidated in the Northeast.”

“For now,” Gruss interjected.

“Yes,” Keats said. “For now. But if they find a way to activate the app without permission from individual users, then we’re going to have a whole new shitstorm on our hands.”

We sure will, I thought.

To the tune of twelve million and counting.

CHAPTER 39

WORD FILTERED PAST my desk the next morning that another incident had been linked to Keats’s investigation. Authorities in Portland, Maine, were reporting a missing girl who had either run away or been taken from her bedroom overnight.

The girl’s name was Reese Anne Sapporo. A series of suspicious texts found on her phone had been uniquely formatted with an .ras file extension. It was like the app’s signature move, using the victim’s initials that way.

But the disappearance? That was something new.

I got my first details from Zack when he told me I’d be traveling with the case.

“You’ll be there overnight, at least,” he told me. “You can expense back a few things—”

“Not a problem,” I said. I had an unopened toothbrush and some deodorant in my desk. I’d improvise around the rest.

“Keats wants two from the CART,” Zack told me. “I’m sending you and Candace. She’ll be point of contact for the lab and you’ll assist.”

Candace Yamaguchi was a senior ITS-FE, also known as an Information Technology Specialist–Forensic Examiner, basically one step up from me. I saw her pulling together a field kit at the back of the lab and went to help.

“How much do you know?” I asked.

“Not a lot,” she said, “but we just got this. It was sent directly to Reese Sapporo’s phone about thirty minutes ago.”

Candace navigated to an image file on her tablet and turned it around to show me. “I guess the parents saw this before the police did. As if this bastard wasn’t already cruel enough.”

What I saw was a picture of a girl, presumably Reese Sapporo, in the open trunk of a car. Her wrists and mouth were duct-taped, and her eyes were wide and wild.

Even after everything else I’d seen, that photo sucked the air right out of me. But I knew I had to make a choice. I could get emotional right now, or I could get ready to go. Not both. So I grabbed a second field case and focused on the checklist of things we’d need for this trip.

Camera, tool kit, gloves, blue tape, wire cutters, evidence tags …

Twenty minutes later, we were