Black Oil, Red Blood - By Diane Castle Page 0,67

again, and we were back in business.

“Check this out,” Cameron said, pulling up a string of documents that had my name scattered throughout. “PetroPlex was corresponding about you, which is why I thought you had the tapes.”

I scanned the documents. Chloe Taylor. . . evidence. . . Schaeffer. . . threat. . . recover. . . eliminate. . . all words that didn’t bode well for me.

“What about me?” Miles asked. “Anything about me?”

Cameron ran a quick and dirty search for Miles’ name. Nothing came up. Then he ran a search for “Taylor’s paralegal” and got all kinds of hits.

“Great,” Miles said. “I never knew my name was ‘Taylor’s paralegal.’ I feel like I have a whole new identity now.”

I patted him on the back, jovially. “Look at it this way. At least you still have your house and your car.”

“Yeah, but not my hair,” he said. “I maybe would trade my house and car for my hair. Especially right now, seeing as how I’m not using either of them.”

“Well, nobody’s looking at your hair right now either except for us, and we like you anyway.” I stuck my hand out and massaged his crown. “Even though you have that really weird bump right there that makes you look like a conehead.”

Miles moaned. “Don’t hate on the bump. That’s brain in there. A big brain.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I think you might just be a bonehead.” I punched him playfully in the arm, and he went over to lie on a cot and sulk. Lucy followed him and curled up on his stomach.

Nash was concerned with more important things. He leaned over Cameron, staring into his computer screen. “Can you pull up anything that might relate to the tapes?”

“I’ve been reading through stuff for days,” Cameron said. “The amount of documents these guys generate on a daily basis would suffocate a horse. They know Schaeffer had something on them, but they’re not sure what, and they don’t seem to know about the tapes. I don’t think they’re aware of the mole or that any recordings were made at all.”

“What makes you think that?” Nash asked.

“There are no hits on a search for ‘recordings’ or ‘tapes,’ and I’ve been reading all the executive level correspondence for weeks. I haven’t noticed any kind of obscure references to any recordings of any kind. The only thing I can find is a few references to Schaeffer’s files.”

“Anything that specifically orders a recovery?” I asked.

“No,” Cameron said. “But I didn’t know about the connections with all the local officials until you guys told me your story today. The good news there is that PetroPlex uses a digital IP PBX phone system.”

“Okay,” I said, feeling like I should know what that meant, but again, I had no clue.

“That means I can hack into the phone system and retrieve the phone records,” Cameron explained.

“Cool.” Sounded good to me, even if I wasn’t exactly sure how it worked.

Nash sat down in front of another computer. “Let me see if my login to the City of Kettle’s system still works.” He typed a few characters, paused, and typed some more. “Yep,” he said. “They never were very good at staying on top of their computer network. Most of the guys at the department wouldn’t know a computer from a hole in the ground.”

“It could be a trap,” Cameron said, alarmed. “They could be waiting for you to log in so they can trace your IP address.”

“Trust me, not gonna happen,” Nash said. “I’ve seen the way they operate down there, and it takes a week to get a new email account set up. They are simply not equipped.”

Cameron didn’t look so sure. “Just hurry up and log out as soon as you can. Maybe nobody will notice a little activity blip.”

Nash did some fast typing, printed out a list of phone numbers, and logged off.

He handed the list to Cameron. “Here are the phone numbers for the mayor, the police chief, and Judge Joe Bob Delmont. We know for sure they are involved in some kind of local conspiracy. Can you cross reference them against PetroPlex’s database?”

Cameron nodded eagerly and went to work. Before long, he had a list of times and dates pulled up. There were at least a hundred calls to and from Delmont and the refinery president in the last week. There were half as many to Mayor Fillion, and a handful to Chief Scott. The calls to Chief Scott were all placed within the

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