“It is,” Mac answered. “But I wasn’t that phased by it because under their scenario you could only manipulate one machine at a time.”
“And to make any meaningful impact on an election, or at least a presidential election, you would have to manipulate hundreds, if not thousands of machines,” Wire added, understanding Mac’s train of thought.
“That takes time, resources and people,” Jupiter noted. “Couldn’t be done, or at least would be really really hard to do something like that machine by machine. The operational security on something like that would be a bitch.”
“Not under the HBO scenario,” Mac answered. “But that’s not what we have here, I don’t think. I think Connolly, or whoever else might be involved, has taken this a step or two further. Checketts’s presence suggests they’re going to manipulate the machines at the source, at DataPoint.”
“Going to? It’s five days to the election,” Wire stated. “If they’re manipulating the machines at the source, it’s already done.”
McRyan and Jones both shook their heads in dismay and sat back in their chairs.
“She’s right,” Jupe said.
“Yeah she is,” Mac agreed, leaning back in the chair, his fingers laced behind his head.
As if the night hadn’t been enough, the case just escalated again.
Mac pushed himself out of his chair and walked over to the windows for the conference room. He casually closed the shades and then walked to the door and looked out. Chief Flanagan was still around, talking to Riley. Mac caught the chief’s eyes and tilted his head towards the conference room. The chief walked into the room and Mac closed the door.
“What do you have?”
“I think we might know what this is all about now. At a minimum we got a big piece of the puzzle.” Mac put the picture of Checketts on the whiteboard. “This is Peter Checketts. He is the president and owner of DataPoint Electronics in Milwaukee.”
“The picture is from the meeting in Kentucky, Chief Flanagan,” Wire added.
“So we have two of the four men from that meeting, at least other than the private security men, right?” the chief asked.
“Right,” Wire answered. “We still haven’t figured out who the other two guys are, but that’s not the interesting part of this.”
“What is?”
“DataPoint Electronics,” Mac answered.
“Which is what?”
“Among other things, a voting machine company,” Wire answered.
That caught the chief’s attention. “Go on,” he said quietly.
Mac explained their theory that the meeting had something to do with manipulating voting machines. He finished with: “Why else would Connolly, Checketts and these two other men meet?”
The chief sighed and sat down and thought about what he’d heard for the past few minutes. Flanagan shook his head, “So you two have the vice president’s campaign manager and the president of a voting machine company at a clandestine late night meeting in backwater Kentucky a week before the election.” Flanagan just looked at the picture and shook his head, the magnitude of what they were looking at dawning on him. The chief also knew what they had sounded good, but that wasn’t enough. “You may be right, it’s a good theory, makes some sense, but you’re way ahead of yourselves. You have no proof.”
“Chief, the picture, the meeting, these guys are up to something,” Jones said.
“They are for sure,” Wire answered. “But the chief’s right. We have a theory, but we have little to no proof. We’d get laughed out of court.”
“Yeah, but we’re not in court,” Mac said. “We’re conducting a homicide investigation and this gives us more to go on. But I’m thinking one other thing, Ms. Wire.”
“That we need to call the Judge?”
“Yes.”
Wire nodded. “And get the campaign to work on figuring out where DataPoint machines are and when they got there. If you’ll excuse me, I need to make a call.” Dara got up from the table and opened the door to find Detective Franklin ready to knock. Wire walked by Double Frank, who came into the room.
“What’s up, Double Frank?” Mac asked.
“Mac, we’ve hit every hospital in town and all the ‘off-the-books’ guys we are aware of and we haven’t found the guy.”
“Okay, Frank, it was worth a shot.”
“Okay, Mac,” Double Frank turned to leave but then stopped and turned, “but …”
“But what, Detective?”
“It’s probably nothing.”
“Not tonight it’s not. What is it?”
“As we’ve been asking around tonight, a couple of docs said they’ve heard rumors of a new provider out there. Nobody knows his name, it’s something of a mystery I guess, but supposedly he has high-end surgical