The bedroom was across the hall from the closed room. They would be taking a chance, but Jake indicated he thought it was worth it. Carefully, they retraced their steps down the hall, then stepped into Graper’s bedroom. Once inside, Jake slowly drew the door closed and switched on the light. The disadvantage of closing the door was they wouldn’t know if his mom came out of her room. The advantage was the closed door helped muffle any sounds they made, and allowed them to turn on the light. Fumbling around in the dark wasn’t going to achieve anything.
The bedroom wasn’t that large, but had been modified to turn a small alcove into a tiny office. There was no door, but the work area was set off from the living space, and in an area where it was private from the rest of the house. If they were going to find anything, there was a good chance it would be there.
Moving together, they headed over to the desk in the tiny office. Jake could see that the computer was on, but in sleep mode. He wiggled the mouse, and was surprised that when the computer woke up and the monitor came alive, it was to a desktop and not some kind of log in screen. Graper apparently didn’t feel the need for any security. That suggested there might be nothing to find.
Laney searched the desk while Jake scanned the files on the computer. Nothing jumped out at him. He ran a check on file entries by date, believing anything of interest would be recent. Nothing appeared related. He’d like to copy the contents of the entire disk, but there were over six hundred gigabytes of files on the hard disk, and he didn’t have portable memory anywhere near that large with him. Instead he simply copied all the files less than a month old. Then he checked the email. There was nothing that looked interesting, but he copied the recent entries as well.
“Look at this,” Laney said, handing Jake a pad of paper with a single page of scribbles.
There wasn’t much on the single page, but what was there was revealing. The names “Trask” and “Mathews” were connected by a doubled ended arrow and followed by a pair of large question marks. Graper had somehow made the connection between the two aliases Jake had used. Even more telling were the names “Kerns” and “LoBue” separated by a dashed, almost like a hyphenated name, again followed by a question mark.
“There’s no doubt he’s made the connection,” Jake said, staring at the page.
“He hasn’t linked the names to who you really are,” Laney observed.
That didn’t matter. Jake knew Graper, or someone would make the connection.
“Oh boy,” Laney said. He’d been looking through the center drawer of the desk while Jake had been preoccupied with the pad.
“What did you find?” Jake asked.
Laney showed him the small gray address and phone book that Graper had kept in the desk. There were surprisingly few names in the book, but Laney had it open to a page that listed only three names. His finger was pointing at one of them.
Jake read the name. Lucio Rizzo.
The name was unfamiliar to him, but he could feel a chill as he read it. He was certain what it had to mean.
“Who is this Rizzo?” he asked, certain from his reaction that Laney knew.
“You told Carlson and me that you were certain your problems were tied in with the Chicago Mob under Franco Boitano. Depending on who you ask, Lucio Rizzo is the second or third in command under Franco. Why would Graper have his name and number in a personal address book?”
Jake looked at the number and memorized it. He recognized the Chicago area code from some of his checking earlier.
“He’s got to be dirty,” Laney said, without waiting for Jake to respond. “Here is your link to the group that is after you.”
“There’s no way to be certain if he’s contacted Rizzo with what he suspects yet,” Jake said unhappily. He could envision the need to risk a back-track to nip this at an earlier time, and have to live through these events yet again, assuming he survived the loop-back. He’d hoped he was early enough.
“We can check his phone, and possibly this number of Rizzo’s” Laney said.
“Wouldn’t you need warrants for that?” Jake asked. Warrants would announce what they were after.