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“And you would be right to think that,” continues Snark, and his grin widens even further if that's even possible, “Because the chat logs from Mila's flash drive were, chef’s kiss. Good job digging these up. Also, that pudding porn was something, huh? I don’t get it, but I don’t not get it, you know?”
All three of my guys blink. “Pudding porn?” asks Reaper, sounding really, really confused.
“Not important for the case. I'm sure Mila can tell you about it.”
Reaper turns to me. “Pudding porn?”
I shake my head. “Later. Come on, Snark, what did you find?”
“I think Mullerby knew he was expendable and wanted some insurance—for all the good it did him. These chat logs are between him and…” He does a drumroll on his thighs. “Royce Kincaid. Looks like Mullerby used some sort of third party thing to record the chats, because this app usually deletes them as soon as they're seen. I’m pretty sure it goes deeper than that as well, there are a lot of files I haven’t figured out yet, but we have the first two rails on the ladder. Just goes to show, don't trust anyone not to leave a digital trail.”
Mack nods. “Not when you're on the case, for sure. Excuse me while I go delete everything off my phone.”
“Too late. I see all. I know all,” Snark chants.
Scrapper flips him off. “Fuck off. Tell us what's in the logs.”
“Mullerby was a greedy motherfucker. Kincaid picked his mole well. Guess when you've been overlooked for promotions for years, you don't seem to be going anywhere and you're not making as much dough as you'd like, it's easy to say yes to throwing the occasional case under the bus. Fuck, he wasn't even good at the cases where he tried. No wonder he was at the bottom of the totem pole. Anyway, I've got chat logs over the span of almost ten years. Took a while just to go through them all, even if they didn't communicate openly. And decrypting all the files was a fucking bear, let me tell ya.” He looks at Scrapper. “You owe me a whiskey, by the way.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Scrapper waves him off. “I'll get you two fucking bottles. Just stop drip feeding this shit and give us the info that we need.”
“I can say with real high confidence that there's enough incriminating evidence in these logs to put Kincaid away for a long time.”
Reaper looks over at me. “Sounds perfect for an exposé, doesn't it?”
Just the thought has me tingling. Actual evidence, actual content that I can make public to get the system that screwed my brother exposed to the whole world. But that leads to one really big problem. “That's great, but what about Danny? If I go public with this—and I'll have to, because the cops are just going to bury it rather than arrest the judge—then the threat is pretty clear. That video…” I can't even finish the thought.
“We're gonna figure it out,” says Mack with more confidence than I have. Let's start with getting the evidence together, and you let the boys and me worry about some of the details. Snark, can you get all this to us in a format we understand? I wouldn't know the first thing about how to deal with these encrypted files of yours.”
“Of course.”
Something occurs to me. “Didn’t Mullerby claim he didn’t know who it was? If he had these logs?—”
“The motherfucker lied. He musta been scared something fierce to keep lying after the treatment we gave him.” Scrapper shakes his head.
Mack draws breath to say something more when his phone rings. He looks at it. “Huh. Once shit starts happening, it's happening all at once.” He taps the button. “Hellfire, talk to me.”
I don't know who Hellfire is or why it's important, but the boys seem to think it is, so I wait impatiently for the call to finish.
When Mack hangs up, he's smiling like a lion baring his teeth before jumping an antelope. “I got names. I got a connection. You can say a lot about Hellfire and his boys, but they know what the fuck they're doing.”
“Worth the money?” asks Reaper.
“Oh fucking yes.”
Okay, enough. “What's going on?”
“Remember those fuckers who beat you up?” asks Scrapper. I nod. They're hard to forget. “Well, we now know who they are.”
Mack adds, “And we know who hired them. Or rather, which phone number they communicate to their boss with.”
“It wouldn't be a phone number we're already familiar with, is it?” asks Snark with a laugh.
“Funny you should ask.” Mack drives his fist into his palm and twists it. “It does seem vaguely familiar, but I'm pretty sure we're gonna have to have a talk with these boys to make sure we're on the right track.”
“Need a hand?” Snark sounds almost gleefully eager.
Reaper glances over at me and his expression turns darker than a storm cloud. His voice is so steely it's giving me chills. “No, I think we've got this. We've got a little bit of unfinished business that requires a personal touch. We don't know where to find them yet, but it's a start.”
