Jesus H Christ, this is the bloody case from hell!

Don Cooper


Jack and Don had never been so glad to get back to civilisation. They'd set up a line of communication between themselves, Boston PD and the Marshals, lodged a progress report with Burrell in the Boston field office and then Jack had gone to dinner at the finest restaurant that would accept a reservation at such late notice and Don had gratefully gone home to his wife and two teenage girls.

And rang Jack two hours later.

"If I hear Rill Rill one more time, I'm going to murder my children."

"No court in the land would convict you," Jack commiserated.

"Sixteen six six six and we fell apart? What does that even mean?"

"No clue," Jack said truthfully and gestured to the waitress to put his main meal in front of him. He'd already rather gleefully attacked a plate of marinated shrimp.

"Anyway, listen, I've been thinking about that road block in Haven," Don began, "Wuornos wants to take it down. Says it's a resource issue and it's not needed now Crocker's obviously left town.

"Umm," Jack said, taking a bite of his twice-cooked duck and closing his eyes momentarily in pleasure. He took a long swallow of the 2006 Tasmanian Pinot Noir he'd splurged on and then continued, "I don't think we should. In fact, I've drafted a request to the Bangor office to provide backup so Haven PD isn't doing all the work. That should quieten Wuornos."

"You think Crocker's still in Haven?"

"No. But I think his big big boat and his highly-successful restaurant that we never got to bloody eat at is. We're pretty sure he's in Boston now so we need to keep him here. If we take the road block down he could bolt back home, pack up properly, and we'd never find him."

"So you think he only made it as far as Boston because he wants to swing back and get his stuff? Well, you're the psych."

"That I am. Speaking of which, I had a strange conversation with our own Assistant Special Agent in Charge when I filed our report."

"Why? What did Burrell have to say?"

"That he thought the Crocker case was corruption, not murder, and that's why the FBI were involved."

"What?" Don barked, "But he was the one who gave us the brief and told us to track Crocker down."

"No, he was the one who sent us to White. White gave us the brief. White's in Public Corruption. Burrell had no idea there was a warrant out for Crocker's arrest. He thought we were going to question him, not bring him in."

"Jesus H Christ, this is the bloody case from hell. So, what does he want us to do?"

"Keep following the brief as directed while he works out what's going on."

"You didn't share your little 'Duke is innocent' theory with him, did you?"

"No, but I was tempted."

"Good. Let's just keep our heads down and our mouths shut until this whole thing works itself out."

"I don't know, Don. I told you. This thing stinks."

"Umm," replied Cooper non-committally. Jack ordered himself another glass of wine.

"So, what kind of corruption did he think Duke was involved in?" Don asked him.

"Apparently, there's some evidence that a certain parole board was bribed to release a certain prisoner that was being held for murder up at Shawshank."

"Let me guess. Max Henson."

"The one and only," Jack confirmed.

"And as soon as he was, he went straight home and straight to Duke."

"It's certainly interesting," Jack said understatedly.

"Well, either way, we need to find the slippery bastard."

"You do know how much your language has deteriorated over the last few days don't you, Agent Cooper?"

"Fuck yes. And if we don't find this asshat in the next few days, it's going to deteriorate fucking further."

"Hahaha. Well, I'll see you tomorrow at Harvard. Plenty of swearing there. I have local PD scouring the video footage of the internet cafe. While they're doing that, we'll go and learn all about Crocker's Ivy League days."

"Can't wait. Enjoy your dinner."

"Enjoy Sleigh Bells."

"Bloody teenagers. They used to be so sweet."

"Yeah well, so did my ex-wife. People change. Deal with it."

"See you tomorrow."

"Ciao."


One week later

"So," said Jack, settling down in the cafe and ordering what he suspected was going to be his last espresso from imported beans in a long while, "Boston was a misdirect."

Cooper slammed shut the report from the Boston Division's Cyber Crime Unit.

"It appears so. I'm beginning to think you were right and I severely underestimated Duke's intelligence. We've wasted days looking at internet cafe footage and combing Harvard and it doesn't look like he ever was in Boston. Whatever Ivy League school Parker thought he went to, it wasn't Harvard. Thank the Lord we still have that road block up and being manned by Feds."

"And the report?" Jack asked him.

"Have a read of it for yourself. Their conclusion will be of particular interest to you. I feel like going down there and reminding them that it's 2010 and not the damn dark ages."

Pistone picked up the report, flicked to the conclusions section and found he could not stop his jaw from practically hitting the table.

"How the hell is that possible?"

"Language, Jack," Don mockingly reprimanded him, "you're starting to sound like me."

"Their search for the florist order was deliberately rerouted to the internet cafe and they didn't even notice?"

"They have no idea where Crocker made his online order for the florist. They can't even narrow down the continent. All the evidence says the order came from Boston. Except it didn't. They have the security footage for the cafe for the past month and Boston PD watched every damn frame. He was never there. When Cyber Crime looked closer at the trace, it was following a planted trail."

"The transaction was made to look like it came from Boston when it didn't," Jack paraphrased, "and they can only speculate how it was done. They don't know of any hacker who could do this. It's beyond anyone's known capabilities at this stage."

"See, hackers bounce their point of attack all around the place. If they're good, Cyber Crime can't find them but at least they can tell why they can't find them. This transaction just... appeared. Read out the last line. It's the best."

"If they didn't know better, they'd... think that... this was magic."

"Magic, Jack! Magic! An FBI report just used the word magic."

"You're losing it, Don. You know that, don't you?"

"Magic!"

"So, what do we do?" Jack asked him, sliding the other man's coffee away from him and ordering him a camomile tea. Probably best to keep him away from caffeine for a while, he thought. And sleeping pills.

"We start at the beginning."

"The beginning of the murder investigation? Haven't we already done that?"

"No," Don said, "we start right at the beginning. If Max Hansen was only freed because someone paid off the parole board then it puts a whole new light on things. Why did Max Hansen come back to Haven? What were his movements? Why did he go and see Duke Crocker in the first place? Duke can't have been more than eight or nine when Hansen got put away. So, if he had something to do with Hansen's release, we need to know why."

"You're right," Jack admitted, annoyed for not seeing it himself, "Hansen came back to Haven and went straight for Duke's boat. And then when he died, Haven PD interviewed him. And only him. Why?"

"The more I look at this case," said Don, "the more I realise that we know absolutely nothing about Duke, or Hansen or... anything. Everyone's been incredibly helpful but no one's told us anything. Particularly a certain annoyingly folksy small-town Detective. So, we get everything related to Duke and Hansen, including Wuornos' and Parker's personnel and case files and we go through it all right from the beginning."

"Well," said Jack thoughtfully, "we'll need to get a warrant for the last two but the other ones we have. Haven PD handed them over to us on day one."

"So, let's go."

"Back to Haven it is," said Jack with a grin. "We can check back into the Over the Way B&B right next to your nemesis. And if we hurry, we can make breakfast at the Old Lighthouse. I'm sure Fern will be glad to see us."

"Oh, joy."