Rita could not remember the last time Connie McDowell had set foot inside the 15th squad. Many things had changed since then, but at least one important thing had remained the same.

"Hello, Lieutenant," John Irvin said to Connie, a broad smile painting his face as his eyes gleamed joy for all to see, "it's wonderful to see you."

"Hello, John. How are you? How's your sister?"

"She's doing well. I'll let her know you asked."

"If she needs anything, you'll let us know, promise?"

"Of course."

They had known each other for longer than John had known Rita, though only by a month or so. Once upon a time, what seemed like a lifetime ago, John (courtesy of an online church that would make anyone who took a short course and paid a small fee a reverend of the church) celebrated the service that had wed Connie McDowell and Andy Sipowicz. It had not been a road without bumps, but they had traversed them all, the three of them, and John considered them to be part of his family.

The room was very much like it had been when Connie had been a member of the squad. The computers stationed at each desk were only one of the differences, but they were what Rita needed most now.

"Let's use your old desk," Rita said as John handed her the manilla envelope with the word EVIDENCE printed in large bold font, as well as a stack of telephone message slips, "for luck."

"Loo, we have the witness to that liquor store robbery in two," Detective Abby Archer said as she approached.

"Not now," Rita answered as she inserted the DVD into the DVD drive that could not be found on any modern computer.

And I bitched up a storm about not getting new computers.

"What have you got?"

"Don't know yet," Rita answered as Abby's partner Sax McGuire walked up and stopped next to Abby.

Connie had opened the envelope and spread out the photos.

"That one," she said as she indicated what looked like a folded post-it note with only a long sequence of numbers.

2f0d41dee064fb43f550890c0b2cfd4fe2697d0f71d01046542a9d64bf534769

"That's a long fucking number." Abby said.

It was only a second or two later that the familiar image appeared on the smaller screen.

Enter krb5 session key

"Huh," Abby said.

"Speak friend and enter," Saxon McGuire said.

Three heads turned to look at her.

"Don't tell me none of you have read or seen Lord of the Rings."

"Connie, read it to me," Rita said, and began to type in the session key slowly.

It took over a minute for Rita to type in the number.

"Are you holding your breath?" Abby asked her partner.

"No," Sax replied before exhaling.

Rita entered the last number and pressed enter and the login prompt was replaced by a simple desktop displaying a series of folders, all identified only by numbers.

"Disappointed," Sax said.

"More fucking numbers," Abby said.

Rita picked the folder labeled 1652929200 at random and opened it.

"Jesus, who named these files?"

"Somebody with a number fetish."

The contents of the random folder were two other folders. One folder, which was labeled once again by numbers, was empty. The other folder had a single document, labeled, simply, document, that appeared to be a ledger of some sort, but was obviously written in code.

It was the empty folder that garnered the most attention.

"Why an empty folder? Connie asked.

"And why that label?" Rita replied.

"Why numbers and letters?" Abby asked.

"No letters higher than F," Saxon said, "Those could be hexadecimal numbers."

"Hexa what now?"

"Loo, can I drive for a minute?"

Rita looked at Detective second-grade Saxon McGuire for a moment before looking at Connie and standing up.

"You have the con."

Saxon sat down, switched to a web browser, searched for decimal to hexadecimal converters before choosing the first one in the list and converting each number.

40.813808, -73.936867

"I know what that is," Rita said as Saxon quickly converted the numbers for longitude and latitude into a street address.

"2350 Fifth Ave, New York" she read from the screen.

"That's Harlem," Connie said.

"Abby, we need info on anything that was reported at that address in the past year," Rita said.

"I'm on it," she said as she wrote on her pad and picked up the phone.

"And we need to toss the apartments for the other three guys again. We know what we are looking for now."

"On it."

That comment seemed to jog Connie's memory.

"Did any of the other three have a long-ass number tucked away in their wallets?"

Rita looked at her former partner before turning to look at John Irvine.

"I'm on it," he said as he picked up the phone.

Rita grabbed the entire contents of the disk and began to drag them to the hard disk.

"Shouldn't we wait for TARU?"

"Fuck."

"What do we do now?"

"We wait," Rita said as she pointed at the random folder she had picked, and the long number that it had as it's label, "Sax, google that number. It's a long shot, but you never know."

"Gotta love The Google," she said as she copied the number from the folder label and pasted it into the search bar.

"Isn't this what we pay the eggheads for?" Connie asked.

"Killjoy," Rita replied just before Saxon spoke.

"Lieutenant…."

It was the last item on the first page of search results.

Calendar: Day view: Thursday, 19 May 2022 - Campus Oficial - UNT › calendar › view › time=1...

Thursday, 19 May 2022 ... There are no events this day.

"Holy shit," Rita and Connie said in unison.

"Abby…"

"I'm on it," the blonde detective said as she wrote in her pad, her phone still up to her ear.

It was at that moment that the guys from the NYPD Technical Assistance Response Unit finally showed up.

"Fucking took you long enough."

"Jackpot," Abby had said as she hung up her phone. "The 2-9 says that location was the first vigilante raid they got. The guys they nabbed were transporting women. They had holding pens set up in a self storage business. The tip they received came in at 11:54 PM on the 18th."

"So they had something set up for the 19th, but they were interrupted late on the 18th," Connie said.

"They must have been planning to ship this batch of women on the 19th," Rita added, "but someone interrupted up their plans."

Saxon was working to translate the other locations and dates once she had figured it out.

"Those are UNIX timestamps,"

"So even though we can't read it, we know what that ledger must contain. Entries for, what, twenty-five women? Do we have an accurate count?"

"Some of the women had split by the time the 2-9 showed up, but most had stayed, and someone had put enough of a beating on the five kidnappers that two of them needed surgery," Abby said.

"How many of the women stuck around until the guys from the 29th precinct showed up?"

"Twenty-one. The others were probably illegal, and didn't want to take chances with INS."

"Jesus fucking Christ." Rita said before crossing herself.

"Are all of those guys still alive?" Connie asked.

"I can find out," Abby said as she wrote in her pad.

"Do that. And find out how heroin guy number four, who ratted out his team, managed to slip out of the hands of the DA Investigators and end up dead in Central Park."

"Wilco."

"Lieutenant, two of these dates haven't landed yet," Sax McGuire said as she pointed to the screen, "these two. July 18 and July 25."

"Someone likes Mondays." Connie said.

"That one's ours," Rita said as she pointed to the location for the first date written in Sax's notebook before pointing to the second one, "Check that one, but I'm pretty sure it's in Midtown North."

"On it," The dark haired detective replied.

Rita turned her attention to the lead technician from TARU that had been feeling very much like a fifth wheel up to that point.

"I need a clean copy of the contents of this disk."

"We'll scan it on an air gapped laptop, pull the files, scan those individually, and give you a thumb drive."

"How long until you crack the contents of all those documents? We need to know what they are moving."

I'm not sure," he said as his eyes went to Saxon McGuire as she handed him the disk, "at this rate you may crack them before we do."

"You have four days between now and the 18th. I need more pieces of this puzzle."

"Shouldn't we hand this over to the task force?" Saxon asked.

"Eventually," Rita said as she looked at Connie and the two traded devious smiles, "once we know more. We don't have enough to get warrants yet."

"No, huh?" Saxon replied.

"Shit," Abby said suddenly as she stood up.

"What," Rita asked.

"The witness to the liquor store robbery in interview room 2."