Turow, Scott - Kindle County Legal 07 - Limitations by Turow Scott

Author:Turow, Scott [Turow, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Legal, Thrillers, det_crime
ISBN: 9780312426453
Google: AF7OAgAAQBAJ
Amazon: B002LITSAM
Publisher: Picador
Published: 2006-11-13T16:00:00+00:00

11

TEMPER

At 3:00 P.M., Marina, who’s been working with the phone company for several hours, arrives with one of her deputies, Nora Ortega, a thin, dark, silent woman whom Marina has brought along on a few occasions in the past to take notes. George makes it a point to offer Marina his hand, and she exerts her entire boxy form as she shakes.

“That was over the top, Judge, putting that tail on without telling you. Sorry.”

He apologizes too, using the term ‘grouchy old man.’ They settle in familiar poses, George behind his desk, Marina in the black wooden armchair in front of it.

“So what did we learn about number 1?” he asks. “Anything good?”

“We’ve got some idea where he was. Which basically comes down to Center City.”

They’ve assumed all along that George’s tormentor is local, but this is the first proof. Nonetheless, the new information seems sparse compared with what he expected.

“I thought they could position a cell phone better than that.”

“If it’s turned on, Judge. But not if the phone is off. Which yours is, of course. It was probably off as soon as you got that text message.”

“So how can they tell he was in Center City?”

“My guy over there wouldn’t get very specific. They’ve got the government on one side and the ACLU on the other. He sort of explained all this by humming. But how I think this may go is that a cell phone actually puts out signals on two channels, and the company has a record of the second one, what’s called control channel data, which includes the location of the cell your phone connects to. The best they can do is tell us that the message went through the tower in the steeple at St. Margaret’s. He could have been anywhere within two square miles of there.”

“So you’ve narrowed it down to about two hundred thousand suspects?”

“Exactly.” Marina smiles. “We’ll have them all interviewed by morning.”

George is relieved that she has recovered her sense of humor with him. In the meantime, she holds up Patrice’s spare cell phone, which she’s brought back after getting all the info from it the telephone company needed.

“What I’m wondering is how he got this number.”

“Because I was nice enough to give it to him,” says George. “I was trying to find the phone I lost. So I called it. Made sense to me. When I got voice mail, I left a message. ‘This is Judge George Mason. If you’ve picked up this cell phone, please call me at the following number.’ I tried a few times.”

“And how would he have gotten into your voice mail without your password?”

“The whole sequence is programmed into the phone when you hold down the one key. Obviously he figured it out.”

“Obviously,” answers Marina.

“Any idea who else he called? Did he give himself up in some way?”

“Not really. The company says there’s no detail in the last two weeks.”

“Meaning?”

“If he used the phone, the calls are free under your plan. Voice mail. Stuff like that.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.