Chapter 44

Detective Connors was a good six inches shorter than me with a serious face. I remained standing as he approached and handed me several pieces of paper stapled together. “This is our warrant,” was all he said.

I took the paper. “Excuse me, I only have one hand, I need to sit.”

“Are those your tablet and phone?” He pointed to the two devices.

“Yes.”

“I will need those.”

I didn’t respond but sat and put the papers on the table as he picked up the electronics. I skimmed but wasn’t used to reading the legalize. There was something about an affidavit, testimony, and evidence that suggested I would have child pornography, exploitation of minors, phones, and other electronics of any residents here. Holy shit.

I looked up at him. “All right, wow. Well, take what you need I guess.”

He stared at me. Meilin had taken her seat again. Officers were now walking around and taking Melissa and Lavi’s phones and putting them in labeled bags. Lavi wanted to make a call but the officer stopped her saying that they could not use the devices as we could destroy evidence but they would arrange for calls later. An officer reached towards Meilin’s purse but she snatched it away and began saying something in Chinese.

The officer said, “Ma’am, you need to give me your devices.” Meilin responded in Chinese. He looked at Ji, “Does she speak English?” Ji looked at him and said something in Chinese. My knowledge of Chinese is mostly limited to food but I’m pretty sure I heard the word for ‘pig.’

I spoke up, “Excuse me, this says for residents of the house, they aren’t. Only Lavi, Melissa, and I are.”

Connors motioned for the officer to step away. “You’re right Mr. Carlo. However, I will need you and your guests to stay here while we conduct the search. Now, do you have anything we should be aware of? Any weapons, traps, dangerous animals?”

“I don’t have any pets. Uh...” This was overwhelming. “I have a taser in my office. Girls, where are yours?”

“Bedside table,” Melissa said, “both of our’s.” He noted in a little pad he was writing in.

“What else did you say? Traps? Who has traps?”

The closest thing to an emotion I had seen so far, amusement, crossed his face. “You might be surprised, Mr. Carlo.”

For the next half hour, the five of us sat mostly in silence while two uniformed officers watched us. Connors and the other two officers disappeared into the house. At the end of that time, Connors returned and raised his voice from the patio door into the kitchen. “Mr. Carlo, Ms. Heller, Ms. Milton, can you join me?” We got up and joined him at the kitchen table. Melissa sat her back stiff and straight and stared at Connors as if boring a hole into him with her eyes. Meanwhile, Lavi crossed her arms and looked ready for battle. I just wanted these people gone and to take a nap.

“Is this going to take long?” I asked.

“Do you have somewhere other to be?”

“No, I’m tired and could use a nap.”

Melissa, “Robert is still recovering from a serious injury.”

“It will take as long as it takes. Now, I found quite a bit of computer equipment in the house...”

“Let me save you some time,” I said. “Everything in the office is mine. The laptop on the desk and Linux server are mine. Everything else is work’s. The laptop upstairs on the bookshelf is mine, the other two are Melissa and Lavi’s.”

Lavi, “Mine has the anime stickers on it.”

Detective Connors looked at us and noted all that. “We will have to take all of it if we take this equipment.”

“Can you leave the work stuff? I don’t want to go through the hassle of replacing it.”

He looked at me. “This doesn’t work like that Mr. Carlo.”

“I’ll log you into it and you can look around see I don’t have any of this stuff you are looking for.”

Melissa looked at me, “What are they looking for?”

“Child porn and exploitation of minors evidence,” I said. She rolled her eyes in response.

The detective looked at her seriously, “Sixteen is a minor Ms. Milton.”

Melissa looked at him with obvious confusion. “So? So, you’re looking for stuff with sixteen-year-olds? Is that supposed to mean something?”

“It doesn’t?”

“No, no it doesn’t.”

Lavi had been sitting there quietly and then raised her voice, “Hey Sirius, message Peter Heller, say Kozinski.” Suddenly the television over my sink came to life with a pulsing ball of light that represented the digital assistant that was always listening.

A computerized voice said, “Ready to send. Is this correct?” The name Kozinski was misspelled but it was recognizable.

Connors raised his voice and yelled, “Cancel that!” But the assistant had only been calibrated to our voices. Lavi said, “Yes.” And Sirius sent it.

“What is Kosinski?” he asked. He was recovering his composure.

“Jacob Kozinski of Kozinski and Phillips,” Lavi said.

“Ah.” He obviously recognized the name but he looked dubious. “Who at the firm, maybe I know them?”

“Uncle Jacob.” She didn’t say it with any emphasis but Connor’s eyes darted up from his pad when she did. “He lives on the other side of town but it won’t take him long to get here.”

“Excuse me a moment.” With that, he got up and walked into the living room. I heard voices but couldn’t make anything out. I found out later that he had called to let his boss know that the biggest criminal defense firm in the city might be involved and to check something else that was very important. When he came back he walked past us and out into the yard where Jiang, Meilin, and June were. He sat down and talked to them for a few minutes. Apparently, Jiang at least confessed to knowing English as I saw her talk to him but she translated for her mother. A few minutes later he came back and was carrying the bag with my phone and tablet.

“Mr. Carlo, do you or anyone else here have another phone you haven’t told us about?”

“Not me,” I looked at the girls and they shook their heads.

“No cheap disposable ones you got for travel?”

“Nah.”

“No spare, backup phones?”

“I have phone apps on other devices if I really needed to and my tablet has its own cellar data connection.”

“I’m looking for an actual phone that has connected to local towers. Would you mind unlocking your phone for me just so I can check a few things out?”

“Uh...” I looked at the girls. “Melissa, Lavi?”

Lavi said, “Go for it. Let him get his rocks off.” Melissa looked less enthusiastic but nodded affirmatively.

Connors was watching all of us with suspicion. I was really glad I was on heavy meds. He was trying my patience. “We like to make videos. You’ll find them on any of our phones so it’s not just my decision to make.”

“You have videos, uh, explicit ones of you and,” he motioned in indication, “them?”

Melissa traced a finger on the tabletop but coughed and said, “Most is in cloud storage. There’s kind of ... a lot.”

“By a lot you mean...”

She shrugged with hostile eyes. “Most of the early stuff is in 1080 but the most recent is in 4K.”

His eyes remained steady, “Anyone else in these?”

“No one under eighteen,” I said. “The timestamps will show that but they have a right to their privacy. For that matter, I don’t like the idea of letting anyone go through my stuff but this is ridiculous so if it will get rid of you I’m glad to. I don’t know what you’re hoping to accomplish though. If I had a cell phone I wanted to hide how the hell would you find it?”