Chapter 22

I drove toward my home in County Seat thinking, I might have to go back to the SBI lab after all. It meant giving control of our cases to their investigators and taking a back seat to their people. I hated losing control of the cases.

Damn it, if I could only get the Colonel interested in the Forensic services. He could surely come up with the facilities. Even if it meant a friendly take over of an existing private lab.

I was still in the car when the phone rang. "Sheriff Porter this is Doctor Angela Simmons at the University forensic department. There seems to have been a bit of a mix up with our computer department." the female voices said.

I put on my sweetest feminine voice to say, "No mistake your computer department head is a dick." I tried to say it nicely while still letting my opinion show. I have his comments on tape and they are not even close to what we signed up for. I have a son of bitch who teaches 13 year old to give blow jobs, then turns them onto the street. I plan to find the son of a bitch today. Your people want me to wait two days while he maybe getting out of the country for all I know. I plan to find someone with a link to the super computer and then I plan to expose your sloppy work, so other cops will think twice before signing on with you."

"Isn't there anything we can do?" she ask.

"Yes there is you can train one of my people to access your super computer. In the meantime you can assign a grad student, who know how to access your computer to take my fucking calls. If I say it is an emergency, you can go to work on it right then. Short of that there is nothing."

"Well it certainly seems reasonable, that you know your grad student by name, and forge a working relationship with him or her. As for establishing a link to your network, we won't be able to do that. It's a security thing for our system." she informed me while standing up to me. "If you would like, you can turn around, come back here so we can get started looking for your son of a bitch." she added.

"Twenty minutes and have someone meet me. Oh yes, I'm staying till we get something on this prick, so please have coffee available. I will pay extra for it."

"I think we can arrange that," she said.

When I walked into the reception area of the new Forensic Sciences Classroom and lab building, there stood a young man, who need only glasses with adhesive tape on them to be the consummate geek. He was chubby, had bad skin, and smelled like a he had bathed in old spice.

"I'm Roger Millhouse," he said.

"Of course you are, and I'm in a hurry can we get to a computer somewhere," I said.

"Certainly Sheriff, I have been instructed to do anything you ask, so long as it's legal."

"And if it is Questionable, but not illegal." I asked.

"They didn't give me any instructions, but if I were to say 'The Sheriff told me to do it'. It should cover both me and the school." she said with a smile.

"Then we understand each other," I said. He led me into a room not much larger than my storage trailer. It held a couple of desks with key boards but the money was in the machines with blinking light everywhere. Those were why I put up with all this shit. It was one of the few links to the State's Super Computer.

"Where do we start," he asked.

I slipped him an index card with Jamison's name and all the pertinent information. That information included the access codes to his police file. "You can start by running his credit card. It's a Master Card issued through the Bank of America. We have a court order and the authorization is on the card."

"I don't need it, all that is on your department's file. Your man whoever he is can do a pretty good job with the crude equipment you have. He just can't get the hour by hour usage, I however can. The dean told me you are hunting a really bad man." Roger said.

"I am Roger and you and I are going to find him. Because everybody is hooked up and wired in like it or not," I said.

"Just a matter of time," the kid said. His grammar was so good it embarrassed him, because mine was so bad beside it. "Here we can follow his account minute by minute. Last charge was in Davenport S.C. He bought gas."

"That was careless of him. He surely had enough cash to fill up his tank." I said.

"Not where he bought it. It was one of those self service pumps that only takes credit cards after midnight." He said.

"That was still pretty stupid. Well we have him in Davenport SC. What time did he make that purchase. Looks like three days ago. Do you have anything since."

"Not on that card, but the bank also issued a separate debit card, and an investment account. It is not linked to either of those, but it has an advance card that is not tied to anything but that account."

"Why didn't we find that shit out," I said.

"Because you can not get access to the bank's information the same way that I can," he said proudly.

I almost asked it if was legal, but I decided I just didn't care at that point. "Okay you have my attention, now prove you are worth all the shit I went through to talk to you." I demanded.

"He tapped the investment account, because it is the hardest to trace. He moved 10,000 dollars to his pay pal account." Roger said.