Last Chance to Die by Noah Boyd (good books for 8th graders TXT) 📕

He gave her a sarcastic grin. “Should I decide to get some instruction, I know an expert who delivers the word with extreme malice.”

“I’m willing to bet you know several.” Carefully, she pulled out the sheets of paper, which now had a purple cast to them.

He took the fingerprint loupe and said, “On the code page, there are three prints on each line and three lines, nine impressions. So we’re going to get nine numbers out of this. With any luck they won’t represent something else. Start thinking about what has nine numbers and can identify a person.”

“Actually, I was thinking about it on the way here. There’s only one that comes to mind—a Social Security number.”

“Sounds reasonable.” Vail examined the top row of prints. He compared it to the prints from the “fingerprint card.” “The first one is the left ring finger, so number nine.” Kate wrote it down. He examined the second latent. “The left index finger—seven.” He continued, line by line, until all nine latents had been decoded. “Okay, what have we got?”

She handed Vail the pad of paper with the nine numbers written on it. She had placed dashes after the third and fifth, making it read like a Social Security number. He handed it back. “How can we find out who it belongs to?”

She went over and sat down at the computer. “Let me see if they have an Accurint program on here.” After logging on to the Internet and clicking the mouse a couple of times, she said, “Yes.” She signed in to the program with her password and then typed in the nine digits. After a few seconds, a secondary screen popped up. “James Dellasanti. Currently residing just outside Wheaton, Maryland.”

“Can it tell us where he works?”

“Sometimes, but it’s a different query.” She punched a few more keys, and the screen changed. “No, not this time. Let me check and see if we did a background investigation for his clearance.” She switched into a Bureau program and queried the name. “Well, the good news is, he doesn’t work for the FBI or any agency we do the backgrounds for.” When Vail didn’t say anything, she said, “We could give this to Langston, too. Let him do the cut-and-paste stuff.”

“We can’t. We don’t have any evidence against this Dellasanti. With the others we have a DVD and then stolen documents with money in a bank box. Here we have nothing but a set of numbers that we’re not even sure is a Social Security number. And where’s the link to the next mole, if there is one? There’s got to be more to this.”

“Then it has to be the dates.” She looked at the page. “December twenty-seventh and January sixth.”

“Maybe, but what do they mean?”

“One date has passed, and the other’s coming up in two days.”

Thinking about what she’d said, Vail walked over to the wall covered with the maps and reports documenting Calculus’s travels. “Can you get into the spy satellite again?”

Kate started tapping the keys and after a minute said, “We’re up.”

“Okay, let me read you his coordinates from December twenty-seven. Just the places he stopped for more than five minutes.”

After she wrote the numbers down, he moved behind her and watched as she manipulated the mouse until the coordinates were in the small windows on the screen. She zoomed in. “The first one is the Russian embassy compound.”

“That’s to be expected. Try the next one.”

She entered it and then zoomed down to ground level. “That’s a fairly busy intersection with a McDonald’s right there.”

Vail went back to the wall. “He was there about twenty minutes and it was approximately eleven thirty. So it was probably a Big Mac lunch. Next one.”

After locating the third coordinate and zooming down to it, she said, “It’s a public park in Maryland.”

“That’s it!”

“That’s what?”

“That’s what January six is. A dead-drop date.”

“How do you know that?”

“It’s well documented that the Russians love parks for exchanging money and information. And it’s also well known that they hate changing a procedure when they find one that works.” Vail went back up to the wall and rechecked the entry. “He was there eighteen minutes. Calculus was picking up the information from Dellasanti, who evidently is supposed to go back there on the sixth and retrieve his payment.”

“Don’t you think that’s a lot of supposition based on a couple of written dates?”

“You’re right.” He turned back to the wall and searched Calculus’s movements again. “Here,” he said, pointing at a document, “the following day he was at the same coordinates for twelve minutes.”

“He was putting the documents back.”

“Probably copies. He would have to turn in the originals because his bosses would have to see them to okay the payment.”

Kate said, “So the day after, he put the copies there with the payment? For us to catch Dellasanti with?”

Vail was tracking Calculus’s movements again. “He never went back there after that, so it has to be. And by writing down the second date, he’s telling us exactly when he’ll pick up the package.”

“And then Calculus told him the money wouldn’t be there until January sixth. This time the evidence is actually catching him in the act,” she said. “What better proof?”

“Exactly,” Vail said. “Can you walk the camera around a little?”

“Sure. What are you looking for?”

“Someplace for the drop. Someplace you could hide a package of documents or money and not have it bothered by people or weather. That’s why parks are so popular for this kind of thing. Especially in the winter.”

Kate’s eyes were locked on the screen as she virtually strolled through the park. “Here’s something close by, maybe twenty yards away—a footbridge.”

Vail came around the computer and stared at the monitor. “Perfect,” he said, then pointed. “See underneath the end there? You could easily hide a good-size package.” Vail went back to the wall to check the coordinates of the bridge. “Okay, he was there for about three minutes, and then he walked around