Page 60 of All Twisted Up
I glanced over at my friend, noting the twinkle of excitement and something else in his eyes. I nodded, glancing back at the screen as Judy switched back to the cell phone tab.
“Based on normal daytime and evening routines of the residents within a several block radii of the building which would be using that tower, I used a filter to eliminate some of the cell traffic.” She pressed a button, and the bulk of the lines disappeared. It was still a staggeringly long list of cell calls. “Look at these, though.” She pressed more keys which highlighted another, shorter list of numbers in yellow. Though it was still a huge number, I was beginning to understand her logic.
“From the timestamps, you can see there were very few calls made after midnight and up until after the raid when they surged,” she said, pointing to the lines.
“When everyone was presumed to be sleeping,” Joshua concluded.
I glanced over at him; our eyes met for a brief second before I looked back.
“That’s right…and as you can see here, a large number of calls were placed after the DEA breached the building.” She ran her finger down the screen. “They all went out to 911.”
“People reporting gunshots during the raid,” Joshua concluded.
She nodded. “Exactly.”
“I assume you tied a lot of the calls back to residents in the area you mentioned,” I stated.
Judy nodded, looking back at me with a smile. “I was actually able to do better than that.” Her fingers clicked over the mouse, highlighting what she wanted. “As you can see here, when Iisolateallcalls that took place between midnight and the time the raid began, we’re left with even fewer calls. That leaves us with this cluster of numbers which I can almost guarantee came from the building itself.”
“How do you know that?” Joshua asked.
She smiled. “Becausethesecalls were made from unknown and untraceable numbers.”
“So…these came from burner phones?” I glanced up at Candy.
“Yes,” he said, waving to the chairs at the table. “Take a seat so she can tell you the rest.”
We all took chairs around the table as Judy animatedly went on. “The FBI and DEA were on shared coms and radios before, during, and after the operation, so it should make sense that if a burner was used, it wouldn’t have been one of us.”
“Right, they most likely would have been made by one of the sicarios in the apartment we raided or even Gomez himself,” I concluded, glancing at Joshua when he made a little humming sound.
“The sicarios are the cartel thugs, right?” he asked.
“Right, Mr. Calder,” Candy said. “The calls Judy found could be cartel thugs—as you say—or someone else inside or outside the building using a burner phone.”
“Got it,” Joshua said.
“Outsidethe building,” I repeated, as that sank in.
Candy nodded. “Yes, in the real world, it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine that someone other than the bad guys in Gomez’ apartment had a burner. These calls might have come from a resident in the immediate neighborhood calling into thebuilding, or a spectator who purchased an untraceable phone to disguise criminal activity of some other kind. For that matter there are any number of people who use burners for whatever reason. Who the heck knows?”
“But to be clear, what we’re looking at here—” I gestured to Judy’s laptop. “Is most likely cartel phone traffic using burners as they talk to each other.”
Judy grinned. “Bingo.”
“I get it…but please back up a second, Judy,” I said as an idea formed in my mind. “You said that because the FBI and DEA were on shared coms, the burner callsshouldcome from an outsider, not one of us.”
Judy nodded vigorously, grinning as she patted my hand. “You get a gold star.”
I smirked.
“Which brings me to my next point.” Judy sounded excited as she talked. “I was able to isolate several calls betweenoneof the numbers in the building that night and a location of interest to all of us.” She smiled widely. I don’t know why, but her teasing was beginning to aggravate me just a little bit. I didn’t know Judy that well since she’d only joined the team after we made the move to L.A. from Houston. I liked her sunny disposition most of the time…just not now, when Joshua and his family’s lives were on the line.
I really wanted her to get to the point. “And are you going to share the location with us or make us guess?” I knew I sounded harsher than I meant to, so I picked up my coffee and took a big swig of it to hide my frustration.
“In the twenty-four hours preceding the raid, several burner calls were made to and from Gomez’ phone using a cell towerwithin the radius that includes 255 East Temple Street, Los Angeles.”
I shook my head, not comprehending the significance of the location.
