New York. DA office. 19/06/2012. 14:54.
Karine Lyndon was having a very bad day. Sitting at her desk, she was looking at the file in front of her with a frown. For the last two month, she had tried repeatedly to make a case against Piotr Droski but nothing could stick in court. Piotr Droski was a russian mob lord who controlled everything from drug dealing to assassination in the west of New York. Basically everything that was illegal and could make money, Droski had a hand in it. The second witness that she had managed to convince to testify was found dead this morning along with his girlfriend. The official verdict was a gas leak in their apartment but that did not fool her even for a second.
Looking at the file in front of her, she was desperately trying to find something or she would have to drop the case all together. Her boss has even urged her to drop the case as they were already swamp with work as it was. She knew time was working against her but that has never stopped her before and it would not stop her again this time. If there was something to be found in there, she would find it. At that moment, she hears someone knocking on her door.
"Enter." She said without looking up. "If this is the file I requested, put them on my desk Ethan."
Ethan was her assistant for the last two years since she was assigned to the criminal division. He was a twenty five years old hard working young man who has graduated from a community college nearby.
"Do I look like an Ethan?" Ask a voice that makes her immediately look up and smile.
"Sweetiie!" Karine squeal.
Getting up, she launched herself in the arms of her smiling son. If her colleague could see her like that with a man, they would think they were dreaming. Karine was a very serious and terrifying woman at work and seeing her squeal like a little girl would blow their mind for sure.
"Hi mom. I miss you too." He said while hugging her.
"Why didn't you call to let me know that you would come? Wait a minute, why did the receptionist not call me? How did you enter the building?" She asked.
The DA office was a gouvernemental building. You needed to have an appointment or have credentials to pass the security screenings downstairs.
"I did what you teach me mom, I act like I belong there and then charm my way in. When I finished with the girl in the hall, she was almost drooling." He said laughing.
"I create a monster." Said Karine while shaking her head. The smile that she had and the look in her eye did not hide her pride or her joy.
"How are you? Mom said that you have a difficult case on your hand." He asked.
Hearing that, the shoulder of Karine slump a little and fatigue start to creep in. Looking at her, Nathaniel starts to frown. His mom was a very tenacious woman, to see her exhausted like that showed him that what she was working on was not a regular case.
"I'm good, just this case is very tiring. My boss put pressure on me to drop it so I need to find something tomorrow or I would be forced to drop it and take a new case. We are already swamp as it is, I can't take more time from other cases but this guy is evil. I can't let him walk or it would be next to impossible to make another trial against him." Karine said, her voice breaking a little at the end.
"Let me help." Nathaniel proposes instantly which makes her smile bitterly.
"Baby, I know that you want to help but this is a very hard case with a lot of dead bodies. I can't let you go through it. Plus, it is illegal to show you private files."
"Come on Mom, I read your file since I'm like nine and you know it. Let me help, maybe with another perspective and a pair of fresh eyes, you could come up with another angle to tackle this case."
"Nothing that I could say will make you drop it, am I right?" She sighed, she knew very well how much he could be stubborn. He was like her in that aspect.
"Nope." He said with a winning smile.
"Okay, take the chair and wipe that silly smile off your face. We have work to do." She order sternly.
"Yes, mom." He said, doing what he was told.
Four hours later they were still at it. Looking through the files in front of him, Nathaniel was getting angrier by the second. That guy was a gigantic piece of shit. Extorsion, tax evasion, drug dealing, loan shark, assassination… that guy was involved in everything. He was operating in NY for the last five years and his business was thriving. He was ruthless and cunning, the only thing that saved him from getting jail. His criminal record was two pages long but nothing ever stuck.
The first witness that her mom found was a small time employee in an accounting firm. He was leaving late from work when he saw Piotr Droski kill in cold blood a store owner who did not want to pay 'protection' money anymore. Two days after missing the trials, his head was found on a dumpster near the DA office. He was sending a strong message to everyone who wanted to testify against him. 'Not even the DA can protect you from me' as of today, the rest of his body had not been found.
Nathaniel knew now why her mother didn't want him to help her. That was a very grim case. Looking through his financial files, Nathaniel was seeing something irregular albeit not illegal. His money transfer had no pattern that he could discern and that was bothering him. Everything had a pattern and that was why his intuition was telling him something was wrong here. Sighing, he was going to take a break when his entire body froze. He was looking at the file when his eyes wandered on the bottom right corner of the page.
Every printer in America when printing a page puts a serial number on the right corner. This number was designating the serial number of the printer and the number of the page printed. If the entire file was printed from the same printer, the number at the end would follow themselves. Jolting awake, he hurriedly collected all the pages from the financial files and then classified them by date. Once done, he starts to peruse the file printer number of all the pages.
The suddain activity on the other side of the table soon gathered the attention of Karine.
"What is it sweetie? Did you find something?"
"I think so. Mom, how many printers do you have on this floor?"
"What? Why do you ask?" Karine asked, surprised. She did not expect a question that trivial.
"Please answer me first." He pleaded.
"Two or three."
"Not more?"
"No, budget cut. What is it sweetie?" She asked, thoroughly troubled now.
"Here look." He said getting to his feet and going to her side of the desk. "Look at the printing code at the bottom of the page. None of this number follow the last one."
"This doesn't mean anything sweetie, maybe the printer was jammed and they changed it. It happens, we have crappy material here." Karine said. She could not help to be disappointed. She knew that her son was a genius but he was still too young to help her.
"No mom, look. Prior to two years ago, all files followed the same code. Then look at the code, for the last two years only one out of ten page follow the same code. The rest was printed with two different printers." He said pointing at the page, showing her the code. Looking at it, Karine could not help to frown.
"What are you saying sweetie?"
"Look at the bank transfer, it does not make any sense. Look here, it said that he made a wire transfer to pay the credit of that car last year." Nathaniel said, his expression grave
"What about it?" Karine asks, her interest picked.
"He sold that car three years ago mom. Here is the line that proves it. That same transfer appears on his bank record but only with the other printer code. Mom all of it is faked! Someone tampered with the evidence!"
"WHAT!?" Karine almost screamed.
Taking the file into her own hand and with the help of her son that shows her the transfer line of every file, the expression of her face was turning angrier by the second. She could not help to see that her son was right, almost every banking file from the last two years had been tampered with.
"That was done in a hurry, that much is obvious. Who could have done it?" He ask.
"NYPD forward us the evidence as it protocole. So anyone there with access to the file could have done it. Or… " She started to say before paling visibly.
"Or?"
"Someone here." She finally said with a dreading voice.