26

GERALD’S DEMONSTRATION HAS me thinking. Although we don’t know if the Warlock is going to that level of deception to hide his victims’ identities, it’s not worth putting anything past him since we’ve already seen how texts and e-mails fooled Swanson’s wife.

Efforts to trace the messages and calls have led to a firewall of proxy servers. None of them look custom-made. Just off-the-shelf hacks using readily available tools and how Gerald pieced together his impostor software. There was no need to invent anything, just find the tools already out there. They were good enough to get the job done.

The Warlock seems to be very pragmatic. After testing out other image-matching services, Faceplaced.com seems the most likely fit for what he’s using. It has a much superior algorithm and a far more extensive database of images to draw from. Before heading out to Austin, Jennifer did a little snooping to see if she could get the code for the site, but the admin had it locked down tight.

Ailes sees me staring at the screen on my laptop displaying the Faceplaced home page. “What’s on your mind?”

I point to the website. “The hotel room is planted. But this site is the one place we’re sure he’s been at least at some point, and he doesn’t want us to know about it. It’s where he gets some of his magic tricks from, so to speak.”

“Yes. Unfortunately, despite Jennifer’s best efforts to talk to the owner geek to geek, he’s not letting us look at his server logs.”

“I know. But I think we want more than that. We want to see all the searches. We might be able to find out who he’s after next as well as the identity of the woman in the grave. Maybe even set up a little trap.”

Ailes sits back in his chair and shakes his head. “We’ve asked. We’ve hinted at a search warrant. But the probable cause is too thin. It could take weeks. He’s the anti-authority type that would go public if we made any move. And that would be bad. He also told us the searches get purged nightly. But that could be a lie. We need to keep this a secret from the Warlock. Before Jennifer left, all she could manage was a promise from him to not tell anyone we’ve been asking. And it’s a goddamn lot of data. There are thousands of girls that could look like our Chloe. Swanson was a lucky hit.”

The website is important. I don’t know Jennifer at all, other than a brief conversation, but she doesn’t seem like a people person. Of course, I’m kind of aloof myself. But I know how to turn on some personality. “Maybe we don’t need another hacker to convince him?”

“Are you saying Jennifer was the wrong person to send?”

“No. I’m just saying that’s not working. Let’s try a different route. Let me give it a shot. If we can’t get a search warrant, then we need to keep trying. This is our best lead by far.”