Rossi pushed a manila folder over to Wolf. “Here is a copy of the police report. If you would please not let Marino know that I gave you that, it would be much appreciated.”
“All right.” Wolf took the folder and put it on his lap. He looked around the room, noticing the piles of paper on each desk. It seemed mountainous compared to what he was used to. Every single person at a desk was dealing with paperwork, or holding a piece of paperwork while on the phone, or handing a stack of paperwork to someone else.
Rossi seemed to sense his curiosity. “What?”
“Oh, I was just noting the vast amounts of paperwork on everyone’s desk. I thought we had it bad in Colorado.”
Rossi and Lia laughed. “Really? This is a lot of paperwork?”
Wolf nodded. “Yes. This is a lot of paperwork.”
They laughed like school children at the observation, Rossi slapping his hand on the desk. “Paperwork is in the DNA of all Italians. We are born with paperwork in our hands.”
Rossi leaned forward and furrowed his brow, as if remembering the sober reality of Wolf’s visit, “David, all that paperwork is the reason it can take a lot of time. But I’ve been keeping on top of your brother’s release papers. They are sitting on Marino’s desk now for final approval. In the meantime, I see you have your brother’s computer?”
“Yep.” Wolf nodded. “I can’t get into it. I was hoping to get your guy to help me.”
“Good, give it to Paulo. He will be able to help you. If he can help me with this pig,” he slapped the side of his dirty cream-colored desk top monitor, “then he can help you with a brand new computer like that!”
“I hope,” Wolf said.
Chapter 23
“Porco miseria.” Lia plucked a slip of paper off her desk. “I have to go see Colonnello Marino. Let me get you started with Paulo.”
“Ciao!” Paulo stood peaking over the two giant monitors on his desk.
Wolf estimated his age at about fifteen years old, but then again he wasn’t good at estimating ages past twelve years old, Jack’s current age.
Paulo was dressed in plain clothes, wearing a black t-shirt that had two 1950s style American hot rods smashing into each other. His jeans were faded, baggy in the mid section and skin tight in the legs, a popular look Wolf had noticed propagating with the youth of today’s Italy. He wore thick red plastic framed glasses and had a faux-hawk hair-do. Silver rings on three fingers and a bright red plastic watch adorned his arm extended to shake Wolf’s hand. It was a firm hand shake with solid eye contact.
“Piachere.”
“Hello. Uh, do you speak English?” Wolf asked.
“Yes, yes! I am a, not very good,” he said in an impressive American accent. “But, I learned in University.”
“Great,” Wolf wondered if college for Paulo was done pre or post puberty.
“Well, what’s up?” Paulo pointed at the computer bag slung on his shoulder.
“I would like to get into this computer, but I don’t have my brother’s password.” Wolf wore a pained expression as he pulled out the thin Macintosh laptop.
“Pfffffffft, okay.”
“Do you think you can do it?”
“Yes, no problem.”
Lia looked satisfied. “Paulo can do anything with computers, and programming, and the internet, and, all things that confuse the rest of us.”
Paulo was blushing ferociously but tilting his head back proudly. He opened the computer and pushed a few buttons simultaneously, his attention unwavering from Lia.
“He’ll take care of you,” she said slapping his back. “I have to go talk to Marino, I will be back, hopefully soon.”
Wolf looked around. “Okay, sounds good. I’ll be here.”
Lia walked away back across the room and down the hall. Wolf caught himself staring and turned quickly to what was happening with Paulo, who was now standing at his desk staring intently at Lia leaving the room.
“Mmmmmadonna.” Paulo breathed the words, turning to Wolf with a conspiratorial look. “She is beautiful, eh?”
“Yes, she is,” Wolf agreed with a resigned smile. “Okay, what’s happening?”
“Oh, yes, you can pull up that chair there. I am going to create another administrator account on the computer. It takes a few minutes. Then I can go in and access all the files.”
“Okay, sounds good.”
Wolf waited and watched Paulo work his magic with the computer. The computer screen looked to be displaying lines of code — a site Wolf was completely unfamiliar with. He felt proficient enough with a computer, but he was watching a master mechanic rip the hood off of a car and dig into the engine. A tweak here, a command there, and a few minutes later they were inside the computer with a normal view Wolf was more accustomed to.
“Okay, I’ve created a new admin account, and changed the password to your brother’s account, allowing me to log in as him. I’m going to fire up a few of his programs. Otherwise, what would you like to do?”
“I’d like to look at his documents, I guess.”
Paulo worked for a few minutes, opening windows and programs. “Well, wait a minute, this is interesting.” Paulo was looking in the Skype program.
“Why?”
“Well, you haven’t had the computer on at all since you got here? Obviously not…never mind.”
“No, I haven’t. It was closed when I found it in my brother’s room and tried to hack into it last night. Well, I tried a couple passwords and gave up, then just left it to charge.”
“Okay, okay. Well, there are messages on Skype from a person on Tuesday.”
“Okay,” Wolf said expectantly, “and what does that mean? I really have little experience with Skype. My brother was always trying to get me to use it, but I just ended up talking to him on the phone.”
“Well, okay. Look here.” He pointed towards the little logo on the bottom of the screen. “If there was someone who was trying to get hold of your brother with some messaging on Skype, say, on Tuesday…then I would have just logged into his account and a bubble would have shown up on the icon showing how many messages he had missed since he last logged in.”
“Okay.”
“But there was no bubble that popped up on the icon.” Paolo was tilting his head with wide eyes. “But, if I go into his account and look at his recent conversations here on the left, look what someone is saying to him.”
— Hey man, you there? 09/18/12 9:12 PM
— What’s happening? Are we doing this interview or what? Let me know… 09/18/12 9:53 PM
— You okay? You there? 09/18/12 10:09 PM
Wolf felt his face getting red. He couldn’t see the significance of what Paulo was saying to him, and Paulo sensed it.
“So, the most important part is here. Look at the date these messages were sent. This was Tuesday, September, 18th, three days after your brother’s death, at 9:12 PM local time…or, how many hours behind is Colorado?”
“Eight.”
“Okay, so that means between 1 and 2 PM in the afternoon your time, someone was trying to get hold of him, looks like for an interview. But he wasn’t answering. However, Skype is telling us these messages have already been looked at, because there was no indication on the icon that there were unread messages!”
“Which means someone was on the computer looking at these messages at some point before we just looked at them, otherwise there would have been unread messages.” Wolf was finally getting the significance. He sat back hard in his chair, putting his hands on his head, Paulo following his gesture.
“Exactly,” Paulo said. “Someone has opened this computer and looked at Skype in the last few days, after your brother’s death. So, what do you think they were looking for on this computer?”