Stone Investigations (Stone Series Book 4) by Bob Blanton (open ebook txt) 📗

◆ ◆ ◆

Matthew continued to monitor Malcom II for the rest of theafternoon.  By three o’clock it was obvious that he was going out.  He had thebackpack out and had checked through its contents again.

At 4:30, Matthew had just finished riding his bike home whenhe saw Malcom II heading for the bus stop.  He hoped whatever Malcom II was upto would be over by six when Jessie and his mother got home.

Malcom II rode the bus to a stop on Balboa, just four blocksfrom the Starbucks that the previous Malcom had been using to meet Ms. Frye. The stop was right in front of a McDonald’s.  Malcom went in and ordered aburger and fries, then took his stuff over to the counter facing the windows. He put on an Atlanta Brave’s baseball hat, wearing it backward.  Matthewremembered that Malcom, aka Frankie, had worn the same hat the same way.

The skateboarder from earlier came in and walked over toMalcom II.  He dropped his pack at Malcom’s feet and gave him a casual “Watchmy bag, will ya?” comment.  The kid ordered fries and a Coke then walked backto Malcom and grabbed a backpack.  Since Matthew had been watching for it, hehad seen Malcom using his feet to switch the backpacks around.  The kid leftthe McDonald’s carrying Malcom’s backpack.  He joined a group of teens who wereplaying around on their skateboards doing tricks.

The kid pulled a bundle of flyers out of the backpack andmade a show of sticking one on each of the cars in the parking lot.  He did afew tricks between putting flyers on the various groups of cars.  When he wasfinished, he skated back to his friends and sat down where he continued to eathis fries and drink his Coke.

A car pulled in and the kid set his Coke down and fiddledwith the backpack.  He watched as the driver went into the McDonald’s.  Matthewcould see he was keeping an eye on the driver while he ordered a Coke andfries.  Then the driver walked away from the counter, stopping at Malcom’splace.  He slipped an envelope to Malcom who handed him a bag of M&Ms.  Assoon as that happened, the kid skated over to the driver’s car and stuck a flyerunder the windshield wiper blade.  He then spun in place and hopped the curband raced back to his friends.

Matthew watched the driver as he went back to his car.  Hemade a show of starting to get in and then noticing the flyer.  Instead ofreaching from the driver’s door, he closed the door and went to the windshieldto remove the flyer.  Matthew just caught him picking up a small foil packageout of the gap between the windshield and the hood of the car.

The routine repeated itself three more times, about ten minutesapart.  Each driver slipped an envelope to Malcom for a bag of M&Ms.  Andwhen they got to their car there was a flyer and a foil package from theskateboarder.  The skateboarder also made sure to stick flyers on any othercars that came into the lot, but only put the foil packages on the ones thatMalcom had handed M&Ms to.  Most of the drivers made a show of opening thebag of M&Ms before they got to their car.

Chapter 5Analysis of a Crime

That night Matthew set up a program to search Facebook forsimilar posts to the ones he saw Malcom reading and posting on.  He also spenttime looking at the profiles of the people whose pages Malcom was posting on. Of course, they were all college students since you had to have a college emailto register.  Since Matthew was a student at UCSD, he set up a Facebook profileand set his computer to searching all the various profiles that were available.

◆ ◆ ◆

Early Saturday morning, Matthew checked in on Malcom II.  Hewas on his computer posting on some Facebook pages.  He had a list he wasworking off of.  It had eight entries; each had a name followed by athirteen-digit number.  The page he was working on had several similar entrieson it.  He put in his entry then moved to another page and there he entered thedata from the next entry on his list.  “Not very helpful,” Matthewthought.  He filed it away hoping that he’d come across something that wouldhelp him make sense of the numbers.

The next day, Matthew and Emily met for lunch.  Emily wanteda full update and was frustrated that she had to wait so long to get it.  She’dhad a tennis game at the country club that morning and Matthew had to attendgroup class, sparring class, and take his private lesson at the Golden Dragon,the martial arts studio where he trained.

They were meeting at Emily’s house so they would be able tohave some privacy.  Alex was out with Jason, and the girls were downstairs withthe nanny.

“Okay, what have you learned?” Emily demanded.

“Not much more than what you already know.  I checked thepages that Malcom posted on, they’re all over the map.  Two are for students onthe East Coast, one for a student in Florida, and another for a student inTexas.”

“So none for anyone in San Diego?”

“It was a sample of four, so that might not be significant,but it would make sense to avoid posting on a site for someone local.”

“Have you looked for other postings?”

“Yes, I set a search up to find similar postings.  There are lotsof them, none are on the West Coast.”

Emily gave Matthew a smile letting him know that she thoughtthat proved her theory.  “How many?”

“Over five hundred sites and eighteen thousand two hundredfifty-three postings last week.  It looks like my search had finished when Ichecked it an hour ago.  But they’re not necessarily related to Malcom or thedrug thing, asking someone to meet you at MDs, SBs, BKs, CJs doesn’t seem thatunusual, but having a bunch on the same page on the same day with differentdestinations is weird.

“Wow, if they are part of the drug thing, that seems like alot for Malcom to deal with.”

“I’m assuming that it’s a network.  Probably covers all thenew distribution for the West Coast.”

“That’s a