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Rapier pointed to a screen that showed the flash mob of teenagers coming through the casino’s revolving doors.

“When Detective Krowczyk—”

“Who?” Payne interrupted.

Rapier nodded in the direction of a tall, lanky white male, maybe thirty years old, who was hunched over a notebook computer at the far end of Conference Table One.

Payne thought Krowczyk had to be at least six-foot-four but weighed maybe only one-sixty on a good day. He wore blue jeans, black sneakers, and a white, wrinkled knit polo shirt. A brown leather jacket hung on his seatback. He stared intently at the computer, the glow of the screen reflecting off his round frameless eyeglasses and illuminating his long pale face. There were cans of diet soda on either side of the computer and, behind it, a torn-open package of crème-filled Tastykake Dreamies.

“Danny Krowczyk’s a SIGINT analyst recently assigned to our Digital Forensic Sciences Unit,” Rapier said, using the abbreviation for Signals Intelligence. “This morning he had his software scanning the postings on social media, trying to find possible leads on anybody planning activity we should interdict, or at least keep an eye on, when he came across the alert calling for the flash mob at the casino. It flared up fast, otherwise we might have had a chance to shut it down before it reached the casino.”

“And now we have all the instant message traffic?”

>

“Yeah. It’s open source material. Anybody can find it if they want and they know where to look. But it’s what’s in the messages that can tell us what’s important. I’m putting Andy Radcliffe on tracking who’s behind the screen names of what appear to be the higher value messages. He’s got a group of geeks—”

“Said the pot calling the kettle black,” Payne interrupted, smiling.

“—who’re really good at drilling down and linking traffic that otherwise would appear unconnected. They’re in Andy’s advanced coding classes at La Salle—and in touch with others in the coding world—and talk a language I don’t understand. Anyway, bottom line, many screen names are going to come up bogus, of course, but if his guys can get enough legit ones, or even link to bogus ones, they can digitally map out who was involved, maybe even whoever set it up.”

Payne nodded thoughtfully. “It’s likely a long shot, but maybe they’ll turn up a connection between the flash mob and the doers of the jewelry store robbery. That flash mob could very well have been a diversionary tactic for the theft.”

“Maybe. Or some other event that may link back to it. People post all kinds of incriminating things. Some of it just blows your mind. Like the gangs that self-promote and taunt other gangs . . .”

“‘Internet banging,’” Payne put in, nodding.

“Right. It’s like they forget there’s a whole world watching. And that’s before we get warrants to monitor and search their accounts and devices.”

“It is amazing.”

“Anyway, Krowczyk is also now doing a really huge search of other open source intel to see if anyone’s talking about suddenly having fancy jewelry and watches—or trying to sell it—like those that were stolen.”

Payne watched each of the screens for a long moment, then his eyes drifted to the center bank of screens where the top middle one was set to Philly News Now.

The news reader at the desk, a serious-looking forty-something with her brunette hair in a pageboy cut, was wrapping up a report on the arrest of a ring of Mexican nationals caught pushing black tar heroin in Strawberry Mansion. The ticker of red text across the bottom read . . . BREAKING NEWS: PHILLY POLICE ON SCENE OF CARJACKING THAT SOURCES REPORT LEFT 1 DEAD IN KENSINGTON . . . STAY TUNED FOR A LIVE REPORT . . .

Then the broadcast faded to black and on came an advertisement. It showed delicate ballerinas in Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker prancing en pointe at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, and announced tickets remained available at the Center City venue.

Nice juxtaposition.

“The City of Brotherly Love: Home to drug cartels, junkies, carjackings, murders—and sugarplum fairies!”

Good luck selling all those tickets.

Payne looked back to the squad car dash camera image of the Kensington scene. The uniform, securing the scene, stood with arms crossed inside the yellow crime scene tape. Just beyond the tape, a dark-skinned man who looked to be about forty was pulling a video camera and tripod from the trunk of a Chevy compact. The sedan had the logotype of Philly News Now on its front door. The man set up the tripod a few feet outside the yellow tape, attached the camera to it, and then waved with a big black microphone in an effort to get the officer to come over to him. The blue shirt declined with a slow shaking of his head. The reporter raised his eyebrows, shrugged, then turned to the camera.

Payne, out of the corner of his eye, noticed that the wooden door to the ECC was opening. His eye dropped to the screen in the first bank where he’d seen himself enter the room, and saw no one at the opening door. Then, a moment later, Andy Radcliffe maneuvered his wheelchair into view.

“Aha,” Payne said, “so that’s really what the mechanical door opener is for.”

“Andy wasn’t too happy,” Rapier said. “He thought he was getting special treatment. But I told him it was the law, that we’d finally got it installed.”

“He did not hit any button on the wall. And I didn’t see you buzz him in.”

“That’s because I also put a sensor in his wheelchair. Don’t tell him, but that’s not required by law.”

Payne smiled. “Right.”