Crush - Alan Jacobson [140]
“Yeah, and now I know why you told me not to look. Bad shit there, bro. Be really cool if I could help you catch this psycho sicko.”
“It’d be more than cool. You have any luck?”
“First thing I did was to take the jpegs that are embedded in the file and applied some new technology out of Carnegie Mellon. This stuff is gonna blow your mind. The computer analyzes the image and determines where in the world it was taken.”
“There are a few photos we really need to place,” Brix said. “If you could help with that, you’ll be my new best friend.”
Tomás’s eyes swung left, then right. “Right. Well, in spite of that, I do have some answers.”
“What does it do?” Lugo asked. “Look for similar shapes and landmarks?”
“No, not landmarks. That’d be too limiting. It records the distribution of textures, colors, lines, vegetation and topography in the photo and then compares it to the database they’ve created using GPS-tagged images in Flickr.”
“The online photo album site?”
“Yup. So here’s what I’ve got. The first three photos appear to be from Albuquerque, New Mexico, the next two from Southern California and the last two from Northern California.”
“Ray,” Brix said, “when the dust settles, contact Albuquerque PD and tell them we have the killer of three of their unsolveds. Pull the jpeg images from the PowerPoint and email them the photos. Do the same for SoCal.”
Mann pointed at his pad. “Other than his trip up north in ’98, looks like he came from Albuquerque, shot west along I-40 to L.A., then worked his way up the state.” He touched the pen to the paper with each location, as if it were a map. To Tomás, he said, “Can this image analysis technology also date the photo?”
“No,” Tomás said. “But it’s funny you should ask. I started thinking, if your bad guy took any of these photos with a GPS-enabled phone, the time, date, and place of the picture would be embedded in the photo. When I looked at the individual image files, some were taken with a regular digital camera, and they’re time-and date-stamped. I’ve got the camera model and exposure for each photo, but that’s not going to help you.
“I can’t be sure the dates and times are accurate because it depends on whether the owner input the correct data when he set up the camera. But as it turns out, the later pictures were shot with a GPS-enabled camera phone, and one was taken near downtown Los Angeles. We’ve also got a scanned photo, and when you scan film prints, the scanner leaves behind embedded data in the digital file that’s created. This picture was scanned March 9, 1998.”
Brix shot a glance around the room. “That would fit with the Marin County vic found near the Golden Gate.”
“What can you tell us about the document itself?” Agbayani asked.
“Lots of good stuff,” Tomás said. “First, let me ask you something. What do you think this killer’s deal is? You think he wants publicity?”
Lugo looked up from his notes. “Yeah, that’s exactly what we think. Why?”
“Well, I assume if he wants publicity, you want to minimize that, to reduce panic.”
“That’s one theory,” Brix said. “Why do you ask?”
Tomás shrugged. “This killer could post the PowerPoint document on some websites with unique tags and let search engines ‘find’ it, then use a kiddy script virus kit to create a virus that would then spread. It’d be disseminated from thousands of computers.”
Brix sighed deeply. “Well, that’s fucking great.” He rubbed his eyes and said, “Let’s hope our UNSUB is not that tech savvy. Can you tell anything from the document that would indicate his level of sophistication?”
Tomás bobbed his head. “I’d say he’s more knowledgeable than the average computer user, but he’s not a hacker or anything like that. So if his intent is to try to wreak the most havoc possible, and he knows something like that virus kit exists, he’d still have to research it. But you can find out how to build a bomb on the Internet from household items, so yeah, it’s possible he could create this virus even if he’s not an expert.”
“What about the document itself?” Mann asked.
“Okay. Here’s the