Full Circle

Chapter 7 - Troubled Waters

Chapter Description: Peter's befuddled by Win-Win, and Ellen helps. James finally has a scene!

Winston-Winslow NYC branch. July 12, 2006. Wednesday morning.

"You found James?" Peter asked.

Henry nodded. "He used Robert's identity to travel from Montana to New York. Once he got here, he rented a room at a fleabag apartment and has been working at a couple of construction sites." He brought up a map on his monitor, pinpointing the locations and reading out the addresses for Neal.

"Not far from the Federal Building." Neal's voice came through the speakerphone. "The apartment's less than two miles away."

"Both of the job sites are near an area where a lot of politicians have their offices," Peter noted.

"Would Pratt have an office there?" Ellen asked.

"He's in Albany, isn't he?" Neal asked.

"As Lieutenant Governor he has an office in Albany for his elected role," Peter explained. "But he probably runs his political campaigns from here."

Henry ran a search and nodded. "He has a campaign office that's near both job sites. Our theory that Pratt's the reason James is here is looking more and more solid."

Peter wanted to suggest staking out the area in a municipal van, but of course he couldn't. This wasn't an FBI case.

"We know where he's living. Let's go talk to him!" said Neal.

Peter, Henry, and Ellen all responded, "No!"

"We don't want to spook him," warned Henry.

"We need to be prepared," Peter added. "We need more information and a solid plan."

"What are we supposed to do?" Neal asked, sounding annoyed by the delay. "Stake him out for a week?"

"Suppose we could stake him out retroactively," Ellen suggested.

"Security footage?" Henry guessed.

"The company I work for installed security systems in several buildings in that neighborhood, and the apartment James lives in sounds familiar. If I'm right, we'll have ten days of footage on file, possibly from multiple sources."

Neal groaned, and Peter shared his frustration. Viewing raw video footage was a laborious process.

Henry, on the other hand, looked intrigued. "You work for Griffin-Moore, right? They're on the list of places I'm supposed to contact about using our facial recognition capabilities. Could you arrange a meeting with someone who can get us access to that footage? We could do a demo by searching video feeds for matches on our photo of James."

Ellen was about to place a call to Griffin-Moore when Peter intervened. "You can't seriously tell me they'd go along with that — sharing a client's footage."

"Why not?" Henry asked.

"It's not legal," Peter protested. "You can't access it without a warrant."

"We're not a government agency," Henry said.

Ellen added, "It's in the agreement with each client that we can use their footage for the purposes of training and testing our technology."

"But giving it to Win-Win..." Peter trailed off.

"Not giving it," Ellen said. "But sharing our data with a technology partner is a normal occurrence."

"Even without a contract?" Peter asked.

Neal's voice came over the line, "They'd still let you do the demo, right? They wouldn't give you a copy of the footage, but you'd get to see the results."