MAX

MAX is Dillon Savich’s laptop and a practical extension of his investigative work: it helps research evidence, search for a person, and support a system for recording and locating a suspect’s calls. Its recurring role moves from routine computer work to a conspicuous surveillance operation, where the reach of the technology raises questions that its investigative success does not itself settle.

Identity and Investigative Use

Savich describes MAX as a laptop he uses for a great deal of his work, adding that the two of them have tracked down many offenders over the years. His phrasing casts the computer as a familiar collaborator, while the evidence presents its capabilities through specific tasks rather than as independent agency.

One such task is case research. Lacey Sherlock recommends that Dixon Noble speak personally with technicians and keep the inquiry discreet; Savich, she says, can have MAX examine the embalming process and determine whether the method has appeared before. The laptop is thus used to compare a detail of the case against information that may establish whether it is distinctive or recurring.

MAX is also assigned a search for a woman. After the investigation turns to that task, Sherlock says that they will get MAX started on finding her when they return to the bed-and-breakfast. The evidence does not identify the woman here, but it establishes the laptop as a flexible investigative aid, used for both technical research and person-finding.

Recording and Locating Calls

When Moses Grace calls again, MAX supports a prepared response. Savich has arranged for it to instant-message the communications center in Washington, D.C., and says it recorded the call through a Bluetooth transmitter wired into his phone. The computer’s role is therefore part of a connected setup: the phone captures the communication, while MAX helps relay information to the investigative team.

Savich explains that, under the authorities he associates with the PATRIOT Act, investigators can obtain a wiretap warrant covering calls made by an individual suspect rather than only calls to or from one specified number. On that account, changing phones would not by itself defeat the monitoring. Caller ID blocking nevertheless delays the team: Savich says that knowing the number immediately would have allowed them to locate the caller in about fifteen seconds.

A later account describes a broader location scheme. The Washington, D.C., cell towers are reprogrammed to route calls to Savich’s cell phone as though they were emergency 911 calls, and MAX is fastened to the dashboard in readiness for Moses to call. When he does, the setup displays his position as a yellow dot. The result depends on MAX working alongside the phone and the altered tower system, rather than on the laptop acting alone.

Reach, Questions, and Decommissioning

The operation prompts Dixon Noble to ask whether a caller to Savich’s number would have had both a recorded voice and a location displayed inside the Hoover Building, and whether that arrangement was legal. That question marks the difference between a tool’s usefulness in an investigation and the legitimacy of the means used to obtain information. The account supplies Savich’s explanation of the warrant and monitoring arrangement, but does not resolve Noble’s legal question in the cited exchange.

At a later briefing, the Director of National Intelligence reports that the FBI domestic wireless telecommunications operation has been decommissioned without disrupting emergency 911 service. The President then asks whether operational security remains intact and whether the government can expect civil-liberties questions to produce no blowback. The exchange records both the shutdown and the continuing concern about its consequences; it does not provide an answer to the President’s questions.

Narrative Role

MAX links several scales of investigation. It begins as an ordinary work laptop associated with Savich’s established case-solving routine, then becomes part of a targeted call-recording arrangement and, finally, a dashboard component in a system that turns a suspect’s call into a visible location. The progression makes the technology’s power concrete while also foregrounding its limits: caller ID blocking slows the response, and the successful location of Moses does not erase the questions of privacy, legal authority, and oversight raised by the operation.