A Different Dawn (Nina Guerrera)

by Isabella Maldonado

  “In each case, the child was born anywhere from six weeks to a day before the attack,” Buxton said. “The killer wouldn’t need precise information about the date of birth, only that the baby had been born alive and was home from the hospital.”

  They were all missing something, and she couldn’t let it go. “We know the unsub has to plan his attacks well in advance of the crimes. That includes locating and targeting his victims. How is he doing that?”

  “Is it possible he is accessing medical information from these women’s obstetricians?” Kent asked. “That way, he would know the projected due date for the baby.”

  “That information is highly confidential,” Buxton said. “And there’s no national clearinghouse containing all of it.”

  “What about someone hacking into a medical insurance database?” Breck said.

  Wade shook his head. “They didn’t have anything like that almost thirty years ago. People used to fill out forms that were kept in file cabinets at the doctor’s office.” He cut his eyes to her. “You remember pen and paper, Breck?”

  “Okay, boomer.” She smirked. “But Guerrera is right, babies arrive on their own schedule, unless it’s a planned C-section.”

  “That’s it,” Perez said, speaking for the first time since the meeting began. “I was at Meaghan Doyle’s autopsy. Her C-section incision was still fresh.”

  “Was it planned?” Nina asked. “Or an emergency procedure?”

  “I spoke to her best friend, who threw the baby shower,” Perez said. “It was planned. Meaghan told her the delivery date months in advance.”

  Excitement hastened Buxton’s words as he looked at the screen on the wall. “Can all of you forward the autopsy files for the mother?”

  “This has to be it,” Nina said to her team as the various agents from around the country began typing on their computers. “How would the unsub plan his crimes for leap day if he couldn’t be sure when the baby would come home from the hospital?” She paused a moment. “And how would he know the sex of the baby ahead of time?”

  “The only answer is that he had to have backup families in place,” Kent said. “Since he was methodical and careful and had access to so much information in advance, we can only assume he would have more than one target couple.”

  “He had to know they were expecting a baby and where they lived ahead of time,” Buxton said. “If we can figure out how he knew, we could get a bead on him.”

  One by one, Breck clicked on the forwarded files from each city, checking the attached autopsy files, all of which confirmed a recent C-section incision on the mother. In each case, the baby had been a girl, and the couple’s first child.

  Nina felt the familiar tingle of gathering momentum. She wasn’t sure how, but this meant something.

  Chapter 15

  He hefted the empty suitcase and stowed it on the top shelf of the closet. Twenty minutes earlier, he’d checked into the Phoenix Royal Suites. He resented having to burn one of the aliases he had developed over the years. More than simply a fake name, he had constructed several elaborate false identities that included driver’s licenses and credit cards needed for travel. If the FBI tried to link the cases together, they would not find his real name—or any recurring name at all—on airline passenger lists to and from cities where the crimes occurred.

  While at the hotel’s front desk, he’d made it a point to study the security system, including camera placement, room-key procedures, and hotel staff. His lock-picking skills would not work with electronic card readers on guest room doors. He needed a different way to access what he wanted without leaving a trace of his presence. A plan began to take shape when a bellman approached to ask if he needed assistance with his small piece of rolling luggage—an obvious play for a tip.

  He had declined the offer, wheeled his suitcase up to the room, then immediately called for room service to request extra hangers for the closet. Ten minutes later, he answered a polite knock to find a uniformed room service attendant holding ten wooden hangers.

  He took them from the young man, then made a show of digging around in his pocket as the attendant waited for a tip. He held out a twenty, then pretended to lose his balance. The attendant caught him, preventing him from falling. He clutched at the young man’s jacket to right himself and, when the attendant left after accepting the tip, he no longer had his universal electronic keycard.

  Now, gazing at his reflection in the long mirror on the back of the hotel door, he weighed his options. He assumed hotel security would deactivate the stolen keycard as soon as the attendant reported it missing but figured he should have at least twenty minutes before that happened, since most people who requested room service were in their rooms to open the door for an attendant.

  A uniform would be a useful tool for his purposes, a kind of shorthand by which people read one another. He decided that a bellman’s duties would serve his purposes better than a room service attendant. The gray bellman’s outfit with red trim would cause people to make certain assumptions about him, allow him to remain invisible as he prowled the halls . . . or entered a room.

  He stepped out of his suite and traversed the carpeted hall to the elevator. Once inside, he pressed the circular button with a B on it and felt his stomach lurch as he rapidly descended to the basement.

  The doors hissed open and he stepped out, scanning the area. He spent the next ten minutes in a determined hunt, telling a startled maid he had mistakenly gotten off on the wrong floor, before he found the hotel supply room.

  After checking to be sure no one was around, he began a quick and efficient search of the linens, bedding, toiletries, and towels stacked in neat piles. A hint of red caught his eye, and he made a beeline for a rack filled with hotel uniforms. He pushed aside gray-and-white maid’s dresses, black security blazers, and gray valet outfits before finding the bellman’s uniforms with their red-striped pants.

  He had just snatched everything he needed in the right size when the door opened.

  “What are you doing?” A young bellman eyed him with overt suspicion. “Guests aren’t supposed to be down here.”

  He gave a nonchalant shrug. “I wanted to borrow a uniform.”

  The bellman looked barely old enough to shave. “You’re up to something,” he said. “I should call security.”

  The kid had said he should, not that he would, call security, leaving open the possibility that he might be persuaded not to make the call.

  He noticed the young man’s worn shoes, cheap watch, and obvious DIY haircut and took a calculated risk.

  “I’m looking for a bit of information.” He waited a beat before adding, “And I’m willing to pay for it.”

  He had dangled the bait. Either the kid would bite, or he wouldn’t.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “For starters, what rooms are that famous FBI lady and the other Feds staying in? I’m sure you know who I’m talking about.”

  “Oh yeah. She’s hot.” The kid nodded, then his eyes narrowed. “You’re not just a random hotel guest, are you?”

  The kid wasn’t as stupid as he looked.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “You a reporter or something?”

  He turned the idea over in his mind, quickly assessing the possibilities. He decided another admission could work to his advantage. He could keep in touch with the kid going forward.

  He adjusted his approach. “Guilty as charged. I want to get a scoop on the case they’re investigating, and there’s no way to get anywhere near them. Their FBI facility is like a fortress, but here at this hotel . . .” He allowed the implication to hang between them for a moment, then lifted the uniform on its hanger. “I can wear this and blend in. Watch what they do without them knowing.”

  “The bell captain will have my ass if he finds out I’m helping a reporter.” The kid gave him a shrewd look. “What’s it worth to you?”

  He smiled. He had closed the sale, now they only needed to settle on a price
. He enjoyed negotiations. “A hundred bucks.”

  The kid jutted his chin out and adopted a tough tone. “Five hundred dollars and you’ve got yourself a deal.”

  He allowed a long pause. “Tell you what. I borrow the bellman’s uniform and you tell me what rooms they’re in, and I’ll give you three hundred dollars.”

  The kid folded his arms across his scrawny chest. “Five hundred.”

  He pulled three crisp Benjamins from his pocket. “Three hundred. Cash money. Right now.”

  “Done.” The kid snatched the proffered bills, slipping them into his inside vest pocket.

  He stifled a smirk. He would have paid a thousand. The kid had a lot to learn about haggling.

  “She’s on the thirty-first floor,” the kid said. “In the farthest adjoining suite at the end of the hall. There’s two G-men in the connected suite and another one across the hall in a room by himself.”

  “Pleasure doing business with you.” He made a show of pausing as if an idea had just occurred to him. “Can I have your cell number in case I need more information in the future?”

  The kid rattled off a number, then grinned. “It’ll cost you each time.”

  He nodded, committing the number to memory, then pulled a black garbage bag from the shelf. He slipped it over the hanger to hide the uniform, then walked down the hall to the service elevator.

  Ten minutes later, he strode along the thirty-first floor dressed as a bellman, aware the FBI team was out investigating. He scanned the numbers on placards affixed to the walls beside each door. Based on the bellman’s description, he figured Guerrera and the other female were sharing a room that adjoined the suite with the two male agents he’d seen with her. Their supervisor was probably the one with a room to himself across the hall.

  He arrived at the end of the hall, glanced over his shoulder, and waved the keycard in front of the sensor to room 3110. If anyone ever thought to check the hotel’s computer system in the future, they would eventually determine that the room had been entered on this date using a room service attendant’s lost keycard. The trail would end there.

  He wasn’t worried. The young man who brought the extra hangers up to his suite would be blamed—and probably fired—for carelessness. The bellman in the supply room wouldn’t connect the incidents. If he did, he certainly wouldn’t come forward to admit he’d taken a bribe to point out where FBI agents were staying.

  The latch clicked and the tiny light turned green. He pushed the door open and slipped inside. He was not here to take anything. He was here to leave something.

  Fortunately, the uniform’s matching gray gloves would leave no prints or extraneous fibers that didn’t belong in the hotel. He slipped a pouch from his pocket and pulled out a metal disk the size and shape of a nickel. He removed the lampshade, unscrewed the bulb, and pulled out its electrical guts. He spliced a thin wire jutting from the side of the circular listening device to the lamp’s internal wiring, giving the bug a continuous power source. He could monitor them for weeks if necessary. He lifted the lampshade back on and screwed down the finial that held it in place.

  Now for the backup. He had taken the ballpoint pen the hotel had thoughtfully placed in his room on the desk and retrofitted it for audio. He switched out the pen already on the desk with the one he’d rigged, taking care to aim the tiny microphone toward the room rather than the wall.

  One room done, two to go. He considered the pens a double-or-nothing gamble. He’d made sure the ballpoints could all still write, although the shortened cartridge meant the ink would run out quickly. With luck, one of the agents might take it with them. People often did—hotels counted on that for cheap advertising. If they did, he would literally be in their pocket as they investigated. On the other hand, they all might throw the pens away. Unlike the bugs in the lamps, the minuscule batteries in the pens would drain after a few days without a constant power source. If this investigation dragged on, he might have to come back and replace them. Either way, he would have audio from the lamps indefinitely.

  It was all about the risk-to-reward ratio. The likelihood of discovery was low, and the potential to gain information was high. He liked his odds.

  Chapter 16

  Nina had learned from Wade and Kent that part of a profiler’s job was to go inside the mind of both the killer and the victim, but she was running headlong into mental dead ends with this one. Unable to fathom why he did what he did, she was left with how. How had he known about the C-sections? How had he chosen his victims?

  “Maybe we can find something in his history that will help,” Buxton said, steering the conversation back to the past cases. “Four years before San Diego, he successfully pulled off his scheme in Houston.” He glanced up at the wall-mounted screen, which Breck had split between the Houston agent and the HPD case file from twelve years ago.

  “He mixed bleach and ammonia to make a toxic gas,” the Houston agent said, taking Buxton’s cue.

  “Interesting,” Wade said, studying the images on the screen. “Poison has a reputation as a woman’s weapon of choice, and he also used household items any woman would be familiar with. He played to stereotypes so framing the mother would be more convincing.”

  “And that’s exactly what the police investigation concluded,” Houston said. “The mother in this case had ended her career as a well-regarded attorney shortly after she became pregnant. She told everyone she wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. A rumor started after the deaths that she regretted her decision and became depressed. Local police never could find the source of the gossip, but it fit with what the evidence showed.”

  “Maybe he helped spread the rumor,” Nina muttered, thinking of the Llorona tale. “He’s been fortunate in cases where a false narrative helps his storyline along, or he pushes out a convenient theory himself one way or another.”

  Kent regarded her thoughtfully. “It would all be part of his smear campaign against the mother in each case.”

  “No sign of a struggle?” Perez asked, taking the discussion back to the crime scene.

  “There were a few contusions on the bodies,” Breck said, an array of autopsy photos still visible on her computer screen. “But the ME concluded they could have occurred perimortem as the victims thrashed around.”

  Perez’s brows furrowed. “He must have struck the husband and wife hard enough to render them unconscious or at least incoherent while he gassed them.”

  “I’d like to have one of the forensic scientists at Quantico take a closer look at that autopsy report,” Kent said.

  “I’ve directed Agent Breck to compile and forward the information as soon as we’re finished,” Buxton said before directing his attention back to the wall monitor. “Four years before Houston, he struck in Chicago.”

  The Chicago agent appeared on the screen. “In our case, he used an organophosphate to poison the victims.”

  “Pretend I’m not a chemist,” Perez said. “Organo-what?”

  “The FBI has run across it a few times,” Buxton responded for the Chicago agent. “An organophosphate, or OP, is a type of chemical commonly found in pesticides. It can be concentrated to form a nerve gas. Terrorists have been known to do this. Sarin is a type of OP toxin. When it’s properly formulated, a single drop of OP on exposed skin can cause almost instant death.”

  Nina folded her arms. “Okay, so how did this get blamed on the wife? Was she a chemistry professor?”

  In answer, the Chicago agent held up a printed image of a panel van with a company logo on the side. “Her husband was a professional exterminator. He had all kinds of poisons stored in containers in his van. During their investigation, the police found a trove of web searches in her computer history researching how to create a fast-acting toxin from the chemicals her husband had.”

  “This is going back sixteen years,” Buxton said. “The subject of sarin was well publicized due to terrorist attacks around the world. I suppose it was easy enough for detectives to assume she had latched on
to the idea from watching the news.”

  “And what was her supposed motive?” Nina asked.

  “Nothing obvious,” Chicago said. “I imagine the internet searches were the main source of corroboration with what they found at the scene.”

  “Searches he may have planted on her computer as part of his staging process,” Breck said.

  Nina had another idea. “If he’s as good as I think he is, he might have gained access to the house and run searches on the computer once or twice prior to the day of the murder to create a brief but convincing search history.”

  Breck looked up from her monitor. “If he was really good, he could have taken over her computer using a Trojan horse and put stuff in there for months in the background where no one but police computer forensics would find it.”

  Nina was convinced there was more information hidden just beneath the surface. She was beginning to get a picture of the unsub but wanted to delve deeper. “Which city was before Chicago?”

  “Philadelphia.” Buxton nodded to Breck, who switched to new images on the screen.

  “Ours was another case of carbon monoxide poisoning,” the Philadelphia field agent said. “This time it was a car left running in the attached garage. I’ve been assigned to Philly for five years now, and February’s damned cold around here. Apparently, their next-door neighbor thought they were just warming up the car in the morning. After a while, she went to check it out and found the family dead. Turns out the car had been running in the garage since midnight.”

  Nina was perplexed. “How does an accidental death get ruled as a murder-suicide?”

  “Evidence at the scene indicated the mother had waited until the family fell asleep before starting the car and propping open the interior door leading to the garage,” Philly said.