“That’s my read of it too. There’s a chance now, a real chance, to catch the lady shooter, with the evidence to convict those who hired her.”
“Tapes of the murder for hires. I’m glad for you, Paul. I hope you get all thirty tapes.”
“I have a feeling this is going to unfold as a lot of hurry up and wait, and last for several weeks. Notice I said weeks, and I’m impatient at that thought when the case has been on the boards for years. I have a feeling patience isn’t going to be my strong suit this time around. I’m hoping I can kill some of that waiting time with you.”
“I’ll enjoy watching the FBI work. It will be nice being a spectator to a case for a change.” She studied him. “Could I meddle for a moment?”
“Sure.”
“Remember to get some rest during the times this case does sprint. I’ll like you better when this is over.”
“I will. You can keep me honest.”
“Good. Because I’m about to hang up on you so you can go get some sleep.”
He laughed. “Good night, Ann.”
She was smiling as she dropped the link. So was he.
13
Paul entered Suite 906 just before ten a.m. Margaret offered a mug of coffee and nodded toward Arthur’s office. “Go right in.”
Paul walked into his boss’s office. “Good morning, Arthur.” He hesitated. “Director.”
“Paul.” The director of the FBI crossed to shake hands. Edward Baine was career FBI, politically accustomed to turf wars, and underneath the polish was still a sharp cop with good instincts for people and problems. Paul liked the man. “I believe you know Tori Scott from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.”
Paul took her hand. “I do. It’s a pleasure, Tori.” She had been a guest along with her husband at his father’s dinner table many times.
“Let’s take a seat and we’ll get started,” Arthur directed. Paul took a seat beside his boss. “Give us the highlights of where you’re at, Paul.”
“The audiotapes are as advertised. She sent us tapes for murders twenty-five and twenty-nine. We’ve confirmed the voice print of the middleman and the two speakers on the tapes. Flint Meeks paid to kill his wife, Yolanda, and Tony Ryckoff paid to kill his brother, Victor.
“There are prints on the letter and the envelope which may be the lady shooter, or they may be a distraction to keep us occupied. For reasons only she understands, she may want to let us know who she is.
“The prints are for a lady named Linda Smythe, now fifty-three, from Boston, Massachusetts. It fits with her first three murders, as that was her home territory. We have a bio for her through age twenty. She grew up in a violent and abusive home. Drunken father. Mentally ill mother. Numerous domestic calls, aggravated assault, drunk and disorderly. She was removed from the home twice. The mother died when Linda was ten, the father when she was seventeen. It could be her real bio, as it’s the kind of background that could lead to a hired shooter. We haven’t generated a match for the photo in DMV, or passport records yet, but we’re working on it. The big question is her letter, and the decision on what to do.”
“Tori,” the director said, “you had an interesting perspective on this case that you shared on the flight here. I’d like to start the discussion there.”
“Thank you, sir. It seems best to keep an eye on the larger picture of what is possible when we decide what to do.” The woman shifted to sit forward. “Paul, you made her nervous with your investigation, she broke nine years of silence, and she contacted you. She is likely already regretting sending that envelope. She’s confirmed to you she’s still alive, and she has something you really want—tapes of the murder contracts. By her actions she intensifies the hunt to find her, she’s no longer a ghost, and she’s got to be on edge about that. If we reply with anything other than the offer she made in her letter, we give her an excuse to walk away. So we stay cautious with this first decision. Her letter is not a negotiation. She wants us to take or reject her offer.”
Tori sat back and folded her hands over a crossed knee. “With four more tapes, you have solid proof on six murders. And by continuing the interaction with her, you rapidly improve your ability to catch her. In my opinion, that is worth taking the federal death penalty off the table. We still have the state death penalty in play on some of the murders. We use the first reply to show we will work with her, we convince her to keep talking with you, and we have that back-and-forth of mail to help find her.
“The more tapes you can get in your possession, the more your position improves relative to what she has to offer. She has the bulk of the tapes. When you have more than half of the tapes, the balance shifts and you can risk offering a different deal from what she wants. When her demands get too high, you counter with a smaller deal for a single tape, you try to drag out the communications, or you say no to her offer, ask her to suggest something else and see if she will offer a counter proposal. But you can’t risk that move unless you are prepared for her to break off contact and disappear.” She looked at the director. “I don’t think we are ready for her to disappear. So we stay with what she’s requesting for now. Speaking personally, I want those thirty tapes. It’s worth a great deal to get them.”
The director nodded. “I like commonsense plans, and I just heard one. We ignore the offer, we turn it down, and we lose access to tapes that are valuable and a chance to catch her. So we take the deal as offered and play this round out.” He looked at Paul. “You’ve been thinking this through. What else is on your mind?”
“We have a timing problem. We have to keep quiet the fact the lady shooter has made contact and is giving us tapes. If we tip our hand, the people who hired the hits will disappear. Or they will find and kill the lady shooter before she gives us all the tapes she’s going to provide. So we need to wait and make all the arrests at the same time.”
Paul looked to Tori. “We have the tape with their voices contracting for the murder, the middleman records of what the lady shooter was paid, and—if we can catch her and she’ll cooperate—the lady shooter’s testimony. It’s enough for an arrest. I don’t know if that will be enough for a conviction. The two men we now know about have solid reputations, and these are old murders.” Paul looked over at the director. “We’ll have to do the aggressive investigations of the murders after the arrests are made. And we’ll have up to thirty murders to investigate at the same time. It’s going to take a lot of agents. I just don’t see a way around that problem. We start making arrests before all the tapes are in, too many things can spin out of our control.”
“The priority for now is acquiring the tapes and capturing her,” the director decided. “Do whatever you can without jeopardizing that goal.”
“I appreciate that. A minor but critical point: we can’t afford a mistake like those tapes accidentally going through security downstairs and getting erased, so we need a different drop-off place for her to return the agreement and tapes. I suggest we use Zane’s address. I want to read him in on what is going on. He can alert me when a package arrives and can hand-deliver the tapes here.”
Arthur winced at the name of Paul’s predecessor, but nodded. “Agreed.”
The director smiled, well aware of the complex history. “He’ll be useful. Paul, run this out in time to the endgame. How would this ideally unfold?”
“There is a back-and-forth of letters while the thirty tapes come in. We identify who is on each tape. Once we have all the tapes, or all the tapes we judge we are likely to get, we rapidly scale up in personnel.
“Forty-eight hours before we make arrests, we lock a task force of lawyers in a room, lay out what we have for each case, and we decide in advance what kind of deal we will be willing to offer to each person.
“We make the thirty arrests as rapidly as possible. We serve warrants for financial records, phone records. We do the thirty interviews immediately and put the deals on the table. Twenty-four hours in we assess where we are at—who is going to take the deal, who is going
to stay quiet, what information we’ve been able to gather in the field, and what needs pursued next. We hold a press conference announcing the arrests.
“We start interviews in the field related to each murder. These people got away with hiring a murder, and odds are good at least a couple of them have made remarks to a friend or family member they are going to regret having said.
“Each murder gets assigned a legal team and a lead prosecutor. There are thirty arraignments. We hand off the murder cases to the attorney general and keep the lady shooter as our focus if we haven’t caught her.
“We have one extra point working in our favor. The odds are good these people have committed at least one other major felony since they hired a murder, so while we focus on the investigation, we also get as aggressive as we can within the scope of the warrants and the inquiries to see what else is out there that might be easier to prosecute.”
The director nodded. “Let’s hope it goes that smoothly. We’ll need a room large enough to handle at least a hundred lawyers, and we’ll need better than a hundred sixty agents available when this case moves to arrests, warrants, and interviews. I’ll work on those preparations. Keep us updated on where the tapes lead, and let me know if there is anything else you need. We’ll reassemble this group when there is another letter from her to decide how to answer.”
“Yes, sir.”
Paul looked to Arthur, who nodded and got to his feet, indicating the meeting was concluded. “Catch her, Paul.”
Paul returned to the small war room where Sam and Rita were working. He wrote down Tori Scott’s direct number on the contact board. “That went smoother than I expected. We’ll have an agreement drafted today as the lady shooter’s letter specified.”
He turned to face the two. “I made a few decisions last night. This is going to play out over weeks, if not months, with a lot of urgent moments and then a lot of waiting, and it’s only going to be us working the case, so we divide and conquer. Rita, I’m giving you the tapes. Become best friends with Nathan Scholes. Identify the voices. Put a name on the person who paid for the murder. Prove the tapes are authentic. I need an audio match for each voice that will hold up in court.
“Sam, your priority is catching the lady shooter. We are sending signed copies of the agreement. She has to receive and sign those documents. We don’t want her to abandon the package, we don’t want to spook her and send her back in hiding. But within those boundaries, figure out how to use the reply package to catch her. As a cover story, someone is leaking classified information, and the package is being followed to locate who is receiving the information. Recruit whoever you want to use from here or a field office, and don’t skimp on field expenses. Arrange whatever gives you an edge in catching her.
“I’ll handle her letters and the agreements, and I’ll work on building the murder cases once we have the names.” He looked at his watch. “I’m going up to talk with Thomas Gates as this agreement gets written, and then I’m going to go tell Zane I drafted him for another job. Let’s meet back here later this afternoon.”
Paul pulled out a chair at the table. “Okay, Sam, I’m back and I’m all yours. Talk me through your plan for catching her while she retrieves the package.”
Sam reversed the video on his screen. He told Paul he had sent a local FBI agent to drive through the neighborhood in a van and now had a good video of the area to go along with the street maps and the satellite photos. Sam paused to point out a house. “I’ll be here. There is a good view of the front door and mailbox. I will see anyone who takes the package and be able to get good photographs. If it looks like a middle-aged lady, we’ll take her down right there. If it is someone she’s sent, we’ll settle in to trail them to her.”
Sam turned around the street map. “There’s only one road leading out of the subdivision, and it has a stoplight. I will call ahead when the package is taken, and they will flip that light to hold at red and not turn green. Those assigned to tail the individual will pick him up as he leaves the subdivision. If the individual leaves the subdivision on foot, we will have teams at all corners of the subdivision to pick up the surveillance. We want to spot the handoff of the papers. We’ll have six teams in the area to trade off coverage as he moves.
“We are going to mail the documents overnight mail via the post office. It will be big and blue and be put into the mailbox. If we tried another delivery service, the package gets left between the screen door and the front door, and we can’t see it. I want eyes on the package at all times, and I can see it if it’s in the mailbox.”
Sam paused a moment, then said, “It’s possible the homeowner is involved in this. So we have a plan for that contingency. We’ll be watching the homeowner. We’ll have a team on his car at the school, and we’ll know when he leaves for home. If she hasn’t taken the package before he gets home, we’ll assume he’s involved. We’ll have a warrant to monitor his home phone and the cellphone we know about, but the concern is he’s carrying a burner phone. So when he gets his mail, we will jam the cell towers so he has to call her on the house line. If he calls someone, we’ll follow where that call leads us. If he doesn’t do anything, we will wait and tail him whenever he leaves the house.
“My guess, she’ll step in and take the package from his mailbox. But since she doesn’t know when the reply will arrive, she has to have someone in the neighborhood watching for it to arrive, or she has someone checking the mail every day. We’re going to have a problem being stationed around the neighborhood and not being seen. The biggest risk is she spots us and abandons the pickup. If there’s no activity after forty-eight hours, she well may have decided to walk away. At that point we will step in and interview the homeowner.”
“It’s a good plan. You’re using agents from the local office?”
“Yes. They think we’re investigating someone leaking classified documents. Are you sure you don’t want to be there, boss? It’s going to be an interesting chase.”
“If something goes wrong, she’s going to be contacting us again. It’s better if I’m here. You pick her up, and we’ll celebrate together when you get back.”
“I’ll head out just as soon as you have the document.”
“I’ll be back with it signed in about two hours.”
The next morning, Paul set up a series of monitors and audio feeds in the war room, with the names Sam, Rita, and Ann labeled on the feeds. He would spend much of the next few weeks in this secure room, reading, listening to updates, working problems, and he might as well be organized and comfortable while he did so. Rita would focus on the tapes, Sam on catching the lady shooter, and he’d work on answers to the questions sketched out on the board.
“Sam, audio check.”
“You’re loud and clear, boss. Five minutes and I’ll have a feed for you of the mailbox I’m watching.”
“I’ve got a monitor open for it.”
“Rita.”
She was in the audio lab downstairs and looked over to wave at the camera. “Boss, you should see the tools Nathan has in here. He can make me sing on perfect pitch.”
“Enjoy it.” Paul knew Rita and Nathan had set up the original taping equipment the middleman had on his phones in order to test out what could be used as additional authentication for the tapes.
Paul tried a secure call to Ann. Her picture appeared, stabilized. “Hi, gorgeous.”
She glanced over and grinned. “You’re being kind.”
She was home. He could see her living room behind her. “What are you doing?”
“Working on a story.”
“Mind if I leave you up on the monitor? This is the war room just off the conference room. I’m in monitor mode. The reply gets delivered today, and Sam is running the op to try and catch her.”
“No problem. When it gets busy there, just mute me out so I don’t have to try and follow your conference-room chatter. I’ll wave if I want you to toss audio back on.”
“Will do. Good story?”
“Ask me in a few hours.”
“I’ll do that.”
He muted her screen as he saw a mailbox appear on the far screen. “I’m getting your feed, Sam.”
The package had been sitting in the mailbox for the last two hours, and nothing approached the mailbox except a sparrow looking for somewhere to land. Paul was watching the same video as Sam. “I hate this waiting.”
Ann paused what she was typing to glance over. She pointed to the plate on his table. “Eat. From your personnel file I would have thought you were an expert at stakeouts.”
“I’m remembering now why I enjoy leaving fieldwork to others. You’ve started reading my file?”
“I have.”
He reached for the sandwich. She didn’t volunteer anything else about what she’d read or what she thought. He wanted to start a conversation, but while her hands were on the keyboard he was trying to keep his remarks to her at a minimum. He forced his attention back to Sam. “Sam, how are you doing?”
Sam put a hand into the mailbox video feed to wave. “I’m having to get up and pace to keep my legs from going to sleep. She’s good at this, boss. She didn’t show up five minutes after the mail arrived when we were most ready to react.”
“I hear you.” The afternoon was wearing on.
Paul finished the sandwich. He picked up an interview only to put it back down, and then simply took a few more minutes to watch Ann. She had been typing at a good clip ever since he had put her up on the monitor this morning. She paused occasionally to scroll back in the text to read a few pages, often stopping entirely just to look at the screen and think. This was Ann writing, and he would really like to know what she was working on.
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