by Steven James
Lien-hua ran the second set of plates while Cheyenne, Ralph, and I reviewed the footage to the point at which the emergency vehicles passed through the intersection at 7:14 p.m. on their way to the scene. No other Volvo sedans.
“OK,” Lien-hua said. “Both sets of plates are registered to Rusty Mahan.”
“Two sets of plates for the same car?” Cheyenne turned the keyboard toward her so she could tap at the keys, bring up the case files. “You’d need someone on the inside at the Department of Motor Vehicles to pull that off.”
Ralph shook his head. “No. A driver’s license, address, and a few bucks’ll get you plates.”
“Fake ID?” Lien-hua asked.
“Sixty bucks on the street.”
I shook my head. “I could see switching plates to avoid apprehension, but why switch them if you’re just going to leave the vehicle at the scene? Especially if you use plates registered to the same owner?”
The case seemed to be skewing into a completely different direction.
“All right, let’s think about this,” Lien-hua said. “IPR-OMI. Does that mean anything to anyone?”
“IP is your Internet Protocol,” Cheyenne said. “Your computer’s address within a network. ROM has something to do with computer memory.”
“Read-only memory,” Lien-hua said.
Cheyenne tapped at the keyboard. “IPROM stands for University of Illinois Probability Modules. A software program students use in their probability courses.”
Ralph cut in, “Lien-hua, you said our guy might be a hacker?”
“Yes. But what about the I at the end?”
We were quickly sinking into the quagmire of conjecture.
He shook his head. “OMI could mean ‘oh, my.’”
“Hang on a minute,” I said. “Rather than worry about what kind of hidden message the plates might contain, let’s find the DMV clerk who filed the registration papers and see if we can get a description of the person who applied for them. See if it was Mahan or not. We can have Angela Knight or the NSA’s cryptographers work the plate angle for us.”
No arguments.
“All right, bring up the video again, Cheyenne.” Then I addressed all three of them. “Is there anything else here? Anything we’re missing?”
She played the footage again.
The traffic light.
Red. Yellow.
“The facility’s cameras . . .” I mumbled, “the electronics store . . . the killers know video . . .”
Green.
“Wait,” I said. “Replay it.”
And at last I saw it.
I couldn’t believe I’d missed it earlier.
“Here, here, here. Watch it again. The traffic lights.” I leaned close to Cheyenne. Hit play. I caught the light, sweet scent of her perfume, tried to ignore it.
As the video played, I could see from the looks on everyone’s face that none of my colleagues had any idea what I was talking about. I moved the cursor back and pressed play one last time. “The light. Notice when it changes.”
We all watched as the car approached, the light turned green, the vehicle slowed, passed through the intersection, accelerated.
“He slows down,” Lien-hua said, “as he approaches the light.”
“Yes, as he approaches,” I said. “But it turns green while he’s at least thirty meters away. So why would he slow down on an empty street as he approached a light that just turned green?”
“It could be almost anything.” Ralph put an edge to his words, and it was clear he didn’t think this was significant at all. “He could have been distracted, on the phone, fiddling with the radio . . .” A stretch of thoughtful silence, then he mumbled the same thing I’d been thinking, “Or he wanted to get caught on camera.”
“That’s what I’m wondering,” I said. “Everything else so far has been set up to make us look in one direction while missing the obvious facts in another. They switched the plates and it looks like they wanted us to notice—but not right away.”
“Who would even guess that we would check this?” Lien-hua asked. “The traffic cams?”
“Someone who thinks like Pat,” Cheyenne said.
“But why?” Ralph asked. “Why would—”
My phone rang and my caller ID told me it was Missy Schuel, the lawyer.
Her timing couldn’t have been worse. I hated to step away from this conversation, but this was one phone call I couldn’t afford to miss.
It rang again.
“Hold that thought,” I told my friends. “I’ll be right back.”
I slipped into the hallway and answered my cell.
23
“Pat Bowers here.”
“Dr. Bowers, Missy Schuel. I received your message. I’m sorry I didn’t get back to your sooner, but my daughter threw up this morning, and I had to take her out of daycare.”
Of all the excuses to not return a call, taking care of your sick child had to rank near the top of the list, but it seemed oddly forthcoming for a lawyer to share that with a potential client.
“Is she all right?”
“Yes. Thank you for asking. She’s with a friend.” A brief transitional pause, presumably meant to bridge the conversation from personal matters to business. “Normally I’m not able to see new clients on such short notice, but I had a cancellation at 12:50. I can meet with you then for perhaps fifty minutes. It’s my only opening until the seventeenth.”
I glanced at my watch.
12:20.
Not gonna happen.
I knew that Missy Schuel’s office was in downtown DC, at least a thirty minute drive from NCAVC, so even if I left immediately and sped all the way there, I’d barely make it, and considering how much Missy and I needed to discuss, I couldn’t think of any way I’d make it back to Quantico in time for my 2:00 class. “There’s nothing else? You’re sure?”
“Dr. Bowers, I can meet with you at 12:50.” No irritation in her voice, just professional formality. “Otherwise, I’ll be glad to give you the names and numbers of other lawyers I would recommend. Which would you prefer?”
“Are they as good as you are?”
“No.” A simple, frank assessment that impressed me.
I thought of Ralph’s list of all the agencies involved in this investigation, all the people on the case. They can get by for a couple of hours without you, Pat. Don’t mess around here. Do what’s best for Tessa.
“I’ll be there at 12:50.”
“All right. My office is located at 1213 11th St. NW. Park at the liquor store across the street. They don’t mind.”
“The liquor store?”
“I don’t have any parking here at my office, so I tell my clients to use their lot. Just don’t linger or they’ll think you’re there for a drug deal.”
My confidence in Ms. Schuel was beginning to falter.
“Okay.”
“I’ll see you soon, Agent Bowers.”
“Hang on. I told you I was a doctor; I didn’t say anything about being an agent.”
“I looked you up. I don’t like surprises.” And that was all.
We ended the call, and I hurried back to the conference room and collected my things, leaving my laptop for the team to use. “I need to go.”
Lien-hua gave me a look of concern. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.” I gestured toward the hallway. “Can I talk to you a moment?” As we left I noticed Cheyenne watching us curiously, but when she saw me look her way she focused on the computer monitor again.
When Lien-hua and I were alone in the hall, I said, “Could you do me a favor? Are you heading back to the Academy?”
A pause. “I can.”
“Could you take my 2:00 class?” I could hear that my voice was urgent, rushed. “Just thirty minutes maybe. We’re supposed to do a walk-around of the body farm.”
“Pat, what’s going on?”
Go on, lay it out. Then move.
“It’s Tessa’s father. We found him last month,
and he’s trying to take her away from me. He’s suing for custody. I need to meet with a lawyer, and it can’t wait.”
There. On the table.
“I’ll take the whole class period. Go.”
“Thanks, I owe—oh man. Cheyenne. She rode here with me. She’ll need a ride back to the Academy.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll give her a lift.”
“You sure?”
“If we’re going to be working together, we’ll need to get to know each other.”
Unintended consequences.
Without thinking about it, I squeezed her shoulder lightly. “Thank you.” Touching her felt both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. Different tones of the past.
I was about to pull my hand away, but she put her hand on it and her fingers curled around mine, ever so slightly, but they did. “You don’t have to thank me. Now get going.”
Then the moment disappeared. She returned to the conference room and I jogged to the parking lot, my thoughts flying ahead to my meeting with Missy Schuel.
24
So, according to Tessa’s dad, Julia Rasmussen was someone he’d met when he lived in DC six years ago. Apparently, she was the one who introduced him to sculpting.
She was a sculptress.
How nice.
“Will you be seeing her while you’re in the city?” Tessa asked.
He was slow in answering. “Tomorrow. Yes.” He gestured toward a sculpture about twenty feet away. “Well, here we are.”
Tessa stared at the figure Paul was walking toward: four-feet tall, made out of some kind of plastic resin. The sculpture’s feet were fins that slowly morphed into thickly muscled, hairy legs and then changed into a naked torso and neck, then a face of a girl with a tragically sad smile but optimistic eyes.
It had an explanatory plaque. Of course.
Paul was beaming. “Amazing, isn’t it?”
Julia, huh?
The sculptress.
“It’s . . . interesting.”
“What does it say to you?”
“Honestly?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“It says she couldn’t decide what to make—a frog, a gorilla, or Shirley Temple.”
He looked at her oddly.
“I’m sorry, I mean, okay, how about this: it’s the history of life on this planet, from fish to ape to man, moving inexorably toward happiness. But our race hasn’t reached it yet—we’re still dragged down by our animal nature, and that’s why her face is so downcast. She’s hopeful, optimistic, but has yet to reach enlightenment.”
He blinked. Glanced at the plaque. Looked again at Tessa.
“No, I haven’t seen it before,” she said.
“That’s extraordinary.”
“Yeah, but it’s not honest.”
“Not honest?”
“The sculpture. About life. It assumes natural selection always moves toward happiness, which is imposing a value judgment on it, which is illogical. And who’s to say animals aren’t happier than we are? Not too many of them commit suicide. Besides, a lot of people think we’re shaped by the hand of God, not simply natural processes. Mom believed that. I do too.”
A pause. “You’ve thought about this before.”
“Yeah.” She considered telling him that Patrick had told her more than once that truth is not afraid of scrutiny. But she held her tongue.
“Do you believe in God, Paul?”
He was slow to answer. “I’m not sure.”
“Does Julia?”
“Tessa, this is—”
“None of my business?”
He looked at her closely. “No, I don’t think Julia believes in God.”
Tessa felt it in the air: awkwardness, awkwardness, awkwardness.
“So.” He pointed to a nearby sculpture: a toilet seat surrounded by fake fur and framed inside a giant green triangle. “What about this one? Let’s see if you can get two in a row.”
Oh, please don’t tell me Julia the Sculptress made that thing too.
Tessa glanced at the name on the placard.
Good.
“Well?”
“Come on, Paul. I just want to talk. I’m really not into this whole sculpture-interpretation-thing.”
“You nailed the last one.”
“Luck.”
“I don’t believe you.”
She held back a sigh. “It’s a toilet seat in a giant triangle. Can we move on? Please?”
“Come on, you can do better than that. Can you tell me what it means?”
All right.
Enough with this.
“I’m no artist, but I don’t think the point of art is to mean, I think it’s to render. If it doesn’t do that, if it needs a plaque to explain it, it’s not art. It’s like nature—what does a bird mean by its song? What does a flower mean when it blooms? It means beauty. Any explanation beyond that is superfluous.”
He stared at her.
“Look, what did you do before moving to Wyoming and becoming a recluse?”
“I worked for the government. I told you that before. How do you know so much about—”
“Yeah. The game and fish department.”
“That’s right.”
“Why are you living out there in the middle of nowhere? Are you running from something?”
“I needed a place to be alone to work on my sculptures; we went through all of this when you and your stepfather came to my cabin. Did you study art or—”
“Patrick. When Patrick and I came to your cabin. Please use his name.”
A hard look. “I’m not sure what you’re trying to do here. Are you angry at me?”
“No.”
“Let’s try to switch this from an interrogation to a conversation, okay?”
She felt a sharp itch of anger. “I’m not interrogating you.”
“How about we just go back and forth, okay? You ask me a question, then I’ll ask you one.” He gestured toward some leather chairs near the window, but she didn’t move.
“How long did you and Mom go out?” she said.
“Three weeks.”
“And did you—”
A smile. “It’s my turn, Tessa.”
She said nothing.
“Do you love Patrick?”
“I love him. Yes. What about Mom? Did you love her?”
A pause. “We went out for three weeks, Tessa.”
“And?”
He didn’t answer.
“So,” she said, “you slept with her even though you didn’t love her?”
“We slept together. Yes. Three or four times.”
“Three or four? You don’t remember?”
“My turn for a question. Has he ever done anything to hurt you?”
“Who?”
“Patrick.”
“To hurt me? What are you talking about?”
He pointed to her right arm, to her scars. “Did he do that to you?”
“How could you even think that? I did that to myself. You can’t remember how many times you slept with my mom? How many other women were you sleeping with at the time that made it so hard for you to keep track?”
“There weren’t any others.” Then back to the scars. “Some of those look recent. Why didn’t he stop you?”
She stared at him coolly. “I think I’m done with this little conversation-bonding-time.” She slung her purse strap over her shoulder. “And I’ve had enough art appreciation for one day. I’m leaving.”
He reached out for her arm to stop her, but she glared at him. “Don’t even.”
He stopped just short of actually touching her.
“I care about you.” He let his hand retreat. “I want you to be safe. During Basque’s trial last month, your stepfather—Patrick—admitted to physically assaulting him, to breaking Basque’s jaw when he arrested him.”
“The guy was trying to kill him.”
“That’s not exactly how the press portrayed—”
“Patrick
would never hurt me. Ever.”
A drop of silence. “I’m glad to hear that.”
She narrowed her eyes. “What’s with all the questions about Patrick?”
“You’re my daughter. I just want to make sure you’re in a safe environment. You’re important to—”
“Oh yeah? Well, then, answer me this: if I’m so important to you, why didn’t you ever come to see me? And please don’t tell me it’s because you thought Mom was going to abort me. You kept tabs on her. You wrote to her fifteen years later—I found the postcard! You would have known about me.”
She watched him closely. His face. His body language.
“Honestly, I always thought your mother went ahead with the abortion.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I’m telling you the truth. I didn’t know you were born, Tessa. I had no way of knowing. Before your mom moved away she made it very clear that she didn’t want me in her life.” A pause. “But now we’re here; we’re together, and I’m just trying to make sure that this man who is taking care of—”
“Patrick! His name is Patrick! And he’s more than just the guy who takes care of me, okay?”
“Okay.”
Show him, Tessa. Prove it.
She yanked up her left sleeve, revealing the raven tattoo she’d gotten to conceal the scar Sevren Adkins had given her when he slit her brachial artery and left her to bleed to death.
“Patrick saved my life last year when this serial killer attacked me. He risked his life. He almost got killed doing it.”
“A serial killer?”
“That’s right.”
He was looking carefully at the tattoo. And at the scar.
“I didn’t know that.”
She let go of her sleeve. “Yeah, well, now you do.”
“I’m sorry you were hurt like this. I would never have let someone—”
“I am so done with this.” She turned to go.
“Tessa, don’t walk away from me when I’m talking to you.”
She whirled around. Got in his face. “Patrick would do anything for me, and while you were out there in your little Una–bomber cabin playing with papier-mâché, he was busy being a dad to me. Don’t email me anymore. I think I know everything I need to.”
“There’s still a lot we need to discuss. I’ll—”