by Steven James
I said to Tielman, “Tell me about the car.”
“Well, somebody gave a homeless guy a hundred dollars in quarters yesterday afternoon. He’s been feeding the meter every hour or so. Anderson saw him, figured he couldn’t possibly be the car’s owner. And, well, there you go.”
“Someone gave a homeless man a hundred dollars? What motivated him to keep feeding the—”
“The promise of more money, if he kept it going for twenty-four hours—and no, the homeless guy couldn’t give us a description of the man who gave him the money.”
Hmm.
“No one else besides Anderson noticed this?”
“Apparently not.”
I studied the vehicle. “Did your team find anything significant here?”
“Well, the luggage claim tag.”
“What?” Angela hadn’t mentioned that.
“Yeah. Cassidy found it. Farraday swept the car first, must have missed it. No prints on it, though. No DNA.”
Why would killers this careful leave a claim tag behind?
“What else?”
“We ran the plates, examined the carpeting for soil samples, no red flags; Cassidy checked the steering wheel, door handles, trunk for DNA and prints, but so far the only ones come from the owner’s family, two friends, and the guy who owned the car before they bought it last year.”
He had a look of satisfaction on his face, as if he were proud of how well he’d done his job. “The owners are clean. They were both at an art reception at the time of the chase at the hotel. Their car was gone when they left.”
“They reported it missing?”
“Yes.”
“No candy wrappers in the car?” I said. “Gum? Straws, napkins, anything else you could get DNA from?”
“I’m good at what I do, Agent Bowers.” His voice had turned cold.
“I’m glad to hear that.” Donning the latex gloves, I slipped into the car, sat in the driver’s seat, peered out the windshield.
This is the last thing the driver saw before exiting the vehicle.
From here, I could see the panning surveillance camera above the police station’s front entrance. I waited, it rotated toward me, then away from me, then toward me again, but by its position in relationship to the entrance and the panning angle, I guessed this car wouldn’t appear in the frame.
I asked Tielman about it, and he confirmed my suspicions—the team had checked the footage, he told me, but nothing came up. “If the killers’d parked thirty feet further up the block we would’ve had ’em.” His tone seemed to praise the police department’s potential cleverness rather than the killers’ anticipation of it.
Man, these guys were good.
And it was video again.
Always something to do with video.
Angles.
Orientation.
I recalled the cameras at the research facility, the deleted footage from 5:00 to 7:00, the video feed to the electronics store, the traffic camera catching the plates of the Volvo, the looping video footage of an empty alley. The killers seemed to be experts at turning against us the very tools we were using to try to find them.
And yet.
Yet . . .
The man who wheeled Mollie into the hotel had gotten caught on camera twice—entering the hotel and then entering the service elevator.
He’s too good for that.
Why didn’t he just use the alley entrance or the—
The dog didn’t bark.
He wanted us to chase him through the hotel.
I considered that.
Why would he want that?
I had no idea, but either the killers had been careless or they were so far ahead of us that they were orchestrating everything. Six moves ahead of us the whole time. They seemed to know the cave and were only showing us the tunnels they wanted us to see.
I stepped out of the car, asked Tielman, “This vagrant who was feeding the parking meter, did he remember when the guy gave him the money?”
“Just sometime yesterday afternoon.” He folded his arms: I’ve thought of everything. Go ahead, try to come up with something I missed.
“Any change left? If so—”
“He used about half of the money on booze,” Tielman interrupted me harshly. “We checked the coins he had left for prints, nothing came up in AFIS.” He looked past me, toward HQ. “I’ll see you at the briefing.”
“Good work here.”
After a pause. “Thank you.”
As I watched him leave, I noticed that three TV news vehicles were lined up at the end of the street, and Nick, the cameraman who’d been at the Lincoln Towers Hotel yesterday when I arrived, was climbing into the WXTN van.
And as he did, I had a few thoughts about an entrance to the cave I hadn’t yet peered down.
83
I pulled out my cell. It only took a few moments to find WXTN’s phone number online. I tapped it in as I entered headquarters.
Security was tight, but I knew one of the agents working the metal detector, and when I held up my creds and flipped up my jacket to show him my weapon, he waved me through.
The command post was on the third floor.
A WXTN secretary put me on hold, and by the time I was finally transferred to the station’s president, I’d made it up the three flights of stairs. “This is Bryan Tait,” he said. “I understand you’re with the FBI?”
I opted to stay in the privacy of the stairwell for our conversation. “Just doing a little fact checking. You have a cameraman working for you with the first name of Nick; can you confirm his last name for me?” I made up a name. “Is it Verhooven?”
“We have a large staff. I’m not familiar with all of our employees. Just a moment.” A pause as he looked up the name. “Trichek.”
“Can you spell that for me?”
“T-r-i-c-h-e-k.”
“I need you to send me a copy of his work schedule for this last week.” I figured I could pull up his address and phone number myself.
A pause. “Has he done something illegal?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
Another pause. “I’m afraid that’s privileged information. I’d need to speak with legal affairs about this.”
“Sounds good. And while you’re on the phone with them, I’ll just call in for a warrant, save us both some time.” A small bluff. “We can chat again in fifteen minutes. Meanwhile, I hope word doesn’t Steven James leak out that WXTN was hesitant to cooperate with the authorities. You know how these things can get around—”
A brief silence. “I suppose Mr. Trichek’s work schedule is nothing extraordinarily confidential.”
Didn’t think so.
“Good.” I gave him an email address to one of the Bureau’s secure online drop boxes, then said, “And also Chelsea Traye’s records. I’d like hers as well.”
A final stretch of hesitation. “Of course.”
I thanked him, ended the call, and headed down the hallway to the command post, trying not to assume anything.
And failing.
84
Work stations were set up throughout the sprawling conference room. I counted twenty-two people present, either tapping at computers, making phone calls, conferring in small groups, or poring over crime scene photos that’d been spread across the tables. I recognized some of the officers and agents; most of them I did not.
Lien-hua and Margaret were standing beside a few hastily arranged rows of folding chairs facing a large screen with a 2-D map of the city projected onto it, the locations of the crimes pinpointed with glowing red dots. A nearby eight-foot table strewn with papers, half-empty coffee cups, and two laptop computers lay just to Margaret’s left.
My eyes met Lien-hua’s, and neither of us were in a hurry to look away.
For a moment I thought of Cheyenne’s comment last evening that she would be in class all day, then call me tonight, and a curl of confusion wandered through me again.
Lien-hua.
Cheyenne.
Pat, don’t do this to yourself! Last night you—
Margaret dialed her gaze in my direction. “There you are.” Her words were full of her characteristic charm, but I sensed more antagonism than usual. “There’s a lot to cover.” She gestured toward the chairs. “Let’s get started.”
Often, agents in charge of task forces such as this will hold command level meetings and then have the lieutenants, detectives, and so on brief everyone else. However, it wasn’t unheard of to bring everyone together, and I knew that Margaret liked saving time and making sure her people were on the same page, so I wasn’t surprised when she paced toward the center of the room and called for everyone to gather for the briefing.
As the task force members left their work stations and began assembling in the chairs, Lien-hua gave me a furtive glance. “Good morning, Agent Bowers.”
“Good morning, Agent Jiang.”
“How’s the arm?”
“It hurts. But it’ll be okay.”
“I’m sorry for the first part, thankful for the second,” she said, then, “I enjoyed our briefing last night.”
I blinked. “Our briefing?”
“Yes. On the deck.”
“Oh. Yes. Our briefing. Perhaps tonight we can go a little more in-depth. About the subject matter.”
“Hm . . . I’ll be sure to prepare my notes.”
Oh, man.
Easy, Pat.
Lien-hua took a seat, and I pulled up a chair beside her.
Margaret waited until everyone was seated, then said, “All right, let’s begin.”
The door to the hallway wisped open, and Lieutenant Doehring and Agent Cassidy snuck in and grabbed chairs near Tielman. When I glanced at Doehring, he shook his head, answering my unspoken question about the crowd outside.
No one who resembled the suspects, Basque, Adkins, or Lebreau.
“Now,” Margaret announced, “in addition to the luggage claim tag, Mollie’s laptop was recovered inside the vehicle out front, and our cybercrime team is currently analyzing it. Already, they’ve found a two-minute-fifty-one-second video of Rusty Mahan’s death, recorded sometime after midnight on Wednesday morning. I’ve seen the footage.” She paused, then added somberly, “He did not die well.”
The room fell silent.
Though it was not something I wanted to see, I knew I needed to watch that footage as soon as this briefing was over. For now, I opened my laptop so I could look up Chelsea Traye’s and Nick Trichek’s home addresses.
Margaret went on, “So far we have a suspect list of 758 names. However, none of the DNA or prints found at the scenes match any of them.”
I found the addresses—Chelsea lived near Reagan National Airport, Nick near the zoo—neither address was in the hot zone. As I thought of Nick, I remembered him finger-typing on his phone with his left hand. The killer had used his left hand to open the door, press the elevator buttons.
He tried using his phone in the hotel’s control center.
Was he taking video?
Once again I caught myself assuming way too much and tried to slide the thoughts aside.
Margaret took some time to summarize various forensic aspects of the case, most of which I was already familiar with, and at last she nodded toward Lien-hua. “Agent Jiang has been working on the psychological profile of the killers.” She gestured toward the front. “Please.”
Margaret took a seat, Lien-hua rose. “Thank you.”
Carrying a remote control, she went to the front and addressed the group. “We have two unknown suspects. One male, one female. Both Caucasian, age uncertain, but based on an analysis of their posture, stride length, and the partial facials in the video footage we have, they’re most likely late-twenties to mid-thirties. Because of the level of complexity and sophistication of these crimes, I would lean toward the higher number.”
She tapped the remote to change the image on the screen to a bullet-point summary of her profile of the killers. “The killers’ actions and crime scene behavior show that they are experienced perpetrators, but the flagrant nature of their acts might indicate that they do not have any recent criminal convictions in their records.”
“That they do not?” someone asked.
“As a general rule, serving time makes you careful,” she explained. “Getting away with crimes makes you careless.”
True.
“The killers are intimately familiar with the DC Metro area, including traffic camera locations, and they’re forensically aware and adaptive to our investigative approach. The staged crime scenes and strategic misdirection techniques indicate possible law enforcement, forensic, or military training.”
That was a troubling thought. I clicked to the suspect list and noted the current or former law enforcement and military personnel whose names appeared on it.
Six out of the 758. Two ex-cops, four ex-military.
No one I knew.
Lien-hua went on. “Considering the deliberate shock factor of the crimes—the chimpanzee attack, filming Rusty Mahan’s death and then leaving the video for us to find, dismembering Mollie Fischer—all of these actions point to a motive beyond that of hatred, anger, greed, or malice.”
“It’s a game,” Anderson said, cutting in almost before she could finish her sentence. “They’re doing it for fun. Mocking us.”
Despite my best efforts to remain objective, I had a feeling he was right.
“Taunting the authorities,” she said. “Yes, I agree. So far we find no apparent sexual sadism directed toward the victims, nevertheless there are clearly sadistic tendencies in both perpetrators. They will closely monitor news coverage of the crimes, possibly try to insert themselves into the investigation, perhaps as hotline volunteers, vigil organizers, or community watch coordinators. One will be more dominant—almost certainly the male, but both are narcissistic and have pathologically high self-esteem.”
“Wait a minute,” an officer in the second row said. “Did you just say high self-esteem? Don’t you mean low self-esteem?”
“Esteem incorporates love and respect,” she replied, “but the only people whom these killers esteem, value, or love is themselves. They seek only their own pleasure, care only about their own future. Contrary to popular belief, it’s almost unheard of for a person to commit a criminal act because he has low self-esteem or ‘doesn’t feel good enough about himself.’ People who kill, steal, rape . . . or even break the speed limit . . . do so because they place their own desires and needs above those of other people.”
Hmm. Good point.
“Low other-esteem,” the officer said poignantly.
Lien-hua nodded, and as she went on, the email from Bryan Tait, WXTN’s president, arrived in the online drop box. The work hours for Nick and Chelsea coincided with the crimes—they’d arrived at the primate center on Tuesday at 7:29 to film their remote and at 3:44 on Wednesday afternoon at the Lincoln Towers.
Of course they did, Pat. It’s their job. To report on-site.
During an investigation you should never do what I caught myself doing now: associating a name with a crime before it’s solved. Once you start down that road, you’ll begin to conveniently find all sorts of evidence to prove yourself right. It’s just human nature.
Still—Lien-hua finished, and Margaret turned to me. She had a slight gleam in her eye, and that’s never a good sign.
“Agent Bowers.” She was well aware of how much I hate giving briefings, and even before she went on, I had a feeling what she was going to say. “Anything to add? I’d love to get your perspective on this case.”
Great.
“Great,” I said flatly.
As Lien-hua sat down, I took the floor, set my cell phone on the table beside me, and turned on the 3-D hologram projector.
85
10 hours left . . .
11:29 a.m.
The hologram hovered above the table.
Glowing pathways, one for each victim, wavered along the city streets, s
ometimes intersecting wherever shared travel routes overlapped.
As I summarized the geoprofile, I input the street on which Mollie’s laptop had been found, as well as the location of last night’s gas station explosion. The hot zone shifted west.
“You think that’s related?” Margaret asked, referring to the gas station.
“The receipt found in the van is from that station. Also, the killers left a stolen vehicle and laptop in front of police headquarters, and last night there was an explosion on the county road running along the perimeter of the FBI Academy at Quantico Marine Base. So here we have—”
Doehring leaned forward. “The roads bordering the two agencies who are running point on this case.”
“Yes,” I said. “But those aren’t the only agencies involved in this investigation. Capitol Police, US Marshals. It’s very possible the killers might leave a clue at their offices as well.”
Margaret assigned an officer to notify the other agencies’ headquarters. He left the room, and I went on, “I don’t believe we’ve probed deeply enough into the possible links between these crimes and others in the past. We need to see if there are any other known faked deaths with related dismemberments, videotaped staged suicides, or . . .”—and this was the kicker—“video traffic footage of two different license plates for the same vehicle—either the suspect’s or the victim’s.”
Blank stares.
“Different license plates?” Tielman asked.
“I know it’s unlikely that responding officers would record this type of information on ViCAP, but we’re looking for patterns here. We don’t know why the killers switched Rusty Mahan’s plates, but it appears likely that they wanted us to find out that they had. I want to know if they’ve done it before.”
“So, a message?” Anderson said.
“Possibly, but I’m more interested in locating the killers than in deciphering their—”
Lien-hua gave me a slight head shake, and I backpedaled a little. “What I mean to say is, it’s possible that this is a red herring. But whatever the killers’ motives are, it’s likely that in a crime spree this elaborate, they would follow patterns established or learned during previous crimes. And if that’s the case, linking the crimes from this week to earlier offenses will help us shrink the suspect pool and better focus our investigative efforts—and let’s go beyond simply prior convictions and explore similar crime patterns and associated behavior. Anything at all, even if it appears insignificant at first.”