by Steven James
“I won’t be able to let you hold your hands over your ears, so you’ll probably hear some of the sounds. I’m sorry about that. I apologize in advance.”
He situated her on the floor of the closet, closed the door, and then went to the kitchen to preheat the oven.
I burst through the door to Rachel’s Café.
Smelled the familiar scent of freshly roasting coffee, saw Janie working behind the counter—a sophomore journalism student. Trendy glasses, retro clothes. Newspaper spread in front of her across the counter just like usual.
A man in his early twenties wearing earbuds sat at a table near the coffee roaster, slowly swaying his head to the beat of his music. A pile of college textbooks in front of him. Apart from the two of them, Rachel’s was empty.
Janie must have wondered why I was scanning the room. “You all right, Dr. Bowers?” She knew I was a doctor, knew I worked for the government, but that’s all I’d ever told her. “Come in to get some work done?”
To get some work done. Yes.
No!
I realized what I’d done: left my computer at home.
No! How could you be so stupid?
Wait.
Tessa’s cell. Yes.
“Dr. Bowers?”
You can access the online case files with the cell phone.
“Janie.” I pulled out the phone. “This might sound like a strange request, but I have a few pictures to show you and I need you to tell me if you’ve seen any of these people in here. If any of them are regulars.”
“If they’re regulars,” she said brightly, “you’d know them.”
I shook my head. “I’m only here late in the day. I brew my own coffee in the mornings.” I tapped the screen of the cell, brought up the online case files. “Can you look at the pictures for me?”
Confusion ghosting across her face. “Sure.”
Quickly, I clicked to the “Known Victims” section of the case files and downloaded the photos for Chris Arlington, Brigitte Marcello, Benjamin Rhodes, and all the others. Then I dragged them into the phone’s photo suite so Janie wouldn’t see the word victims.
“It’s really important that you look at these carefully,” I said.
The front door opened. Cheyenne. “Pat. Are you all right?”
“Yes. Come here.”
Janie’s eyes flicked from me to Cheyenne to the cell phone. She no longer looked uneasy but frightened, and I figured it might be best to just tell her what I did for a living. I didn’t want the college guy in the corner to hear me if he unplugged his earbuds, so I lowered my voice. “I work for the FBI, Janie. And I think maybe you can help us with a case.”
“You work for the FBI?”
“Please. Just look at the pictures.” I handed her the cell, showed her how to slide her finger across the screen to scroll through the photographs. She stared at the phone for a moment, then began to view the photos one at a time.
Cheyenne stepped closer to me, piecing things together. “Are you thinking this is where John chooses—”
I nodded. “Yes.”
Janie tapped the screen. “This woman. Yeah. I’ve seen her. And this guy too.” She flicked back and forth between the two photos, pointing first at the headshot of Heather Fain and then at the picture of Ahmed Mohammed Shokr, the man who’d been poisoned on Wednesday.
“So, this is it,” I breathed. “This is—”
“Who is he, Pat?” Cheyenne asked. “Do you know?”
I shook my head.
Janie tapped the screen again, moving to the next two pictures. “This guy’s a priest, I recognize him . . . and sure, Dr. Bryant teaches one of my classes. He comes in here sometimes . . .” She flipped through the remaining pictures. “That’s it. That’s all the people I recognize.”
It was a start, but I needed more. I looked around the café and ran through everything in my mind. The timing. The connections. The locations.
Taking the phone, I surfed to the list of fifty-one names, and began to pore over them, looking for someone I might have run into at Rachel’s Café.
From where she lay bound and gagged in the closet, Amy Lynn could hear the noise of pots and pans clanging in the kitchen and the indistinct garble of police dispatch codes being called out through a radio.
She was trying to convince herself that the man who’d hit her and then tied her up was not the Day Four Killer. He was the last person on earth she would have ever suspected.
But it was him, there was no denying—
She heard the doorbell ring and she tried to scream, to yell for help, but was barely able to make a sound.
The sound of the dispatch radio stopped.
The doorbell rang again.
Then, heavy footsteps pounded through the house. She strained to get free.
The front door opened. She heard a cry. A short scuffle.
A thud.
And then the voice of her attacker, “Well, this isn’t quite what I had in mind, but you’ll do.”
I whipped through the fifty-one names, but I didn’t remember seeing any of the men at Rachel’s and I didn’t have enough information to figure out which of them might be John.
Then a thought: John sent the pot of basil and the handwritten note to Amy Lynn. She was the only other person besides myself whom he’d personally contacted.
He chose her, Pat. Just like he chose you.
Janie’s newspaper lay on the counter. I flipped to Amy Lynn’s political column and pointed at her headshot just beneath the title. “Janie, does this woman ever come in here?”
She nodded. “Sure. I’ve seen her.”
“Did you ever see any guys checking her out? Watching her? Maybe following her?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“What about guys meeting her here?” Cheyenne said. “Flirting with her? Coming on to her?”
“Usually, she’s with this one blond guy. But he wasn’t in any of those pictures you showed me.”
“Reggie has brown hair, Pat,” Cheyenne said. “It’s someone else.”
I’d only shown Janie pictures of the known victims, not the fifty-one men.
I suspected that many of the government personnel files would be incomplete and lack a photo, so I copied the names, surfed to the Department of Motor Vehicles records and quickly downloaded the driver’s license photos for all of the men. I handed the phone to Janie again. “OK, one more time. The guy she came in with; see if he’s one of these men.”
“I’m not sure I’m really being very helpful—”
“Please,” Cheyenne said. “You’re doing great.”
Finally, with Cheyenne’s encouragement, Janie accepted the cell. And I closed my eyes and rotated the cube in my mind.
Desperately, desperately, Amy Lynn tried to think of a way to get free. But the only things in the closet were shoes, hangers, dresses, blouses.
Something. There had to be something!
Dim light seeped beneath the door.
She peered around the closet.
No. Nothing.
She twisted. Repositioned herself.
Her leg bumped into one of her dresses and she heard the hanger rattling on the bar above her.
And she realized how she could get away.
A puzzle with so many pieces.
Who could have found Sebastian Taylor? Who could have worked with Grant Sikora to plan Basque’s assassination? Who could have known the response times and the fact that I was on the task force? Who had access to my unlisted phone number and to—
I opened my eyes. “That’s it.”
Cheyenne furrowed her brows. “What’s it?”
If I was right, the killer had been right under my nose the whole time. And he had the perfect alibi—but I couldn’t be sure yet. There was one more thing I needed to check.
I calculated the time difference between Denver and DC and realized that Angela Knight would still be at her desk at cybercrime.
“Pat, talk to me,” Cheyenne said.
I could tell she was getting frustrated.
“Let me check with cybercrime first, but I think I might know who John is.”
103
I used Cheyenne’s phone, dialed Angela’s number.
Janie was still scrolling through the fifty-one DMV photos.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe—
Angela picked up. “Hello. This is Special Agent—”
“Angela. It’s Pat.”
“Oh, I just sent you the address.”
“What address?”
“For Paul Lansing.”
I blinked. “Angela, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Six minutes ago you sent me an email request for a locate on Paul Lansing, formerly of Minneapolis, Minnesota.”
A rising uneasiness. “I didn’t send you a request.”
“It came from your computer.”
A request for Paul Lansing? From my computer?
You left your computer at your parents’ house, Pat!
Paul . . . from Minneapolis . . .
Tessa must have found an old address for her dad.
A mixture of anger and a strange kind of loneliness shot through me. “Angela, you said you already replied?”
“Yes.” Her confusion had shifted to concern. “What’s going on?” This can wait. Find John.
“I’ll explain later, just don’t send me any more emails until I call you back. For now, pull up those audio files I sent you earlier. I’m wondering about the caller’s location.”
“I told you before, I wasn’t able to get a lock on—”
“I know, I know, but can you isolate the background sound on the first call? Separate the audio tracks from the two sides of the conversation, analyze them individually? Can you do that?”
“Sure.” But she sounded a little reluctant. “Just a sec.”
Amy Lynn struggled against the ropes binding her hands behind her back, trying, trying to reach another dress. If she could just get hold of a wire hanger, she could use the hooked end to work at the knots.
But even though she’d managed to pull down five dresses so far, no hangers had dropped to the floor.
She heard her captor dragging a body into the bedroom.
Hurry! You need to hurry!
She leaned as far to the right as she could and grabbed one more dress.
Tugged. Rolled.
It slumped to the floor.
And this time the hanger fell with it, bouncing off her shoulder and landing on the carpet beside her face.
After only a few seconds, I heard Angela mumble, “That’s odd,” and when she said those two words I knew what she’d found.
“The ambient noise,” I said. “It’s from both sides of the conversation, isn’t it?”
“Yes. But that would mean that the first anonymous tip—”
“Was placed from inside the dispatch office.”
“But that’s . . .”
“Yes.”
“Here!” Janie tapped the phone. “This is the guy.” She turned the phone so Cheyenne and I could see the photo. “I saw him come in with that reporter a bunch of times.”
Even before I looked at the picture I already knew who she was pointing at—Ari Ryman, the ex-Marine who’d played the audio tapes for us in the dispatch office.
The Day Four Killer.
104
I handed Cheyenne her phone. “Quick. Call HQ, see if Ari Ryman is there.”
A flood of emotions crossed her face as she looked at Ari’s photo.
“The guy from dispatch? You think he’s John?”
“Yes, I do. Please, I’ll explain in a minute.”
As Cheyenne made the call, I turned to Janie. “You’re sure? The reporter, she used to come in with that man?”
“Yeah,” she lowered her voice. “I think they might have been having an affair. You work here long enough, you watch people, you can usually tell when two people are . . . you know.”
I let my thoughts fly through the facts that had led me to suspect Ari: as an EMS dispatcher he would have had access to my unlisted phone number, known the task force members’ names and our response time, and been able to pull up information about the hospital and the morgue; he was an ex-Marine.
He would have learned hand-to-hand combat.
The call came from inside the dispatch office.
And he hung out with Amy Lynn Greer at Rachel’s Café, the place where the killer apparently hunted for his victims.
Cheyenne pocketed her cell. “Ari Ryman never came back to work after lunch today.”
I looked around Rachel’s Café again, trying to figure out where he might be.
He comes in here with Amy Lynn. He sent her the note: “Must needs we tell of others’ tears? Please, Mrs. Greer, have a heart.
—John.”
I spun. Faced Cheyenne. “Is Amy Lynn still at the safe house?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.” She tapped at her cell again.
I thanked Janie for her help, pocketed Tessa’s phone, and was turning to leave when Cheyenne exclaimed, “Amy Lynn left the safe house last night. The GPS for her Blackberry is at her home address, 7881 East 8th Avenue.”
“C’mon.” I ran for the door. “She’s next. The killer wants her to have a heart.”
Yes!
Amy Lynn finally managed to grab the hanger.
Frantically, she twisted the wire tip and went to work at the ropes.
We climbed into the car.
So many thoughts—I was furious at Tessa, determined to catch Ari, dreading what might have happened to Amy Lynn Greer and her husband.
No, Pat. In his note at Bryant’s house, the killer said he was going to tell the last three stories tonight, after you returned to Denver. So they might still be alive—
I fired up the engine. “Cheyenne, get some cars to the Greer house—”
“Already on it.” She had her phone to her ear.
And I squealed the car into the street.
Giovanni removed the shirt of the unconscious man and placed it beside him on the bed. Then he picked up the scalpel.
The candles flickered beside him.
He could hear Amy Lynn squirming in the closet, and he paused for a moment to listen to her. Carrying the scalpel, he crossed the room, opened the closet door, and found that she’d pulled half a dozen dresses onto the floor. She’d managed to get hold of a hanger and was trying to use the tip of the wire to work her hands free.
“I’m impressed,” he said. “Really, I am. That was a good idea. Keep working on that. I’ll be back in a few minutes to check on you. Let’s see how far you get.”
He returned to the bed, positioned the scalpel’s blade against the man’s bare chest, and was just about to press down when he heard Detective Warren call for dispatch to send two squads to 7881 East 8th Avenue.
Giovanni stopped.
They’d found him. They were coming.
So.
He looked at the man on the bed, then at the blade in his hand.
A change of plans.
He set down the scalpel and went to remove Amy Lynn from the closet.
“Two squads are on their way to her house,” Cheyenne said. “Now, fill me in.”
In a handful of seconds I summarized the hypotheses that had led me to suspect Ari.
Cheyenne listened. Tracked with me, then shook her head. “But motive? What’s his motive?”
“We’ll ask him when we find him.”
So many sides of the cube to lock into place. It was hard to prioritize. I could think of at least four people we needed to call immediately.
I took us around a corner so fast I almost lost control. “Cheyenne, make some calls for me, OK?”
“Shoot.”
“Try to get a hold of Reggie and Amy Lynn. Tell her to report immediately to the FBI field office, not police headquarters. Her life’s in grave danger.”
I still couldn’t believe that Tessa had used my computer to email the FBI�
�s cybercrime division to look for her dad. She should have just asked me for help. Not gone behind my back.
I definitely needed to calm down before talking with her. Sort out what to say.
So I didn’t call her, but I did call dispatch. “Tell the officers who are watching the house to go inside, confiscate my computer, and stay with the girls.”
A slight hesitancy. “Yes, sir.”
I shot through a red light and merged onto I-25.
Amy Lynn lay in the trunk of her own car.
The man had freed her legs, but her hands were still tied behind her back. She was still gagged.
They were backing down the driveway.
She heard the garage door rattle shut, and as the car rolled into the street, in a moment of dark and ironic clarity, she realized that unless she somehow found a way to escape, she was going to end up as nothing more than a chapter in someone else’s book.
And it would be the story of a lifetime.
Hers.
The car accelerated.
She didn’t care if the gag and the sound of the engine stifled her cries, Amy Lynn kicked against the trunk’s latch as hard as she could.
And screamed.
Amy Lynn Greer wasn’t answering her cell, but Cheyenne did reach Reggie. They spoke for a few moments, then she filled me in: that morning, after discovering that Amy Lynn had left the house, he’d dropped his son off at day care and gone looking for her.
“He told me that he didn’t put out an APB on her because he wanted to find her himself, to protect her. That he was embarrassed he’d let her out of his sight.”
I smacked the steering wheel with my hand. “That’s just great.”
I accelerated. Slid into the left lane.
“This afternoon he got a GPS lock on her Blackberry. Apparently she placed a call to New York City while she was near Sebastian Taylor’s house, so he drove up there to look for her, but she was gone. About twenty minutes ago he received a text message from her that she was at home. He’s on his way there, but he’s still a good fifteen minutes out.”
We called Jake, filled him in; I thought of calling Kurt, but he was still in Breckenridge trying to salvage his marriage, so we gave a shout to his boss, Captain Terrell, instead. Cheyenne told him, “We think it’s Ari Ryman,” and something caught in my memory.