Hunting Savage

by Edlund, Dave;

  That was a troubling question, since Emma had received the file from an anonymous hacker. Maybe the file wasn’t genuine? Maybe Jon Q had compiled a fake?

  No, she wouldn’t let herself believe that. She would print several of the most damaging memos and use that to garner the reporter’s interest. Maybe she would eventually share the emails and electronic file, too. Then it would be up to the reporter to authenticate the information. After all, that’s what a good investigative reporter does, she reasoned.

  The doorbell interrupted Emma’s planning. Through the sidelight she saw a man at the door. He was dressed in a gray suit with tie and wearing dark sunglasses. His black hair was cropped short, military style.

  “Hello,” she said as she opened the door.

  “Good morning, ma’am. I’m with the FBI, Portland office.” He held out his ID next to a metal badge. Emma looked hard at the ID.

  “Agent Barnes?” She read his name.

  “May I come in? I need to discuss an ongoing investigation concerning cyber security.”

  With paranoia gnawing at her gut, she motioned him inside.

  The rented house had a small living room. Emma directed Agent Barnes to an armless padded chair, and she sat at one end of the sofa. She hoped her mounting fear wasn’t showing.

  “What is this about? Why do you want to talk to me?” she asked, trying to keep her voice even. How would someone normally act, she thought. Curious, I should be curious.

  Barnes made a show of looking at his pocket-sized notepad. “Miss Emma Jones, is that correct?” he asked, ignoring her question.

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “I need to ask you some questions about your email. Is that alright?”

  Emma’s pulse quickened. Stay calm, she thought. He can’t possibly know about the messages from Jon Q And so what if he does; I haven’t hacked into any restricted servers.

  Emma nodded.

  “Do you receive a lot of junk mail or spam?”

  “Sure, I suppose. What’s a lot?”

  Barnes seemed to be looking right through her, trying to interpret her body language. It was normal for people to be anxious and uncomfortable when questioned about a case. Often perspiring, sometimes stumbling over words to construct a coherent sentence. In fact, it was the criminals who were most likely to be casual, uncaring in their response, thinking that was the normal reaction.

  “Over the last few days, have you received any suspicious or odd emails from anyone you don’t personally know?”

  “Well,” Emma said, “you mean other than the spam?”

  “Yes. Other than the usual junk messages and advertising.”

  Emma felt the weight of his stare as she thought how to answer his question. Surely he knows. Maybe I should just tell him the truth.

  “Miss Jones. Please answer my question.”

  As Emma rubbed her hands, they felt clammy. “Well, let me think…”

  Barnes held his pen, ready to scribe her answer in his notepad.

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “No, I don’t think so.”

  Agent Barnes leaned back in the chair and laid his pen down.

  “Miss Jones.” He spoke in an even tone, his words measured, carefully chosen. “I don’t believe you are being completely honest with me. You are pretending to be ignorant. Now, why would you do that?”

  She stared back, chewing her lip.

  “I know that a file was emailed to you last night. It came from an individual who likes to call himself Jon Q. And I also know he sent several other email messages to you over the past three weeks. It seems that you and Mr. Jon Q had a rather extensive correspondence.”

  Emma felt her heart pounding, beads of perspiration threatened to slide down her forehead. She was squeezing her hands so tightly the knuckles were white.

  Under the FBI agent’s withering gaze, she slowly nodded.

  Barnes sighed and then placed the notepad in the breast pocket of his suit jacket.

  “I didn’t do anything wrong,” Emma said. “Honest! You can read the emails yourself.”

  Barnes had heard it all before. He sighed again, this time louder, and placed both hands on his knees. “Okay. I believe you. But you will have to cooperate with the investigation. You will have to truthfully answer all my questions.”

  “Okay,” she nodded.

  “Let’s begin with the emails. Let’s look at your computer.”

  “It’s in the dining room, I was reading his last message when you rang the doorbell.” She rose and walked toward the table next to the kitchen, Barnes following closely.

  “Here,” she pointed at the laptop, the screen still displaying the White House memo. “This file was attached to his last email. I really think this is important. It should be made available to the public. My grandfather was on the Liberty. He was one of the sailors who was killed.”

  Barnes leaned in and inserted a thumb drive into a USB slot. Then he took a step back.

  “I’m sorry for your loss Miss Jones, but it was a necessary sacrifice. Now, please save that PDF file to the thumb drive.”

  She entered a few keystrokes to transfer the data, then ejected the portable drive.

  “Thank you,” he said, and pocketed the thumb drive. “I just have a couple more questions—” Barnes coughed. “Do you have some juice, or a soda?”

  “Sure.” Emma wanted to be helpful. She believed that if she fully cooperated, the FBI would treat her as a witness rather than someone who helped in the crime.

  She turned her back to Agent Barnes and walked to the kitchen, opening the refrigerator.

  “That’s fine,” he said.

  Emma looked over her shoulder into the barrel of a gun. She still had one hand holding the refrigerator door, her eyes wide in fear.

  “Who are you?” Emma asked.

  Her question was met with a silent glare.

  “Please, just let me go.”

  “I can’t do that.” He held the gun steady.

  Tears welled up in Emma’s eyes. “Please…”

  That was the last sound she heard.

  A small red circle formed instantly between her eyebrows, and Emma collapsed to the floor.

  Barnes holstered the weapon, slipped on gloves, and then proceeded to ransack the house. He entered the bedrooms and dumped the drawers onto the floor. In the dining room there was a small desk, and he again tossed the contents on the floor, pocketing a ten-dollar bill he found in the pencil drawer.

  Satisfied, he turned his attention to the laptop. Reinserting the thumb drive, he opened an executable file. Soon, he was prompted to type in and confirm a new password. His job nearly completed, he gathered the laptop.

  As he closed the front door, Barnes glanced around the neighborhood. It was quiet, with older ranch-style homes set well back from the street on large lots. Every house had at least one mature pine tree in the front yard. It was mid-day, and no one was strolling the sidewalk; no cars or delivery trucks were moving on the street.

  Agent Barnes walked to his car, placed the laptop on the passenger seat, and drove away.

  Chapter 3

  Bend, Oregon

  April 8

  The yellow crime-scene tape spoke volumes. Behind closed doors, the neighbors all asked the same question: What happened? By the time the ambulance arrived, a crowd of about two dozen had gathered on the far side of the street. Some were holding cups of coffee; a few were drinking from beer bottles. The atmosphere was one of morbid curiosity.

  The local television station had their van parked nearby and was transmitting live updates. The cameraman was there to film the covered body wheeled out on a gurney late in the evening, footage guaranteed to be played on the 11:00 p.m. newscast.

  The forensics team was still busy collecting evidence, room by room, and documenting the crime scene. It was going to be a late night.

  Standing in the living room, Ruth Colson was looking toward the kitchen and dining room. Colson was a handful of years away
from retirement, yet her energy and passion for solving crimes had not abated in her 34 years of police work. Her gray hair was short, giving her a masculine appearance. She had been on her feet almost continuously for the past three hours; thankfully, she was wearing her trademark neon-green Oregon Duck sneakers.

  With both hands braced on her narrow hips, she said, “No shell casing… we have a small-caliber entry wound, but no exit… and no stippling on the victim’s face, consistent with a lack of observable GSR…”

  Standing beside Ruth was her junior colleague, Niki Nakano. “The lab may still find gunshot residue on the victim’s clothing.”

  Niki was relatively new to the Detective Unit and had been mentoring under Ruth for close to a year. A third generation Japanese-American, her parents had instilled in Niki a thirst for excellence and success that drove her from Patrol to Detective by age 32.

  “True, but for now all we know is that GSR is apparently lacking, suggesting the shot was fired from a distance.”

  Detective Colson stepped toward the kitchen until she had a clear view of the refrigerator. She stretched her left hand out, miming a gun. “If the perp was standing here, the gun would be only five or six feet from the victim. At that distance there should have been extensive blood stippling on her face from the powder and bullet residue.”

  Niki walked around the dining room, which was separated from the kitchen by a wall of cabinets with a pass-through counter. Finding the spot where she had an unobstructed angle on the refrigerator, she repeated her mentor’s exercise. “This is as far away as the shooter could have been; and it’s still—what—maybe 12 feet?”

  “Plus, the shot would have just missed the wall and cabinets,” Ruth pointed to the wall on either side of the pass through. “Make sure they swab this area for GSR.” She leaned in close, careful not to brush her face against the painted surface, her flashlight on, scrutinizing the white paint for particles that could have come from the discharge of a firearm. She shook her head. “I don’t see anything.”

  “None of the neighbors reported hearing a gunshot. Maybe the shooter used a silencer?”

  “No, it just isn’t right. In order to account for the evidence, the theory is getting too complicated. We have what appears to be a simple home invasion burglary that went bad because Emma Jones wasn’t supposed to be home. But why?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Why this house? It’s a rental. Two students. They don’t own much property of value. And to suggest that a silenced weapon was used… that’s for the pros. It doesn’t fit. This crime screams amateur.”

  Niki understood. “Except for the ballistics.”

  “Could be subsonic .22 ammunition.”

  “Maybe. We’ll know more once the lab results are in.”

  “The roommate—Kate—what did she say when asked what was missing?”

  Niki referred to her notes before answering. “She didn’t take an inventory, she was pretty distraught. But she said they didn’t have much—no money or jewelry, no guns or expensive electronics. She did mention that Emma’s laptop was gone. She said it was on the table when she left in the morning, that Emma was working on something. We’ll have her go through the house later, probably tomorrow if she can handle it. She was taken to the station for a complete statement.”

  “So only a laptop was taken. And we have a most unusual head wound on the victim.”

  “I don’t know what to make of it,” Niki said.

  Ruth frowned. “Neither do I.”

  Sheltered from North Pacific storms by Vancouver Island, the quaint port city of Friday Harbor on San Juan Island is a recreational paradise. Accessed only by boat or plane, getting to and from this sleepy town takes just enough effort to keep the population at a little over 2,000.

  When Mitch Kemmel dropped out of college to pursue his computer interests, Friday Harbor suited his needs well. With good civic infrastructure, including an undersea cable providing electricity and high-speed Internet, he had all the modern necessities his newfound profession demanded. Yet he was far enough away from Big Brother that the thought of government oversight was almost laughable. Many of the people calling San Juan Island home embraced bartering to avoid taxes and aligned themselves with the most liberal political positions. Mitch had two friends living on acreage outside the city limits who had gone completely off the net—hadn’t filed tax returns in years and, for all intents and purposes, didn’t exist in the eyes of the local or Federal Government.

  Like most other days, Mitch was working at his office—a study in his modest house on Browne Street. The solitary window was covered with aluminum foil, ensuring no one could spy on his activities. He preferred a more powerful tower PC to a laptop for most of his coding. On the desk were three monitors side-by-side between two art-glass desk lamps.

  Mitch lived on the dark web. He had complete confidence in his hacking skills to keep his actions untraceable. Now he was searching a popular bulletin board for the next opportunity.

  The project he had just finished on the USS Liberty was sufficiently interesting to compensate for the poor payout. He’d added those files to his growing library, all stored on a server in the corner of his office. He was too paranoid to store information in the cloud—one never knew when the software and search-engine giants would be forced to grant back-door access to Big Brother.

  Hell, maybe they already had for all he knew.

  It was midafternoon, and he wasn’t expecting any visitors, so when the doorbell rang he ignored it. Then it rang again. Annoyed, Mitch left his study, ready to tell whoever it was to go away.

  Through the peep glass in the front door, he recognized a mail carrier’s uniform, complete with a satchel hanging from her shoulder by a wide leather strap. The woman was holding a white box with red and blue markings indicating it was Priority Mail. The annoyance subsided, and he opened the door.

  She said, “Mitch Kemmel?”

  “Yes, that’s me.”

  “Priority package,” she said as she extended the box forward.

  Mitch grasped it with both hands, surprised at how light it was—as if the box were empty. “Thank you,” he said as he looked at the mail carrier.

  Rather than a pleasant face, he was looking directly into the barrel of a gun. The carrier pulled the trigger and with a whisper of a metallic clang, Mitch Kemmel was dead.

  The shooter glanced around quickly while pulling on latex gloves. Not seeing any passersby, she dragged Mitch inside and closed the door. Moving quickly from room to room, she tossed drawers in the bedroom and then found the study. She stashed a half-dozen memory sticks and about 20 CDs inside the satchel. Then she used a set of screwdrivers to expertly remove the solid-state hard drives from the tower as well as the server, placing everything into the satchel.

  In less than 15 minutes, she picked up the empty Priority Mail box and was out the door, driving away in a white minivan with red and blue tape striping and a U.S. Postal Service magnetic placard on the door.

  Chapter 4

  Bend, Oregon

  April 16

  Detective Colson had done everything she could; now it was time to wait and hope for a break. In the week following the murder of Emma Jones, the forensic evidence had been cataloged and secured, lab reports had been completed and reviewed, and witnesses interviewed. Kate Simpson, Emma’s roommate, had been very cooperative over hours of questioning. She still insisted that nothing of value was missing, other than Emma’s laptop.

  Although the crime appeared to be a standard home invasion burglary turned violent, Ruth resisted that theory. Too much of the evidence didn’t fit. Especially bothersome was the unique nature of the bullet that killed Emma Jones.

  The autopsy revealed it to be magnetic, not made of copper or lead as are the overwhelming majority of bullets. The projectile also lacked the linear striations indicative of rifling. Ruth had never encountered anything like this type of projectile, and she was pinning new hope on this unique evidence.
r />   She emailed photos of the bullet and other ballistic evidence to the Oregon State Crime Lab as well as those of neighboring Washington, California, and Idaho. She even sent the package to the FBI—hoping that another lab would have helpful information; anything to shed light on this puzzle.

  “Bingo!” Ruth nearly jumped from her chair as she read an email from the Washington State Police.

  Niki looked up expectantly, waiting for the explanation she knew was forthcoming.

  “Just got a lengthy reply from the State Patrol Crime Lab in Seattle. That magnetic projectile the ME removed from our victim’s head—well, they have one, too.”

  “Wow, that’s a lucky break. What do they have to say about it? Anything on the type of gun that fires it?”

  Niki walked around the desk so she could read the message over Ruth’s shoulder. “No, nothing on the gun.” Ruth sat down. “I don’t believe it.” She touched the monitor with her index finger. “Their case file was opened a week ago, just like ours.”

  Niki read further. “The victim—Mitch Kemmel—was shot at his home in Friday Harbor on the same day that Emma Jones was murdered. In both cases the time of death was early afternoon.”

  Ruth leaned back in her chair, staring at the screen. She had hoped for answers, additional clues. What she got was another conundrum.

  “Friday Harbor is more than 400 miles north of here,” Niki said, “so obviously we are dealing with two killers.”

  “Well, time for some old-fashioned detective work. I hope you’re wearing comfortable shoes.”

  “What do you have in mind?” Niki raised an eyebrow.

  “We have two murders at about the same time—400 miles apart. The lab reports say the ballistics are identical and unlike anything anyone in the department or crime lab has ever encountered. So, let’s talk to the local experts. Maybe someone knows something.”

  On their fourth stop, at Lost Creek Armory, the detectives finally caught a lucky break. The owner of the gun shop, Tom Lewis—a fit man of about 40, clean-shaven and with short dark hair showing below a Boston Red Sox ball cap—provided their first tangible lead. Although Mr. Lewis claimed he had never seen a magnetic projectile, he suggested the detectives talk to Peter Savage. “He owns EJ Enterprises,” Lewis had explained.