“How?”
“I don’t have time right now. It’s our case and if I wanted to involve you I would have. Besides, Holt is in on it.”
She looked hurt and angry. A difficult look to pull off, but she did it well.
“Alright. Be careful.”
“Sure.” She locked eyes with him and stayed that way for what seemed an eternity. Finally, Sally cleared her throat and Victoria looked away.
“Ok,” she said. “I’ll get back to work. If you need anything, call.”
“Yep,” he said.
“Actually, call me anyway, so I can get that stuff to you.”
“Alright.”
“Promise?”
He crossed his heart and she smiled. He knew he’d break it.
Chapter 26
Jaxon and Sally were riding back from DC when she asked, “What were the unknowns?”
“In what?”
“The murder of your son. Victoria said there were some unknowns.”
He drove for a bit without saying a thing and he finally glanced over at her. “You really want to drag this up?”
“I just want to know.”
He sighed. “With Michael, the timeframe had some holes in it.”
“Like what?”
“The time of death didn’t match up with Switzer’s activity.”
“Ok…”
The silence dragged out as the memories flooded back in.
“What? Was he doing laundry at the time? Baking bread? Come on. How did it differ?”
He stared straight ahead driving in silence for a minute as she waited patiently. He really didn’t want to go back there.
“Most people don’t know this,” he said, “but Switzer was taunting me. We were getting close to him and he started making threats against my family. I ignored them and it got Michael killed.”
“You’ve told me some of this,” she said, “and I know it’s tough for you to talk about, but what if it helps us with this case? Maybe we’re overlooking something. We seem to have a lot of unknowns.”
“Yes we do.”
“So, why didn’t the time of death match up?”
He sighed. “You know time of death is not exact.”
She nodded.
“The M.E. determined Michael’s time of death as 11:00 p.m. Unfortunately, Malcom Switzer was under surveillance close to that time.”
“Who was watching him?”
“Me.”
Her face showed surprise at this. “I’ve never heard this before. How were they able to get the conviction?”
“He was tried on multiple counts and Michael’s murder was just one of them. Because of the inexactness of the Time of Death Certainty Principal, the D.A. was able to convince the jury Switzer could have done it in that timeframe.”
“How?”
“Remember the Certainty Principle states that if the subject was certain to be alive at a known time, and you know with certainty when they were found dead, then we are 100 % certain the death took place within that interval. Then the M.E. uses other techniques to narrow that down further. Lividity, rigor, vitreous humor, etc. It can still be off an hour or two based on how long the person has been dead.”
“What was the interval?”
“Five hours.”
“That’s pretty good. How did they know?”
“I know when I left him and I know when I found him.”
“Tell me.”
He drove in silence a little more and then it spilled out of him like water. “Victoria was out on her own case with Stansfield. I was at home with Michael. He was in bed at 9:00 when I got the call about Switzer. We’d been trying to track him down, but he had been missing for over a week. He showed up at his trailer and they called me. He only stopped for a few minutes inside the run down piece of shit he lived in and then was on the move. They figured he was on the hunt again. I needed to go, but I couldn’t leave Michael alone. I called the babysitter and I apparently woke her up. She said she was sick, but would be right over. Michael was only going to be alone for a few minutes, or that’s what I thought. I had to go, so I left him asleep and locked up. The sitter had her own key.”
“What happened to the sitter?”
“She never made it over. She told us later, she had taken some cold medicine earlier, before I called, and fell back asleep immediately after. She didn’t even remember me phoning. Switzer killed him while I was out supposedly watching his every move.”
“Oh Jaxon-I’m sorry. I’d heard things about Michael, but I never knew all this. Jesus, I’m sorry.”
He nodded without looking at her and they drove in silence for a few minutes.
“How did Switzer do it?” she asked.
“We lost sight of him for forty five minutes at 10:45 p.m. We picked him up again coming out of the bar we lost him in. He headed straight to his trailer and never left it until we arrested him two days later. He must have gone out the back of the bar and done the deed, then high tailed it back to the bar and walked out the front like nothing happened.”
“Wasn’t Switzer fond of ears? He was known to keep the left ear of his victims as a souvenir, right?”
“That’s another one of the unknowns. He cut the left ear off of the first four victims. We found them in his trailer folded up in newspaper and sealed inside a Ziploc bag in the freezer. Michael had both ears missing and they have never been found.”
Chapter 27
“Q, it’s Luke Harrison.”
“Yo! Luke! What’s up?”
Luke smiled into the phone as he heard Quentin Jenson’s Jersey accent. Even though the kid was from Atlanta, Georgia, you would never know it unless he told you. Luke guessed it was cooler being from Jersey than Atlanta.
“How good are you?” Luke asked.
“Depends on what it is you need,” Quentin said.
Everybody knew Q was the local hacker and could penetrate just about any electronic device known to man. Maybe even gadgets that were not of this world. Too bad there weren’t any to test this theory.
“I need you to hack my phone.”
“Damn, I thought you needed something that was challenging. Bring it over and we’ll crack it open.”
Luke yelled to his mom he’d be back in a while, hopped on his bike before she could object, and rode over to Q’s house. He lived in the neighborhood just behind Luke’s in a beat up 1950’s era cinder block home. Three large dogs roamed the chain link fenced in yard and Luke had to whistle to get Q to call them off. It was amazing to watch the transformation from vicious attack beasts with their teeth bared and saliva drooling from their mouths, to panting and wagging, happy go lucky pets that wouldn’t harm a fly. Q said their names were Wynkin’, Blynkin’ and Nod. Luke guessed the one with the missing eye was Wynkin’.
Q led him through a house which was littered with trash, boxes, and clothes, and they entered another world which Q said was his ‘Cave.’ Everything in the room either lit up, blinked, or hummed. It was an amazing assortment of computers, iPads, Smartphones, video monitors and web-cams. His desk contained three, twenty-four inch monitors lined up in a row and some program was displayed, running on each screen.
“Dude, this is awesome!” Luke said.
“Nothing but net,” Q said. “I paid for everything but the iPad. That was a Christmas gift from my uncle Bodey.”
Luke walked up to the desk and watched a video running on the screen to the left. A cat was playing a piano while a dog licked himself. He wasn’t sure what it was supposed to represent but it was funny as hell.
“Let’s see the phone,” Q said, his hand held out waiting.
“Will this ruin it?” Luke asked.
“This will make it better,” Q said with a grin. “What exactly do you want out of it?”
“I need you to find out where a text message came from.”
“Ouch!” Q said.
“Problem?”
“We’ll see. A lot of that kind of stuff is encrypted, but I jus
t downloaded this new hack my uncle came up with and it might do the trick. I haven’t even got to use it yet.”
“Is it legal?”
“Define legal.”
“Uh-never mind. I don’t care. I need to know.”
Q took the phone, hooked a USB cable to it and plugged the cable into one of the many computers he had arrayed around the desk.
“Is your uncle a hacker too?” Luke asked.
“No. Better. Bodey’s a systems engineer for CRAY computers. He writes this stuff.”
Luke smiled. “Cool.”
Q loaded up a program and Luke watched as he typed in some commands and a list of calls and phone numbers came up on the screen. He could see Ellie’s number and John’s, along with his own house and various others. Q clicked something and all the text messages came up. Most were from Ellie and, as he saw them, Q turned and grinned at him.
“You and Ellie gettin’ hot and heavy, huh?”
“Just ignore that stuff,” Luke said. “This is the one I need to know about.”
He pointed to the message he had received during the group’s little get together last night. Q read the message and asked, “What town meeting?”
“It’s not important. Can you tell me where this came from. The number shows up only as zeros.”
Q clicked another screen and said, “Yeah, I see that. Whoever made this message didn’t want you to find out who they were, that’s for sure. It’s routed through a special server that people like me use so we can’t be traced.”
“Damn! I thought you’d be able to get it. Oh well.”
“You’re kind of impatient aren’t you?” Q said and then grinned. “I didn’t say I couldn’t get it.” He clicked through a few more screens so fast Luke couldn’t tell what they were and arrived at a screen that held a series of ones and zeros all lined up throughout the whole page.
“This is the binary code the server is using to scramble the cell phone numbers that make the incoming calls.” He clicked through another page and a list of numbers showed up. “Awesome! I’m going to have to tell Bodey this program rocks. The phone number you’re looking for is right here.” He pointed to a ten digit number about halfway down the screen. The area code was not familiar to Luke.
“Can you tell where it’s texting from?”
“I can even do better. I can track where the cell phone is right now.” He opened another program on another screen and typed in the cell number. The screen changed to a busy hourglass and then a map popped up with a blinking icon in the center. Luke bent over his shoulder to look. Nothing on the map looked familiar.
“How can I tell where that is?” Luke asked.
Q zoomed out and Luke could see it was in the state of Indiana. Northern section in a town called Hobart. The blinking icon was not moving.
“It’s stationary,” Q said. “He’s currently staying put. If he was in a car, or walking or something, you would see it move. Does this help?”
“Yeah, at least now I know the number.”
“What’s your e-mail?”
He told him. “Why?”
“I’m going to mail you this program and you can track the phone whenever you want.”
“Sweet!”
Jaxon woke with a killer hangover. After yesterday’s visits with Emory Holt and Victoria, along with reliving the night Michael died, his mind had had enough for one day and he elected to numb it. With Crown Royal. It worked like a charm, but now he was paying for it. His phone rang and he held his head as he looked at the clock. It was 10:00 a.m.
“Shit.” he said, reaching for the phone. “What?”
“Are you up?” Sally asked, a little pity in her voice.
“Yeah. Sorry. I’ll be there in a few.”
“Good. The chief’s looking for us. He wants an update. Holt called him.”
Shit. That’s all he needed. “I’ll be there in fifteen.”
He threw on a tie and grabbed his jacket as he tossed a cup of food in Reverb’s bowl. The dog looked mournfully at him.
“What?” he said. The dog did not have an answer.
Swinging through Starbucks for a quick jolt of caffeine, he made it into the bullpen in twenty minutes. Sally was waiting impatiently.
“I thought you said fifteen minutes,” she said as they walked to the chief’s office.
“Fifteen-twenty-somewhere in there. I made it.”
“Oh God-you need a breath mint. Here. And it’s been twenty five.” She handed him a stick of gum and his stomach revolted as he stuck it in his mouth. He hoped he could keep things down until the meeting was over.
“Nice of you to find time in your busy morning to see me,” Chief Horace Benton said, as they walked in.
“Sorry, Chief,” Jaxon said.
“Sit.”
Sally and Jaxon grabbed chairs and sat in front of the desk. Benton was five years his senior and someone Jaxon actually respected. The man had not brown-nosed his way to the position. He had earned it in the trenches, and that meant a lot to Jaxon. The Chief didn’t seem to be sharing the love this morning, though.
“Why didn’t you discuss the FBI with me? I had to hear from Emory Holt this morning that my two lead investigators visited the J. Edgar Hoover building soliciting the help of the FBI and I was in the dark. Thanks.”
“Sorry Chief, we got a lead and we followed up on it,” Jaxon said.
“Do you want to fill me in or do I need to ask Holt to do that?”
He let Sally do most of the talking since his head and stomach ached. The sunlight streaming in through the window felt like molten gunshots to his head and at one point he had thought the bile in his throat was going to make an appearance that would probably earn him a day without pay. He forced it down, only barely. The Chief was saying something and he had missed some of it.
“The FBI wants to be involved. Holt informs me they have a case that is quite old, but he feels could be the same guy, and if that’s so, the investigation crosses state lines and they want to jump in. I’m inclined to grant them access since we seem to have run into a brick wall in this thing.”
“I don’t want Holt in on it,” Jaxon said.
“Why?”
“We’ve got this thing covered and I told him yesterday we weren’t ready to bring them in. We just needed a little information and they were the best source for it.”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with Victoria, does it? I would be highly disappointed if you put your own personal difficulties before the welfare of the people and children of this county. That’s not happening is it Jaxon?”
“I can’t work with him,” Jaxon said.
“Dammit Jaxon! You’re going to have to. Do I need to pull you two off of this thing? Because I’ll do it in a heartbeat. Holt’s in and you two are going to have to learn to love it. Got me?”
“Fine,” Jaxon said and stood. “I’ll break out the welcome mat.”
Chapter 28
Luke hesitated with his finger poised over the send button. He wanted to send the text message, but something was keeping him from doing it. Maybe he was having second thoughts about the logic of harassing their tormentor. His phone vibrated in his hand and he jumped. It was Ellie.
“Hey.”
“Hi,” she said.
“What are you doing?”
“Waiting for you to call me, but I guess that was never going to happen. What are you doing?”
“Sorry, I was over at Q’s house.”
“Quentin Jenson?”
“Yep.”
She sounded serious now and asked, “What were you doing over there?”
“You won’t believe it. You need to see this. Can I come over and get you? I need to show you something.”
“Ok,” but he could hear a little apprehension in her voice.
“Be right there.”
When he got her back to his house, they went up to his room and he booted up the computer.
“What’s this all about?” Ellie asked.
/>
“Just watch.”
He loaded up the tracking program Q emailed him and typed in the phone number. After a minute, the map came up and the blip was moving east. He turned to her and watched her study the computer screen. Her face showed confusion for a moment and then she looked scared.
“Is this-him?” She said.
He nodded his head, grinning.
“How?” She asked.
“I got Q to hack my cell phone and he used a special program his uncle wrote to find the phone number that sent the text message we all got last night. This is it.” He pointed to the number in a box at the top of the screen. “Then Q gave me this program that can track the cell phone anywhere in the country.”
“So, we can tell where he is?” She smiled.
He nodded.
“Where is this, now?” she asked pointing to the blip.
“Q said if the blip was moving then he was in a car or something. Hold on…” Luke played with the program and zoomed out so they could see he was in Pennsylvania. He zoomed back in and the map displayed roads and highways. “It looks like he’s on I-70 near Somerset Pennsylvania, heading this way.”
“What’s he doing?”
“I don’t know, but he was in Indiana earlier. Seems like a long way to drive. I wonder if he lives there.”
“Do you think he’s coming here to hurt somebody else?”
Luke shrugged. “Could be. I can’t even imagine what would be going on inside that psycho’s head.”
She stepped to him and hugged him. “We can go to the police now. We can show them where he is and they can take him away. We need to call Jaxon.”
“We will. As soon as we’re sure it’s him.”
“But you said it was his number.”
“How well do you trust a hacker?”
She turned away, thinking. “What are we going to do?”
“I was going to text a message to him and see if he responds like we expect. If he does, then we know it’s him.”
“Won’t that let him know we’re on to him?”
Luke frowned. “I was kind of worried about that too. I was about to text him before you called but I hesitated for some reason. Something was telling me to wait.” He smiled. “I guess I needed my smart girlfriend to see how stupid I am.”
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