CHAPTER 29
Trojan Horse Exploit: Infiltration of an urbex site via a public space by an explorer dressed as if he or she belongs there—for example, an explorer dressed in casual business attire who slips off a subway platform and gains access to the abandoned train or service tunnels.
Wednesday, November 21, 7:21 AM
Jennings residence
Arlington, Virginia
Meg’s phone rang just as she was sitting down at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and a toasted bagel. “Jennings.”
“Meg, it’s Chuck. I figured something out last night, but it was so late I didn’t want to give you a call.”
She grabbed the sugar from beside Cara’s empty place and scooped up a rounded spoonful. “Did you find anything?”
“I think I have him.”
Meg froze with the spoon suspended in midair, grains of sugar sliding off to sprinkle the table. “You have . . . our suspect?”
“I think so. I found him on the boards at about two this morning. All because of that bug. Except it’s not a bug. It’s a trilobite.”
“A tribble?”
“A trilobite.”
“I have no idea what that is. Something that’s not a bug?”
“It’s a prehistoric arthropod.”
“And we’re back to bug.” After realizing she was spilling sugar all over the table, Meg dumped the rest of the spoonful into her coffee.
“Only if you consider an underwater bug really a bug.”
Meg poured cream into her coffee and stirred. “I guess not. So this prehistoric sea critter is what the killer is spray-painting at all the crime scenes? Isn’t that a little . . . off the beaten path?”
“Just a little. But that’s what led me to him. Or at least to his screen name. He’s ‘Trilobite’ on multiple boards.”
“I guess I should have seen that one coming, considering the not-bug.” She took a moment for a sip of coffee while she turned over the information in her head. “How sure are you on this?”
“The guy’s screen name is an obscure sea creature I had to look up to find out what it was. And before you ask, some of the fossil forms match his cartoon drawing. They’re way more complex and they evolve over time, but he’s working with spray paint and a short time frame, so what he does is enough to get the point across and leave his mark. I’ve seen that calling card in a bunch of pictures he’s posted to show his explorations. So, yeah, it’s him.”
“Great job. I’m not sure we’d have even known where to start looking for him. Can you send me information on the boards and on him?”
“Already done, including my user ID and passwords for the sites so you can get in and nose around freely and no one will suspect anything. Check your email. Can you get the computer wizards at the FBI to track him down based on his IP address or whatever it is they use to trace people?”
“Maybe. I’m certainly going to find out. Can I give you a call if I have any questions?”
“You sure can. Happy hunting.” He hung up.
Meg jammed a bite of bagel into her mouth, washed it down with a slug of coffee, and picked up her phone again, speed-dialing McCord.
“Morning.” His voice was still sleep-slurred.
“I need you to wake up.”
“I am awake. I’m talking to you, aren’t I?” Sleep-slurred shifted to slightly surly.
“I have a lead. Maybe the lead. I need my researcher awake.”
The was a momentary pause. “I’m awake.” His voice was clearer now. “Though I can’t promise any miracles until after I’ve had at least one cup of coffee.”
“I hear you. Got a pen and paper handy?”
She heard a low groan she translated as McCord pushing himself out of bed. “Okay, shoot.”
She quickly outlined the information she’d learned from Smaill. “I’ll forward you the email he sent me. But considering what we know about this guy, we need to figure out who he is. I’m about to call Kate and get agents on it, but I want you on the scent first. Not that they’re not great at what they do . . .”
“But they don’t have my investigative chops and some of my contacts who would never talk to law enforcement. Are you trying to butter me up?”
“I don’t need to. Just the promise of this story is enough to light a fire under you.”
“How well you know me.”
“By this point, yeah. I need this as soon as you can, McCord. This is when things are really going to start to move.”
“Then stop talking to me so I can get going.” He hung up.
Meg picked up her plate and her mug, chugging the cooling coffee as she walked to the sink. Then she called her dog and gathered her things. She’d call Kate from the SUV.
It was time to go to work.
It was time to end this.
CHAPTER 30
Cracking: Being the first explorer at a site.
Wednesday, November 21, 8:17 AM
Forensic Canine Unit, J. Edgar Hoover Building
Washington, DC
Never one to sit with her feet up waiting for others to do the work, Meg dove into her own research as soon as she got to the unit office.
“You got coffee.”
She looked up at the sound of Brian’s voice as he and Lacey entered the bullpen. “We were supposed to jog this morning,” Meg said, “but I canceled so we could be in earlier. I thought it was only fair.”
“I don’t need fair, but I’ll gladly take the coffee. Lacey, go hang out with Hawk.” He watched the two dogs happily greet each other, and then he pulled out his chair and sat down. “What’s with the Glock?” He indicated the gun she wore tucked into a belt holster at her hip.
“I could ask you the same thing. You don’t normally come in with your service weapon.”
“Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but I feel like the guy’s going to try again. Soon. And I want to be prepared for anything.”
“That’s exactly how I feel.”
“While we’re waiting, what do you need me to do? You look like you’re already into something.”
“I am. McCord is on the scent, and Kate is working on her leads, so I’m trying to give them a hand.” She picked up her laptop and rolled her chair to his desk, perching it on top so they could both see. She took him through Smaill’s email and some of the sites. “I’ve gone through the first two links he sent and I’m working on the third. Can you take the fourth and keep going?”
“Can do. We’re looking for anything that might lead to his identity? Maybe hints about where his home base might be based on a concentration of urbex searches in the vicinity?”
“Actually, that’s a really good idea. I’ve been trying to pick up on anything about his personality and profession that might indicate his identity, but geographic centralization is a great angle. Life is busy, and when you want to spend an afternoon doing some exploration, you don’t want to waste four hours of the day driving there and back.” Meg stretched out a hand to her desk and grabbed her notebook. “I’ve been making notes, including all the sites he’s listed here.” She handed him the notebook. “Want to make a copy?”
“Yeah, I’ll do that.”
Brian copied Meg’s existing notes, and then they both settled in to work at their desks. Craig came in, and they both looked up only long enough to give him a nod and get back to work.
More than an hour later, Meg’s phone rang. She ignored it for the first two rings as she finished reading a post on a location in Virginia. She reached for it blindly and hit talk. “Jennings.”
“It’s me.”
Meg’s head snapped up at McCord’s voice to find Brian staring at her expectantly. “That was fast.”
“When you’re good, you’re good. Is everyone there?”
Her pulse kicked into overdrive. “Do we need everyone?”
“Yes.”
“Call me back in three minutes at this number.” She rattled off Craig’s office extension and hung up. She picked up the handset
on her desk and dialed Kate’s extension.
She picked up the call. “Agent Kate Moore.”
“It’s Meg. Can you get to the unit in three minutes? I think McCord has a break in the case. He’s calling into Craig’s office.”
“I can be there in two.” The line went dead.
Kate made it in just over two minutes, but her heavy breathing told Meg she’d skipped the elevator and opted to run the stairs for speed. She paused in Craig’s doorway, one hand braced on the jam. “Did I make it?”
“You did.” Meg stood up from the chair in front of Craig’s desk. “He—” She broke off as Craig’s phone rang.
Craig hit the speaker button to answer the phone. “SSA Craig Beaumont.”
“It’s Clay McCord of the Washington Post.”
Meg leaned low to speak into the phone. “We’re here, McCord. Craig, Kate, Brian, and myself. What have you got?”
“I have your suspect. I mean really have. His actual identity.”
Meg met Kate’s skeptical gaze and then motioned to the phone. Take the lead.
“Mr. McCord, this is Agent Moore. Can you explain in detail who this man is and how you reached that conclusion?”
“Sure. Meg shared Chuck Smaill’s research into the urbex community following her discovery that a common graffiti image was discovered at all four body dump sites. As an urbexer himself, he had access to some closed forums and could contact other members personally as a trusted community member. He also supported this by going back through some of his own photos of previous explorations. He came up with a screen name, which also happens to be his signature image. Trilobite.”
“Hang on a second, McCord.” Meg brought up an image of a trilobite on her phone, showed it to everyone in the room, and then followed it with the crime scene image from Massaponax Psychiatric Hospital. “They’ve seen both the fossil and the spray-painted version. Keep going.”
“As you might imagine, this is kind of an obscure reference, both the name and the image. I started doing some digging as to who works on this kind of research. I mean, I’d never even heard of this critter before this morning, and I bet most people haven’t. This guy not only uses it as his graphic representation, it’s his screen name. They’re clearly a fascination for him. I felt that particular aspect had to minimize the suspect pool. So I pulled a string to start the process.” He cleared his throat. “I contacted Ryan Bennett.”
Meg whipped around to stare at Brian, who blinked at her with his mouth agape.
After a second of silence, Kate said, “I don’t understand. Should I know who that is?”
“That would be my husband,” Brian said. “McCord, were you looking specifically at what the Smithsonian had in its collection?”
“That, and I was looking for a springboard to a connection with a Smithsonian paleobiologist or geobiologist. I met Ryan at Meg’s get-together after the Garber case closed. I really liked him, and he said if I ever needed a contact within the Smithsonian for a story to talk to him. So . . . I did.”
“My husband, the confidential informant,” Brian muttered. “Did he connect you to someone?” he asked so McCord could hear him.
“Actually, yes. He was extremely helpful.”
“He’s a walking encyclopedia, so that doesn’t surprise me.”
“He connected me to Dr. Collette Boucher. Called her himself, at home considering the time, to make the introduction, then gave her my number so she could call me. I had her on the line inside of ten minutes. When I told her about the critter, she knew about it. But it’s not her particular field of expertise and the Smithsonian doesn’t have any trilobite fossils in its collection.”
“But someone must,” Meg said, “or else you wouldn’t be calling.”
“Nailed it. She didn’t have any fossils, but she knows who’s working on these little guys. And that would be Virginia Tech.”
Brian held up a finger and darted out of his chair, running back into the bullpen.
“Hang on a second, McCord. It looks like Brian’s onto something.”
Brian returned, holding the photocopy of Meg’s notebook list. Several more locations were listed on the page after Meg’s list in blue ink. “McCord, Virginia Tech, that’s in Blacksburg, right?”
“Yes.”
Brian stood and went to the map, quickly finding the location to the west of Roanoke on the eastern edge of the Jefferson National Forest. “This is it here.” He brandished the single page. “I thought it would be Virginia, though I thought it might be more centralized. The majority of the urbex sites I’ve been compiling are Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina.”
“What sites are those?” McCord asked through the speaker.
“Meg and I split our research workload. She was looking for anything directly related to the guy’s identity or career. I was working on the hypothesis that if he’s been doing urbex for a while, the majority of the sites will naturally be closer to his own home base. And I’m finding a concentration of sites in that area.”
“Nice.” McCord sounded pleased. “Then this fits right into that theory. There’s a paleobiology and geobiology group at Virginia Tech. Dr. Boucher referred me to Dr. Göran Nilsson, one of three researchers in this group. And when I described the man I was looking for—around six foot two, white, strawberry blond, light eyes, freckles, and the crescent-shaped birthmark on his neck—he immediately knew who I was talking about. Brett Stevenson, a postdoctoral fellow in his own lab.”
“Hold your horses,” Kate interrupted. “Stevenson? One of the remaining investors is Peter Stevenson.”
“Grandson maybe, based on his age?” Craig suggested. “If he’s a postdoctoral fellow, he’s probably in his late twenties. These investors are all midsixties and up.”
“We’ve been thinking all along that one of the investors was orchestrating this with an outside killer to make sure they got the money. What if this guy has made a deal with his own grandson to make sure he gets a big inheritance? He must have found out who the other investors are, maybe through the cultural associations, and then the grandson does the killing? Maybe he gets a portion of it now and is promised an even bigger portion when his grandfather dies? That kind of thing?”
“Or maybe the grandson is doing all of this with an eye to his grandfather being the final victim in his spree so he gets the windfall as his inheritance,” Meg said. “McCord, was this guy willing to work with you? If he’s a paleobiologist, the eastern seaboard isn’t exactly the La Brea Tar Pits. He must be sending his people out somewhere else.”
“Actually, there’s more in this area than you’d think, but most of it has been discovered already because of population centers and urban growth. A lot of paleological research in the US is now out west, like New Mexico and Arizona. And that’s where Dr. Nilsson’s research is, in Arizona.”
Kate leaned forward in anticipation. “And his people go out there? They do research in the state of Arizona?”
“They sure do. And I have dates. And every single one of them is outside of the abduction dates. In fact, Dr. Nilsson is willing to state on record that Stevenson was in Virginia during all of those times. And he promised not to mention our conversation to Stevenson so he won’t get tipped off and make a run for it.”
Meg turned to Kate. “We’ve got him.” She couldn’t keep the excitement out of her tone.
“Sure looks that way. Good work, Mr. McCord. Can you—” She broke off as her cell phone rang. She read the name on her caller ID. “Sorry, hang on, I need to get this. It’s one of the agents on protective duty.” She answered the call.
Meg glanced at Brian, who grinned back at her as they listened to Kate’s end of the call.
“Agent Kate Moore. Yes, hi. You’re where? And that’s where he is?” Suddenly she went ramrod straight in her chair, her voice going sharp. “You’re sure about this? Who did you talk to?” A long pause. “And that’s the official prognosis? Thank you, Agent Esposito. Combined with other new informati
on learned today, this case just broke wide open. I expect a full report on my desk later today. Thank you.” She hung up and looked at the group. “That was the agent covering Peter Stevenson on protective duty. He just followed Mr. Stevenson to the LewisGale Medical Center in Salem, Virginia. Mr. Stevenson is there for treatment because he has terminal pancreatic cancer.”
Craig leaned back in his chair thoughtfully. “That’s the whole game right there, isn’t it? Pancreatic cancer is terrible, and the recovery rate is in the single digits. He’s dying. He’s going to be taken out of the investment as a result.”
“And that’s the key,” Meg said. “He may have no idea what’s going on around him. He could be just living what’s left of his life. His grandson, on the other hand, has his eye on the prize. If his grandfather is the only one left standing, the tontine closes. And when he dies, which sounds like it could happen imminently, then all the riches will go to the beneficiaries of his will, which the grandson might inherit eventually if his parents are still alive. Or he might be the direct beneficiary. We need a better picture of that family.”
“On it,” Kate said, typing something furiously into her phone.
“And we have to go after Brett Stevenson,” Brian said. “You have enough to call him in for an interview.”
“I absolutely do. Today. I want him either here or in a field office today. And I want to handle the interview myself. Mr. McCord, did Dr. Nilsson say if Brett Stevenson is currently in state?”
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