by Rick Murcer
“I’m afraid da mon is right dere,” said Braxton, exhaling.
Barb waved and offered a tired smile. “True dat.”
He frowned and turned in Josh’s direction. “Spill it, Josh. What’s going on?”
“We’ve got another problem. A big one.”
His stomach jumped. He hated it when Josh spoke like that.
“What would that be?” asked Sophie.
Josh twisted his neck, trying to relieve the stress. “It seems we have six murdered people in New York, all by the same killer. Belle’s BAU, Chloe, and Barb are being ordered to get there by morning.”
CHAPTER-34
What the hell else could go south on this case?
Manny chose to get past the idea of his wife and Barb being assigned to go with Belle and concentrate on what happened in New York. He understood why Josh wanted them to go. Belle’s new team was hardly a team yet and lacked serious experience in the field. He also knew, after they’d gathered some facts, that there would still be plenty of time to change Josh’s mind.
“A spree killer?” asked Manny.
“It appears so. He even left a note, a message at each scene.”
Manny’s stomach did a full flip. “A message?”
“Each one says ‘Catch me if you can.’”
“Shit. That’s an issue. Obviously, because of the six dead in a short time, he’s not done with whatever crusade he’s on,” said Manny, plopping down in the nearest black leather chair.
“I’d say that’s right,” said Belle. She moved to the table, sitting on the edge. “I want to help here, more than you all know. After I thought about it some more, and that doesn’t mean I like it, Josh is right—this time anyway. The ACTU isn’t my unit, and I need to go do my job.”
“You do,” said Manny.
“I’m just not sure my three folks are ready for their first case. They’re very good, but they’re just now wrapping up their weapons training. They’ve still got a full eight hours of briefing to complete on profiling. They need more time.”
Josh nodded. “And that’s why I’m sending Chloe and Barb to help. It’s the right thing to do. I hate doing it, but adding Anna in the research arena helped me make the call. Besides, Bureau and Agency policies aside, it’s the right thing to do for your families.”
“But now we do that whole divide the team again. I think that’s still dangerous here. We’re still so in the dark about what, and who, and where, never mind why,” said Manny.
“I think we can clear up a few things during the meeting. Meanwhile, we have crimes that need to be solved in New York,” said Josh, his voice rising. “Belle’s people have to go there, and she needs experienced agents to help. It’s that simple.”
Manny started to protest again, that they also needed Chloe and Barb, but realized Josh was probably right. And who was to say what was more important here? Plus, if they needed more support here in New Orleans, they could draw on the considerable presence of the Feds in New Orleans.
He put his hand on Chloe’s. “I’m good with it, as long as you are.”
“Well, I wasn’t, but I am now, sort of,” answered Chloe.
He glanced at Sophie. Her gaze met his, her chin jutted out. “In case we all get our butts blown to Kingdom Come or get infected with some germ-warfare agent, somebody is still left, right?”
“Exactly. And there won’t be any more discussion. The three of you leave in the morning, bright and early,” said Josh.
Sophie then reached out and touched Josh’s arm. “I think you’re smart here, even though I don’t like it either. I will say though, surviving when your spouse doesn’t ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
In a complete impromptu reaction, Josh drew Sophie to him and hugged her fiercely, emotion showing across his strained face. “Yeah, that’s true. And I’ve lost too many of you already. It’s not just about the survivors of a family like ours. It’s about all of us who can’t do this job without the rest of us.”
After a few moments, Sophie patted Josh on the back, then kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks, boss. I sometimes forget that.” She then held him at arm’s length. “You’re going to have to stop being so damn emotional. It’s not becoming for someone who is as manly hot as you.”
Josh nodded, smiling. “I’ll do better. I get like this when I’m tired and frustrated.”
“Tell me about it. Now let’s get this meeting going. Plus, I’m hungry. Let’s get some of that Cajun gumbo, burgers, and dessert up here. Like chocolate cake and ice cream.”
“Will do,” said Josh. “Sounds good to me too.”
Ten minutes later, Josh had finished briefing them on what had happened to the two God’s Hand members.
“So we got IDs?” asked Manny, shaking his head at just how wild the aspects of this investigation were becoming.
“Yep, but that was about it. Lots of these cult members, especially ones as radical as this one, try to wipe out their past and get far away from family and friends. It’s like they drop off the face of the earth. Neither had anything in their recent profiles that will help us. I did take the liberty of sending their names to both Anna and our tech staff to see if something comes up.
“Until we get more, if we do, all we can really say about them is that this group has had members do this killer-for-hire-to-better-the-world attack before, but we’ve never been able to pin any association with God’s Hand leadership from those incidents,” said Barb. “They seem to be Teflon, but we’re still digging.”
“No cell phones, I guess?” asked Manny.
She shook her head. “No electronic trail at all, at least so far. I wouldn’t get my hopes up either. I’ve seen how some of these groups operate. They just don’t leave trails on what they do and how they do it. Like Alex said, we’re still looking, though.”
“What about the woman in the lake?” Manny asked, looking at Alex.
“Glad you asked,” said Alex, his eyes red with strain and apparent fatigue. But he was still wearing that got-something grin.
Manny sat up a little straighter.
“Her real name is Lucretia Doucett. She went by a few other aliases but didn’t go through any effort to hide who she was, at least that seems to be the case because she was easy to identify.”
Alex shifted in his chair then slid a stack of thin files down and over to the members of the team.
“This file has background info on her as well as a copy of the initial autopsy results. I’m not going to bore you with details that you’ll forget. But there are a few things you should know.”
“Fire away,” said Manny.
“Okay. First, she is an expert shot. She attended several shooting schools and seminars, plus she won nine different competitions, including the big one in Atlanta put on by the United States Practical Shooting Association, four times. Twice with perfect scores.”
“Handguns?” asked Sophie.
“Yes. No one else was close,” said Alex. He paused to sip his coffee.
“I think that falls in line with Sophie’s and Manny’s theory that the killer was an expert shot. This woman would have fit the bill,” said Chloe.
“That’s a great start for identifying the warehouse killer, but we need more,” Manny said, hearing the guarded excitement in his own voice.
Barb got up from the table, walked over to Alex, and kissed him flush on the lips, and then returned to her seat.
“What was that for?” Alex asked.
“Because you’re the best, and you’ve got more on her. I know you do,” she answered with a wink. “And there’s more where that kiss came from.”
Alex cleared his throat. “We can discuss my rewards later. Anyway, it seems she also owned four different handguns, two of them Beretta 92s plus a Glock 22 and a Smith and Wesson .38. She could have owned more, but these I’m sure of. She had to register them with that USPSA to compete.”
“Okay, but how does that help?” asked Josh, rubbing his face.
The Cheshire Cat had nothing on Alex’s grin. “Well, it seems they also have to register the kind of ammo they use and do a ballistics profile to make sure the ammo falls into their competition guidelines.”
“Don’t tell me one of those matches the crime scene in the warehouse,” asked Manny, standing.
“Better than that. We got a match on two of her weapons.”
“Two?” asked Sophie.
The knock on the door interrupted Alex’s answer. Braxton jumped up and opened the door, waving in the waiter from the hotel’s restaurant. The waiter wheeled in a cart that exuded the very aroma of heaven itself, filling the room with spices and chocolate.
Walking over to the metal food cart, Manny stood in front it, blocking it with his body.
“No eating until you answer Sophie’s question.”
“No problem. I’ll make it simple. The Feds investigating those five murders in Florida and Louisiana from a few years ago that you sent me the file on will be happy. One of those guns was used in each of those five murders.”
CHAPTER-35
Leaning back in the soft microfiber chair, Anna glanced at the two agents sitting on each side of the door, earpieces in, sunglasses covering what she knew were curious stares. Freak shows were hard to come by these days. She’d probably do the same thing in this situation.
She turned back to the computers on the desks, determined to ignore the guards, and picked up her can of cola. The bright red and green colors seemed to have her mesmerized for a brief moment. It had been years since she’d had a can of anything.
They didn’t trust her, and the rest of the incarcerated population here, with cans because they could be used to make a weapon, make an escape. She snorted. Where would she have gone? She didn’t think even she could escape the fortress of hell without help. Not that she hadn’t planned a couple escapes in her mind. But her ace in the hole, her white knight, had come through, at least somewhat, like she knew he would. No escape necessary.
In the end of this mortifying process of admitting her past and becoming human, Manny Williams had trusted her. Her. Was there anything more liberating than the trust of another? Especially given her history.
She closed her eyes, smiling. Liberation came in many forms, but she seriously doubted if anyone had ever enjoyed theirs more than she. Even if it was only for a day or two. She knew someday it would be for good.
The lone tear began its deliberate track down her cheek. She felt every millimeter, the warmth, the moisture, and above all, the purpose of that tear as it bore deep into her heart of hearts. Something she swore she didn’t have those years growing up—a heart.
Her hands began to shake. She stopped them with a will she forgot she had.
A moment later, she laughed out loud. It sounded strange, shaky, and she loved it.
Emotion.
Good God in Heaven, she loved the array of emotions that she, Anna Ruiz, could call her very own. No person or thing could ever take those away. Ever.
After one long draw that drained the can, she set it down and then leaned forward toward the screen on her right.
The other one, the laptop, was working through a program she’d written to locate keywords Alex and Manny had provided for her that might give them a clue as to where an attack might come. Including the names of buildings, business centers, financial institution, local landmarks, and even prominent people.
She’d try, but that request was easier asked than accomplished. She had a few tricks up her sleeve, however.
Alex had given her another list and explained that they were Internet sites and URLs that had showed up in Amy Brooks’s husband’s search history on the couple’s two computers. Identifying what words and sites would be considered unusual had been a trick in itself. She’d gone to each one that he’d accessed more than three times in the last year. She hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary with that search.
He’d visited some nutrition gurus, a few gun sites, researched a tattoo design he apparently was going to add to his arms, a few travel locations, and some local New Orleans nightclubs.
He’d spent considerable time on a few of them; she wondered if he may have been thinking about changing jobs as a bouncer. If that were true, those websites seemed like more normal visits to her. It was what most people did when they were unhappy with their job or needed to make a step to better one’s life. She wrote them off and waited for what her program was designed to do: extract the sites he’d deleted from the subdirectory hidden deep in the computer’s memory.
Most people thought once a URL was deleted from their machines, it was gone, but nothing was further from the truth. The info was still there; one simply had to know how to find it.
Police departments and government cybercrime agencies were becoming more and more proficient in that task, but some Internet carriers did a better job of protecting their customer’s privacy than others by not allowing police access without a court order, and even then, it could be difficult to get to. That was where her program came in.
It wouldn’t take long before she knew exactly where he’d been in Cyber Land over the last year. She hoped there would be some kind of clue as to what was going to happen, where, or even if anything was going to happen.
Manny had told her it was a stretch, at best, but cases had been solved with less. They just had to know what they were looking at. That’s where she came in.
Moving a little closer to the large screen displaying a blank page, cursor flashing in the corner, she exhaled. This next journey wouldn’t be so easy. People could go to great lengths to protect their worlds. The Darknet typified that to the nth degree.
It wouldn’t do well for someone who had just ordered a hit on their wife to be exposed by sloppy programming or a breakable security code. Not to mention how that would affect the hitman’s future business.
In this case, if a domestic terrorist wanted to network in order to accomplish his task, then the terrorist would need knowledge on how that was to be done. That meant proficiency at Internet protocol and deep security.
The Darknet had its share of perversions, mostly illegal, but she suspected high-level intel regarding complex security that would be—
The laptop’s sharp alarm pulled her away from the PC screen. The huge smiley face, sunglasses resting above rosy cheeks, told her to touch him and she’d be rewarded.
She smiled; touch him she would.
After she tapped the screen, a list of URLs, green against a dark background, filled up the page then continued to scroll downward for about thirty seconds. After it stopped, she touched the screen again to get the visited pages to display in chronological order, newest to oldest—6,756 total sites visited. Anna whistled softly.
“Wow, you’ve been far busier than Manny and Sophie thought, haven’t you, Daryl Brooks?” she whispered.
She stared at the desktop screen, longing to dive into the Darknet arena, this time with a purpose far nobler than five years ago. But she had some hardcore information to focus on now.
After one more longing look, she reached for the laptop and placed it on her thighs. She then began the process of looking at each entry. After three pages, she noticed that Daryl had visited an email page that was different than his current email account. She cut then pasted the URL into the browser box and hit enter.
The new email account flashed its header across the screen, the login information for Brooks already in place. He called himself Juggernaut16 and used his wife’s full name as a password. So much for supposedly secure email sites.
Clicking on the “in” box, she watched as twenty-seven messages showed up in the spam folder, three new messages, and eighteen read messages.
She read the headers for the new ones, then five of the read entries, then stopped, moving closer to the screen.
The next read email down had a blank subject title, but the email address was from someone called Dreamer666. Dated two days before the warehouse killings. The name wasn’t all that origi
nal, but the meaning was clear.
Anna clicked the email and it popped open. She read it.
Are you ready? We can do this. I’ve found out a couple of things about Wanger that may lead to something else entirely. I don’t think he’s quite what we or the agency thought he was. I’ll tell you when I have more time. Be there and be ready. This could be what we’ve been waiting for.
FB
Anna tilted her head and read it again. She frowned.
What the hell does that mean?
Like a lightning bolt, the truth of the email struck her.
She reached for the cell phone, planning to call Manny, but the phone wouldn’t turn on. It appeared to be dead and needed charging.
“Shit.”
She got up from the chair, ready to ask one of the guards for their phone, then thought better of it. They’d just refuse her anyway.
Reaching for the phone’s box resting on the metal desk near the door, she removed the charger, went over to the phone and hooked it up, bending over to plug it into the power strip under the computer desk. Her hair falling in her eyes and the long sleeve from her sweatshirt both got in the way, twice.
“Damn it.”
After the third attempt was finally successful, she stood up and laughed out loud. She’d actually gotten angry and frustrated—not something someone with her past had experienced often.
The clock on the corner of the computer said 12:10. Fine. It would take at least ten minutes for the charge to be full enough before she could make one call. She hated waiting that long, but she still didn’t want to ask one of the guards to lend her a phone. That could be a can of worms best not opened.
She thought about forwarding Manny the email, but thought better of it. She wanted to explain to him what she saw, plus the Feds’s security system would probably delay the inbound message until they could verify the source. And a prison probably was on their no-no list to receive communication from.
After plopping down in the chair, she put her feet on the desk and began tapping her finger impatiently on her leg, wondering about the email. What agency? Did this have to do with the warehouse? Most certainly, right? Who was FB and why was he or she contacting Daryl Brooks like this? Why—?