Winter's Storm

by Mary Stone

  Rising to his feet, Noah returned the nod. “Captain, I’m Agent Dalton, and this is my partner, Agent Stafford.”

  With a slight smile, Bree accepted the captain’s handshake. “We’ve been going over the cases with your two detectives. Our colleagues in Richmond are looking over the digital case files you sent to us, but we came here to get a personal account from the detectives who worked each of the cases.”

  The captain lifted a bushy eyebrow. “What’ve you found so far? Do you think these murders are all connected?”

  “Yes.” Noah answered the man without hesitation. “We don’t know who the perpetrator is, or if there’s more than one killer, but we are certain they’re connected. The FBI will take over the investigation from here, but we’ll still need the help of the Danville PD.”

  “Of course. What do you need from us?”

  Noah’s mouth tasted bitter as he cast another glance at the slew of graphic pictures. “Right now, we have reason to believe that the survivors of the Riverside Mall shooting are in danger. We don’t know how the killer is picking their victims, but we believe they’re targeting the survivors from that night.”

  The captain looked appalled. “That’s twenty-one people.”

  “It’s a big ask, but these people are in danger.” Noah made sure to keep any hint of impatience out of his voice. It wasn’t the captain’s fault that his precinct was underfunded.

  Captain Polivick shook his head. “I don’t have the manpower to spare for that many people, Agents. Danville’s crime rates have been on the rise for the past few years, but the city hasn’t exactly been throwing money at us. We’re short-staffed as it is. If I diverted that much manpower, we’d be leaving other parts of the city at risk.”

  “I used to work for the Dallas PD, and I get it, Captain. But something needs to be done to protect these people. We’ve got no way of knowing when they’re planning to kill again, and we need to get ahead of them.”

  Brows furrowed in concentration, the captain nodded. “You’re right. How about we split the difference. I’ll assign a team of officers to get ahold of the folks here in Danville first, and then we’ll reach out to those who live in other places. We’ll do wellness checks periodically, and we’ll make sure they have safety plans in place. Most of it’ll be up to them, but we’ll help get it started.”

  It wasn’t nearly enough, but Noah flashed the man a quick smile of gratitude for taking this seriously and doing whatever he could. “That’s a good plan. We’ll take care of alerting the folks outside of Danville, and we’ll make sure the precincts in their areas have an idea of what’s going on too. We’re trying to put off the media frenzy for as long as we can, so just ask them to be discrete.”

  Bree nodded. “If I had to guess, I’d say that we’ll have a press conference about the crimes within the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours. That should give you and your people enough time to prepare, right?”

  “Right.” Captain Polivick nodded again.

  Prepare for what, Noah still wasn’t sure. The killer was faceless, and they had no idea how this person had gone about selecting his targets.

  Right now, their only defense was to fire blindly into the darkness and hope one of the shots hit the mark.

  13

  Winter slipped back into the routine of an investigation as easily as if the last case had never stopped. She, Miguel Vasquez, and Sun Ming had all taken to their computers to parse through the digital records of each of the three Danville murder cases. After a few hours of working solo, they’d convened in the briefing room to combine their notes.

  At one end of the whiteboard, Miguel had written out the names of the twenty-one remaining survivors. To Winter’s surprise, the tenured agent’s handwriting was neat and precise. Compared to Sun and Winter’s chicken scratches, Miguel might as well have been born with a pen in his hand.

  Winter, Sun, and Miguel had each taken a different case to look over. As they uncovered details while they continued to review the cases, they had added them to the whiteboard.

  When Winter stepped away from her laptop to write the current location of Willa Brown’s surviving family, the glass and metal door swung open as Bree and Noah strode into the room.

  Glancing to the clock and then back to the newcomers, Winter lifted her eyebrows. “You guys are early. We didn’t expect you to be back for another hour.”

  Noah cleared his throat overly loudly and shifted his gaze to the shorter woman at his side. “That’s because someone has a lead foot.”

  With a sweet smile, Bree offered him a noncommittal shrug. “I don’t really like to drive, so when I do get behind the wheel, I prefer to get where I’m going really fast.”

  The hit of levity was a welcome reprieve after an afternoon of digging through details of the tragic death of a young woman. Willa Brown had survived a veritable massacre only to be brutally murdered in a place where she should have been safe.

  They hadn’t planned for the afternoon briefing to take place for another hour and a half, but when Aiden appeared in the open doorway, Winter figured their timetables had just been moved up. Aiden’s pale eyes flicked around the room before he eased the door closed.

  “SAC Osbourne is in a meeting.” Aiden nodded at the whiteboard. “We can leave all this up, and I’ll give him a rundown of where we are once he’s out. Dalton, Stafford, what did you get from the Danville PD?”

  Brushing both hands down the front of her leather jacket, Bree looked up to the whiteboard. “They had a suspect for Willa Brown’s murder.”

  Winter nodded. “Shawn Teller. Other than listing him as a suspect and mentioning that he’d been seen around the apartment complex, they didn’t have much about him in the case file. What happened to him?”

  Bree lifted a shoulder. “They don’t know. He just dropped off the face of the planet before they had a chance to find him and bring him in for any real questioning. His friends and family never filed a missing person report because they all just assumed he ran off to live with a girl he’d been talking to online.”

  Winter snapped the cap onto the dry erase marker in her hand. “That seems convenient. I hadn’t gotten to digging into his background yet. All I gathered was that he was a neo-Nazi and was about as cooperative as a stone.”

  From the corner of her eye, Winter caught a flicker of movement as Sun shook her head. “He wasn’t mentioned in the Esperson’s case file, or the Ulbrich’s.”

  Bree made her way up to the whiteboard. “He’d already disappeared by then.”

  Noah shuffled through some papers. “One of the detectives we met with, Detective Meyer, had a theory about why the murders were all so different. She thought that the crimes might have been committed by different people, and that the killers were all part of some deranged fan club devoted to Haldane and Strickland.”

  “That’s a good theory, but there’s one thing that still really bothers me about this.” Miguel pushed to his feet and stepped around the table where he and Sun had posted up to do their research. “Sandy and Oliver Ulbrich were at the Riverside Mall, and they were part of the group that had been taken hostage by Haldane and Strickland. But…” He held out his hands.

  “But their names were never made public,” Aiden finished for him.

  Winter forced the surprise off her face. Miguel had shared his discovery with her and Sun, but to the best of Winter’s knowledge, he hadn’t passed the information on to Aiden.

  Stuffing his hands in his pockets, Miguel gave the SSA a grim nod. “That’s right. Now, if our current theory is that one or two of Haldane and Strickland’s fanboys have been tracking down and killing the survivors from the shooting, how’d they figure out that Sandy and Oliver were there?”

  “Plus,” Winter held up a finger, “Willa and her sister were both there, but neither of them did interviews with the press afterwards. They didn’t necessarily keep their details private like Sandy and Oliver, but their names weren’t easy to find, either. The Danville poli
ce and the news outlets around the city wanted to protect the victims’ privacy.”

  A chill settled over the room as a spell of silence ensued. There were too many details about the murders that didn’t add up to a single, cohesive picture. Even if each crime had been committed by a different person, the question remained how they had gotten ahold of the victims’ names and personal information.

  Though Winter had learned to live with her sixth sense, she didn’t often look forward to the visions. Right now, however, she wished she could coax one of the headaches up from wherever it was they hid in the depths of her mind.

  As Winter cleared her throat, the room’s collective attention shifted to her. “The first thing we need to do is figure out how the killer, or killers, got access to Sandy, Oliver, and Willa’s information, and we need to make sure Mary Brown knows she might be in danger.”

  “Mary and her family have been notified,” Noah said, giving her a smile that warmed her toes. “They live in Boulder, Colorado now, and the police department in their area has been notified too. Our drive back from Danville was surprisingly productive.”

  Aiden scooted his chair back before he stood. “Based on how secretive Sandy and Oliver were, then one of the killers either has to be a proficient hacker, or…”

  The implication of Aiden’s unfinished observation hung over their heads like a lead weight.

  “Or they were there.” Sun’s voice was as grim as Winter had ever heard.

  Slowly, Aiden nodded. “I’ll get in touch with Agent Welford and Ryan O’Connelly to let them know that their suspect is now our suspect too. Whoever the third person was that Haldane and Strickland mentioned in their manifesto, he’s our prime suspect now.”

  14

  The remainder of the night and the first half of the following day flew by. In all honesty, Winter couldn’t remember the last time she was so busy at work without the physical presence of a suspect. Max Osbourne had scheduled a press conference for the next day, and Winter and her coworkers were under orders to learn as much about their case as possible.

  Ryan O’Connelly and Ava Welford had been briefed on the case so far, and their work had been officially combined into the Violent Crimes Division’s investigation. The nature of their search for the third person involved in Haldane and Strickland’s manifesto had turned from reactive to proactive quite literally overnight.

  For the majority of the morning, Winter had filtered through Shawn Teller’s history in order to amass a compelling argument to obtain a court order for his parents’ DNA. She even made an effort to look into the supposed girlfriend that Teller had met online.

  Just like the Danville detectives had advised, the Teller family was uncooperative. After spouting off a few colorful suggestions about what Winter could do for the rest of her investigation, each friend or family member she contacted had hung up. Without a court issued document to compel them to talk, she suspected she would get more information from a brick wall.

  With a quiet sigh, she leaned back in her office chair and glanced to the clock. Noah was out for a much-needed coffee and food run, but Winter and Bree had scheduled a lunch time meeting with Agent Welford and Ryan O’Connelly. The plan was for them to combine notes, but Winter had little to add to the upcoming discussion.

  Shawn Teller and virtually his entire family were unpleasant, hateful people. Though their social media accounts were decked with Confederate flags, their Irish ancestors hadn’t arrived in the United States until a decade after the Civil War had ended.

  It was ironic. During the time when the Teller family arrived in the States, Irish immigrants were treated with the same spite and fear that the Tellers now treated people of color. She couldn’t help but wonder if their great-great-great grandparents would be disappointed.

  In any case, Winter’s research was only more confirmation that Shawn Teller was the prime audience for Kent Strickland and Tyler Haldane’s hateful message. There was a great deal of merit to Detective Grace Meyer’s theory, and in Winter’s opinion, Shawn Teller lent even more viability to the theory.

  Winter was so lost in her contemplation that she hardly noticed a figure approach her desk from around the corner of her row of cubicles. Bree’s white, button-down blouse was tucked into a dark pair of slim jeans, and her riding boots added at least an inch to her height.

  Blinking to pull herself back to the real world, Winter offered her friend a slight smile. “Hey. How’s your morning going so far? Did you find anything new?”

  Bree shifted her laptop to the other arm as she shrugged. “Not much, really. Just more and more that makes it seem like the person who killed Adrian and Kelsey Esperson was something of a professional. The tranquilizer they used on the dog was powerful stuff. Usually, it’s only kept by veterinarians for surgical procedures on animals. I checked through the records of some vets in Danville, but I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. I’ll be finishing up that research today.”

  As Winter closed her laptop, she rose to stand, stretching out her muscles. “It could have been stolen. If the killer knew how to disarm the security system in the Esperson’s house, they might have known how to get past the security at a vet’s office too.”

  With a nod, Bree started off in the direction of the conference room where they were scheduled to meet with Ryan and Agent Welford. “I thought that too, but there weren’t any break-ins reported by the vets in Danville, nor were there any reports of missing medication. I checked all the way back through the last two years, and there was nothing. There were a couple attempts, but the burglars took off as soon as the alarms went off. They didn’t even manage to steal anything before they ran.”

  “Maybe they stole it from a different city.”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” Bree said. “Unfortunately, that doesn’t give me a lot to go on.”

  As they approached a glass and metal door, Winter spotted Ryan and Ava seated at a circular table. Ava’s dark brown hair was pulled away from her face with a barrette, and her gray blazer matched her slacks.

  Even though Ryan wasn’t technically employed by the FBI, he dressed as well as any other agent in the building—maybe even better than most. His black suit was tailored to his lean, muscular frame, and his dark hair was styled in the way of a 1960s businessman.

  Bree rapped one hand lightly against the metal frame before pushing the door open. “Good morning, or…wait.” Bree rubbed her tired looking eyes as she raised her wrist to check the time. “Oh, well, I suppose it is morning for another five minutes.”

  The corners of Ava Welford’s blue eyes creased as she smiled. “Good morning to you too. I guess this is how we’re spending our lunch break today?”

  Winter let the door swing closed behind herself. “Noah went out for a coffee and sandwich run. He should be back soon. I’m sure he’ll have pastries for us too.”

  Ryan rubbed his hands together. “Hopefully, he’s got some more of those chocolate croissants. So far, they’re probably my favorite thing about living in Richmond.”

  As she pulled out a chair, Winter’s stomach growled so loud her cheeks went pink. “Agreed. And I’m betting that’s the real reason why your sister is moving out here, isn’t it?”

  With a hapless smile, Ryan spread his hands. “You might be right. She hasn’t ever had one, but she loves chocolate, and she loves croissants, so it seems like a match made in heaven.”

  Bree held up a hand. “Okay, okay. All I ate before I left this morning was a granola bar, so let’s stop talking about pastries until Noah gets back. You guys have been looking into how the victims’ information got to the killer, right?”

  Agent Welford nodded. “We have. Now, we haven’t figured out who exactly was behind it, and we haven’t tied the digital activity to any other crimes we’re aware of, but…” she waved a hand at the writing scrawled across the whiteboard, “we’ve narrowed down the timeframe when each victim’s identity was compromised.”

  A thrum of excitement w
ent through Winter. “Compromised? As in, their identities were stolen?”

  “Yes and no.” Ava placed both hands on the table and pushed to her feet. “Their identities weren’t stolen in the traditional sense of the term. No one went on a spending spree with their bank accounts, and no one tried to open credit cards in their names. That’s probably why none of them noticed. If the hacker had done any of that, the folks with credit monitoring would have noticed it right away.”

  Bree looked as disappointed as Winter felt. “So, what did they do then?”

  “We’re working on figuring that out right now. We’re going through each person individually.” She raised her arm to tap beside the top-most name. “We started with Sandy and Oliver Ulbrich, since they were quite private about what they went through that night.”

  Winter squinted to read the text beside Ava’s hand. “So, the Ulbrich’s information was hacked about a month before they were killed.”

  Ava waved her hand down the line of names. “Same with all the other victims. All their information was accessed within a period of about two days, or closer to thirty-six hours.”

  Shaking her head, Winter glanced to Bree. “That doesn’t make any sense. Willa Brown was killed almost six months ago, and Kelsey and Adrian were killed three months ago. Are you sure this is when all these people were hacked?”

  Ava nodded. “We’re certain of it.”

  Although Winter knew very little about how hackers did their work, she had learned a thing or two since she first stepped inside the bureau’s doors. She knew the IT departments could trace where logins came from and were normally alerted when they came from vastly different geographic locations. Even if the geographic locations were the same, the IP address could be different from the usual login, or it might be linked to previous fraud. The person’s account activity could change, giving other hints that they had been illegally accessed.