“I don’t think he was involved with her,” Frank said from behind her. He squeezed her shoulders then pulled up the straight-backed chair once more, stretching his left leg out in front and rubbing the injury on his other leg.
“Why do you say that?”
He pointed at the pictures in her hand. “I don’t know your brother, either, but I can’t imagine anyone even casually involved with a woman calmly taking pictures of her murder. Much less have the foresight to photograph the car’s license plate, follow the murderers to the dump site, and photograph her body.”
“How do you know he did that?” She knew Ian had gotten images of the murderers and license plate. The evidence of his callousness was in her lap.
Frank leaned forward and brought up a second image on the other monitor screen. “This was another picture Doyle found in your cloud.”
The picture showed more of the young woman’s wrapped body and the surrounding foliage.
“He followed them.”
“I’d say he watched them from a distance to see where they dumped her, then checked the site out for himself.”
“Do you think he was hoping to find her alive and help her?” she asked, knowing it sounded like she was grasping for something positive in the situation.
Frank stared into her eyes a long moment. “He might have.”
So few words to say so much. Ian could’ve been trying to save the woman, but Frank highly doubted it. Not with the whole blackmail scheme and putting his sister in jeopardy. Sydney read it in his eyes, the doubt, the resignation, and the compassion for her.
She took a deep breath.
Time to pull up your big-girl panties, Sydney, and face the truth. Your only living relative is scum.
“Then let’s see if we can figure out who she is, who did this to her, and why,” she said, laying out the photos in front of her so they could all see them. “And mostly, let’s screw my brother in the process.”
Castello admired her grit. Every time he assumed the situation would be more than she could handle, Sydney managed to find some inner strength to not just carry on, but thrive under the stress.
“Doyle’s running the woman’s face against a facial recognition program,” he said. “Hopefully, she’ll pop up as a match to someone reported missing.”
“Will it be able to do that? I mean, it’s not a full-frontal image, and we can only see half her face due to her hair and…” Sydney leaned in closer. “I guess that’s leaves and dirt?”
“Probably blood, too,” Doyle said. “This program doesn’t need a flat, two-dimensional image looking straight at the camera to do its matching. It can use a face at angles to the camera. Up to about ninety degrees. It’s a new one that I’ve been beta testing for the company.”
“Let me guess,” Frank said. “The whiz kid hooked you up with them.”
Doyle flashed him a grin. “Doesn’t hurt to have friends in high places.”
“The whiz kid?” Sydney asked.
“Another nickname for Luke,” Frank answered. “You have older brothers, I guess you get lots of nicknames. Of course he has some for them, too.”
“Like what?” Sydney asked, a twinkle of curious humor in her eyes, softening them to a paler purple.
“Dave is Bossman or Head-dick-in-charge.”
A snort of laughter escaped her. “I bet he loves those.”
Frank shrugged. “He’s the oldest, and used to giving orders to the others.”
“I guess it would come naturally. Just like Luke resenting him for it. What about Matt?”
“Dudley.”
“Dudley?”
“Yep. As in Dudley Do-Right.”
“The cartoon character?”
Frank nodded. “The guy was pretty much a by-the-book patrolman until he met Katie.”
“Really? How did she change him?”
“Guess when you fall in love, all the rules go out the window.”
“You know, the more I hear about those two, the more fascinating I think their story must be.”
Before he could elaborate, the computer running the facial recognition program beeped.
“We’ve got a match,” Doyle announced, and they all stared at the screen as it printed up the name.
“Holy shit,” Doyle said.
“Isn’t that…?” Sydney turned to stare at Frank.
He was already pulling out his phone and dialing Jake’s number. “I think you better get over here to Doyle’s place. We’ve just found Annabeth Kelly.”
* * * * *
Jake arrived fifteen minutes later, bearing two plastic containers. He set them down on the counter. “Sami sent cookies, Doyle.”
The old man grinned, opening the first one. “Chocolate and butterscotch chip. My favorite.”
“The other one is cinnamon rolls,” Jake said with a wink to Sydney. “My wife tends to bake when she worries.”
“What is she worrying about?” Sydney asked.
“You.”
“Me? Your wife hardly knows me. Why would she be worrying about me?”
He gave her a shrug. “It’s what she does. She likes you. So, you’re family. She worries about family.”
Sydney looked over at Castello for more explanation.
He gave her a shrug. “It’s what she does.”
Jake smiled to himself. The big guy hadn’t taken his eyes off the little photographer, not even for some of Sami’s cinnamon rolls. His wife was going to be ecstatic. She’d said when they left the other night that the marshal had it bad for Sydney. Samantha loved being right.
But he wasn’t here for family matchmaking. Time to get down to business.
Putting on his FBI-agent-in-charge face, he glanced from Castello to Doyle and back again. “So, you want to tell me about how you found Annabeth Kelly when law enforcement from D.C. to Columbus haven’t been able to find her for a month?”
“Technically, we can’t tell you where she is, but we can tell you what happened to her,” Castello said.
A this-is-going-to-be-bad knot formed in Jake’s stomach. “Okay, I’ll bite. What happened to the state representative’s only daughter?”
“She was murdered,” Sydney quietly said beside him.
He inhaled and let it out slowly. The girl being missing with no electronic footprint such as credit card or ATM use, left little doubt with law enforcement that if they found her she wouldn’t be alive. She’d been gone too long. Hearing it as fact was another thing.
“You’re sure she’s dead?” he asked.
“Proof positive,” Frank said, erasing any doubt they were speculating.
“Show me what you have.”
Doyle led the way to his computers. The macabre image on the huge monitor screen hit Jake like a boxer’s punch to the midsection. No matter how many dead bodies he’d seen, both as a local cop and an FBI special agent, he’d never gotten immune to the sight. Especially of a young girl, barely out of college.
“You’re sure it’s Annabeth?” he asked, moving closer to study the girl’s face.
“Sure am, Rookie,” Doyle said beside him. “Ran the facial rec program twice to be sure.”
“Okay, we have Annabeth Kelly. How do you know she was murdered? Maybe this was just a bad accident or a suicide?” He already knew they had to have evidence of the crime. Castello wouldn’t jump to wild conclusions.
“I doubt she wrapped herself up in a rug and garbage bag then had an accident or jumped off a bridge.” Frank pointed to the spots on the image that supported what he said. “But we have an actual recording of her murder.”
“What?” Jake whirled around to study the serious-faced trio in front of him. “How did you get it? Where’s the video? Who killed her?”
“It isn’t a video,” Frank said.
“An audio recording?”
Frank shook his head.
“Damn it, Castello, I’m not playing twenty questions with you today.”
“It’s a set of photographs,” Sydney qu
ietly said.
“You photographed her murder?” he asked Sydney, unable to hide the incredulity in his voice. He took a step towards her.
Frank stepped in between them. “Watch it, Carlisle. Sydney had nothing to do with Annabeth’s death.”
Defensive and wordy. Castello had it bad.
“Okay. I didn’t mean to accuse her, Frank. But she’s the only photographer in the room.”
The marshal backed off with a nod.
Jake took a breath before talking to Sydney again. “Who did take the pictures?’
“My brother.” The words were barely above a whisper. Pain flitted over her face.
“The same brother you thought was in your house the night of the fire-explosion and is now missing?”
She nodded.
“How did these come to be in your possession, then?”
Castello crossed his arms over his chest. Jake met his angry gaze. Yes, he knew he was sounding like an interrogator with a witness, but a murder of a politician’s child just changed the rules of the game. He needed to know all the details—now.
“We found extra film in my case today. I assumed Ian had put it in before I left town last week. Frank brought me right over here to use Doyle’s darkroom to develop the film, since mine was gone. I had no idea, truly, what was on the film…” Her voice caught, then she handed him a stack of eight-by-ten, black-and-white photos. “They’re in the order that he took them.”
Jake leaned against the desk and slowly went from photo to photo. They were right. One frame at a time, the packet of photos coldly depicted the shooting of Annabeth Kelly and the disposal of her body. When he reached the end, he straightened the pile and let them flip faster like an old-fashioned, silent movie. The act gruesome in its entirety.
Finished, he slowly exhaled again and looked up at the others. Doyle and Sydney had taken the two rolling chairs. Castello stood like a silent guardian, arms still folded across his chest, right behind Sydney, clearly marking where his interest, both in the case and personally, lay.
“That’s not all you have to tell me, is it?” He never took his eyes off Castello.
“Since we left you, we’ve had another attempt on Sydney’s life. I thought it was the police detective we’d met with to talk about the arson and explosion of her home.”
Aw, shit.
Jake rubbed his free hand over the back of his neck. “Let me guess, that’s the police detective found in the trunk of his car today?”
Frank gave a brisk nod.
“Dave was on the phone earlier, talking about how the higher-ups are keeping closemouthed about his murder. Apparently, a government agency is implying national security, or something. He wanted to call Luke to find out when I didn’t know any more than he did. Let me guess. Your boss implied it was something to do with WitSec?”
Frank gave a non-committal shrug.
Great. Back to non-verbals. He pulled out the first picture of the guy shooting Annabeth. “Any idea who this guy is?”
“Not yet,” Doyle said. “Put in the facial recognition program while we were waiting for you. Guy’s wearing sunglasses, covering his eyes and part of his cheekbones, so I may not have enough facial pointers to get a positive match.”
“Okay. Keep it running. Maybe we’ll get lucky.” He flipped through to the end of the stack of photos and pulled the one with the license plate on it. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a program to run this, do you?” he asked his old partner.
The corner of Doyle’s mouth raised in a half-grin. “Already on that, too, Rookie. Dead end. It’s a government plate.”
“Don’t tell me we’ve got someone in the government behind all this.”
“It makes sense, Jake. We’ve got the murder of a Congressional intern, who also happens to be the daughter of a State Representative. Then someone is able to trace an email with that color photo of the dead intern to the IP address from where it was sent. Then the home of where the computer was that sent the photo is torched and bombed just to erase the original files of the picture.”
“Wait,” he said holding up his hand. “What do you mean, that photo was emailed to someone?”
“Turns out my brother is not only a heartless jerk, but an unscrupulous blackmailer.” Sydney stood. “If you will excuse me, I think I can’t deal with any more of this right now. Doyle, is it okay if I use your darkroom again? I have wedding photos to develop.”
Doyle nodded and she stalked from the room, head held high.
“Little lady’s got some starch in her makeup,” Doyle said.
“That she does,” Frank said.
Jake studied the photos once more, glanced at the color blackmail photo, and then fixed a steady eye at Castello. “So, how’re we going to get you both out of this mess?”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Jake was right. It was a mess. His mess.
“I should never have called you. Never gotten you mixed up in this,” Frank said, pacing the length of the computer room and back. “I can get by with keeping my superiors in the dark about what we’ve discovered since I’m on medical leave. You’re obligated to go up the chain of command.” He stopped moving. “If I’m correct, and the evidence says someone with some powerful strings is behind this, the moment you do, Sydney’s dead.”
Jake didn’t blink. “And that’s why this isn’t going anywhere but between us.”
“No. I can’t ask you to put your career in jeopardy. You have a family to think of.”
“Not your decision, big guy. One thing I learned from my wife, family comes first. And you’re family.” He pulled out his phone. “Which means we need some specialized help. Time to call the boy genius and interrupt his honeymoon.”
Frank glanced up at the clock on the wall. “It’s six hours earlier in Hawaii, they’re probably out at the beach.”
Jake laughed. “Eleven o’clock their time? I doubt the golden boy is even out of bed yet. I know if it were me and Samantha in an isolated, private, island beach house, rolling in the sand before noon wouldn’t be on my plans for the day.”
Frank pondered for a moment about how he’d spend time alone with Sydney, if people weren’t trying to kill her. “You’re right. He’s still in their cabana house, probably has the phone and computer nearby. Call him.”
Jake put the call on speaker as it dialed.
“This better be an emergency, Jake, or I’m going to kill you when I get home,” Luke’s sleepy voice said.
“I need you to crawl out of bed, put on some boxers, because I don’t even want to think of you naked while we talk, and hack a government database for me,” Jake said.
“I have no problem hacking naked. No one’s going to see but Abby, and she doesn’t mind.”
“Luke!” Abby said in a giggly voice, extremely close to the phone.
“TMI, kid genius,” Frank said.
“Crap. You have me on speakerphone and Castello’s there? This can’t be good. Who’s in trouble?”
“Sydney.”
“Sydney?” Abby asked, all laughter gone from her voice. “Is she all right?”
Frank pointed to the phone and asked Jake, “Any chance this could be an encrypted line?”
“Already is.”
“She’s safe, Abigail. For now.” Frank wasn’t going to sugarcoat it. Abigail wouldn’t appreciate that. “Someone blew up her house and then tried to run her over with a car.”
“Oh, my gosh!”
Mumbling sounded on the other end of the line, probably Luke comforting his new wife.
“What can we do to help?” Luke asked after a few moments.
“Got a government license plate I need you to run for us. Bounce it around the world and as many satellites as you can.” Jake read the number from the picture.
Luke let out a low whistle. “Got it. Max security. Might take a little while.”
“Do what you need to, but get us the information as quick as you can. And Luke?” Jake said.
“Yeah?”
“Got it. Tell the old man hi.”
The line disconnected.
Doyle grinned. Luke had been calling him old man since the day they met. “I’ll keep an ear open for the land line. Swept it for bugs last week, but I’ll do it again.”
Jake nodded. “Yeah, saying hi to you was his message that he understood. You’re the only person we know who has a land line.”
Going old school was the family’s code not to use their personal cell phones. Burner phones and land lines only. It also told the two Homeland agents on their honeymoon that no one but family could be trusted.
“Time to call in the brothers,” Jake said, already dialing his phone.
“You sure about that? Putting one of you and your jobs in jeopardy is bad enough,” Frank tried to protest.
Jake shook his head, already talking on the phone. “Dave? Yeah, I need you and Matt to come to Doyle’s place.”
He paused and mouthed the word family at Frank as he listened.
“Castello needs our help.”
“Tell him to tell Matt to leave Katie at home,” Frank said. No way was he risking her or their unborn child with his problem.
Jake relayed the message and hung up.
Frank’s phone buzzed. It was a text message from his boss. “I’ve got a meeting with the detective in charge of Abrams’ murder at nine at The Three Legged Mare.” It was an Irish-American tavern near both his Victorian Village house and Sydney’s former home.
“Good. Dave can go with you, take some of the sting out of the handcuffs we’re putting on the guy if he knows one of his own is working the case with you.” Jake pulled up a rolling chair. “In the meantime, catch me up on what you know about Sydney’s brother.”
* * * * *
The photos of the wedding had turned out so nice. Abigail was truly a beautiful bride. The smile on her face as she gazed up at her handsome husband spoke to the love she had for him. The fact that he had the same amazingly happy expression when Sydney had caught him watching Abby without her knowing brought tears to Sydney’s eyes.
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