Текст книги "The Naked Eye"

Автор книги: Iris Johansen

Соавторы: Roy Johansen
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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

CHAPTER 14

Lynch House

8:35 A . M .

“IT’S ABOUT TIME YOU WOKE UP,” Lynch said from the foot of the staircase. “I was about to come up and get you. We have things to do and people to see.”

“It’s only been two hours,” Kendra said as she came down the stairs. “And I’m glad I slept. It’s not been happening very much lately.”

“No?” He nodded. “I noticed you were looking a little fragile. You’ve lost a few pounds. Sharing your nights with Colby?”

“More than I would like.”

His lips tightened, “More than I would like, too.” His fingers touched the dark circles beneath her eyes. “We’ll take care of that soon. I’m glad you slept. See, you should have been here from the beginning. You must have felt safer.”

“And you’re always right?” There might have been an element of truth in his words, but she wasn’t about to tell him that his fortress hadn’t been the sole reason she had been able to relax. Lynch was here, and that was security in itself. “What things to do and people to see?”

“We need to go to the field office and see Griffin. I want to get a complete report on the investigation into Stokes’s abduction and death. They must have facts and possible witness reports by now.”

Kendra nodded. “Griffin texted me that they thought Stokes was taken at his home. He was going to text me more later.”

“Then he can tell us in person. As well as anything else that’s come up.” He led her through the living room toward the kitchen. “Coffee, then we’re on our way.”

“Did you and Sam get together about how to track down Colby’s computer ace?”

“Sam has a sort of cult following in San Francisco that he’s tapping. Northrup does look promising, but no one’s seen him or heard of him since last November, when a source said he was doing a hacking job for a pharmaceutical company. He obviously likes money, so I put out feelers to a money-laundering operation with contacts all over the U.S. He’s clever, and he would need to get any fees safely out of the country.” He smiled. “Either way, we’ll find him. It’s only a matter of time.”

“Which we do not have.”

“Then we’ll find a way of hurrying it along. We’ve only just started the process of—”

“Hey, wait,” she interrupted as they were passing by the portrait in the living room. “I meant to ask you. What happened to your beautiful bikini babe?”

He paused and glanced up at Kendra’s portrait. “Maybe I’m becoming discriminating.”

“Nah.”

“Or maybe I like the way your portrait makes me think … and remember.”

She kept her gaze on the portrait. “How very sensitive. What did your gorgeous Ashley say?”

“She wasn’t pleased, but she understood that she has to be tolerant of other women who are less fortunate than she.”

“Is that what she said?”

“No, it was implied. Ashley is easy to read.”

“When did you buy the portrait?”

“Two days after we saw it together.” He grimaced. “The bastard held me up.”

“Then why did you give in?”

“Warren knew he had me. I wanted it.” He met her eyes. “So I took it.”

Heat.

She quickly looked away from him. “Or he took you.”

“No, that’s not the way it works. In the end, it belongs to me. I can look at it. I can touch it. I can care for it.”

“Or destroy it.”

He shook his head. “What a waste that would be. No, I believe you’re here for the long haul.” He took her elbow and nudged her toward the kitchen. “I really don’t think I could do without you…”

FBI Field Office

San Diego

9:50 A . M .

KENDRA AND LYNCH STEPPED off the FBI field office elevator and walked down the long corridor toward Griffin’s office. Kendra glanced around at the busy personnel and was immediately struck by the sense of urgency compared with her other recent visits.

Lynch obviously saw it, too. “There’s a psychopath on the loose, and it’s being perceived as partially their fault,” he said quietly. “They know how bad this has made them look. We can use this to get any amount of cooperation we need from them.”

“Spoken like the true Puppetmaster you are.”

“Hmm. I really need to stop sharing thoughts like that with you.”

“Don’t sweat it. I knew when Griffin visited me the day after Stokes was killed that we weren’t going to have a problem with them. If it gets us closer to nailing Colby, play whatever games with them you want. Whatever it takes.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that. Manipulation doesn’t have to be a curse word. It can be just a matter of steering conditions toward a mutually beneficial conclusion.”

“Ha. If you dare say that the next time you try to manipulate me, I’ll slap you.”

He smiled. “I think you would.”

“Bet on it. FYI, you should probably keep that little rationalization to yourself.”

“Point taken.”

Kendra spotted Griffin and several other agents in a large conference room separated from the corridor by floor-to-ceiling glass walls. Griffin waved them in.

Stacks of file folders, reports, and photos covered the long conference table. Agents were hurriedly sorting through the material and pinning especially relevant items on bulletin boards.

Kendra went still when they spotted the hundreds of printed photos stacked in the center of the table.

Photos of her. The same photos she had seen papering ever square inch of Colby’s cell that day she’d visited him in San Quentin.

They’d made her ill then, and they made her even more so now. Colby had let it be known that he wanted pictures of her, and his numerous correspondents had obliged by sending printed photos from the Web. He’d known that her trail would eventually lead to his cell, and he surmised quite correctly that the collage would creep the hell out of her.

“Sorry you had to see those again,” Griffin said. “After Colby’s execution, we—”

“You mean supposed execution,” Kendra said.

“Yes. Supposed execution.”

She wished she didn’t take satisfaction from the barely contained anger and frustration that suddenly flashed across his face.

He continued. “We subpoenaed the contents of his prison cell, along with copies of all call and visitor logs. As you know, there was some thought that he might have been responsible for other victims not yet on our radar, and we wanted to have this stuff just in case we needed it down the road. We had it all brought up from our storage facility in National City.”

Lynch looked at the stacks of opened mail on the table. “Popular guy for a mass murderer.”

Griffin shrugged. “The culture of celebrity. He obviously had help with the computer stuff, so we’re still trying to identify as many of his contacts as we can.”

“Isn’t most of this in the copies and scans you gave me?” Kendra asked.

“Most, but not all. There are notes scribbled on the backs of some of these photos, and we’ve tracked some more info from the cell phones he was using in prison. We want to make sure we haven’t missed anything.” Griffin picked up a sheaf of papers from the table. “Your friend, Beth Avery, e-mailed me this fairly detailed memo outlining several possibilities for who may be helping Colby in this area. She zeroed in on Joseph Northrup but indicated there were a few more experts who might be suspect. It’s very impressive.”

“She’s very impressive,” Kendra said.

“Well, Sims, our computer forensics specialist in Quantico certainly thinks so. I understand he and Zackoff have been in cahoots since I requested help after Stokes’s death. But the director wants him to work more closely with Zackoff, so Sims is flying in this morning. He should be arriving around noon. Sims will drop in here first. He wants to see what both our local people and Beth Avery have come up with. Then he’ll take a look at the documents and have her explain how she sourced them for her memo.”

“It’s based almost entirely on this material you’ve had in your possession for months,” Kendra said.

“Okay, I can see you want to rub it in,” Griffin said. “And it’s your right. We’re playing catch-up, I admit that. You’ve been looking for Colby for months, and we’ve only been on this for forty-eight hours.” He gestured to the piled Colby info on the table. “But we’re making progress. You can see we’re trying like hell.”

“Yes, I can see that.” He wanted her to praise him, exonerate him. But there in the conference room, surrounded by Colby’s mementos, Kendra felt the walls closing in on her. She tried desperately to push the sensation away from her. She’d had the same reaction when she last saw the man himself at San Quentin.

She drew a deep breath, trying to steady her racing heartbeat.

Power through it. If she let this rattle her, then the monster wins.

She couldn’t let that happen.

Lynch did not glance at her, but he gave her arm an unobtrusive squeeze. She felt a rush of gratitude. He alone could see what she was going through, but he wasn’t about to blow her lack of control in front of this roomful of agents.

“Fine,” Kendra finally said. She pulled out her phone. “I’ll text Beth and ask her to be here at noon for the meeting and bring her docs and source materials.”

“Thank you.”

Lynch quickly turned to Griffin and changed the subject. “Do you know for sure where Stokes was abducted?”

“We have a pretty good idea.” Griffin jerked his head toward the doorway. “I’ll show you.”

They followed him to another conference room just a few yards away. It looked positively barren compared to the room they had just left, but the two bulletin boards were filled with photographs of a home and driveway.

“Stokes never showed up for work that morning, but he’d made a few calls from home between seven thirty and eight.” Griffin pointed to a photo of a silver thermal travel mug lying on the driveway. “It looks like he was taken here as he was getting into his car. Autopsy results show that he had a fast-acting muscle relaxant in his system, so it’s likely he was caught by surprise and injected with it.”

“Was there anyone else at home?” Kendra asked.

“No, he lived alone. Divorced. His wife and three kids live with husband number two in La Jolla.”

“None of the neighbors saw anything?” Kendra pointed to some of the other photographs. “These houses look pretty close together.”

“Yes, but the driveway at that point has limited visibility. Colby chose his spot well.”

“He always has.”

Lynch was staring at a pair of blurry photos of a white van. “What’s this?”

“Neighbors did report a white van on the street, and one of them even puts it in Stokes’s driveway that morning. Traffic cams captured these between 8:15 and 8:25 that morning, with this van moving away from Stokes’s neighborhood.”

Lynch’s eyes narrowed on the grainy photos. “Can’t read the license plates, of course.”

“Of course. I’ll be the first to chip in whenever the hell this city decides to invest in some HD traffic cams. We’re trying to round up some security-camera footage in the area to see if we can get a better look at it. It’s a Ford Transit with fifty/fifty rear cargo doors and a 130-inch wheelbase. Naturally, there are about a million of those around. And Stokes’s neighborhood was just as ordinary. We were lucky that anyone even noticed the van.”

Kendra fought back a wave of sadness as she turned back to look at Stokes’s modest home. She hadn’t known about his failed marriage, and she realized that she actually knew very little about the man. They had only met a few days before, at the scene of that domestic homicide case. It seemed like so much longer ago that she and Stokes had made their introductions and discussed her work on the Van Buren investigation. She’d never imagined that just a few days later he would—

The Van Buren case.

She sharply turned away from the bulletin board.

He’d been so impressed that her lip-reading abilities had blown the case wide open. Is it possible that he—?

“I need to see the video of Stokes’s death,” she said abruptly. “Right now, Griffin.”

Griffin wrinkled his brow. “Once wasn’t enough for you?”

“Once is too much for anyone. But I need to look at it again in your A/V lab. It may need to be zoomed in and sharpened. Can you arrange that?”

Griffin still seemed mystified by her request, but he nodded. “Zoomed in, sharpened, forward, backward, or upside down. Any way you want to see it. Do you mind telling me why?”

“It may be nothing, but there’s a chance Stokes might have been trying to tell me something. I can’t be sure until I look.”

“We can go downstairs and have one of the A/V techs pull it up on his console. It’s the same guys who are combing security-camera footage for more views of that van. I can pull one of them off for a few minutes.”

“Thanks, Griffin. It’s worth a shot.”

*   *   *

FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, KENDRA, LYNCH, and Griffin stood in a small, windowless room looking over the shoulder of a chubby, young A/V tech named Nate Copley. Nate sat at his video console, looking up at a flat-panel monitor as he turned a shuttle-wheel control next to his keyboard.

Kendra felt a wrenching pang as Stokes’s agonized face appeared on the screen. “It was around five minutes before the end. Please skip as much of this as you can.”

“Gotcha,” Nate said. “I logged this myself. I hoped I would never have to see it again.”

Kendra turned around to avoid the Stokes video as it sped past. Behind them, a tech was at another console, scanning through parking-lot security-camera footage that also happened to capture a busy street. He slowed the footage whenever he saw anything that resembled the elusive white van, then resumed the high-speed scan each time it proved to be nothing.

Nate pointed to his monitor. “Around here?”

Kendra turned back to the monitor. “I think so … Go a little slower.” She studied the image. “Stop when you see Stokes’s head angle slightly to the right. It happens someplace around … There!” She touched Nate’s shoulder. “Play it at regular speed.”

She moved in for a closer view of Stokes’s final moments. His face twisted in agony, and his lips moved as if muttering a curse. Yet no sound came out.

He did it again.

“See that?” Kendra said. “Still no sound, but I think his lip movements were identical.”

Seconds later he did it once more, then settled back on the table in a state of collapse.

Kendra turned back toward Lynch and Griffin. “Stokes knew I broke the Van Buren case by reading the lips of the murderer on the phone at the crime scene. He might have been trying to tell me something.”

She turned toward Nate. “Can you zoom in on his face and play it again?”

He turned back the shuttle dial. “Yes, but it’s going to get blurrier. I’ll enhance it as much as I can.”

He scanned back and used his keyboard controls to zoom in on Stokes’s face. He used another control to adjust the sharpness, finally finishing with a setting that was slightly more defined than where they started.

She leaned forward, tensely examining the shape and movement of the detective’s mouth.

What are you saying to me, Stokes?

I’m here. I’m listening.

“Play it again, please.”

Nate punched a key and leaned back in his chair. “It’s now on a loop. It will keep repeating until you tell me to stop it.”

Lynch leaned closer to the monitor. “Can you even get a read from this angle?”

“It’s not the easiest, but I…” She was silent, her gaze on the ever-repeating video. Detach. Focus. Take the movements one at a time. Then bring them together. Her eyes narrowed. “Wingate!”

“What?” Griffin said.

“Hush.” She stared at the screen for a moment longer. “That’s it. I’m positive.”

“Wingate?” Griffin repeated.

“Yes. The ‘g’ is hardest to pick up, but you can see it bouncing on his throat.”

“You can see it,” Lynch said. “I can only trust you. But what does it mean?”

“I hope it’s someone’s name,” Kendra said. “How the hell do I know? But whatever it is, it was important enough to Stokes to get it out to me even though he was in agony.”

“It might be a name,” Griffin said. “Though it could be a street, a building, or a development of some kind. Or it could be the raving of a man out of his head with pain.”

Lynch shook his head. “Kendra is right, Stokes tried to get it across three times while he was being slowly murdered. And did it in a way that he knew that Kendra could pick up on it yet Colby wouldn’t.”

Griffin shrugged. “I’ve learned my lesson. I’m not about to overrule Kendra on anything to do with this case.” He picked the phone on the desk next to Nate’s workstation. “I’ll have my team start a search for it.”

“I want to help,” Kendra said. “Get me a desk and a computer.”

“Right away.”

Kendra couldn’t take her eyes off Stokes on the monitor screen, still locked in that loop. He was sweating and bleeding, mere minutes away from death. But there he was, still heroically giving his all.

Wingate.

Lynch House

10:25 A . M .

“OKAY, LET ME INTO that inner sanctum, Sam,” Beth called through the door. “I’ve got a tray, and I’m not going away.”

“I’m busy.”

“I’m not going away,” she repeated. “You very rudely refused to come to breakfast with Lynch and Kendra. Even though I took the trouble to cook. So now you have to eat alone. But you will eat, Sam.”

“It’s not rude to sacrifice myself to finding that son of a bitch. You have a wrong set of values.”

“Open the door.”

She heard him mumbling, but he was coming toward the door. The next moment, he’d thrown it open and stood scowling at her. “I’m not hungry.”

“Your stomach has probably shrunk in the last few days.” She sailed into the office, deposited the tray on the coffee table and settled in a corner of the couch. “I haven’t been able to get you to eat. Stupid, Sam. Very stupid. I let you get away with it because the pressure was over the top, but now you’re back to a steady pace.” She poured herself a cup of coffee. “Omelet, bacon, and toast. Eat.”

“Why don’t you go bother Kendra and Lynch?”

“They went to the FBI office. I just got a text from Kendra. They want me to come in for some kind of forensic computer meeting and bring the research and sources I’ve pulled together on Colby’s possible computer consultants.” She grinned mischievously. “Think maybe Griffin wants me to teach his people a thing or two?” She changed the subject. “But before I go anywhere, I want to see you eat.”

“So you’re going to stay and watch me?”

“Yes, because you’ll forget it’s there. Then it will get cold and unappetizing, and you won’t eat it even when you do remember.”

Sam sat down on the couch. “Nag.”

“Just doing my job.” She smiled. “I told Kendra that it was a competition thing between you and Griffin’s fair-haired computer guy.”

“Not true. I’m better than he is.”

“Without doubt.”

He nibbled at his bacon. “But Sims is smart, and I wouldn’t want him to think that he can get ahead of me. Just because he’s been up there in Quantico with those FBI directors kowtowing to him all those years is no sign that his thinking is any more innovative than mine. That would be embarrassing.”

“You’d live through it.” She tilted her head. “And you can’t tell me that you couldn’t get a job there with all that kowtowing if you wanted it.”

“Yeah, Sims has already mentioned it. I told him when I got as old as him, I’d think about it.”

“Ouch. How old is he?”

“Oh, fifty or so.” His smile was brimming with malicious mischief. “I couldn’t resist. He was being patronizing. Can you believe it? Patronizing to me.”

“Criminal. All I can say is that you’d better come out on top of this horse race.”

“I will. In the meantime, Sims is being helpful. We’re going at it from two different directions. He’s able to request logs from the Internet service providers for Kendra’s place, my house, and here, and he has a lot of resources at his disposal to analyze the data and try to figure out where Colby’s streams are coming from. I’m actually hacking a lot of those ISPs to find out the same thing. There’s some duplication of effort, but we each come up with stuff that the other can’t easily find.”

“I can see that. He has the full weight of the FBI behind him, and you have the freedom to skirt the law. That makes you a good team.”

He scowled at her. “But it’s not as if I’m with him night and day. For your information, we haven’t been online since yesterday afternoon. We just check in when one of us has had a breakthrough. Then it’s natural that we have to work together.”

“Perfectly natural,” she said solemnly.

“Do I detect sarcasm?” He glanced at his watch. “I don’t have time for this.”

“You do if I say you do. Eat. It’s the quickest way to get rid of me.”

He took his fork and began cutting his omelet. “I didn’t really say I wanted to get rid of you. I just don’t want you to interfere. I kind of like having you around.”

“Sam.”

“Okay, I told you that I have privacy issues when I’m working. It’s true. But lately, you’ve been like Old Dog Tray.”

“I beg your pardon.”

He chuckled. “You know, the dog that lies in front of the fireplace, and you don’t notice he’s there. But the song says he’s the best friend around.”

“How flattering … I think.”

“Look, you’re gorgeous and smart, but you don’t want me to flatter you. I save that for other women. You want the real thing.”

“Old Dog Tray.”

“Yeah, because it means something, like the way I feel about Kendra.”

“Are you saying that she’s Old Dog Tray, too?”

“In a way. We’ve been together for years, and we know we can count on each other.” He looked at her. “We’re like that now, aren’t we?”

She nodded, smiling faintly. “I believe we’ve fought our way through to that status.”

“Except I don’t know how you think sometimes. You know pretty much everything about me, but I don’t know—” He grimaced. “I didn’t ask Kendra much about how you got into that mental hospital. All I know is that you were imprisoned without cause.”

“But you’re asking now.” She was silent for a moment. “I saw something I shouldn’t have seen, and my grandmother wanted to get rid of me.”

“Something you shouldn’t have seen?”

“Murder,” she said baldly. “I was only a teenager, and I was easy to get rid of. I had a supposed skiing accident, a blow to the head, and she shipped me off to Seahaven, the posh mental hospital that she funded, to be ‘cared for’ by her tame crew of doctors.” She took a sip of her coffee. “And I stayed there for years and years. Until Eve and Kendra came to find me.”

“My God.” He shook his head. “Your grandmother?”

“She wasn’t your usual grandmother. She was beautiful, clever, and ambitious. And our relationship was … not warm and fuzzy.”

“I’d say that must be an understatement. What a nightmare.”

She nodded. “But it’s a nightmare I don’t allow myself to dwell on. It’s over, and I won’t let one moment of my present or future be held hostage by it.” She said fiercely, “I was a zombie in that place. They were planning on finally killing me when Eve found out she had a sister in that hospital. You can see why I’m grateful to you for helping to spring me.” She held up her hand. “So don’t you dare downplay what you did for any reason. I’m free, I live my life to the hilt, I learn something new every day.” She smiled. “Including bits and pieces of some of that computer know-how you dazzle everyone with. If I stay around long enough, I may even give you a run for your money.”

He nodded. “You might at that.” He cleared his throat. “And I’d like to be around to see it. You’re an extraordinary woman, Beth.”

“I’m getting there.” She finished her coffee. “Every day, every way, every person I meet.” She got to her feet. “You’ve finished everything but your coffee. I’ll let you work on that while you go back to your computers.”

“You could stick around.”

She threw back her head and laughed. “What a sacrifice. My sad story must have really impressed you. Don’t worry, I won’t take you up on it. That wouldn’t suit either one of us. I don’t have time to hold your hand even if you could stand me in here.”

“It wouldn’t be that bad.”

“No, because I wouldn’t do it.” She picked up the tray and headed for the door. “I’ll bring you a pot of coffee before I leave to go to the FBI field office. If you need anything else, let me know.” She slanted him a look over her shoulder. “You’re a good guy, Sam. And I suppose I have to forgive you for being so rude to me the first time we met.”

“It took you long enough.”

“I don’t forgive easily. Ask my grandmother.”

“What do you mean?”

Her smile was both enigmatic and teasing. “As Scheherazade said, that’s another tale.”

She closed the door behind her.

San Diego FBI Field Office

12:05 P . M .

“BETH AVERY, TOM SIMS.” Griffin smiled. “It should be the start of a beautiful friendship. You definitely have something in common.”

“You mean someone,” Beth said as she shook Sims hand. She had watched him speaking to Griffin’s other three local computer experts before Griffin had brought her forward to introduce her. She had been impressed. Confident but not lacking in respect for them or their work. He might be in his fifties as Sam had told her, but he was a young fifty. A lean, fit body, gray-streaked hair, tan skin with just a few wrinkles around his dark eyes, a great smile. “I didn’t realize you were going to be at this meeting. But it’s obvious now you are the meeting. Sam has been talking about you ever since you started working together. I’m very happy to meet you.” She grimaced. “But I’ll be more happy when you two finally manage to track Colby and aren’t working until the wee hours.”

“So will my wife. She’s becoming very impatient with me,” Sims said. “And I’ll be happy, too. I’d never admit it to Sam, but I’m not quite as spry as I once was. The tennis helps, but lack of sleep can be hell. If this case weren’t so important, I might have delegated it to someone else.” He ruefully shook his head. “But I couldn’t do it. Sam would have been scornful. And I would have been humiliated.”

“I don’t know how the two of you managed to get caught up in this rivalry.”

“Vanity,” Sims said. “I know it’s immature. But it’s getting the job done. We’re making amazing progress.”

“I know. Sam told me.”

“Sam tells you a lot, doesn’t he?” He gazed curiously at her. “He talks about you to me. Did you know that?”

“No, I’m sure it isn’t in-depth conversation. I’m just on the peripheral of Sam’s life.”

“No, the mention is always just in passing. But I could tell that there was a comfortable affection there.”

“Like Old Dog Tray?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Never mind. You would have had to have been there.” She grinned. “It was a conversation that Sam obviously kept from you.”

His brows rose. “Now that wasn’t kind.”

“Kind to Sam. Kind to you, too, really.” She chuckled. “And it might be the last break for a while since your director decided the two of you should work side by side. You’ll spur each other. Good for finding Colby, not so good for maintaining health and sanity.”

“You’ll keep us both in line.” Sims turned to her and smiled. “And, when all’s said and done, it’s finding Colby that matters, isn’t it?”

She patted the packet of resource materials she’d brought with her. “That’s what this is about. Do you want me to go through it with you?”

“How about we do it over lunch? I came right from the airport, and I’m starving.”

“Sure.” She grinned. “Though we should probably call Sam and invite him. After all, he seems to be your alter ego. Or maybe not, after the way he tried to kick me out of his office today.”

“He kicked you out? How rude. Then we definitely won’t invite him for lunch.” He motioned toward the elevator. “I’ve always wanted to try Kansas City Barbecue. I’m a Top Gun fan, and that’s the joint where Maverick and Goose hung out in the film. Before I discovered computers, I wanted nothing more in the world than to be a fighter pilot.”

Beth ruefully shook her head. “Boys and their toys.”