by Spencer Kope
A magnificent Christmas tree stands framed in the large front window of the room to the left, and you can see other decorations throughout the house.
“Hard to believe Christmas is three days away,” I say quietly.
“Two and a woo,” Jimmy says, reverting to military slang for two days and a wake-up.
I didn’t quite understand the term wake-up the first time he used it four or five years ago, but I guess in the military a day doesn’t get full credit if the event you’re waiting for is first thing in the morning. And since Christmas begins first thing in the morning, we don’t have three days to wait, just two and a woo. It sounds so much closer that way.
“Seems like a nice little family,” I say, watching the Hatanakas. “Which one do you think is Lorcan’s accomplice? My money is on the little guy at the end—youngest son and all that. Probably has mommy issues.”
Jimmy chuckles from his gut, and it’s good to hear.
“Yeah, I think we can cross them off the suspect list.”
“Even Short Round?”
He looks at me in all seriousness. “The Hatanakas are Japanese.”
“So?”
“Short Round was Chinese; you know that, right?”
“He was?”
“Short Round from Indiana Jones?” Jimmy asks by way of clarification.
“Yeah; the little kid.”
“He was Chinese,” Jimmy repeats. “He was a juvenile pickpocket on the streets of Shanghai when he met Indiana Jones.”
“I don’t remember that from the movie.”
“It wasn’t in the movie,” Jimmy says. “I read it somewhere.”
Now it’s my turn to chuckle. “You’re a bigger geek than I am.”
* * *
We continue along the sidewalk, now making our way to the shadow-veiled house three doors south of the rental. The dark, hunched shape is an adumbration, a shadow within a shadow, and it sets my skin to crawling.
I suppose that’s just the way of it: When you stare into darkness too long, it’s hard not to shiver, wondering what might be staring back. And when you’ve seen the horrific things Jimmy and I have, the shivering part comes easy.
Our chatter dies away as we draw near, and though we try to look inconspicuous to any who might be watching, I notice that we’re both staring intently, dissecting the house with our eyes. I don’t know what Jimmy’s looking for, but I’m sifting through shine, looking for any hint of Melinda … or Erin … or Debra. I’m looking for the shine of nine different women, seven of whom are already dead.
I find nothing.
Like the other homes in the community, this one sits on a half-acre lot. It’s a distinctly modern home with a wide driveway not of poured concrete, but of individually placed tan pavers. The three-car garage at the left has doors that imitate those of a barn or stable. An aggregate walkway covered in shine branches off the driveway and leads to a front door, which is framed by sidelights and capped by an elaborate transom.
It’s clear at a glance that the lawn and landscaping are tended by others.
Lorcan has rarely walked his lawn or stepped close to admire the exquisite flower beds. A cast-iron seat completely encircles the trunk of a glorious weeping willow in the front yard, and yet it’s a bench where he’s never sat, a tranquil spot never enjoyed.
A moment later, our feet carry us beyond the house. At the end of the block, we cross the street and turn north, coming by for another pass on the other side of the road, just two guys out for a walk in the middle of December … in the dark … in the rain.
When we get back to Gus, I start the engine and turn the heat all the way up. When the windows fog up I turn on the air-conditioning and in a few minutes we’re both warm and the windows are clear.
“Let the waiting commence,” I whisper into the quiet of the night.
* * *
In Hollywood, they make stakeouts fun, so much so that it’s been the premise of entire movies. The problem is that Hollywood only shows the last one percent of a stakeout. No, make that the last one percent of the last one percent. If they showed the whole thing, it would be one long and boring movie.
Jimmy and I have done our share of stakeouts, so we know what to expect. For the next two hours we sit and not much of anything happens. About every twenty minutes I fire up Gus and defog the windows. We listen to Christmas music on the radio and stare absently at the festive lights around the neighborhood, but mostly we wait.
* * *
The dash clock says 8:47 P.M. when a blue BMW SUV passes us by and then slows. It’s the fourteenth vehicle we’ve seen in the last hour, and when I see it approaching in the rearview mirror, I whip off my glasses and try to catch a glimpse of the driver, just as I’d done thirteen times before.
“It’s him,” I say, staring after the vehicle.
The BMW turns into Lorcan’s driveway at the same moment the right-hand garage door begins to roll open and a light comes on inside, giving us a good look at the interior. The distinctive shape of a black Toyota FJ is clearly visible in the far-left stall, while the middle sits empty. There’s no silver Honda Accord. And then the BMW is inside and the door comes down.
We watch as the lights come on in the house … and we wait for the Onion King—Lorcan Child—to once more come into view. We wonder if Melinda Gaines is right in front of us and just beyond our reach.
“Let’s just go in,” I say with resolve, staring at the house.
Jimmy understands my frustration. “We could do that,” he says patiently, “but without a warrant or probable cause, everything in the house becomes fruit of the poisonous tree, inadmissible as evidence. You know that. A guy like Lorcan, with his resources and computer skills, he could change his name, relocate anywhere in the world, and just keep doing what he’s doing. Instead of ending this, we’d just condemn more women to the same.”
He watches me a moment as I stare out the windshield. “Besides,” he continues, “I hate lawsuits, and if we go in without probable cause, he’s going to sue us for violating his civil rights, and he’ll win.”
“You’re sure we don’t have enough for a warrant?”
“Yes,” he replies simply. “You and I know he’s the guy, but that’s only because of shine. Without that, what do we have? Cepa means onion, but so what? He could easily argue that it’s an acronym for something. He has access to the computers at BrightPath Wellness, but again, so what? Everyone on the janitorial staff has access.”
Jimmy repositions himself in the passenger seat, seemingly uncomfortable with the truth in his own words. “The strongest argument we could probably make relates to the hacking job at the Clallam County jail, and even that’s weak. Still, with Lorcan’s computer expertise, we could try to convince a judge that he adjusted Murphy Cotton’s bail and then used a stolen or hacked credit card to pay the bail. The problem is that a guy like Lorcan doesn’t leave a digital trail, so once again we have no actual proof.”
He sighs in exasperation. “I was hoping you’d find his shine on one of those password lists. We probably could have convinced the staff to let us dust them for prints, especially if they thought they’d had a security breach.”
“I thought you said we couldn’t use any prints from the offices.”
“Yes and no,” Jimmy replies. “His cleaning duties allow him access to the office, the desk, the keyboard, the mouse—all the places you saw shine. But he’s got no business inside the desks. That would have been a game-changer.”
“What if BrightPath finds no evidence of after-hours access?”
Jimmy smiles. “They’ll find it, trust me.”
The burst of confidence is reassuring, but it doesn’t do anything for us right now, and I’m still not ready to concede the night.
“What about exigent circumstance?” I suggest a few minutes later.
Jimmy shakes his head. “We don’t even know where Melinda’s being held. If we heard screaming coming from the house, or saw him dragging her past a wind
ow, we’d be golden, but we’ve got nothing.”
* * *
We watch for another hour, mostly in silence, and then Jimmy says the words I’ve been dreading: “Let’s head home.”
I start Gus and buckle my seat belt. Then I just sit there, holding the wheel. “Are we really going to leave her…?”
“She’s probably not here,” Jimmy tells me yet again, and I want to believe him, but as I roll by the big house I feel something drop in my stomach.
“Sorry,” I whisper to the darkness.
I feel Jimmy’s hand on my shoulder, but it doesn’t help.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Tuesday, December 23
Tuesday morning passes in a haze of examination and reexamination. The reports and photos and pages of the case are once again laid out on the conference room table like a cascading horror show. Though the Onion King has finally been unmasked, we’re left tiptoeing across the razor’s edge between knowing something and being able to prove it to a jury.
To make matters worse, the hours have begun to stack one upon the other, growing into a pile that will soon be crowned with Melinda’s death if we don’t figure things out.
One new report has been added to the field of paper.
It’s the confirmation that BrightPath Wellness’s secure database had indeed been breached, and a request from the CEO to keep them in the loop as the investigation develops. As expected, the list of client files that were accessed over the last three years includes Murphy Cotton and eight of the nine victims. The only one missing from the list is Sheryl Dorsey.
The report should be good news, but it sets a dark mood. In addition to the names we were looking for, we find another hundred and forty-seven client files that were accessed, all of them women, and all of them the same general age range.
Diane has already worked through the list, and none of the women have been reported missing. Most likely these are just potential victims, women who appealed to Lorcan, women who are now at risk.
The Onion King has been busier than any of us imagined.
Throughout the morning, Diane remains cloistered in her office, completely obsessed with Lorcan Child and determined to take him down, singlehandedly if need be. At eleven A.M. she emerges long enough to mention a possible shell company, this after finding something that piqued her interest on FinCEN, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. Since then, she’s been bottled up in her office.
* * *
Jimmy is reclining in a conference room chair, staring at the ceiling, when we finally hear the steady clump of Diane’s shoes descending the stairs. Like dogs at feeding time, Jimmy and I are upright in our chairs and facing the door when Diane makes her entrance. Instead of throwing us a bone, she takes a seat between us and leans back in the chair, stretching her neck out and staring at the ceiling, just as Jimmy had been doing a moment earlier.
We don’t say anything; we just watch, knowing that it’s pointless to push.
“So,” she says at length, “it looks like Lorcan has been laundering money through a shell company in Grand Cayman.”
“Grand Cayman?” I ask.
“It’s in the Caribbean,” Jimmy explains, “south of Cuba.”
“Correct,” Diane says, “and it’s notorious as a tax haven. The place has twice as many registered companies as it does people. Lorcan owns a condo in Grand Cayman, as well as assets in other locations, all registered to the shell company.”
“This just gets stranger and stranger,” Jimmy mutters.
Diane lifts her left eyebrow as if to acknowledge the fact. “I’ll give him this, he’s the most technologically sophisticated sociopath we’ve—” She stops in midsentence, as if suddenly struck by something. Tilting her head slowly to the side, she looks at me through narrowing eyes. The furrows rise on her forehead, as if they have questions. “You said you went back to BrightPath looking for a list of passwords—” she begins.
“It was a no-go,” Jimmy interrupts.
We can’t exactly tell Diane that the real reason we were looking for the lists was to see if the Onion King had handled them. Better to pretend we found nothing than have her asking too many questions about subjects we can’t discuss.
“Fine,” she says dismissively, “but did you look for a key logger?”
Jimmy and I stare at each other.
“A what?” he finally asks.
“A key logger,” Diane repeats. “It looks a bit like a thumb drive, but it would have been on the back of the central processing unit, where everything plugs in.”
“We didn’t look on the back of the CPUs,” Jimmy admits.
“What’s a key logger?” I ask.
“Key loggers are used to steal passwords and other private information. They’re small enough that you can plug them into one of the USB ports on the back of the CPU, and then all you have to do is plug the keyboard into the key logger and everything the user types is captured on flash memory.” She shrugs. “Lorcan could have placed one in about ten seconds; then all he had to do was wait. He could have retrieved it the next night, or weeks later.”
“And it logs everything that’s typed?” Jimmy confirms.
“Usernames, passwords, case reports, emails—anything and everything.”
Jimmy is out of his seat so fast it startles me.
“Where are you going?” I shout after him.
“Phone call,” is all he says.
* * *
The office manager in Seattle is skeptical and barely cooperative when she answers the phone, but she does as Jimmy requests and checks the back of every computer, including those used by the support staff.
“Okay, thank you for checking,” Jimmy says a few minutes later, disconnecting the call. He gives me a barely perceptible shake of his head and then dials the number for the Burien clinic.
The manager in Burien is about as receptive as the one in Seattle, but since Jimmy’s request doesn’t appear to violate HIPAA regulations, she goes through the motions. We hear her pull out the first CPU, her voice slightly strained as she crouches and looks for anything out of place.
“I don’t see anything like what you’re describing,” she says, “but, honestly, I’m not a computer person. It could be right in front of me.…” She lets the implication trail off.
“Is there anyone there who knows their way around a computer?”
“Half the office is off for the holidays,” she replies, not really answering the question. “What if I take a picture and send it to you?”
“Uh … sure,” Jimmy says. “Are you going to send pictures of all the computers?”
“I suppose; if that’s what you need.”
He gives her his email address and then she puts him on hold.
After we listen to five minutes of Christmas instrumentals on the speakerphone, she picks up again. “Okay, I just sent them.”
An empty message with no subject and twelve attachments pops up on Jimmy’s screen. Keeping the office manager on the line, he scrolls through the images. Diane hovers behind him, which is odd, since we’re usually the ones doing the hovering.
“Right there,” she suddenly says, jabbing a finger at the screen and circling a small rectangular item plugged into one of the USB ports. It looks like a thumb drive, just like she said.
“Jemma,” Jimmy says into the phone. “I need you to go take a look at the computer associated with the eighth photo.” It takes her a minute to get to the CPU, and then Jimmy tells her exactly what she should be looking for.
“I see it,” she says at last.
“Good. Without touching it, can you follow the cord from the keyboard and tell me if that’s where it plugs in?”
The response is faster this time. “It does.”
Jimmy lifts a fist in triumph and practically jumps out of his seat, but to Jemma he sounds perfectly calm. “That’s excellent, Jemma. I’m going to call the FBI’s Evidence Response Team and have them send someone over to collect i
t. If you need a warrant, we can get one, but technically speaking, the key logger doesn’t belong to BrightPath, right? It could be considered lost property.”
This seems to work for Jemma.
* * *
With the holiday traffic, it takes the Evidence Response Team almost two hours to drive from the FBI’s Seattle Field Office on Third Avenue to the clinic in Burien, retrieve the key logger, return to their office, and dust the miniature surveillance device for prints.
The last update from the ERT was a few minutes ago: one nearly complete print was recovered from the small device. They’re running it for a match right now. Even Diane joins us as we huddle around Jimmy’s cell phone in the conference room, waiting to pounce at the first ring, waiting for word.
I’ve watched the fingerprint analysis process a hundred times, so I can almost picture in my head what they’re doing at the Seattle office: loading the print, beginning the query, waiting for the hit.
When Jimmy and I first started, a lot of agencies were still using AFIS, the Automated Fingerprint Identification System. Since then, the Next Generation Identification, or NGI, system has become standard. It houses over a hundred and twenty million criminal and civilian fingerprint records, including those of Lorcan Child, who was fingerprinted when he was booked for rape seventeen years ago. NGI is much faster and more accurate than its predecessor and can process a print in a fraction of the time it took AFIS. That’s why I’m not surprised when the phone rings a few minutes later.
“Donovan,” Jimmy says, answering before the first ring dies away.
A quiet, indecipherable voice on the other end of the phone makes static for a moment, and then Jimmy says, “Thank you,” in a flat, disembodied voice. He ends the call and places the phone on the table before him.
My heart skips a beat.
I’m suddenly worried that the print might not belong to Lorcan at all. What if the Onion King is again one step ahead of us? What if the print belongs to another Murphy Cotton, some employee or worshipful disciple addled by mental illness? I try to push the thought down, but such ideas are hard to displace once they take root.
