Dead Center

by Susan Sleeman

  Gaines gave a clipped nod. “I was hoping you’d offer to do that so Sierra has the right scene to process.”

  “Should have the information for you in an hour or so.” Grady changed his focus to Ainslie. “You’ll stay here until I come back to get you, right?”

  She nodded.

  He gave her a tight smile and went to his truck to retrieve his equipment bag from the jump seat and took it to the location where the bullets had landed. He squatted and aimed a flashlight on the slug embedded in the step. He couldn’t be positive of the caliber until the bullet was removed and he could take a better look at it, but at first glance, he thought it was a .223 caliber, commonly used in the very popular AR-15. The semi-automatic rifle was used by many law enforcement agencies and was one of the top ten popular guns sold in America. A weapon that Wade would have no trouble getting his hands on. But it was also chambered for other caliber ammunition, so Grady was only making an educated guess.

  Now to figure out if the slug actually came from the suspected window. A precise measurement required a bullet to pass through two fixed objects. The second shot fired fit that requirement. It had pierced Ainslie’s kit and then lodged in the steps. Perfect for his needs.

  He took a longer look at it. Even with his naked eye, he could tell the shot had come from above, as the hole in the kit wasn’t perfectly circular like a straight-on shot would create. But he still needed details for when the shooter was called to account in a court of law. And he would pay. Grady would see to that personally. No matter how long it took or what he had to do.

  He set up his tripod holding a trajectory rod mount with an inclinometer—a device that measured angles and slopes. He passed a fiberglass rod through the hole and fixed it in place with an O-ring, then added additional lengths of rod to reach the step.

  He took his time and worked carefully, even with a clock ticking down in his brain, warning him to work fast and locate this shooter before he tried to take Ainslie out again. Even with the adrenaline still hyping up his actions. He breathed deeply to ward off the urge to hurry. He checked each step and measurement. Then double-checked. No way would he risk making a mistake and waste valuable time going to the wrong building just because he saw a flash, and then have to start over again. He had to forget about what he’d seen. Work the facts.

  He passed the rod through the stairs and started recording the measurements.

  “What did you find?” Drake asked from behind.

  Grady spun in surprise. With his focus fixed on his task, he’d missed hearing Drake approach. Big mistake that could’ve been deadly.

  “I’ve got the angle,” Grady said. “I’ll do my final calculations, and then we’ll know for sure where the cowardly shooter hunkered down for the kill.”

  “Not sure he’s all that cowardly,” Drake said, locking gazes with Grady. “If he’s willing to take shots with multiple police officers around, that makes him even more dangerous than we first thought. Starting now, we need to up our protection game, or the consequences could be fatal.”

  19

  The moment Ainslie hit the Veritas Center conference room to sit down with Drake and the partners—minus Sierra—the adrenaline flooded from her body. Grady still seemed hyped though. He didn’t talk about the bullet trajectory, and she was surprised he didn’t go to the shooter’s hide but had instead told Gaines where to find it.

  She’d asked Grady about it, and he’d said he wanted to get her to a safe location, then he would go back to the hide later. But it seemed like he was holding something back, and she hoped he would bring it up in this meeting.

  He stepped to the head of the table and ran his gaze over the others, who Ainslie was surprised to see that, despite the time of night, were alert and ready to work. He held up a marker. “Okay, so…ideas on how this shooter found Ainslie. Go.”

  “Before we start with that.” Nick set down his can of Dr. Pepper. “I just found something in Ethan’s computer files that you should know about.”

  “Go ahead,” Grady said.

  “There’s a vulnerability in Google Calendar when the calendar is shared with others. The information can be indexed by Google search engines and become public, leaking sensitive details like email IDs, event details, location, meeting links, and a whole lot more.”

  “Wait, what?” Blake gaped at Nick. “You’re saying that shared calendars are viewable on the internet?”

  Nick gave a solemn nod. “Anyone who has the skills to run the search or knows someone who does could know Ethan was attending the going-away party for his co-worker the night of the shooting.”

  Grady’s eyes widened. “And if they did indeed get his calendar information and knew where he was, they could set him up to take the fall for murder.”

  “Exactly.” Nick looked at Ainslie. “That wouldn’t be true for how the shooter found you tonight because the callout wasn’t on your calendar, but it’s a reminder that we could have a breach in your security. Like maybe the GPS in an app on your phone.”

  “Wait, back to the calendar,” Maya said, looking shocked. “Is Google offering a fix?”

  “Actually, a fix isn’t needed.” Nick leaned back in his chair. “If you share calendars, just set the calendar sharing to only say Free/Busy.”

  Maya shook her head. “Would’ve been nice of Google to tell people that.”

  “Yeah. This problem isn’t new and many experts have been issuing warnings for some time.” Nick frowned. “I should’ve thought to warn you all, but I didn’t because I didn’t think anyone uses it.”

  Grady stared at Nick. “So you think there might be a vulnerability on Ainslie’s phone?”

  “Not sure, but it’s possible.” He looked at Ainslie. “I can review your phone if you’d like.”

  “Yes, please!” She dug it from her purse.

  “I need you to turn off the password.”

  She nodded and navigated through the screens to turn it off then slid her phone across the table to him.

  Drake swiveled his chair to face her. “We might be complicating all of this when it could be as simple as someone followed you and Sierra to the scene.”

  “To be fair, we weren’t watching for a tail,” Ainslie admitted. “I should have, I guess, but…”

  Drake waved a hand. “I doubt you would’ve seen them anyway. Someone who can fire off a few rounds with officers around and get away has to have some evasion skills.”

  Grady scowled and wrote the two ideas on the board. “What else?”

  “Tracker on the van, but that’s very unlikely,” Blake said. “Still, I’ll check it out.”

  Kelsey looked at Ainslie. “You didn’t tell anyone where you were going, did you?”

  Ainslie shook her head. “I just took Sierra’s call and headed down to the lab.”

  Emory looked at her husband. “Could an officer have broadcast over their radio that Veritas Center staff were on scene?”

  “Hmm.” Blake tilted his head. “That would be odd, but it would make the information public on scanners.”

  He looked at Ainslie. “Who called Sierra?”

  “I took the initial call,” Maya said, taking his attention. “I’ll follow up to see what I can find out.”

  “So if we’re dealing with the same person who might’ve found Ethan’s calendar, then we should consider the person has computer skills.” Nick shifted to face Ainslie. “Do you have an app on your phone that helps you locate it if you lose it?”

  She nodded. “Find my iPhone.”

  “If that account is compromised, it’ll tell a hacker your exact position at all times.”

  She shivered and held his gaze. “Like right now he’d know I was here.”

  He gave a serious nod. “If you have GPS turned on, that is.”

  Ainslie shivered. “Gross.”

  “And scary,” Maya said.

  “I’ll make sure it’s turned off.” Nick picked up her phone and tapped the screen. “Yeah. You had GPS on. It’s off
now.” He looked up at the others. “FYI, I want to remind everyone never to globally set the GPS to on.”

  “But I use it all the time for my maps app,” Ainslie said.

  “That’s okay. Just fine tune your settings to allow only the apps you use to access GPS when you’re using them.” He smiled. “After I make sure your phone is clean, I’ll give you a crash course in security like I do for the partners.”

  “Yeah, he even reviews our phones monthly to make sure we haven’t managed to screw things up too badly.” Maya chuckled, but underneath the humor, Ainslie could see she was thankful for Nick’s help.

  “I can do that for you, too,” he said. “That is, if you want me to. These guys have to say yes because they have corporate phones and I don’t want to compromise center security, but your phone is personal so—”

  “I’d be glad for your help to keep on the straight and narrow.” She smiled at Nick.

  He laughed. “Hey, I can take care of your phone, but the rest is up to you.”

  Ainslie laughed with him and was glad for the moment of lightness. Grady on the other hand didn’t look so happy.

  “Any additional ideas here?” he asked, but received only head shakes in return.

  “Sounds like we need to get to work on figuring out how he found her.” Emory yawned and rubbed her belly.

  “I’m sorry that we got you up when you need sleep for the baby,” Ainslie said.

  Emory waved a hand. “I wasn’t sleeping. I was in the lab running DNA samples from Neil’s shirt. I hope to have results by this time tomorrow.”

  Guilt over having gotten a few hours of sleep when this pregnant woman had been working weighed heavily on Ainslie. “Thank you so much. It’s exciting to think we might be able to prove Wade bit Neil or his blood was on Neil’s shirt.”

  “There was blood?” Grady asked at the same time as Blake.

  Emory nodded. “Sierra found a few tiny drops on the shirt. Could be Neil’s blood. We won’t know until the process completes.”

  Grady faced Kelsey. “Any thoughts on this?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t find any injuries to suggest that Neil had bled, but I’m only dealing with the bones and the shirt.”

  “So, it’s strangulation then?” Maya asked.

  “As of now, yes.” Kelsey rested her hands on the table and formed a steeple with her fingertips. “But I’m not done examining the bones and have no official ruling.”

  “Since we’ve moved on to Neil.” Grady slashed a bright red line under Neil’s name on the whiteboard. “Blake, can you put pressure on the police to get Ethan’s gun and Wade’s CT scan?”

  Blake frowned. “Pressure isn’t going to help in this situation, and I don’t want to step on Malone’s toes. But I can follow up with her.”

  “That would be great,” Ainslie said, wanting to encourage him when he was looking so frustrated.

  “Okay, are there any other updates while we’re together?” Grady asked, scanning his partners.

  Blake nodded and told everyone about the cash payoff Ethan made for Wade. “Unfortunately, I struck out on getting any video, so that’s a bust.”

  Ainslie was honestly glad for that, as she didn’t want to see her brother walk the fine line of committing a crime. And she sure didn’t want these wonderful men and women to see it either.

  Nick’s phone dinged. He looked at it and pumped his fist. “Yes! The swat call came from the same bar where Ethan attended the going-away party.”

  Ainslie didn’t see why he was so excited. “That’s not good news, right? They don’t have security cameras, so we can’t possibly see who made the call.”

  “We can interview the staff, though,” Blake said, the frustration in his expression lifting a fraction. “If one of them saw our caller, we can have them work with a sketch artist.”

  “I’d be glad to do the sketch,” Kelsey offered. “Assuming of course that I’m done examining Neil’s bones. He takes priority.”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Grady warned. “We first have to find someone who saw the caller.”

  “I’ll need to get a look at the bar’s router.” Excitement lingered in Nick’s tone. “That way I can see the MAC address of the device that made the VoIP call.”

  “MAC as in an Apple device?” Ainslie asked.

  Nick shook his head. “MAC stands for Media Access Control. It’s a hardware identification number that’s manufactured into every network card and uniquely identifies each device on a network. Means I can see each device that accessed the bar’s Wi-Fi that night.”

  “Is there a database of these MAC addresses so we can trace the device to the owner?” she asked.

  “Unfortunately, no. But the trail left by the device might take me to another lead.”

  Ainslie wished they had more to go on, but it was still a solid lead. She looked at her watch. “We should head over there the minute they open.”

  “Not we,” Grady stated. “You need to stay here where you’re safe.”

  “We’ll see.” She didn’t want to argue with him in front of his team, but when the meeting broke up, she went straight to him. “I really want to go to the bar with you.”

  He folded his arms over his broad chest. “Putting your life in danger isn’t necessary when I can take care of it.”

  “I can’t just sit here and do nothing. I need to do this. To help Ethan. I just have to.” She put as much force into her words as she could, but he stood rigid and unyielding.

  She needed an ally. She turned to Drake. “Can you join us for a minute?”

  He headed their way. He looked at them, and his steps turned hesitant. “How can I help?”

  “I want to go to the bar to interview the staff,” she said. “Grady thinks I might be putting myself in danger if I go.”

  “He’s right.”

  Not the answer she wanted. “You’re an expert in safely transporting people. Is there a way that the risk can be minimized so it’s safe for me to go?”

  “Yeah, sure,” he replied. “We could use a vehicle the shooter wouldn’t connect to you. Have you lie down on the floor in the backseat and proceed that way. Should be a piece of cake. As long as Grady doesn’t drive. The shooter’s likely connected him to you by now, and that would be a dead giveaway.”

  Grady tightened his arms. “I’m not letting her go without me.”

  “Sorry.” Drake widened his stance. “If you want her to be safe, then you need to meet her at the bar.”

  Grady eyed her. “I don’t want her to go at all, but what I want doesn’t seem to matter.”

  Ainslie didn’t want to force Drake to endure this argument any longer. “Can you make the arrangements and let me know when we’ll be ready to go?”

  “I’m sure I can get a couple of my brothers to help.” Drake offered Grady an apologetic look and strode to the other side of the room, taking out his phone as he went.

  She moved closer to Grady. “I don’t want to go against your wishes. I hope you know that.”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “I just feel compelled to do this. I can’t explain it. It’s almost like needing to breathe. I’ve had to sit on the sidelines for most of this investigation. If I can do something here and do it safely, then I need to.” She rested a hand on his arm. “Please try to understand.”

  “I’m trying.”

  She sought a way to better explain. “You have siblings. What if one of them was in Ethan’s situation? Would you sit by?”

  “No, but then I carry a gun and can protect myself.”

  “Can you?” She removed her hand and peered up at him. “From everything? What about that sniper shot? Could you protect yourself if someone wanted to take you out that way?”

  “No,” he admitted and shifted his feet. “Not if it was a long distance shot.”

  She didn’t like to cause him to admit his vulnerability when it clearly didn’t sit well with him. “You trust Drake’s assessment of the situatio
n and his transport skills, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Nick has my phone, so I can’t be tracked that way. There really is no way anyone will know where I’m going except you, Drake, and whoever he brings in to help.”

  “Okay.” Grady let his arms fall to his sides. “I don’t like it, but I get it. Just promise me you’ll listen to Drake and not take any chances.”

  “I promise,” she said and meant it. After all, she didn’t have a death wish. She just had a wish to free her brother from jail.

  Grady climbed the rickety stairs in the apartment building where the shooter had hunkered down to take shots at Ainslie. He stepped down a hallway that carried a mixed odor of human filth and coffee. Near an open door, he spotted syringes discarded in the corner. Clearly not a quality establishment.

  He continued to the location he’d identified in his trajectory calculations and stepped through the door to a one room apartment. Sierra, still dressed in her Tyvek suit, was squatting in front of an open window, long tweezers in hand.

  “Find anything?” he asked, really hoping she had a strong lead for him.

  She spun, her gloved hand going to her chest. “You scared me.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “I should’ve given you a warning call-out.”

  She stood and took a long breath then blew it out and took another, her Tyvek suit ballooning with the effort. She grabbed a capped vial that looked empty and held it up. “I found a single strand of hair. Curly. Black. Was caught in a rough gouge on the window frame. Unfortunately, no follicle so no DNA.”

  “But you can do something with it, right?”

  “Maybe.” He’d never heard her sound so hesitant.

  “Maybe what?”

  She stowed the vial in her kit. “This is a real long shot.”

  “Doesn’t matter. We’re at the point where we need to do everything we can.”

  She rested her hands on her hips. “Researchers I know have developed a method that can identify a person from as little as one centimeter of a single strand of hair.”

  Impressive. “How?”