by Steven James
“Yeah, no problem.”
The woman handed her a smile. “Thank you. That’s very sweet of you.”
Then the lady, who was starting to remind Tessa of her second grade teacher, stood up slowly. And, using her cane for balance, she left her purse and her carry-on bag beside Tessa’s chair and walked gingerly toward the restroom.
At the impound yard, I learned that a video camera had been found in the abandoned car’s trunk and had been handed over to the evidence room at police headquarters. I had a feeling it was much more than a video camera.
When I arrived at headquarters, I took my laptop with me to the second floor, walked past the infirmary, and found room 211: the evidence room.
At most police stations, everyone calls this facility “the evidence room” rather than “rooms,” but nearly always, the “room” consists of a maze-like series of many narrow rooms, packed with shelves that are piled high with boxes labeled by year, by case, by type of crime.The officer in charge of the evidence room, a bearded man named Riley Kernigan, who appeared to be serving his last stint with the force before retirement, lowered his newspaper and greeted me with a languid smile.
As he glanced halfheartedly at my FBI badge, I asked him if I could see the sign-in sheet for the video camera. “Sure,” he said.
“But it’s empty. You’re the first guy interested in this thing.”
“Can I see the camera then?”
“Camera, yeah,” he said with a touch of sarcasm. “I’ll show you the video camera.” Obviously Kernigan didn’t believe it was a camera either. He pushed himself to his feet and led me past two narrow hallways to the storage room for current, unsolved cases. I saw the device sitting on the table beside a large duffel bag—the same kind of bag I’d seen the man carrying at the site of John Doe’s suicide.
A thick, foam protective wrap lay beside the duffel bag. I figured Kernigan had unwrapped the device when he checked it in.
The device that the impound guys thought was a video camera didn’t look like any video camera I’d ever seen. It had a digital display screen, laser targeting, radioactive stickers. I didn’t know how it worked, or what it did, but someone thought it was important enough to kill to get, and that was enough for me.
Officer Kernigan stood beside me, stared at it, and then shook his head. “Darndest thing I ever saw.”
The facts of the case were folding in on themselves like a great origami figure. I just wished I could guess what the final shape would look like.
“Can I have a few minutes?” I asked him.
“Take as much time as you like. Stay all afternoon if you want.”
He gave the device one last lingering glance and tossed his newspaper onto the table beside it. “I get off at five-thirty, though. Shift change. Just be done by then ‘cause I gotta lock up back here. Do me a favor and stick it back in the bag when you’re through.”
“Thanks, I will.”Then he returned to the front desk.
I needed to make a decision. This device was stolen from a secure military base, but, as far as anyone else knew, it had been destroyed in the fire. The only other person who knew it had been removed from the base was Austin Hunter, and he was dead.
No one else had signed in to look at it yet, but I knew that a lot of people would be looking for this thing. Most likely the military, maybe people from Drake Enterprises.
Maybe the men from Monday night.
And Shade, whoever he was.
It might be good to see who comes searching for it first …
I set my laptop up in the corner of the room, turned on the video chat camera and the computer’s digital video recorder. Even after the screen went to sleep, the built-in camera would continue recording. With the amount of battery life and memory on my computer, I could take six to eight hours of video if I needed to. I didn’t think any visitors would be suspicious of a computer in the corner of the room, nor would they notice the tiny display light indicating that the camera was on.
Before putting the screen to sleep, I changed the computer’s system settings to allow me to remotely access the hard drive through the Internet. This way I’d be able to run any of my programs even if I wasn’t able to retrieve the computer from the evidence room until evening.
Then, so that we wouldn’t lose track of the device again, I decided to hide it in plain sight … so to speak.
Wearing latex gloves, I carefully wrapped it in the newspaper Officer Kernigan had discarded beside me and then slid it behind a dusty box of evidence from a 1984 grand theft auto case. I needed to put something back into the black duffel bag but didn’t want to compromise the evidence from another case, so I rooted around in the drawers and the custodial closet of the evidence room, found a roll of duct tape, and set to work.
72
2:11 p.m.
Fifteen minutes later, when I arrived at the third floor conference room, I was pretty certain Margaret’s 2:00 meeting would have started already, but something had delayed them and they were still waiting to begin.
Oh, I was overjoyed.
Detective Dunn was sitting at the table, along with Lien-hua, two agents from yesterday’s meeting, and Lieutenant Aina Mendez, who’d probably come because of the connection between Cassandra’s abduction and the fire on the base. Officer Geoff Rickman stood in the corner talking with a man wearing a lieutenant’s badge. I suspected he might be Graysmith.
I took a seat, and a few moments later Ralph entered and settled into the chair beside me. “Well,” he said quietly. “How did it go with Tessa?”
“About as well as I expected.”
“She at the airport?”
“Yeah.” I glanced at my watch. “In fact, the plane’s probably boarding right about now. She’s got a layover in L.A. so she won’t get to Denver until almost seven o’clock tonight. I guess I’ll talk to her then.”
“Her bags’ll probably end up in Europe.”
“Maybe.”
“Good luck with all that. Let me know how things work out.”
“I will.”
I noticed that Officer Rickman wore his watch on his right wrist, and when he sat down, he picked up his pen with his left hand. The discarded leather glove at the arson site was from a left-handed person … Aina mentioned that a police officer’s prints had been found on it … I saw Ralph’s eyes shift toward the door, and then I heard Margaret enter, her heels clattering over top of, and then taking over, the quiet conversations happening all around the room.
I would have to follow up on Rickman later.
Margaret chose to stare at me while the people around us took their seats. “Dr. Bowers,” she said, her teeth gleaming. “FBI Director Rodale told me all about your tactfulness in dealing with the SDPD.
Congratulations. You’ve kept your reputation firmly intact.”
“Thanks, Margaret. I’ve been listening to these self-help podcasts.
It’s good to know they’re paying off. If you ever want to know the link, just say the word.”
She drew in a tight breath, looked at the clock on the wall, and then strode to the head of the table. Cleared her throat. “We have a lot to do, and we don’t have a lot of time to do it.” She paused and gazed around the room like an irritated librarian until everyone had stopped shuffling papers and had turned their attention to her.
“So far the only thing tying Neville Lewis to Cassandra Lillo’s abduction is his presence in the vicinity of the crime. But as you know, that’s not enough. In order to get a conviction we’ll need either incontrovertible eyewitness testimony, a confession, or ir-refutable physical evidence.”
“Cassandra doesn’t want to testify,” Lien-hua said. “She doesn’t even want to look at a lineup. She was quite traumatized. I’m not convinced she’s going to change her mind.”
“Without Cassandra we don’t have an eyewitness,” grumbled Detective Dunn.
“Wait, maybe we do,” I said. “Let’s bring in the woman who led us to the warehouse. Randi. Let�
��s talk to her.”
Ralph spoke up, “We’ve been trying to find her. Surprise, surprise, she seems to have disappeared.”“All right,” said Margaret impatiently, “we’ll work on that, but for now let’s move on to confession. Mr. Lewis says he’s afraid to talk to the police.”
Dunn grinned. “Of course he is. He knows if he talks to us we’ll get the truth from him and send him away to a prison full of guys who are always thrilled to have new mates to play with.”
“No, Detective,” Margaret said. “You missed my point. His lawyers say he doesn’t trust the police for his safety, that after he was in their custody at the warehouse, they failed to protect him.”
She glared at Lien-hua. Something passed between them. “They say that after he was cuffed and read his rights, one of the federal agents assaulted him. His lawyers brought in a doctor who says he has a bruised rib.”
Ralph leaned over, and I heard him whisper to Lien-hua, “That really was a nice kick.”
I don’t think Margaret heard his comment, but she cleared her throat once again regardless. “With all due respect to the San Diego Police Department, so far all of their efforts to get Lewis to talk have been unproductive. However, in return for not pressing charges against Agent Jiang or filing a civil suit against the FBI or the SDPD, Mr. Lewis’s lawyers informed us this morning that he would talk, but only to Agent Jiang. He requested her by name.”
That’s what Lien-hua had told me on the phone while I was at Balboa Park talking with Tessa, but it didn’t make sense. “How does he know Lien-hua’s name?” I asked.
“Well, I’m just speculating here …” Margaret blew a channel of stiff air between her teeth, making the sound of a machine leaking steam. “Maybe his lawyers told him her name while they were encouraging him to press charges against her for assault and battery. Now, if we could get back to the reason we’re here, we need to make a decision—will we accept their offer or not?”
“That’s easy,” Lien-hua said. “We accept. I’ll talk with him. I’ll find out what we need to know—”“Excuse me,” said Detective Dunn. “We arrested this guy in our jurisdiction. This is a local law enforcement matter. We’ll take care of it on our own.”
“I’m afraid it’s not as local as it appears,” Margaret said. “Tell them about the DVDs, Detective Dunn.”
He sat staring. Wouldn’t respond.
“Go on,” said Margaret. “Tell them that your criminalists found seven DVDs in the back room of the warehouse, each with the video of another woman wearing a red evening gown drowning in that tank.”
I heard shocked murmurs ripple around the room.
Margaret’s eyes left Dunn and she addressed the group as a whole once again. “So far we’ve been able to identify women from three different states, based on missing persons reports since November.
We’re working to identify the other four women, but this is un-equivocally not a local law enforcement issue. This is a federal matter.
And that’s why the FBI has taken over jurisdiction of the case.”
Seven murders since November would be an average of one murder every week or two, a remarkably high number. Usually serial killers have a cooling off period in between crimes. But not always.
Jeffrey Dahmer, who killed seventeen people, Gary Ridgeway, who killed at least forty-eight, and the nineteenth-century Chicago busi-nessman Herman Webster Mudgett who may have killed over two hundred, all averaged a victim or more per week during certain months of their criminal career. I was thinking of these grim statistics when I noticed that Dunn’s hands, which had been lying flat on the table, were now curled into tense fists.
“Margaret,” I said. “Were the videos posted online?”
“I was getting to that, Dr. Bowers,” she said tersely. “The answer is yes. The cybercrime division is removing the links, shutting down the sites, but I’m afraid that already, over four hundred thousand people have watched those women die.”
Twenty-first-century rubbernecking. Just thinking about it made me sick. “Did the criminalists find DNA, fingerprints, any physical evidence tying Lewis to the crime?”
Margaret shook her head stiffly. “The water from the tank you blew apart washed away any evidence from the area surrounding the scene. Imagine that? And Mr. Lewis was smart enough not to leave fingerprints on the DVD cases or the cameras. We tried voice recognition with the video of Cassandra but came up dry since the only audio was heavy breathing. Right now, to build our case, we need this man’s confession.”
“Then it’s settled,” Lien-hua said. “I’ll do it.”
“Then it’s not happening here at police headquarters,” Dunn said, “unless we can have an observer, namely me, present.”
“Well, then,” said Margaret. “We’ll move Lewis to the FBI field office.”
The lieutenant, whom I assumed to be Graysmith, finally spoke up. “I’m not sure FBI Director Rodale would appreciate how this investigation is being handled, Executive Assistant Director Wellington.” He laced the words assistant director with rich sarcasm.
Hmm. Maybe I could learn to like this guy after all.
“I’d like a few things clarified …” he continued, “since the matter will likely come up this weekend while Director Rodale and I are on the links in Phoenix. Just so I’m clear, explain to me why we can’t have one of our detectives present for the interrogation of a suspect who lives in our city, kills in our city, and was apprehended in our city? I’m a little fuzzy on that part of this whole deal you’re striking with the suspect’s lawyers, and I want to have my facts straight when Director Rodale asks me to fill him in on the case.”
Margaret gave Lieutenant Graysmith’s words a moment of quiet deliberation, tapped the table twice with her index finger, and said,
“All right. Dunn, you observe. Lien-hua interrogates. And we put this guy away. I’ll have his lawyers draw up the papers relinquishing his rights to file any charges.”She glanced at her watch. “The interrogation will start promptly at 3:35 p.m., exactly fifty minutes from now. In the meantime, I want everyone in this room pulling up whatever they can on Mr. Neville Lewis so that our interrogator can go in prepared. This meeting is adjourned.” And then, as people stirred from their chairs, Margaret added, “Agent Jiang, I’d like you to remain for just a moment.”
73
While I waited outside the door for Lien-hua to appear, I asked Aina to follow up on Officer Geoff Rickman. “I think he was at the fire,” I said.
“Rickman? But Dr. Bowers, I’ve already spoken with him. His fingerprints were on the glove.”
“There you go. That’s him then. He was there.”
“No,” she said. “He wasn’t assigned to the fire, but he received the gloves from the two criminalists and delivered them to the evidence room. Officer Rickman says that he made a mistake and touched the glove. He apologized.”
I’m sure he did. “He stepped in Austin’s blood yesterday, Aina, and his shoe prints matched one of the patent prints left in the hallway. If he wasn’t assigned to the fire, it’s possible he was one of the people responsible for starting it.”
“You memorized the shoe-print impressions in the soot?”
“Of course.”
She paused for a moment. “Well,” she said. “I’ll see what else I can learn.”
“Thanks.”
She disappeared down the hall, and as I was considering the implications to the case if Rickman really were Monday night’s arsonist, the door beside me banged open and Lien-hua fumed into the hallway. “What is it, Lien-hua? What did Margaret say?”
She spun, her eyes narrow, her lips drawn tight. “Margaret said that even if Lewis doesn’t press charges, it doesn’t change what I did. She said she can’t have an agent in the field who cannot control herself. She told me that after the interrogation, she’s putting me on administrative leave. Indefinitely.”
“What? You can’t be serious?”
Lien-hua stepped away. “I’m going to get read
y for the interrogation, Pat. I need some time by myself.”
Margaret wasn’t there last night. She didn’t see how things played out.
I thought back to the Sherrod Aquarium and the sharks’ feeding schedule. I wondered how long it would take them to devour a bony, forty-seven-year-old woman.
Tessa’s flight was supposed to have left thirty minutes ago, and the whole time she’d been waiting she’d been wondering just how long it would take before Patrick called to “monitor” her some more.
She figured that when he did, he would probably apologize all over the place for sending her back home.
Good.
He should.
She pulled out her cell phone and set it on her lap.
In the last fifteen minutes the grandmotherly lady had left for the restroom two more times, and Tessa felt bad for her. The woman looked pale and queasy, so Tessa wasn’t surprised when, once again, only a few minutes after taking her seat, she asked Tessa if she wouldn’t mind to watch her bags just one last time. “Is there anything I can do for you?” Tessa asked.
The woman shook her head. “That’s so kind of you to ask. Just the bags, dear. I think perhaps something I ate isn’t agreeing with me. I’m not used to this flying business, you know. I’ll be back in just a few minutes.” Then she looked warily out the window toward the runway. “You don’t think they might start boarding the plane?”
Tessa saw that the gate agent was faithfully earning her pay by reading a novel with a windblown, shirtless hunk on the cover.
“Doesn’t look like it. I promise I’ll come get you if they do.”
“You are a dear. Thank you.”
Then, the woman ambled toward the restroom again, and Tessa stared out the window at the wide-bellied planes asleep on the tarmac.
