Cutting Edge: A Novel of Suspense

by Allison Brennan

  Anya missed you.

  Maggie knew that no one missed her. No one wanted her. Anya and the professor had been so wrapped up in each other, now they were gone. Jonah Payne had his work and now he and his research were gone, destroyed.

  But Maggie wasn’t done.

  She pulled on a thin dress that she had stowed in a bathroom cabinet before Cole had come home. Slipping on her sneakers, she was about to leave the way she came through the side door and across the open field in the back to where she’d parked when she saw the cat door.

  Why hadn’t see noticed it before?

  She rummaged through the kitchen until she found cat food, then shook the box until a small, black cat slipped through the kitty door. She scooped him up and he purred loudly. “Aren’t you sweet?”

  She smiled and rubbed her face against his furry neck. Then she left with the cat and his food, with no thought of the dead man.

  CHAPTER

  NINETEEN

  “Jimsonweed,” Nora said when she walked into the FBI conference room five minutes late for the briefing she’d called.

  She dropped her briefcase and slid a stack of stapled papers to Rachel and motioned for her to take one set and pass the rest along.

  “Jimsonweed?” Pete asked from the back of the room.

  “Specifically, Datura stramonium. Commonly known as jimsonweed. It grows in warm, dry climates, particularly areas that are wet during the winter but completely dry in the summer. There are several areas in the valley where it can be found. It’s easily recognizable, and too often teenagers use it to get high since, in small doses, it causes hallucinogenic effects.”

  “So it was an accident?” Rachel asked. “They were trying to get high?” She frowned.

  “They left a suicide note,” Pete pointed out.

  Nora said, “Even in a fraction of the amount they consumed, they wouldn’t have survived. The boys had twice the level as Anya, which is why she held on a bit longer. But even if she’d been found immediately, chances of survival were next to none. The poison is deadly and paralyzing, which was why they couldn’t leave the room for help.”

  Pete said, “Why would they kill themselves with a drug that was going to cause such a violent reaction?”

  “Good question,” Nora said.

  Rachel was reading from the coroner’s notes. “The iced tea they drank was brewed with jimsonweed leaves? That’s insane. What’s this about orange peels?”

  “The iced tea was essentially liquid poison,” Nora explained. “It was heavily sweetened with liquid sugar and orange peels to disguise the bitter taste.”

  “Disguise? Because they didn’t want to taste it or because they didn’t know?”

  “That’s the million-dollar question,” Nora said.

  “You’re thinking this might be murder?” Pete asked.

  “Murder or murder-suicide,” Nora said. “I spoke with two witnesses yesterday relating to Anya Ballard’s demeanor in the hours leading up to her death.”

  The conference room door opened. Entering was Agent Steve Donovan from Violent Crimes, who doubled as the ERT team leader. Donovan nodded to Nora and sat down next to Pete.

  “Both witnesses who saw Anya within hours of her death,” she continued, “said that Anya was upset, but had made plans with them for that week. Highly unusual for someone contemplating suicide. We also learned that Anya had a roommate last year who may have been involved with the arsons. Maggie O’Dell. Rachel? What did you find on her?”

  “No California driver’s license. I called the college and they won’t release her records without a warrant. I called the U.S. attorney’s office with the information and they’re supposed to get back to me.”

  “Follow up in an hour if you don’t hear from them. Our probable cause is that she’s wanted as a person of interest in the ongoing domestic terrorism arson investigation. We need that information today.” Nora had another thought. “Hey, go down to Rose College and look through the yearbooks in the library, see if we can get a picture. Check the school newspapers as well. If that fails, ask around the dorm and see if anyone has a picture of her. Picture, address, any information about where she might be.”

  “I can go now, unless you need me here.” Rachel gathered her papers.

  “Great, go now. Finding O’Dell is a priority. And when you get a picture, send it to Sara Ralston in the Reno office. She’ll know what to do with it. Oh, and on your way out ask Jason to surf the Internet and look for any Rose College websites with captioned photos, if the three dead students had blogs or websites, anything that might yield information about Maggie O’Dell.”

  Rachel left and Pete said, “Is she a suspect?”

  “I’d say a person of interest,” Nora said. “At present, we have no physical evidence that Maggie O’Dell was involved with the arsons, or that she was involved with the poisoning, or that she is even in town. One witness implied Maggie was involved, but had no personal knowledge of her involvement. So I want to talk to her.”

  She turned to Steve Donovan. “Steve? You have an evidence report?”

  “I sent you an email with the findings for your records. The blood at Payne’s Lake Tahoe house is Payne’s. We confirmed that he was in Lake Tahoe Saturday afternoon. A neighbor saw him walking outside about four o’clock. Payne waved to him, they chatted for a few minutes. The neighbor is a full-time resident, knew Payne casually. He said Payne seemed like he always did, happy but preoccupied. The neighbor invited him for dinner, which Payne declined. Apparently there’s nothing unusual about that, either. He usually declines.”

  “You checked with other neighbors?”

  “It’s very secluded in his little area. Can’t see any other houses from Payne’s house, there’re lots of trees. It’s not one of the places with a grand lake view. You can only see the lake if you crane your neck on the far corner of the deck. But it’s nice and private.”

  Private enough that you can be murdered and no one will hear, Nora thought. She was about to ask another question when Steve added, “The neighbor gave me the contact information for the house closest to Payne, which is owned by a San Francisco couple. They were up for the weekend and left Sunday night. I spoke to the husband who said he saw a dark-colored truck he didn’t recognize parked in Payne’s carport, next to his Jeep. He didn’t think much of it, except that he hadn’t noticed it on Saturday when he walked past the property.”

  “He didn’t by chance get a license plate?”

  Donovan shook his head. “But Scott Edwards has a 2003 dark blue Ford F-150 registered in his name. It has a camper shell.”

  “Bingo,” Nora said. “You could have woken me with that information.”

  “I talked to the witness ten minutes before I walked in here.”

  “Where’s the truck?”

  “I contacted the sheriff’s department and they don’t have it. I sent a tow truck and an agent to the college to impound it. Anya Ballard has a Volkswagen Beetle, one of those new trendy ones, and that’s next up on the tow list. The other dead student didn’t have a car registered to him. We’re looking into two vehicles that are registered to his parents to see if he regularly used one.”

  “Great job. Let me know what you find and put out a BOLO on all vehicles. We don’t know whether Maggie O’Dell had access to them, and since she has no car registered in her name she may have taken one of theirs. Keep in mind that they transported ducks late Sunday night, that could tie them to the crime scene.”

  “She doesn’t have a driver’s license,” Steve pointed out.

  “She doesn’t have a California driver’s license,” Nora said, “but she could be from anywhere. And even if she has no license, that wouldn’t stop her from driving.” Nora’s mother never had a driver’s license, but they’d borrowed plenty of cars. Lorraine had never been pulled over.

  Steve made a note. “Pete and I spent half the night going through the evidence from the dorm rooms,” he said. “We sent Anya Ballard’s journals to Q
uantico for comparative analysis against the letters that were sent to the media claiming credit for the arsons. The one thing we noticed right off is that so far we have found nothing in her room, or the boys’ room, that has evidence of brewing the iced tea that killed them. No utensils, no containers, no jimsonweed leaves. But this morning when I was going over the logs, I saw that the sheriff’s department had documented four glasses with the tainted tea.”

  “Four?”

  “I triple-checked, and there were definitely four. I reviewed the crime-scene photos and there was one glass on the dresser, full.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “Bagged, the tea sealed, but there were some problems.”

  “What problems?”

  “The glasses were bagged properly, but they were labeled wrong. They were numbered, but no one put the numbers in the logs so we don’t know who had which glass. Trace is currently printing the glasses, but we can’t definitively state which glass was on the dresser.”

  Pete said, “Whichever glass doesn’t have one of the three kids’ prints.”

  “What if one of the dead kids handed out the drinks? What if the glass was meant for someone who didn’t show?”

  Nora straightened. “What if someone pretended to drink, then left?”

  “You mean chickened out at the last minute?” Ted asked.

  “I mean never intended to drink the tea in the first place. It could be first-degree murder if the three dead students didn’t know their tea was poisoned.” She said to Steve, “Make printing those a number-one priority. Maybe we’ll get lucky. Do you have Ballard’s computer? An address book or cell phone?”

  “Yes, but we haven’t gotten to her computer yet.”

  “When you go through her things, specifically look for anything about Maggie O’Dell.”

  “Will do.”

  “Anything else?” she asked.

  He grinned. “That’s not enough?”

  She smiled. “It’s great.”

  “I have one more thing,” said Steve. “We processed Payne’s Jeep yesterday afternoon. Someone much shorter than he drove it last.”

  “That’s terrific.”

  “And she—”

  “She?”

  “The strands of hair we found on the driver’s seat were fifteen inches long. Possibly a male, but more likely female.”

  “DNA?”

  “It’s on its way to Quantico. But I can tell you definitively, it doesn’t match Anya Ballard.”

  Pete said, “Leif Cole has longish hair.”

  Nora asked, “What color?”

  “Brown.”

  Anya was blond, and Leif Cole was light brown and gray. “Light brown? Dark brown?”

  “Medium. Unprocessed. But that’s all I know until Quantico gets back to us. I rushed it, but the response time really depends on what’s on the schedule before it.”

  “Thanks, Steve.”

  Ted asked, “Any word on the missing duck?”

  “No,” Nora said. “Fish and Game is supposed to let me know if they find it.”

  Jason Camp, resident computer expert, stepped into the room. “Nora, sorry for interrupting, but I got something off Larkin’s computer.”

  “Good news?”

  “Depends on how you look at it. Butcher-Payne’s security logs are wiped, but I can tell that someone accessed password-protected files on Sunday afternoon, only a few minutes before the data was corrupted. But I think I figured out why they wiped the drive. Emails.”

  “Something in the emails the killer didn’t want us to know? Why not just take the laptop?”

  Jason beamed. “That I know. LoJack.”

  “The computer was LoJack-protected?”

  “Yep.”

  Nora frowned. “Why didn’t Duke trace it on Monday when he was looking for Larkin?”

  “He didn’t know. I just got off the phone with him, and he said the laptop wasn’t Rogan-Caruso property.”

  Nora got the facts straight in her head. “So the killer realized the computer had tracking equipment and took the information right there. Maybe threatened Larkin, or maybe hacked into it after he was killed.”

  “That I don’t know, but I can tell you that I can’t get the emails back.”

  “So why do I need to know this? You still have nothing.”

  “I have the ISP.”

  “How does that help us?”

  “The ISP for Russ Larkin is Rogan-Caruso. They have their own server. It’s how their security system replicates itself.”

  “But wouldn’t that compromise security if it was used for Internet access?”

  “No—the replication is just information, not actual monitoring. It’s like syncing your iPod, but only one way. I talked to Jayne Morgan, the computer chick over there, and she’s going to pull all emails to and from Larkin for the past two weeks. It’s going to take a bit because they’re compressed and archived, but she said she’d have them for me today.”

  “If you learn anything—”

  “You’ll be the first to know.” Jason left.

  Nora finally felt that she was making forward progress in this investigation.

  “Pete, can you dig deeper into Russ Larkin? Rachel was working on it, but she’s sidetracked with Maggie O’Dell. Specifically, any connections with the three students who died or O’Dell. Maybe we’re missing something. A relative, a friend, something that connects Larkin to one of them.”

  She glanced at her notes.

  “Ted, can you check and see if the autopsy report is in from Reno? If not, call Sara and ask her to follow up with the coroner. Also trace evidence in Larkin’s car.”

  Ted wrote everything down. “Got it.”

  Pete asked, “What about the three college students? We need backgrounds on them.”

  She’d asked Duke to run the background checks, as well as an FBI staff analyst. “Already being done,” she said. She wondered where Duke was. When they’d parted this morning, he’d said he would meet her here. It was already after ten.

  As if on cue, the door opened and Dean Hooper walked in, Duke right behind him. Duke winked at her, just out of Hooper’s line of vision. Nora glanced at her squad. Had Pete and the others seen that? She tried to control the blush rising up her neck to her cheeks. She glanced down at the table and shuffled her papers.

  “Thanks, guys,” she said, dismissing the team. “Let me know if you’re having any problems.”

  Hooper said a few words to each agent as they left, and when it was just him, Duke, and Nora, he said, “I just got off the phone with Dr. Vigo. He reviewed a sample of Anya’s journals and concluded that she wrote the first three BLF letters, but definitely not the last one. Style, word choices, tone—everything was different.” That confirmed their assessment from yesterday regarding the fourth letter, but also gave them more physical evidence tying the dead students to the fires.

  “I need a sample of Maggie O’Dell’s writing,” Nora said. “Maybe she has an article published in the newspaper or we can talk to her professors and get an essay she wrote. Rachel is on her way to the college now, I’ll—”

  Hooper interrupted, “We already have it. It was in the evidence Steve sent yesterday.”

  “He didn’t tell me—”

  “He didn’t know. It was a handwritten letter folded into Ms. Ballard’s journal that began ‘Dear Anya’ and signed ‘M.’ Whoever wrote that letter, Dr. Vigo says wrote the fourth BLF letter. And moreover, whoever wrote that letter also wrote the suicide note. And it definitely wasn’t Anya Ballard.”

  “Is the letter ‘M’ wrote important?”

  “Possibly.” He handed her a copy of the letter. “We dusted the original for prints. We have a few partials from two different individuals, but they’re pretty degraded. Quantico is working on enhancing them, but it’ll take time.”

  Nora read the letter. It was undated, but based on the content it was given to Anya around the time Maggie left Rose College last December.

&
nbsp; Dear Anya,

  How could you choose him over our cause? I’m very disappointed in you. Don’t you care anymore? Don’t you want to be part of the solution? Your boyfriend yaks it up like he cares about the cause, but he’s part of the problem. He’s Establishment. He’s never done anything to help. You know it. He talks and talks and likes everyone to think he’s this big, noble Progressive Environmentalist who cares about the earth and animals that the Industrial Complex is killing so the masses have soap and makeup to disguise their ugly hearts.

  Fuck you both!

  “M” had crossed out that last line, but Nora noticed that while the text started out small and tight, it grew bigger and tilted more to the right—retaining the same tightness but with sharper points and more pressure on the pen. The letter continued with smaller script, but still with the heavy-pressured rightward slant.

  I’m sorry. Anya, I love you. I wish you were my sister. You know about mine. I can’t even talk to her. I wish we could be friends again, friends like before. I’m going to miss you, but I have to go. I hope someday we can do everything we planned. Don’t listen to that jerk. He’ll be screwing around with another student soon enough, then you’ll see him like I do. A walking penis. He was in his office for a long time with that whore Ashley Corman on Monday. I’ll bet they weren’t talking about midterms. Ask him. I dare you. Or would you rather be ignorant and used?

  We can do so much to really change the world and make a real difference. We can do it, Anya. Believe. I’m the only one who understands how you feel. Remember when you cried in my arms when that mama bear was killed by an SUV? She was just protecting her bear cubs. You cried and I told you we’d fix it. We’d make it right. And we did, didn’t we?

  He wouldn’t do that for you.

  I’ll be thinking about you. We have more to do. You promised. Call me.

  M

  “She’s certifiable,” Duke said.

  “Maybe,” Nora muttered.

  “What’s wrong?” Hooper said. “Does something stand out in the letter?”

  “First,” she said, “her sister. We need to find her sister. Maybe that’s where Maggie’s hiding out. Rachel’s at Rose College, we need that warrant ASAP.”