by Jen J. Danna
Matt waited quietly, his gaze on Leigh’s bent head as she flipped through images, scanning down lists of names. Then her body went still and she blew up the image on the screen before slowly raising her head and grinning at Matt. “Well, well … look at that.”
“Evelyn Holt on that list?”
“Got it in one. She was a member of the Lynn Historical Society with Anna at the time of Anna’s death. We’re slowly closing the circle. We’ve established a connection, and if the fingerprints on the gun match then we not only place her in the house, but we literally put the smoking gun in her hand. Now back to why Anna was frazzled that day. Think how it would have been, especially back them. Anna Kain was a middle-class housewife. No expensive schooling, no rich husband, no big fancy house. An Irish immigrant. And here was one of the pillars of the community coming to her house for tea to discuss a common interest. She may have felt honored, but more than that, I bet she felt pressured. You know how some women are—nothing like company coming over to kick-start a cleaning frenzy. What’s good enough for the family is never good enough for a guest, and definitely not a guest with enough money to have a staff to clean for her. Add in that Anna’s fridge was probably empty since it was already shopping day, and she was probably totally thrown. And then I suspect that Evelyn showed up early, which also probably put her in a tizzy.”
“Why would you say that?”
“Because her groceries were still out. If she’d had time, she would have had a pristine kitchen to show off to her honored guest. But perhaps Evelyn showed up early, maybe even just as Anna was arriving home herself. So the groceries ended up being left on the counter.”
“You have to wonder what kicked this all off though,” said Matt. “We assume that Evelyn found out about her father’s death and that’s what set this killing in motion, but how was this suddenly new information for her thirty-nine years later?”
“It’s a good question. We need to look into what was going on in Evelyn’s life then and see if there were any major changes that might give us a clue.”
“How are you going to do that without asking her directly? And, obviously, you can’t ask her son.”
“You’d be amazed what you can find out about a person simply through public records. Family births and deaths. Property changes. Employment records. They tell a story about the lives people lead. And they’re a very good place to start.”
“So … you started off doubting you’d find a body, and then found two. Then a third murder fell into your lap and that victim became yours as well. And you’ve already got very strong leads on two of the three murders. Nice work, Trooper.”
Leigh tipped her head forward in a small bow. “Couldn’t have done it without my team. And that includes Rowe. He’s been invaluable during this case. Now we just need to nail down Peter Holt’s killer. And I think we know where to start looking there, based on everything else. This whole case has been a tangled snarl of violence and revenge. But we’re going to put a stop to it once and for all.” Her phone rang again and she glanced at the display. “Hold on, I have to take this.” Pushing off the stool, she stepped several paces away.
Matt wandered back toward his desk, trying to give her some small amount of privacy. The conversation lasted less than a minute before Leigh ended the call. When she turned back to him, she worried her bottom lip between her teeth.
“Who was that?” Her gaze rose to meet his, and he was shocked by the paleness of her face and her shadowed eyes. He took a reflexive step toward her. “Leigh?”
“That was Tucker. He wants to meet with me tonight. Away from the unit. It has …” She swallowed hard and started again. “It has to be about my father.”
He stepped closer, running a comforting hand down her back. “What did he find?”
“He didn’t say. He just wanted to meet. I suggested my place again since it’s close to the unit.” Her forehead creased as her brows slid together, her expression perplexed. “He sounded … odd.”
“In what way?”
“Like he was trying to convey information without actually saying it. But whatever it is, he wasn’t obvious enough for me to figure out his meaning.”
“He’s a geek. Geeks don’t make good spies. But they’re great for sussing out information.” He leaned back against a bench-top and pulled her back to lean against him. Her body was stiff against his chest, so he settled his hands on her shoulders to massage the tight muscles. “Your shoulders feel like granite. Relax. Try not to worry ahead of time because there may be no reason. Wait until he has a chance to tell you what he’s found.”
Her weight shifted against him as she settled in closer, letting her body lean into him. “Easy for you to say. Will you come?”
“Of course I will. And whatever it is, together, we’ll come up with a way to deal with it. Tucker’s on board now too, and he might have some ideas on how to handle whatever he’s uncovered. So let’s hear him out and we’ll go from there, okay?”
“Okay.”
The lab door banged open and Kiko, Paul, and Juka pushed into the room. Kiko broke into a broad smile when she saw Leigh, although Matt couldn’t tell if it was the sight of Leigh leaning intimately against him or because she was excited about their results.
“So, did Matt tell you about the DNA?”
Ah. The results. “I told her.”
“Isn’t it great?”
Matt dropped his hands from Leigh’s shoulder as she pasted on a smile and stepped into the group of students. Their infectious enthusiasm buoyed her and within minutes, her smile was relaxed and genuine and her shoulders were loose. Matt watched her carefully, feeling his own tension dissipate slightly as she bantered easily with his students. All was well.
For now.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: BOOTLEG
* * *
Bootleg: the illegal transport of alcoholic beverages; in modern times, an audio or video recording of a performance that was not officially released by the artist or under other legal authority.
Monday, 7:13 p.m.
Abbott Residence
Salem, Massachusetts
“Something to drink?”
Tucker glanced at Leigh as he nudged his sneakers against the wall behind the door. “Have any beer?”
“She does because I keep a few in her fridge.” Matt appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Can I get you one?”
“Could really go for one, yeah.”
“I’ll join you. Leigh?”
Leigh tried unsuccessfully to quiet the nerves that jangled with Tucker’s need for alcohol. She raised her mug of tea. “I think I’ll just stick with this.”
“Okay, back in a sec.” He disappeared into the kitchen.
“Come on into the living room.” Leigh led the way down the hallway and Tucker immediately dropped into the same chair he’d occupied several days earlier. He blew out a tired breath and ran his hand through his hair, further disarraying the bright orange strands.
Not wanting to start the discussion until Matt came back, Leigh opted for shop talk. “If you have some spare time, I could use a hand on the Anna Kain murder.”
Tucker glowered at her from under his eyebrows. “When do I ever have spare time, Abbott? You guys work my fingers to the bone.” He wiggled ten digits in her direction. “See? Practically nubs. But I’m sure I can manage what you need.”
“You’re a real trooper, Tucker.” A beat of silence passed. “Pardon the pun.”
“Ha ha. Cop humor. You should do stand-up. But lay it on me.”
Leigh wrapped her hands around the mug, warmth flowing into her ice-cold fingers. “I need a comprehensive background search done on Evelyn Holt.”
Tucker rolled his eyes until only the whites showed momentarily. “Child’s play, Abbott. Where’s the fun in that? You could even give it to Delancy and he could do it.” Matt entered the living room and handed him a bottle of Samuel Adams. “Nice choice, thanks.”
Leigh shifted sideways slightly, balancing her
mug on one knee as she made room for Matt beside her. “How about a comprehensive background search starting from say … nineteen-seventy-five?”
Tucker froze with the beer partway to his lips as his gaze snapped up to hers. “Now that’s a little more challenging. Not impossible, but a little something I could sink my teeth into. Email me the specifics of what you’re looking for and I’ll get on it first thing tomorrow.” He brought a hand down heavily on the manila envelope in his lap. “So … this stuff.”
Leigh’s stomach did a queasy flip-flop just before Matt’s hand closed over hers, his fingers cold from holding two beer bottles. She laced her fingers through his and tried not to hold on too tightly. “Did you find anything?”
“Yeah, you could say that.” Tucker took another slug of beer, then reached forward to set the bottle on the coffee table. He shook some of the contents of the envelope out into his lap and selected the top sheet. “Let’s start with this—the phone log and the highlighted number. You’re right, Abbott, it’s from a burner phone. I tracked it back to a phone sold at a mom and pop convenience store in North Salem. Paid for in cash. And from that point on, the trail goes mostly cold. Now, I ran some searches based on the phone log you got, and a lot of the calls were to known dealers in the area.”
“Which makes it look like it was used in the local drug trade, but we don’t know who it belonged to,” Leigh said.
“That’s my take. These no-contract phones make it easy for perps to do business with each other. Lay down your fifty dollars cash and get a phone with a new number and unlimited talk and data for the next thirty days with no way to connect it to you. By the time the cops are on it, you’ve already tossed it away and moved on to a new phone and a different number. Wiretaps need never concern the tech savvy perp because the cops never have enough time to get a warrant and start listening in. And fifty dollars as the cost of doing business without getting caught is a steal of a deal for these guys. I tried to finesse out a little more information, but when they’re all using the same short-term communications strategy, it’s not easy, at least in this abbreviated time frame. And, speaking of North Salem …” He pulled the photo of Nate Abbott and the unknown man under the glowing Bruno’s Tavern sign from the pile. “We have this photo. I scanned it and extracted all the available biometric data from it. The lighting and the graininess of the security footage certainly made that job a particular challenge.”
Leigh’s heart plummeted. You knew this would be hard, even for Tucker. He can’t pull answers out of thin air. “So you couldn’t get anything from it.”
Tucker pinned her with a flat stare. “Did I say that, ‘O ye of little faith’?”
She bolted upright, leaning forward. “You got something?”
“I used the one side of his face to generate a three-dimensional image and, from that, I got a match. It’s only a ninety percent probability, which is pretty damned poor, but it’s the best I could manage with what I had to work with.”
“Ninety percent sounds not bad, until you realize you might be sending someone to jail with a ten percent error rate,” Matt said. “That’s way too high.”
“It certainly is. But considering who it is and how he fits into the scheme of things, I suspect it’s correct.” Tucker pulled a mug shot from the pile. “This is Thomas Dawlin.” The photo showed a man in his early twenties with three days’ growth of beard and dark, messy, unkempt hair that fell into hard eyes. “Dawlin’s rap sheet is as long as your arm. Drug possession to distribution to a little B & E on the side to finance some of his own habits when dealing didn’t do the trick. He did time and went through rehab and supposedly came out a new man.”
“And was my father meeting with him because he had his finger on the pulse of the Salem drug community?” She looked over at Matt, hope rising. “We can make contact with this guy. Confirm that it was him meeting with Dad and then find out why. We know Dad was investigating at least one death in the drug community; maybe he was using Dawlin as a C.I.”
Matt swung around to Tucker. “Can you track this guy? Give us current whereabouts?”
“Oh, I can give you current whereabouts on him. North Street in Salem—”
Leigh stiffened as Tucker’s tone set off warning bells, bracing for the blow she instinctively knew was coming.
“—in St. Mary’s Cemetery. Dawlin was gunned down shortly after this picture was taken and just a couple of weeks before your father’s death, Abbott. I’m sorry.”
“Goddamn it,” Matt muttered. “Another dead end.”
Leigh tried to block out Matt’s voice. He was trying to help, but his frustration only wound her tighter until she was struggling to breathe. She pulled her hand free, camouflaging the action by shrugging out of her sweater and laying it over the arm of the sofa as if she was too warm. But chilled to the bone, she picked up her tea and cradled it in both hands, keeping herself separate, struggling to hold herself together.
She sensed Matt’s gaze, but continued staring down into her mug until Tucker’s voice broke into her thoughts.
“I do have more for you in that photo than just a dead end.”
Her gaze snapped up to his. “What else?”
“I analyzed the structure of the photo itself. I can tell you with one hundred percent certainty the photo was tampered with. In fact, your father was never there at all.”
Oxygen suddenly flowed into her lungs as tension sluiced off her like a waterfall. “You can prove it?”
“Would I say I was one hundred percent certain if I was just guessing? Yes, I can prove it. Someone else was in the place where your father is now standing in that shot. When you analyze the photo at the pixel level, there are issues around the image of your father—missing pixels, cloned regions that were repetitively copied to fill in some of the blank spots, and blurred regions to hide the fact the lighting around your father was slightly different than it would have been had he actually been standing there. Without a doubt, the image of your father was pulled from somewhere else, added to this location after the original person had been removed, and then the attempt was made to hide the fact the image was photoshopped. To the average person, with the naked eye, it wasn’t a terrible job. For real photo analysis software and the wizard who knows how to use it, it was a joke.”
Leigh sat back against the couch cushions, letting her head fall back, relief making her muscles lax. “He wasn’t there. And we can prove it. The only thing that’s too bad is we don’t know who was really there. Or could your fancy software tell you that?”
“No. But I wondered the same thing. So I did a little investigating. Kind of a field trip for a guy like me who never leaves his keyboard.”
Matt saluted him with his beer bottle. “You found the camera, didn’t you?”
“I did. And it was an interesting experience, let me tell you.” Reaching into the envelope, he pulled out a VHS videotape. “But I also came home with this baby.”
“What the—” Leigh shot upright and her mug cracked down on the table. “Tucker, you’re a geek, not a cop. You can’t go out gathering evidence. We don’t have a real case. You didn’t have a warrant.”
“Whoa. Whoa.” Tucker frowned and extended both palms to Leigh. “Slow down there. You asked for my help. I’m giving it to you.”
“And I appreciate that, but you’re supposed to do it from the safety of your office. You don’t belong out in the field.”
“What was I going to do? Send you? I knew what I was looking for. I didn’t need any help.”
Matt laid his hand on Leigh’s arm, holding steady when she shot him an infuriated glare. “Leigh, let him finish. Tucker, how did you get that tape?”
Tucker sat back, propping one foot up on the coffee table and linking his hands behind his head, like he didn’t have a care in the world. “I figured out where the camera must have been from the angle of the shot and I went down there yesterday to look around. The camera is on this little family convenience store, run by an old guy�
��one of the tinfoil-hat-paranoid groupies, if you ask me. Anyway, the camera is mounted on the front corner of the store angled to record the front door on one side and most of the parking lot in the rest of the frame. But, from its location, one side of the frame catches the front of Bruno’s Tavern, which is kitty-corner across the street.
“It’s a beautiful new camera and it gave me great hope we’d be successful so I went inside to talk to him. And he proceeded to dash my hopes against the rocks when he told me this was his new system, replacing an ancient VHS system the year before. But I took one look around his store”—Tucker’s lip curled in distaste—“which was a jumbled mishmash of pretty much anything you could imagine buying anywhere, and took a chance. I asked if he had any of his old tapes, and the old pack rat said he did. Not all of them, but the bar across the street was known to be a hot spot for drug activity and it wasn’t uncommon for the Salem cops to come in wanting his security tapes. He always provided them, but he always made sure he made personal copies just in case.”
“In case of what?” Matt asked. “They were his security tapes, not an accusation he was involved.”
“Remember how I said he was part of the tinfoil-hat brigade? As far as he was concerned, they were his property and if The Man was involved and wanted his tapes, then he wanted copies because clearly there was something someone was trying to hide in that content. Truthfully, I think he thought Perry Mason was going to call him up on the stand and he’d have to testify about aliens invading and didn’t want to be caught unprepared. I don’t care why he did it, he just did. And he must have been asked by the cops more than a few times because he had two full boxes of copies.” He brandished the tape in the air. “And this one was in there, matching the date stamp on the photo. My analysis software found the exact frame used in the photo sent to you.” He held out his hands as if to say ta-da!
“And?” Leigh repeated his gesture. “What did you find?”
