Constant Risk

by Janie Crouch

  “I don’t understand.” Whitaker scrubbed a hand down his face. “What is this, a copycat? If so, how? How could they have gotten all the details so perfectly in such a short amount of time?”

  “They couldn’t,” Tanner said. “This had to have been someone working with Elliot from the beginning.”

  Penelope walked over and poured herself a cup of coffee. “We haven’t been looking too deeply into his known associates, but that’s where we’ll start. I interviewed him briefly, but he wasn’t very talkative. He hasn’t lawyered up yet, so I figured I’d let him sweat for a little while.”

  “Now might be a good time to see if the sweating worked,” Tanner said.

  Penelope nodded. “You guys want to join me?”

  Penelope handed Tanner a file as they walked through the main section of the building toward the holding cells. “A refresher course on Elliot. Twenty-two-year-old engineering student. Straight As through high school and college. No priors. No known affiliation with any groups or people that would raise red flags.”

  Tanner nodded. He remembered this much from what Bree had told them before they’d infiltrated the building. He handed the folder back to Penelope. “You’ve talked to him. What’s your take on him? We all know a file is only going to help so much.”

  Penelope opened the door and they walked into the observation room. On the other side of the two-way glass sat Elliot Webster.

  “Tends to think he’s the smartest person in the room,” Penelope said. “Hell, he probably is most of the time. I’m sure we’re talking Mensa IQ and damned if the kid isn’t afraid to let everybody know it.”

  Tanner studied Elliot through the window. The kid definitely didn’t look scared. Bored maybe, but not frightened.

  There wasn’t too much impressive about him, at least physically. Blondish-brown hair that looked like it needed a cut. Eyes too close together on a face too pointed and angled. He was probably about five foot nine and 160 pounds.

  Basically, quite ignorable.

  “And he hasn’t asked for a lawyer?”

  Penelope shook her head. “Nope.”

  “Definitely a cocky bastard,” Whitaker muttered. “Guy does remember that we caught him right smack in the middle of attempted murder, right?”

  “I’ll be honest.” Penelope leaned in closer to stare at him. “I think this is all just part of a game to him, the same as sending the footage. I think he plans to lawyer up, but wants to play us as long as possible.”

  Tanner nodded. “We can use his own conceit against him. He hasn’t asked for a lawyer because he’s sure we won’t be able to trip him up with our questions. And that may end up being true, but I say we work his own plan against him for as long as possible.”

  Whitaker looked at Penelope. “Do you mind if Tanner and I try to talk to him? He’s met you, but doesn’t know who we are at all.”

  “Be my guest. I’ll watch from out here and see if I catch anything from him.”

  Tanner and Whitaker walked into the room. Elliot straightened up slightly in his chair. “Finally,” he muttered.

  “We understand you’re denying your right to counsel,” Whitaker said as he sat down across from Elliot. Tanner remained standing, leaning against the wall.

  Elliot raised one eyebrow. “Yeah, that’s right. I think I’m doing just fine without one.”

  Definitely a cocky bastard.

  “That’s your choice, of course,” Whitaker confirmed. “As long as you know you can request one at any time.”

  Elliot tilted his head to the side. “Plus, you only have a few more hours before you’re required to charge me, or let me go.”

  Cocky bastard who knew the law.

  Whitaker nodded. “That’s right. And you will be charged, seeing as how we caught you in the act of attempted murder.”

  Tanner’s eyes narrowed. That’s what Elliot was waiting on before calling a lawyer—an official charge. But why wait if he knew it was coming?

  Tanner decided to see if he could find out what made Elliot tick. He pressed up from against the wall. “We got your videos.”

  Elliot straightened slightly, for the first time not looking completely bored. “Never doubted you would. Is that how you found me?”

  Bingo. That was why he hadn’t called his lawyer. He knew once he did he wouldn’t get his answers. He wanted to know how he’d gotten caught.

  “Yep. Was able to trace them right to you with no problem.”

  Elliot’s eyes narrowed. “I know that’s not true.”

  Tanner raised a brow. “Because you’re too smart for us to trace them?”

  “In this case, yes. Smarter than you guys, at least.”

  Whitaker leaned back in his chair and glanced over at Tanner. “I don’t know about that. I’m a pretty smart guy. Or at least my mom always says so.”

  Tanner grinned at him, glad that Whitaker had caught on so quickly. “Me too, you know. I wasn’t surprised when we were able to track Elliot here to the warehouse so quickly.”

  The kid crossed his arms over his chest. “There is no way you two were able to track me.”

  Time to see what Elliot was willing to spill. “Maybe we didn’t have to track you. Maybe your partner gave you up. Told us who you were and where you’d be.”

  A smooth smile fell onto Elliot’s face. “Is that right?”

  Tanner kept his face neutral. “You sure that’s not what happened? Do you trust him so much that you’re sure he won’t betray you even to save his own skin?”

  The kid’s smile got bigger. “Something like that.”

  Whitaker looked over at Tanner, eyes narrowed just a little bit. He was thinking the same thing Tanner was. Elliot was way too relaxed in his answers about a partner to be truly concerned that someone might have betrayed him.

  Nobody involved with a crime like this would be that secure a partner hadn’t flipped on them in order to save their own skin.

  Tanner wasn’t sure how it was possible with this new footage showing up, but it didn’t look like Elliot was working with anyone.

  He just continued to sit there, smug, strumming his fingers on the metal table.

  Whitaker didn’t get flustered. “Okay, you caught us. Not a partner. Maybe you just got sloppy with your encoding. All the VPNs and routers in the world can’t hide a mistake if we’ve got someone just as good as you.”

  If possible, Elliot just got more superior in his seat. “Yep, I guess that must be how you did it.”

  Tanner decided to give Elliot a little bit of what he wanted. See if that got a reaction. “Fractal pattern.”

  When it came down to it, the kid didn’t have much of a poker face after all. He sat bone straight in his chair at Tanner’s words, realizing for the first time that maybe they did have someone just as good as him. “What?”

  “You were using a fractal pattern in your transmission, right? Still think we’re stupid now, Elliot?”

  He was shaking his head. “How did you—”

  A knock on the door stopped Tanner from saying anything further. Penelope stuck her head in. “Tanner, can I talk to you for a moment?”

  Elliot was still trying to wrap his head around the fact that they’d figured out his precious code. Whitaker gave him a nod and Tanner walked into the observation room.

  “What is it? We’re just starting to make headway on—” He stopped when he saw Bree standing there.

  “I think I’ve figured it out,” she said. “Can I ask Elliot a couple of questions about codes?”

  Tanner looked over at Penelope. “Your call.”

  Penelope gave a slow nod. “Two minutes. Keep it short and remember all of this is being recorded.”

  Bree nodded and they walked back into the room together. Elliot had regained a little bit of his composure.

  “What?” he sneere
d. “Are you bringing in the pretty good cop to be the yin to your bad cop’s yang?”

  “No, Elliot,” Tanner said smoothly. “You were right before when you said you were smarter than Whitaker and me. I’ve brought in the person you’re not smarter than. The one who figured out your little code. Figured out which computer was yours at your house and got the info she needed before the fire could burn the place to the ground. Figured out how to get you locked up in here now.”

  Elliot’s eyes narrowed on Bree. He was close to her age so didn’t make the mistake of discounting her out of hand just because she was young. “Is that so, sexy? Are you smarter than me?”

  Bree crossed over to the table before Tanner could stop her. “Matrix grid pattern torus.”

  Tanner had no idea what she was talking about—it sounded more like she was trying to cast out demons than ask Elliot a question.

  But evidently the casting out worked. Every bit of color drained from Elliot’s face. He turned to Whitaker.

  “I’d like to call my lawyer now.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Bree wanted to ask Elliot more about the torus, to get him to admit that was the new pattern even though she was almost positive it was. But Tanner immediately ushered her out of the interrogation as soon as Elliot mentioned a lawyer. Whitaker followed right behind them.

  As soon the door closed, Tanner turned to Penelope. “You heard the request for counsel?”

  She nodded. “Yes. I’m glad you left right away. We don’t want to risk any chance of Elliot getting off on a technicality.”

  “Besides, Bree got what she needed,” Tanner said.

  Bree looked at him. “I did? Elliot didn’t answer my question.”

  “You wanted to know if the matrix torus thing meant something to him.”

  “Yes. But he didn’t answer.”

  Tanner smiled gently at her. “It meant something to him, freckles. Something enough to scare him into calling for his lawyer when nothing else had. So whatever it is you’ve found? You’re on the right track.”

  She looked around at the three of them. “I don’t think you’re going to like what I found.”

  Penelope sighed. “Tell us anyway.”

  “We have three more victims. Jean Adams was only one of four.”

  Whitaker cursed. “He does have partners. I’m going back in there to talk to him. Get some answers.”

  Penelope put her hand against the door. “No. Not until he has a chance to call his lawyer.”

  “It will probably be easier for me to show you everything back in the command room,” Bree said. “I think you’re going to want to watch all the footage again. Once I figured out the pattern, I certainly did.”

  “Are you sure there are more victims?” Penelope asked. “And how do you know that there are three more?”

  “I found another code,” Bree said after Penelope assigned another detective the task of making sure Elliot was able to call his lawyer. They practically ran back toward the command center.

  “I thought you had already looked for other codes but hadn’t found any,” Whitaker said.

  Bree nodded. “This one wasn’t here yesterday. This new code started once we rescued Jean Adams.”

  Tanner rubbed his eyes. “I don’t understand all this code stuff. Why utilize it?”

  “It’s complex. But I’m not surprised about this because of Elliot’s engineering background.”

  As soon as they made it back to the command area, Bree walked immediately over to the whiteboard. She drew a large square. She wrote Jean Adams at one corner. Then she took a different color and connected the three remaining corners in a triangle.

  “The matrix grid pattern torus is a pattern found all over nature. It’s studied in mathematics. Some scientists argue that it will eventually be used to create renewable energy. But for our purposes, it’s important because it’s a pattern based specifically on the number three.”

  She was about to go into more about the codes, but Tanner put his hand on her shoulder and rubbed it gently. She needed to get to the main point more quickly.

  She closed her eyes and regrouped. Focus just on the victims.

  “The voice modulator. That should’ve been our first clue that there was something going on. Jean Adams isn’t famous. Nobody would’ve recognized her face or voice. But we all might’ve recognized that we were looking at four different victims on the footage if we could’ve heard or seen them clearly.”

  Whitaker nodded. “That makes more sense than anything else we’ve come up with.”

  “Yes,” Bree said. “Like I said before, the footage never stopped coming in even after you rescued Jean. We just weren’t expecting it, so didn’t realize it. And the water in the new footage is still rising at the same rate. We’re still on the same deadline we were with Jean. The dripping water with all four victims started at the same time.”

  Tanner looked over at the clock. “So we have what, less than twenty-four hours before these other three victims drown?”

  Whitaker nodded. “About that. If you don’t take hypothermia into account.”

  “Tell us what you know about these other three victims,” Penelope said.

  Bree grimaced. The matrix torus pattern had shown her there were three victims, but it didn’t give the sort of details the detective was going to want to know. “The killers all started at the exact same time and have created rooms to look exactly alike. That’s how they fooled us with the footage.”

  Tanner looked around at the screens. “So the pattern helped you distinguish which footage belongs to which victim?”

  Bree nodded. “I’ve already got the footage clips lined up so you can look at them together holistically. Once you understand that it’s four different people we’re looking at, you can’t help but see it.”

  Bree played the grouped footage for them. She started with the most obvious, and the most heartbreaking: the woman who was crying all the time. They watched it in silence.

  “It wasn’t that she was upset sometimes,” Tanner whispered. “This victim is upset all the time.”

  Bree nodded, then showed them the second grouping of footage—the victim who never tried to communicate with them at all.

  “I think maybe she can’t see any indication of the camera,” Whitaker said after they watched the clips all the way through twice. “Everyone else got more hysterical or louder when they knew the camera clicked on, but not her. Maybe she doesn’t even know she’s being recorded at all.”

  The rest of the team was trickling back in and Penelope was briefing them as they did. Everyone was now studying the footage in their proper groups. It at least helped make sense out of the behavior of the women.

  Fifteen minutes later Whitaker confirmed that they did in fact have multiple victims when he spotted a tiny tattoo on the foot of the second victim they’d given the name Jane B.

  “It’s right above her pinkie toe on her left foot,” Whitaker pointed out. “I don’t know how we missed this before.”

  “Because we assumed we were looking at the same person,” Tanner said. “We weren’t comparing them to each other.”

  Penelope called the chaos to order. “People. I know this is a lot, but we’ve got to get organized and focused.”

  Everyone immediately quieted down. Penelope turned to Bree. “Can you track these transmissions the way you did Elliot Webster?”

  It was the question Bree had been dreading. “No. The pattern doesn’t have anything to do with how they’re transmitting, just the order and the length of the clips.”

  “But they are partners with Elliot, right?” Whitaker asked.

  This was a little harder to explain. “I’m not sure partners is the right word. Obviously this was planned out together to some degree. They all had to have been using the same schematics. To fool us for this long they each had
to build the room with the same dimensions, with the cameras set at the exact same angle and height. They had to choose women whose body types were similar enough that we would mistake them for each other.”

  “Sounds like partners to me,” someone muttered.

  Bree shrugged. “Maybe they are. They all obviously agreed to use the matrix torus pattern for which victim is shown in what order and for how long. But they were left to their own devices for the actual encryption and encoding of the footage.”

  “So, not partners,” Tanner said.

  Bree rubbed her forehead. “Almost like competitors, but that’s not right either.”

  “Elliot is an engineering student. So maybe not partners or competitors. They’re collaborators in an experiment.” Penelope said.

  “That would make sense.” Bree thought back on everything she’d found. “It’s twisted, but it’s like they all had the same set of instructions and just had to build it to the specifications.”

  “It’s all great to know the why,” Leon said. “But how do we stop them? If Bree can’t track them, we’re basically back to square one. Every hour we’re getting footage, and granted this time we know we are looking at three different women, but how do we find them?”

  Penelope moved everyone over to the conference table. “We start with what info we do have. We need to do a statewide missing persons search. We have a definite MO when it comes to victims. Female, five foot three to five foot four, no more than 110 pounds. That can’t be a very big list.”

  Leon nodded and stood up. “I’m on it.”

  Penelope turned to Bree. “We have a warrant for anything Elliot saved online. Whether these guys were partners, colleagues or competitors, they had to have had some sort of interaction with each other.”

  Bree nodded. Depending on how much Elliot had saved, and what safety defaults he had when he realized his defenses had been triggered, the information they found in his online data storage might or might not be useful. But it was definitely worth a try.

  “Absolutely. I’ll start searching through it, ghosting and rebuilding as much as possible for any missing data.”