The Cipher

by Maldonado, Isabella

  Wade flipped to the next page. “Last place anyone saw her was a few blocks down on M Street at nineteen hundred hours the night before she was found.”

  “Was she with a john?” Kent asked.

  Before Wade could answer, Buxton gave Breck a significant look.

  She took the cue. “I’ve been working with Video Forensics. We got her on a bodega’s surveillance camera walking in to buy cigarettes,” Breck said. “She was alone.”

  “Did she use a fake ID to buy the smokes?” Nina asked.

  “Didn’t have to,” Wade cut in. “The clerk who works that shift apparently doesn’t put a lot of stock in tobacco sales laws. Metropolitan police are dealing with him now.”

  “Who found the body?” Kent wanted to know, apparently just getting looped in on the case.

  “Joaquin Ochoa,” Wade said, glancing down again. “A busboy at the Triple Threat nightclub. He went through the rear service door to take out the trash around three in the morning, after closing time. Saw her foot sticking up. We’re lucky the dumpster was fairly full, or she would have been down near the bottom and he never would’ve seen her.”

  Nina hadn’t heard that detail before. “The unsub didn’t want to dispose of her. He wanted to be sure I went to the scene. He must have known ahead of time the dumpster would be full.” She turned to Wade. “Was it close to the time the garbage is normally collected?”

  Wade flipped a few more pages. “Trash is picked up weekly. Scheduled for the following morning at six.” He gave her a nod of agreement. “He wanted her found.”

  “And he wanted her found in a dumpster,” Nina said. She was certain of it. Nothing this killer did seemed random.

  “That’s been bothering me,” Wade said. “Why did he place her in the bin? If he merely wanted to delay discovery, he could have hidden her on the pavement behind it. She wouldn’t have been spotted until trash collection time when a garbage truck with a hydraulic lift picked up the dumpster to empty it. In fact, that would have made more sense if he wanted to be certain someone saw her.” He looked at Nina. “Makes me wonder if he knew your history.”

  He made the comment with the clinical objectivity of a seasoned investigator, but his words fell on her with the force of a physical blow. He’d posed the idea that the unsub had staged Sofia’s body in a grisly parody of Nina’s as an infant, which meant he suspected the unsub might be aware someone had thrown her in the trash.

  She recovered as quickly as she could, striving to hide her reaction. “I don’t see how he could have known. I certainly didn’t tell him about it when he had me.”

  “But there were some people who knew?” Wade continued.

  “The circumstances of my entry into the foster system were in my file, but I never spoke about it to anyone.” Her eyes slid away from Wade’s. “Ever.”

  “What a killer does with his victim postmortem speaks volumes,” Kent said, saving her from further explanation. “Someone who arranges the body carefully, or covers it up, indicates that he knew the victim or experienced a modicum of remorse for his actions. On the other hand, someone who treats the body with contempt demonstrates total dehumanization of the victim.” He tapped his notebook. “This killer felt no regard for Sofia and did not believe she deserved any consideration whatsoever. That could be the extent of his reasoning for dumping her where he did.”

  “True,” Wade said. “But there’s more here. What about the note he left in her mouth and the coded message spray-painted at the scene? Both mentioned ‘hope’ in a way that made it clear he knew Agent Guerrera’s former surname.” He turned back to her. “How would he know that about you?”

  She hesitated a beat before responding. “Because I told him.” The statement hung in the air a moment before she elaborated. “He forced it out of me. At first, I gave him a fake name, but he could tell I was lying.” She straightened in her chair. Damned if she would let anyone judge her sixteen-year-old self. “He kept hurting me until I told the truth.” He had broken her that day. A part of her would always remain broken.

  Undeterred by her obvious discomfort, Wade delved deeper. “Did he seem to understand that ‘esperanza’ meant ‘hope’ at the time? Did he make a comment about it?”

  She thought back, forcing her mind to compartmentalize, sifting through the detritus of memory fragments. “No. He must have figured that out later.”

  Everyone seemed to mull this over a moment before Buxton pushed the discussion forward, diverting them from the awkward turn the conversation had taken. “Was Sofia Garcia-Figueroa sexually assaulted in any way?”

  “Raped,” Wade said, pulling his eyes from Nina to scan his notebook again. “There are also twenty-seven horizontal lacerations across her back as well as three burns from what looks to be a cigarette and ligature marks around her throat. We won’t know in what order everything happened until we hear more from the ME.”

  Nina’s stomach gave a nasty lurch. “You mean the sex assault could have been postmortem?”

  “The full autopsy will give us a better idea,” Wade said. “We’re also waiting on a tox screen and a DNA report.”

  “I’ve got a rush on it,” Buxton said.

  “Any idea where the murder occurred?” Kent asked.

  “We only know it wasn’t at the scene where the body was found,” Wade said. “Forensic analysis of trace evidence may help determine that too.”

  Nina focused on the girl’s life for clues about her death. How would she have managed to live on the street? Working as a prostitute was risky on many levels. She would have needed protection, and she had likely fallen prey to the narcotics trade that sucked so many in.

  “Is she affiliated with any gang?” she asked. When Wade raised his brows, she elaborated. “Did she have a pimp? A supplier?”

  “MPD is working that angle,” he said. “They have boots on the ground in the neighborhood right now. I should hear from Stanton today or tomorrow. That’s all I have.”

  Buxton immediately turned to Breck. “Let’s hear about the video.”

  Apparently caught off guard, Breck jumped and grabbed the laptop in front of her. Nina sympathized with her. Buxton was running the meeting at a fast clip.

  “We analyzed video from multiple city cams and businesses along M Street,” Breck said. “None of them were angled to show the alley behind the nightclub.”

  “I’ll bet he knew that too,” Nina said. “He planned everything else, it would be logical for him to scope out the site in advance.”

  “We focused on a ten-hour window beginning two hours before she was seen alive in the bodega and the time she was found in the dumpster,” Breck said. “But we can do another search with an expanded time frame.”

  “You get anything?” Wade asked.

  Breck’s face split into a grin. “Watch this.”

  She spun her laptop, facing the screen outward. They all leaned in, focusing on a video of M Street cast in the eerie glow of streetlights and neon signs. The late-night party zone, bordering on seedy, bustled with a mixture of motorized and foot traffic, many in various states of inebriation.

  Breck clicked a key, and each vehicle vanished, along with its floating time stamp. Pedestrians strolled along sidewalks or darted across the busy thoroughfare, serpentining between now-invisible cars beneath the circles of light cascading down from streetlamps, everyone shadowed by a unique time stamp.

  Breck narrated as they watched, her southern accent growing stronger with excitement. “We used a face-rec filter to spot the victim, but she never appeared in any footage along this street in the ten-hour window we checked.”

  “She didn’t walk into the alley, then,” Nina said. “Someone took her there.”

  “We’ve already established that the trash hadn’t been emptied for several days prior,” Wade said. “So she couldn’t have been transported into the alley in a garbage truck. How else would he have gotten her there?”

  Nina considered the possibilities. “Can you narrow the v
isual parameters to people carrying boxes or carts? Anyone making deliveries.”

  “Not only can I do it, I can make it look easy.” Breck typed a command. “Check it out.”

  Men with dollies or boxes wended their way down the strangely empty sidewalk. One of them stopped short, waving his arms and shouting before crossing the street. Nina chuckled as the man spun to jab his middle finger in the air, the commonplace behavior made comical by the digital subtraction of the vehicle that must have almost hit him.

  Kent leaned forward, eyes locked on the screen. “Can you eliminate everyone except people going into the Triple Threat club?”

  Breck’s pale fingers flashed on the keys. More images vaporized. They watched in rapt silence.

  “There.” Nina pointed. A heavyset man in a dark uniform with a pronounced limp wheeled a handcart with a large, bulky cardboard box into the nightclub. The bill of his ball cap hid the upper half of his face and a dense beard blurred the lower half. Time sped by, then slowed again as he pushed the empty cart out, unhurried steps meandering down M Street until he left the frame.

  “Where’s his truck?” Nina said.

  “Let me tag him.” Breck entered another command. “Okay, I’m picking him up here.”

  The man sauntered toward a Ford Econoline van, hauled open the rear doors, and thrust the dolly inside.

  Nina’s blood chilled when she saw the vehicle.

  He limped around to the driver’s door, hoisted himself inside with obvious effort, and drove off.

  “License plate?” Kent said.

  Breck zoomed in. “Van doesn’t have one.”

  “Traffic cams,” Buxton said, agitated. “Follow him.”

  “We only pulled video from a two-mile radius around the scene.” A hint of pink flushed Breck’s porcelain skin. “I’ll expand the search parameters. Now that we have a suspect vehicle, I can go back and track it.”

  Nina concentrated on their remaining option. “Can you search databases for face-rec on the delivery man too?”

  “Let me see if I can get a better look at his face,” Breck said. “It’s dark, but we can probably lighten the image enough to clear it up.”

  “Something’s not right,” Nina said. “The man who attacked me was physically fit and muscular.” She pointed at Kent. “Built like him. This guy looks obese, and he limps on his right foot.”

  “You haven’t seen him in eleven years.” Wade gestured up and down his body. “Take it from me, a lot can go south on a man’s physique in that amount of time. Especially if he injured his leg and couldn’t work out.”

  Breck swiveled the laptop back toward herself and began typing. “I’ll map his gait and enter it into the system. If a suspect candidate shows up on video, we can compare his limp to this one.”

  Kent slid off his glasses. “If I wanted to defeat face-rec . . . could I put on a fake nose, a beard, or glasses to confuse the system?”

  Breck shook her head. “Facial recognition works off your overall facial bone structure, so stuff like that won’t matter. You’d have to go a lot farther to fool the kind of tech we have now.”

  “But it could be done with cosmetic implants or surgery?”

  She gave him a dubious frown. “Theoretically.”

  “Either way, we have our first viable lead now.” Buxton interrupted the ancillary discussion. “Agent Breck will follow up on it. In the meantime, let’s get to the profiling.”

  Nina perked up. This is what she had been most anxious to hear. Though his reputation had taken a hit, Dr. Jeffrey Wade was still the Bureau’s most experienced mind hunter. How would he mentally dissect the psyche of the monster?

  “It all comes down to motive,” Wade said. “The unsub’s behavior reflects his personality, which will conform to certain patterns. These patterns provide insight into what makes him tick.” He steepled his fingers, tapping them against his chin. “This killer is methodical. He chose Sofia as his victim specifically to draw Guerrera into the investigation. His note makes it clear he’s connecting this crime to the one he attempted to complete eleven years ago. It’s wish fulfillment. We can reasonably conclude that he acted out after seeing Guerrera in the viral video.”

  Kent furrowed his brows. “You’re saying the video was the precipitating stressor?”

  “That’s the most logical assumption,” Wade said. He glanced at Nina. “Killers may fantasize about their crimes for quite some time before acting on them. Usually a series of circumstances or events converge in a way that spurs action. Seeing you again—especially where you are in a position of authority, decisively taking down a predator—could certainly set him off.”

  She assumed Wade was providing more background for her benefit and possibly Breck’s. As the two people in the room with no background in profiling, they would benefit from more information.

  She took advantage of the opportunity. “What kind of predator hits twice in eleven years?”

  “A truly obsessed stalker who found another victim to take your place,” Wade said. “Someone who had repressed his urges until they were triggered by a stressor.”

  Kent pushed his glasses back on. “Or a predator who’s been flying under the radar but has killed others during the last decade or so. We can’t be sure Guerrera was his first or his last before this murder occurred.”

  “I would be surprised if someone with such a unique and consistent pattern wouldn’t red flag in the system,” Wade said.

  Buxton shook his head. “There aren’t any similar cases in ViCAP, and we didn’t get a match in the forensics database on trace material at the scene. That includes hair, fiber, fluids, the works. As I mentioned before, though, this was just a preliminary check. We’ll have a more complete report shortly once they process everything at the lab.”

  Nina asked the awkward question they all seemed to be avoiding. “Has any of the evidence from M Street been compared with the samples collected from my case?”

  “We’re in touch with Fairfax County PD,” Wade said. “They’re pulling the box from archived evidence storage. Our lab wants the original material to test. In the meantime, they’ve sent the digital profile over. We’ll know something soon.”

  “Hold that thought,” Buxton said, looking down at his phone. “Public Affairs just sent me a text. Says to turn on the news.” He picked up the remote and aimed it at the flat screen on the wall behind Nina.

  She swiveled her chair to face the monitor. “What’s going on?”

  “The unsub put out a message.” Buxton clicked on the remote. “To the public.”

  Chapter 9

  Nina watched a distinguished silver-haired anchor in a dark gray suit on the wall-mounted television. A news banner flashed below him as he spoke into the camera.

  “. . . message through the Channel Six News Facebook page. Out of a sense of obligation to our viewers, we investigated before going live with this report. We also reached out to the FBI for comment. For more on this breaking story, here’s Jerrod Swift.”

  The frame switched to a two-shot that included a reporter in his late twenties seated next to the anchor.

  “Thanks, Steve.” Jerrod pushed a dark lock away from his forehead and looked into the camera. “About twenty minutes ago, someone sent a direct message to our Facebook page claiming to be the person who killed sixteen-year-old Sofia Garcia-Figueroa in Georgetown two nights ago.”

  Jerrod’s voiceover continued in the background as the screen switched to an image of the news channel’s Facebook page. “The person who contacted us used a fake profile and claimed to have knowledge of the crime only the killer would have. We can exclusively share the contents of the message.”

  “What does it say?” the anchor asked as the screen cut back to a shot of the news desk.

  “He’s angry about what he refers to as a law enforcement cover-up.”

  “What kind of cover-up was he talking about?” The anchor swiveled his chair to face Jerrod. “And how did our news team conclude the message
was legitimate?”

  “We contacted the FBI and provided the image he sent us.” A photo of the cryptic message found in the plastic baggie popped up. “They wouldn’t comment, but sources close to the investigation confirmed it matched a note the killer left at the scene.”

  “Sonofabitch,” Wade said, momentarily distracting Nina. She dragged her eyes back to the nightmare playing out before her as Jerrod continued his report.

  “Whoever sent the direct message to our page claimed the message refers to FBI Special Agent Nina Guerrera, who recently appeared in this viral video. He called her the ‘Warrior Girl,’ which he says is the English translation of her name.”

  Nina clenched her jaw to block the stream of obscenities threatening to burst from her as Jerrod’s disembodied voice narrated in the background while footage from Accotink Park filled the screen.

  “We noticed something interesting when we reviewed the clip,” Jerrod said. “Here’s a still shot.”

  This time the screen split, with an isolated frame of Nina captured from the viral video next to a high school picture of Sofia Garcia-Figueroa.

  “There’s a definite resemblance,” the anchor said when the camera cut back to him. “What is the FBI telling us?”

  “They don’t have an official statement yet.”

  “So what does the killer want?” the anchor asked Jerrod. “Did he indicate why he’s speaking out through the media?”

  “He said he’s not going to let the FBI hide information from the public,” Jerrod said. “Sounds like he wants credit for what he did.”

  Wade let out an exasperated groan. Nina surmised he didn’t appreciate armchair profiling.

  “And he shared a coded message with us,” Jerrod continued.

  Nina held her breath as an image of a series of letters and numbers flashed on the screen. They were different from the ones he’d painted on the dumpster at the scene.

  The anchor continued to fire questions at the field reporter. “What does that mean, Jerrod?”