The Cipher

by Maldonado, Isabella

  Before answering his boss, Wade glanced at Tyson. “What do we know about Neecy?”

  “Comes from a broken home. Chronic runaway.” Tyson checked his notes. “Last time her foster mother saw her was over a week ago.”

  “That’s his message,” Wade said to Buxton as if the information from Tyson confirmed something he’d already suspected. “The Cipher doesn’t care what they look like or where they come from. He doesn’t see them as individuals, as human beings—only as a type.”

  “And that type is?”

  “Some of society’s most vulnerable individuals. Teenage girls who are either temporarily or permanently without a family.”

  Recalling the messages she had exchanged with the Cipher online, Nina dropped her voice so only Wade could hear. “Like I was when he found me.”

  He gave her an almost imperceptible nod. She decided to change the subject, channel her growing anger toward hunting the Cipher.

  “What about the clue in the envelope?” she asked Tyson. “What have we heard from the detectives checking out the Paul Revere House and the Old North Church?”

  The reference to the signal used by the patriots had been nagging at her. One if by land, two if by sea. A real-life code. Is that what had made the Cipher mention it?

  “We got zilch,” Tyson said. “The investigators enlisted the help of docents and went through every square inch of both landmarks. Nothing missing, nothing left behind, no sign of any disturbance.”

  “Throwing us off the trail?” she said, then caught herself. “No pun intended.”

  "Hold on a sec," Tyson said, suddenly excited. "The restaurant where the body was found is called Silversmith's."

  Nina considered the information. Paul Revere had been a famous silversmith. "So the clue was meant to lead us to the body? He's done that before."

  Wade stroked his jaw. “Planting that information could also serve as a false lead or a distraction in case we solved his clue and arrived in Boston before he had a chance to leave the scene.”

  “Which is exactly what happened,” Kent said. “Do you think he knew we were there? That he has inside information?”

  “You mean, do I think he’s a cop?” The room grew quiet when Wade posed the question. “Possibly, but I find it more likely he’s a police buff who’s monitoring the investigation any way he can.”

  “Why not a cop?” Nina said. She had never considered the idea but couldn’t see how Wade would rule it out with such certainty.

  Wade appeared to weigh his words before he spoke, no doubt aware that he was speaking to everyone present. The opinion of a profiler would impact the investigation going forward.

  “He would be attracted to a position with an aura of authority, like a policeman, a military officer, a doctor, or a pilot. He’s such a control freak and so narcissistic, however, that he would have trouble taking orders and—if he managed to obtain such a position—would quickly get discharged or otherwise fired.”

  “So you’re saying he would have to be the boss?” she said.

  “When you were in that alley, your counterattack didn’t deter him, did it? He wasn’t the least bit afraid, even when you held him at gunpoint.”

  She shook her head. “I think it excited him.” She hesitated a moment before posing her next question in an open forum. “Speaking of guns, the unsub could have taken mine when I was unconscious, but he didn’t.”

  “That’s because he wanted the thrill of the fight. He would prefer close quarters combat followed by the intimacy of strangulation. He’s a killer, but he’s also a power-assertive rapist.”

  She needed clarification and imagined several others in the room who didn’t speak fluent psychobabble did too. “What do you mean?”

  “Each victim was tortured before death. The injuries were not inflicted postmortem.” Wade warmed to his subject, clearly in his element. “He enjoys manipulating others. Violence excites him. He gets off on watching his victims cry and suffer.”

  “In other words,” she said, “he’s a sadist.”

  “More than that. He feeds on ultimate power. He makes his victims beg. He’ll offer them mercy, only to refuse it after they comply with his demands. He wants to control everything they do, including when and how they die.”

  Sweat beaded along her hairline as she listened to Wade. Everything he described was accurate. Down to the last detail. Had those other girls been made to plead? To cry? To suffer? Only to finally realize it had all been for nothing? She was sure they had. A toxic blend of rage and humiliation burned inside her.

  Deputy Superintendent Tyson broke the silence. “What else can we do now?”

  For the first time, she saw how much the experience garnered from decades spent investigating depraved killers and their horrific crimes had primed Wade to answer those sorts of questions. He rattled off his response without hesitation.

  “Appeal to his ego. Let the media know we’ve got a huge task force on the case. Give it a name that plays off his chosen nickname. Call it Operation Cipher, or something like that.”

  He turned to Breck, seated with a cluster of video techs. “He’s following this on regular and social media, but that may not be enough stimulation for him anymore. Get crowd shots at each scene and cross-check them with what we have in our database. See if we can enhance our image.”

  Breck’s cheeks dimpled. “Now that we have a sample of his DNA, we can generate a picture of him using predictive DNA analysis—if we don’t find a match in the criminal DNA database.”

  Wade responded with absolute certainty. “We won’t.” He turned to Buxton. “And we need to check for last-minute flight bookings with quick returns.”

  “Already being done,” Buxton said. “Speaking of flights, I want to head back to Quantico, where we have all of our resources. We can coordinate through the task force as we follow up on any leads.” He glanced at his watch. “We’re all going to have a long day.”

  Nina was sure he was right. She glanced down at her hands, reddened from her aggressive scrubbing in hot soapy water after the crime scene tech had scraped under her nails. She longed for a shower and the chance to wash away every microscopic particle of the monster that could still be on her body. The mere thought of him touching her skin repulsed her.

  The trip to Boston had started with so much optimism. A sense of impending victory had buoyed them all as they boarded the jet. She had been swept up in the feeling of confidence that they would make an arrest and save a young life. Despite their best efforts, their head start, their advance preparation, they had done neither. Instead, another girl was dead, and the Cipher had slipped away.

  Free to kill again.

  Chapter 23

  Nina pulled the foil wrapping apart and inhaled deeply. “God bless the Boston police.” She tore open a packet of mustard and squirted the contents over the layers of peppers, onions, and Italian sausage before reverently lifting the roll to her watering mouth.

  Delaney’s lieutenant had given them a tall paper sack filled with hoagies after driving them to the airport. Buxton plopped the bag on the small table between their seats after the Gulfstream took off.

  Breck cocked a brow at Nina. “Damn, girl.” It came out in two syllables. Day-um.

  Nina jerked her chin at Wade, who was already halfway through his hoagie. “We haven’t had food this good since San Francisco.”

  The sourdough bowl of clam chowder from Boudin Bakery was a distant memory.

  Kent laughed. “I like a woman with a healthy appetite. Hate it when my date orders a salad with dressing on the side. Makes me feel like a Neanderthal eating a rib eye.”

  “Give yourself some credit,” Wade said around a mouthful. “You’ve at least evolved to the Cro-Magnon stage.”

  Buxton dug around in the bag. “Any mayo?”

  Breck handed over two packets. “Have we heard anything back from Forensics?”

  “We’ve got a rush on the DNA,” Buxton said. “If there’s a match in any of th
e databases, I’ll hear about it soon.” He tried to tear one of the plastic packets open. “In the meantime, did the BPD give you video of the ice chest delivery?”

  Breck put down her sandwich. “They gave me a flash drive. The unsub is slick. We handed out a composite of a blue-eyed white guy and told the cops to watch for him on the Freedom Trail, and he gets past us to leave the victim’s body by posing as a Latino delivery man driving a van on Salem Street.” She popped open a can of soda. “He blended in with the other food service vehicles making drops behind the restaurants and cafés.”

  “He’s a damn chameleon,” Buxton said, abandoning his attempt at twisting to tear the mayo packet open with his teeth.

  Nina swallowed a bite from her hoagie. “What about his getaway from the sewage system? Did city cams pick him up anywhere?”

  “No luck on that front yet,” Buxton said. “But the BPD did track down the delivery van he was driving. It was abandoned on a side street half a mile from the restaurant.”

  “A rental?” Nina said.

  “He got it from a car rental place by Logan Airport,” Buxton said after mutilating a corner of the packet with his teeth. “The Boston field office agents just sent a copy of the scanned rental agreement to the task force database.”

  “I can access the file through our server,” Breck said, opening her laptop. She typed for a few seconds, then turned the screen toward them. “Looks like he rented the van under the name Guillermo Valdez. Used a Florida driver’s license.”

  They all leaned forward to scrutinize a blown-up image of the license the unsub had used to rent the van.

  Nina almost choked on a piece of sautéed onion. “That’s a photo of Julian Zarran. Didn’t the rental car people recognize him? He’s only been in every major action movie out in the past five years.”

  “It’s a busy airport,” Kent said. “Rental places have a lot of business. They probably had a long line of angry, tired travelers and wanted to get through as quickly as possible.”

  “It’s no accident the unsub chose to use Zarran’s image on the phony license,” Wade said. “He’s giving us the finger.”

  Kent pursed his lips. “When word gets out—and it will—Zarran’s going to raise the bounty to a million.”

  “Probably what the unsub wants,” Wade said. “More Scoobies. More chaos.” He swore under his breath. “Maybe we should call Zarran.”

  Nina kept her focus on what they had to work with. “I take it the Miami residence on the license is also bogus?”

  “We sent an official request from the task force for the Miami-Dade PD to swing by and check it out,” Buxton said. “Dead end. He probably chose the address at random.”

  “He must have some way of getting quality fake IDs,” Kent said. “He’s resourceful.”

  They all looked up as the cockpit door opened. “Call for you, sir.” The copilot handed Buxton a sat phone. “It’s the DNA Casework unit chief.”

  Buxton put the device to his ear as the copilot retreated. “Stand by. I’m putting you on speaker.”

  He laid the phone on the table and tapped one of the icons on the front. “I’m with the Quantico team. Go ahead.”

  “This is Dom Fanning,” a gruff male voice said. “We’ve run the sample recovered from Agent Guerrera through the system.”

  Nina held her breath as she waited to hear if the unsub would finally have a name or if he would remain a cipher.

  “No matches,” Fanning said. “He’s not in any criminal database. We’ve already initiated a request to compare it with cooperating commercial genealogical DNA services. I explained the situation personally, and they agreed to rush it. We’ll know if there’s a familial match within forty-eight hours.”

  Buxton released a frustrated groan. “At least we have his genetic profile now.”

  “You have more than that,” Fanning said. “I received a call from the Trace Evidence Unit a few minutes ago. They’ve been coordinating with our Boston ERT and wanted to see if there was a nexus with the DNA we analyzed, because what they determined is . . . unexpected, to say the least.”

  “What did they find?” Buxton asked.

  “Emmeline Baker, the unit chief, is requesting an immediate call so she can explain it to you directly.”

  Buxton thanked Fanning and disconnected. While he scrolled through his phone list and placed the call, Nina considered what Fanning had reported. There had been no DNA match, but apparently the Boston field office’s Evidence Recovery Team had located trace evidence that offered promise.

  A clipped feminine voice carried over the sat phone’s speaker. “Emmeline Baker.”

  Buxton announced himself and got straight to the point. “I understand you have something to report from the Boston case?”

  “The findings are significant. I wanted to alert you as soon as possible.”

  Everyone exchanged excited glances, well aware that the Trace Evidence Unit maintains a reference collection of human and animal hair, natural and man-made textile fibers and fabrics, as well as wood and other items for comparison with samples found at crime scenes. A significant lead could have come from anywhere at the Boston scene.

  Buxton placed his hands on the table. “Did you get a trace evidence hit?”

  Nina stared at the phone, desperate to hear of a break in the case.

  “Agent Guerrera bit the unsub’s glove, tearing off a few fibers. Our evidence techs collected them from the pavement where she indicated she spat them out. Those fibers come from a manufactured fabric that is an exact match for an existing sample in our database, otherwise we wouldn’t have managed such a fast response.”

  Buxton cleared his throat. “You’ve verified your results through redundant examinations?”

  There was no hesitation when Baker responded. “Affirmative.”

  “How many cases can we link?” Buxton asked.

  Baker answered after a long moment. “A total of thirty-six murders.”

  Chapter 24

  Excitement morphed to shock as they all absorbed the information.

  Nina was the first to speak. “Thirty-six murders?”

  Wade narrowed his eyes. “Would the fabric in your database happen to be used by Red Zone Fight Gear?”

  “Correct,” Baker said. “It’s a patented formula. No one else uses it. It’s like a fingerprint.”

  “No way,” Kent said, looking at Wade. “Not possible.”

  Nina glanced back and forth between them. Why were they both visibly upset about what should be good news?

  Buxton’s full attention was on the phone. “The murders you connected, is the Megan Summers case one of them?”

  Nina remembered the girl’s name from her days as a street cop before she joined the Bureau. Every law enforcement officer in the DC metro area had been on the hunt for the so-called Beltway Stalker. It had seemed as if the entire region breathed a collective sigh of relief when his reign of terror ended. She tried, and failed, to put the puzzle together with several pieces missing.

  “Yes, it is.” Emmeline Baker’s voice carried through the phone’s speaker, cutting into her thoughts. “We’re going to review the cases in DC and San Francisco, resubmit every molecule of trace evidence through our processes. Now that we know exactly what needle to look for in those respective haystacks, we might find the same fiber. No promises, though, with so much cross contamination at both of those scenes.”

  “And the Boston victim?” Buxton asked.

  “She has microscopic matching fibers in the skin around her neck where she was strangled. He may not have had an opportunity to scrub the body before disposing of it this time.”

  “Keep me posted,” Buxton said. “Send the complete report when it’s ready. Thanks for the heads up.” He disconnected and turned to the group. “What are the odds?”

  “The odds of what?” Nina said, unable to stop herself.

  Strain clipped Kent’s words. “Of two serial killers with the same MO, wearing the same obscure bra
nd of MMA fighting gear, operating at the same time.”

  “Unless they were partners,” Wade said. “It’s happened before, serial killers working together.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “But it had all the earmarks of one perpetrator acting alone. I’m sure of it.”

  “So was I,” Kent said. “Until now.”

  “I’m missing something here,” Nina said. “Can someone loop me in?”

  Buxton turned to her. “What do you know about the Beltway Stalker?”

  She paused, remembering how the community had been terrorized by a brutal killer who preyed on teenage girls. “He was active when I was a patrol officer in Fairfax County. Because he hit multiple jurisdictions in Maryland, DC, and Virginia, we didn’t catch on that his killings were related until ViCAP matched some common characteristics in his MO.”

  She didn’t add that the at-risk girls he chose as victims didn’t initially capture a lot of attention. “I think he had about twenty victims going back six or seven years before we put the pieces together, then the media went nuts. The next ten victims after that caused a shit storm of panic.”

  “Do you remember how the case ended?” Buxton asked.

  She paused as more details came back to her. “The Beltway Stalker committed suicide. His body was found next to his last victim, who was . . .” Her eyes snapped to Wade.

  All the color had drained from his face. “Chandra Brown,” he finished for her.

  They held each other’s gaze for a long moment. She struggled to imagine what was going through his mind. Chandra Brown had been the case that had derailed him for the better part of a year. Now she understood what Buxton had meant when he asked about the odds. She turned back to their supervisor.

  “So if there aren’t two killers with the same MO, that can only mean one of two things.” She held up a finger. “We missed a partner who was working with him.” She raised a second finger. “Or we got the wrong guy, and the real killer has been at large for the past two years.”

  “There’s more,” Buxton said quietly. “Agent Wade and the Bureau were both sued by the Brown family.”