sooner or later, someone would. “No photo of Fuller.”
No one commented.
Finally, Vail said, “Okay, so we’ve got some questions that need answers. Let’s keep the line of communication open with him. We should send him an email so he knows we’re going to keep up our part of the deal and ask him who the hell these other vics are.” She looked at Dixon for approval.
Dixon appeared distracted, staring at the screen and not responding. Finally, she said, “Do we want to do that? I mean, he didn’t keep up his part of the bargain. We said
“You want to argue with him?” Vail asked. “At this point, I think that’s the wrong move.”
Dixon sat back hard. “Yeah, okay. Fine.”
Vail looked around at everyone’s body language. They were slumped in their seats. All were looking off, lost in thought. “Hey,” Vail said. “This is good. We’ve got a lot more than we had an hour ago.”
Failing to get a response, she pulled her BlackBerry and began composing a reply:
Thanks for cooperating. We need time to go through this. As promised, reporters from the press and kntv are here. We’re calling the mayor and will keep up our end of the deal. There’ll be something on the 11 o’clock news and a front page article in tomorrow’s paper. We need your help with something. We’re confused because there are victims we don’t know about and we can’t match their names to their photos. And I’m sure you can enlighten us as to why victoria cameron, ursula robbins, isaac jenkins, maryanne bernal, and scott fuller aren’t on your list. Please reply to this email or leave us another flash drive. Thanks again for your cooperation.
Vail read the proposed message to the task force members. “Comments?”
Lugo turned to her, slowly. His face was hard, his jaw set. “I hate this fucker. Why are we sucking up to him? That email sucks. We should tell him to go fuck himself.”
“Ray,” Vail said calmly, “this offender is a narcissist. We’ll get more by being subservient to him, by showing him respect and deference. Our goal, our only goal, is to catch the bastard. If we piss him off and he cuts off communication with us, we may not have another opportunity to achieve our one and only objective.”
“Send it,” Dixon said. She looked over at Brix, who nodded agreement.
Vail said, “I’m emailing this to you, Ray. Send it through Outlook, like you did before.”
“But he didn’t like that—”
“I want his response coming to you guys. In a little while . . .” She couldn’t bring herself to say it. “I just want the communication to go to the sheriff’s department mail server, not my BlackBerry.”
Brix sighed deeply, then pushed himself from his chair. “I’ll call the Mayor. And Congressman Church. And Stan Owens. We’ll all need to huddle on this media story. I’ll tell the reporters we’ll have something for them around nine. Roxx, as lead, I think you should be the face of the investigation. Agreed?”
Dixon nodded slowly. “Yeah.”
Brix pulled his phone to make the calls. Vail looked at the screen, where the image of an unnamed woman lay. The mask of death draped across her face.
“Hate to say it,” Dixon said, “but it’s beginning to look that way.”
Vail felt like saying, “I’ve always had doubts about him. It just doesn’t fit.” But she didn’t. She’d already voiced her opinion. And she hadn’t had anything better to offer.
A call came through on the room phone. Lugo picked it up, then pressed a button. “It’s Aaron.”
Matthew Aaron’s voice filtered through the speaker. “Redd, you there?”
Brix, leaning against the wall, said, “We’re here, Matt. Got anything for us?”
“You’re not going to like it. We’ve traced the flash drive to a PC right here at the SD.”
Brix pushed away from the wall and walked closer to the phone’s speaker. “What?”
“I watched the cybergeeks do their thing, and they’re sure about it. I’ve had them lock down the room. I’m gonna go over there in a minute and start dusting.”
Brix shook his head. “How can that be? It’s a secure facility. You need a prox card—”
“Yeah, that’s the thing. Turns out there was a prox card lost about three weeks ago. Shil-ray Simmons. I just talked with her, took her to task, questioned her pretty hard. She said she thought she just misplaced it and was afraid to report it lost. Nothing was missing, nothing was reported stolen in the building, so she figured it’d turn up, that it was just misplaced in a drawer somewhere.”
Brix’s face shaded red. “What the hell was she thinking? Evidence could’ve been tampered with, cases could’ve been compromised.” He leaned a hand on the wall. “And what were you thinking, questioning her? You’re a CSI, Matt.”
“I was just trying to help. I uncovered the missing card, didn’t I?”
Brix swiped a hand down his face. “We’ll discuss this later. Have they deactivated the stolen card?”
“Already done.”
“Fine. There are database records entries for every swipe each card makes. Get a printout of that log. Which doors, which times, which days.” He motioned to Lugo, who clicked off the call.
“So our UNSUB’s got someone on the inside,” Vail said. “Or he
Brix nodded. “Ray, have Lily in HR print us out a list of all county employees. I want to know everyone who’s had access to the sheriff’s department facility. Include contract workers. Everyone.”
Lugo made a note on his pad. “And you want this tomorrow, I take it.”
“No,” Brix said with a tight mouth. “I want it today.”
“And have them pull the surveillance video for the past week before it gets overwritten,” Dixon said. “We’re gonna have to go through it all, correlate it with the doors that card opened, see if we can ID the fucker who stole it.”
“They already pulled the video when Karen got that letter,” Lugo said.
“That may be all we need,” Agbayani said. “Have Aaron look at the date the PowerPoint document was created and last modified. That’ll tell us when the UNSUB was in the building.”
“Yes, yes,” Brix said. “Perfect. Then match it up with the swipes of that prox card. And find out what’s taking them so goddamn long with that video. Did they find anything or not? Got all that, Ray?”
Lugo tossed down his pen. “Yeah. Got it.” He swung his chair around, rose, and walked out of the room.
Dixon watched him leave, then said, “Is it me, or has he been on edge lately?”
Brix walked to the whiteboard. “We’ve all been on edge. With everything that’s gone on this past week, I think we’re holding up pretty goddamn good.” He waved a hand. “Ray’ll be fine. Besides, we’ve got other things to worry about. We don’t know for sure this card was used by our UNSUB. But it’s highly probable. Now I’m assuming no one on the task force is our guy. But that still leaves a lot of county employees, a lot of ’em in this building, who could’ve palmed that card. So from this point forward, no one’s to share any information with anyone. Have it go through me. I’ll control all info in and out. So don’t leave any important papers lying around.”
Vail snapped her fingers. “That’s how the offender got my phone number, how he started texting me. Those sheets you printed up and gave out with everyone’s cell numbers. He was here, in this room.”
“Shit.” Dixon looked around, acutely conscious of her surroundings. “What else could he have taken or seen? The whiteboard—”
The door swung open. Lugo stood there, his face crumpled in thought.
“Forget something?” Brix asked.
Lugo stepped in and let the door close behind him. “Your PC has all sorts of personally identifiable information buried in it. Like what Eddie was saying, about the date the document was created. But there’s a lot more info on there. Every single document you create embeds info that it takes from your computer.”
“I know a guy at Microsoft who’s helped me out before,” Agbayani said. He checked the room clock. “It’s late,
