Calvin knew such skills were acquired in the elite military, specifically the Marines or maybe Special Forces.
Add that in with the bomb skills and the tracking ability and Calvin came to a scary conclusion. This guy was trained by the best. Calvin could use that particular training against him. Time for some very serious, highest-level hacking.
He hacked a military database, but after the second layer of protection, he was shut out.
He had a hunch. He called Mike and asked him to hack the Marine Sniper School records. Then he emailed Mike the photos from the surveillance cameras taken today.
Less than two hours later Calvin received an e-mail from Mike. The attached document was a full file on the killer. A high-ranking NCO sniper gone bad named Baxter had been charged with a mob hit, but not convicted. That was who was after him. Now Calvin and Rachel were pinned down for sure. Baxter would have his rifle and scope on the building within hours.
Mike wrote two words in the body of the email. “Fuck me.”
At midnight, Ace was still at the Golden Horseshoe office, a rare event, but he was going nuts. His perfect plan was showing signs of weakness. The assassin wasn’t late calling in, but Ace was on edge all the same.
At his last check-in, Scott said he had found Watters and that the job would be done without delay. But that was four hours ago and Ace’s sources at the police hadn’t heard anything.
The phone rang.
“You better have some good news.”
“Afraid not, boss.”
The hit man told him he had played cat and mouse with Watters for a half-hour. Ace listened, his head throbbing harder, as his overpaid hit man recounted his failed attempt.
He had had enough. These failures had gone on too long. But before he could tell Scott that, the hit man said, “I have an idea.”
“Forget it. I’m pulling you off. I’ll find someone else, someone more reliable. You will never work in this country again.”
“No, don’t. Now I know where Watters is and I’ve scoped the area.”
“How did you find him,” Ace demanded to know.
“One of Watters’ clients held a grudge. After his run-in with Watters, he’d followed the collector for days until he’d found the location.”
Ace nodded.
“Tomorrow is the end. And you’d need a day at least to bring someone new in. So what do you have to lose?”
Everything, Ace thought. He didn’t like it, but the assassin was right. He needed Watters eliminated
“Call when it’s done.”
Chapter 35
It was early Saturday morning and Dale sat at his desk.
His group was busy living and breathing the investigation, reviewing crime scene photos, witness interviews, 911 calls and forensic, ballistic and post-mortem reports. This case had everyone on edge. The longer it went unsolved, the more challenging it would be to find the real killer or killers. Dale was still not sure if the killers were working together in some way, but it was a very real possibility, given that one killer had killed Watters’ boss and another or the same one was trying to kill Watters.
His head ached from frustration and his eyes burned from fatigue. He knew that basically they still had nothing solid. He hadn’t expected that after the three perfect murders, there’d be one more and that the second killer had also left no evidence at all.
Feeling desperate, he pulled the most powerful magnifying glass out of a drawer and used it to study the pictures from the four murders.
Watters had some answers. But he was still not located after three days of searching.
Jimmy, who was usually upbeat, looked grim. He ambled across the room and slumped down in a seat. Loosening his tie, he removed his outer jacket, unfastened his shoulder holster and flung it over the back of the chair.
Dale put away the magnifying glass and dropped the crime scene photos, grabbing the folder titled, “Grant, Douglas—Crime Scene Analysis Report.” He read through the information one more time and threw the folder down, papers scattering onto the floor. He spun around in his seat and faced the bulletin board beside his desk.
Brought in for the Grant case, photographs of suspects, evidence, crime scenes and theories had been stapled across the board. With the addition of one new murder, the papers had grown and overlapped each other.
Four perfect murders. So far. That was the hope that Dale clung too—that they were only temporarily perfect and that at some point they’d find something that would actually start cracking one or more of the cases and make them less than perfect.
Paperwork was a part of the investigation that most cops hated. But everyone knew that many investigations had been cracked by one tiny, overlooked detail.
“Where would you find a bomb expert, Jimmy?”
“Military, or a police bomb squad.”
Dale stared at the board, though by now he had almost memorized it. “What do you think?”
His partner dropped his paperwork and sighed. “I have nothing.”
“Hey, Tommy!” Dale yelled. “Who’d you talk to in New Orleans?”
The man rummaged through his desk before answering. “Detective Hopkins.”
“You got a number?”
The cop scurried over and handed Dale a crumpled piece of paper with scribbled handwriting.
Dale made the call, hoping the New Orleans detective kept the same pathetic hours he did. He made his request and was transferred to the homicide department.
“Detective Hopkins.” A hoarse voice, all business, came on the phone.
“This is Detective Dale Dayton of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.”
“Ah, I was just going to call you.”
“Do you have something for me?”
“That’s the thing. After your officer’s call, we went down to the docks and dusted the entire booth, inside and out. The phone booth had been wiped down and cleaned by a professional. We couldn’t pull one print from the site.”
Dale wasn’t surprised.
The New Orleans detective continued. “We kept a camera on for two days—no connection to anyone you named.”
Dale shook his head. “Thank you, Detective.”
He leaned back in the chair and stared at the papers on the desk. Was there anything among this collection that would indicate a path to follow?
Another file was thrown on his desk, this time by an LVMPD intern. “Detective, we got an ID on the prostitute from Pitt’s office. Carey Reynolds, nineteen years old, from Bay City, Texas. Guess her picture on the news caught a tip. We’re doing a background, but so far nothing in her past suggests she was the intended target.”
Dale nodded. “I didn’t think she was.”
Calvin sat in silence, reviewing every feed. There was nothing he could see that might affect him, but somewhere Baxter was staking out the house and preparing his next move.
Baxter would set up a sniper site beyond the range of Calvin’s monitors.
Calvin had left his fortress once when he’d spotted the assassin. He and Rachel weren’t leaving again. A Kevlar vest was no protection against a head shot. What the killer didn’t know, though, was that Calvin could
