“I’ve got to tell you all something,” I said to the group. “Shelby and I were once close. This was before she and Andy met. So, whatever you hear out there, Shelby was my friend, a good one.”
The room stayed very somber and silent. Justine stared at me and through me. I knew she was trying to fit Shelby into the time sequence of my checkered past. She had good reason to.
“Take a look at these photos,” I went on. “I’ve studied the images myself, but I’m not seeing much but the obvious so far.”
Justine spoke up. “I assume not, but was anything taken from the house?”
“Only Shelby ’s life.”
“Were either of them dealing?” Del Rio asked. “Sorry, Jack. The questions have to be asked. You know that.”
I told him no. The Cushmans didn’t use drugs and they certainly didn’t sell. I knew that Andy made enough money as a hedge fund manager to keep him and Shelby very comfortable. I was certain of that much. Andy ran some of my money, and his investing had helped me open offices all around the world, including New York and, most recently, our shop in San Diego.
“Okay, assuming Shelby’s jewelry is real, the room was trashed for effect,” Justine said. “The shot to the breasts would appear to be the mark of a sexual sadist. The other shot says ‘execution.’ So why was Shelby a target?”
“Maybe the whole point was to set Andy up as the killer,” Emilio Cruz said.
I nodded. “If that’s what the killer was trying to do, it worked.”
I told the group what Chief Fescoe had told me. The LAPD’s working theory was that Shelby’s death was a crime of passion, that Andy shot her and then called me as a cover story-a pretty good one, I had to admit.
“You’re sure he didn’t do it?” Emilio asked.
“I’m sure. I know some of you have no sympathy for Andy, but he was in love with Shelby. And now he’s our client. LAPD says there’s no match to the slugs the ME removed from Shelby’s body, and before the killer left the premises he polished the surfaces to a high shine.”
I asked Sci to reach out to the LAPD crime lab and report back on anything he could get out of them. I told Cruz to take another investigator with him to the Cushman house, canvass the neighbors, see if anything had been overlooked by the police. We were a lot better than they were, and we didn’t have to follow their procedures and rules. Plus, I could put more people on the case.
I turned to Rick Del Rio, my blood brother. After he came back from Afghanistan, Rick had made some bad decisions. He paid for them with four years at Chino-which made him very valuable to Private. While doing his stretch, Del Rio had become a student of criminal law, first to help himself, but then he became a jailhouse lawyer, made friends in low places.
“Tap your sources,” I said. “I’m pretty sure the shooter knew the Cushmans’ habits. For one thing, he kicked in the door knowing that Shelby never set the alarm. He probably knew when Andy was due home too. And he wiped that place clean.
“As of right now, finding Shelby Cushman’s killer is our most important case,” I said. “Everyone’s on it. That’s all I’ve got at the moment.”
I stood up and closed the lid on my laptop.
“Hang on, Jack,” Justine said. “I’ve got news on Schoolgirl.”
Chapter 12
Justine knows me better than anyone, including Del Rio and even my brother. She and I lived together for two years, and after we broke up, we stayed close. Confidants, best friends. I’ve told Justine about my daily hate calls. She’s the only one who knows. You’re dead, Jack.
Now she reached under her chair, pulled out a blue knapsack, and put it on the conference table.
I asked, “Is that Connie Yu’s bag?”
Justine nodded and said, “I’m handing it over to LAPD as soon as we’re done with it here. We can do more with it than they can. We don’t know if the killer made a mistake or if he’s baiting us.”
Then she described the young victim and the crime scene in excruciating detail, getting more worked up with every word. She stopped speaking as her throat tightened. She shook her head and swallowed hard, apologized before going on.
But on she went.
It killed me to see how much this case hurt her, and for that reason alone, I wanted to nail the killer almost as badly as she did. We all did.
“Jack, to repeat, whoever this psycho-killer is, he’s not the first to use ‘different means,’ but it’s rare. Most killers of this type have a pattern and stick with it. The pattern describes the killer’s mood and maybe their personality too. These murders are all different. That’s wacked out, and it’s something I haven’t seen before.
“Shooting someone is remote. Setting fire is a sexual crime. Strangling is personal. We’ve got those three methods and more.
“I don’t see this killer evolving, and I still can’t picture him. He doesn’t fit any profile I know. The only good news,” she continued, “is that Cruz found this sad little bag.”
“It was lying on the riverbank in the shadows under the bridge,” said Cruz. “Maybe the killer panicked for some reason and threw it away. Maybe there’s a witness we haven’t heard about yet.”
Dr. Sci picked up where Cruz left off. He was wearing a red Hawaiian shirt, khaki shorts, and flip-flops, one of his standard outfits.
“I printed every fricking item in the girl’s bag,” Sci said. “There were smudges on Connie’s wallet and a clear partial print, but it didn’t ring any bells in the database. That print could belong to anyone, a friend of Connie’s or her killer, but whoever left it for us has never been arrested, or taught school, or been in law enforcement or the military.”
“Too bad,” said Cruz. “I was hoping for something better than that.”
Sci went on. “All is not lost. The cell phone is the jackpot, my friends. Mo-bot came in at four a.m.,” he said, “and she pulled the data.”
“Mo, you found something?” Justine asked.
“There were a slew of text messages,” said Maureen Roth, aka Mo-bot, computer geek extraordinaire, self- appointed mom to the Private family. She was fifty-something but didn’t look it, with her tattoos, ultrahip clothes, spiky hair-and then there were the bifocals, which looked like they ought to belong to somebody’s grandmother in Boca Raton, Florida.
“I found hundreds of messages, all traceable to IP addresses and cell phones except for the last one, which came from a prepaid phone. I know. What a shock. But still, you’ll all want to see this.”
Mo-bot inserted a flash drive into a laptop and poked some keys. Messages scrolled up on the center wall screen.
I read the text message at the top of the list, time dated yesterday afternoon.
connie, it’s linda. my mom took away my cell. i’m in massive trouble and i have to talk to you. meet me behind the taco bell? pleeeeze. don’t tell anyone!
Mo said, “Let’s assume that Connie gets the message that her friend Linda is in trouble. She has no reason to be cautious so far. She goes to meet Linda. Just like that, the trap is sprung.”
“So the text message was a fake? A lure?”
“Exactly. Anyone could have known the name of one of Connie’s friends, bought a no-name phone, and lured her to her death. But twelve girls have been killed now. They went to different schools, and none of the victims knew one another. That’s why I find it probable, even a certainty, that each dead girl was tricked by a fake text. It’s simple, even ingenious.”
Justine said, “So a hacker gets into the girl’s phone, figures out who she trusts, and takes on a friend’s identity by texting from a no-name phone.”
Sci said, “That’s what I’m thinking. A ghost in the machine. But that still doesn’t lead us to the killer. We hit a wall after that.”
