“I’ll owe you both a nice dinner. We’re close here, so hopefully we won’t keep Simon hopping for much longer. Have a good afternoon, okay?”
“You, too. Don’t work too hard.” She clicked off and Taylor told McKenzie about Brandon Scott.
He looked pained. “Really? I wonder…” He ran his hands through his hair, got a faraway look in his eyes that Taylor was starting to recognize. He was about to take a leap of faith.
“You wonder what?”
“Remember Ms. Woodall, at Hillsboro, said Jerrold King and Brandon Scott got into an argument last week? There were some threats made?”
“Yes, I do. Letha King figured it was about her-she and Brandon used to date, and Jerrold was upset that Brandon had dumped her. You think it was something else?”
“Maybe Jerrold and Brandon were lovers.”
“Wouldn’t Sam have found evidence of that on Jerrold King’s body?”
“Depends on who was pitching and who was catching, if you get my drift.”
Taylor thought about that for a minute. “So Jerrold King kills Brandon Scott in some sort of fit of rage, then goes home and kills himself with a lethal dose of Ecstasy? It would sound perfect if there weren’t six other kids dead.”
“Good point. Still, it’s something to ask around about.”
“I agree. I wonder if Theo Howell knows anything about it? He seems pretty tied into this group.”
“Well, why don’t we ask him?”
The Homicide offices were jam-packed with people. All the interrogation rooms were occupied-the Norwoods, with their daughter and her lawyer in Interrogation One; Fane Atilio in Two; Theo Howell and his parents in Three. Lincoln, Marcus and Renn were all in the offices proper, having a deep discussion. Taylor cleared her throat and they jumped.
“What’s up?” she asked.
Lincoln rubbed his dreads. “Nothing good yet, LT. The video was definitely uploaded from Fane Atilio’s laptop. There’s a ton of correspondence-it’s going to take ages to get through. One address pops up most often, and the back-and-forth has got some seriously graphic content, NC-17 all the way.”
“Not underage porn again, I hope.”
Marcus blushed. “Close enough. It’s sex talk, between Fane and a boy. She never uses his name, but it’s pretty explicit. I felt like I was reading an erotic novel.”
“Can you trace the e-mail address?”
“I’m on it,” Lincoln said. “There’s something strange about it though. It’s part of a single account.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know how when you set up an e-mail account, you can set up multiple addresses-aliases, they call them. Say you and Baldwin got a DSL connection through BellSouth, and you both wanted separate e-mail addresses, but didn’t want to pay for separate accounts. You could set up to fifty aliases on that particular account at no extra charge.”
“And who is the owner of the account?”
“Jacqueline Atilio.”
“Is that Fane’s real name? Jacqueline?”
“No, her legal name is Fane Rebecca Atilio.”
“So Jacqueline might be her mother, who we can’t find?”
“That’s what I’m thinking. I’ve looked into her accounts, and I’ve seen almost no activity outside of ATM withdrawals for the past three weeks. All from the same U.S. Bank branch in Green Hills, one each day for the past week, for the maximum daily limit on the account, three hundred dollars.”
“That’s odd. Let’s get the tapes from those ATM withdrawals.”
“On it.”
“Lincoln, what else do you have?”
“I’m overloaded with text messages and IMs to decipher. I’ve been going through all the laptops and phones, looking for anything that stands out. These kids spend a lot of time online, that’s for sure.”
“What about Facebook and MySpace, Twitter accounts? Are they talking about it anywhere?”
“We’re about halfway through everyone’s profiles. Nothing’s leaping out just yet.”
“Be sure you check out Fane Atilio. See if she’s got any ties anywhere. And let me know about the ATM withdrawals as soon as you can.”
“Will do.”
McKenzie caught her eye. “The Howells are here-you saw that, right?”
“I did. I’m about to go talk to them. And the Norwoods.”
“Good. Umm, about the Scott boy’s autopsy? I’d like to look through all of his files for anything that might lead us to an answer for his…condition.” McKenzie said the word with a delicacy that she knew was difficult for him.
She looked him deep in the eye. “Good. I’m counting on you to find something there. I think it’s important. I still think Brandon Scott was the target of these attacks. Find out why for me, okay?”
“Yes, LT. I’m on it.”
“Marcus, where are we with Crime Scene? Any links?”
“We’ve got fibers and fluids and fingerprints galore. It’s taking some time to isolate.”
“Anything that points in the direction of our suspects?”
“Not yet. I’ll get a call in to Simon Loughley at Private Match. He said he was going to fast-track that DNA from the wounds. Maybe he’s close. And there are no matches for that dark hair found at the Vanderwood crime scene.”
“Okay. Y’all scatter. I’m going to talk to the Howells first, I think.”
They didn’t move. “Taylor,” Marcus said, then broke off.
“What?”
“Ariadne said something happened to Fitz. Do you know anything about it?”
Taylor froze. How dare she? How dare she talk to them without Taylor’s permission? Where did that woman get off? This was none of her concern, and she knew nothing anyway.
“What did she say?” she asked, her voice hollow.
Marcus looked very young. “That he’d been hurt and you were terribly worried for him.”
Taylor pulled her hair down with a vicious tug, the blond spilling over her shoulders. She didn’t want to have this conversation right now, she needed to keep them focused. She needed to keep focused.
“Ariadne knows nothing about Fitz’s case. Baldwin called me this morning with some news. The SBI believes they’ve found his trail. The good news is the North Carolina police are ramping up the search. We’ve had unsubstantiated reports of an…injury…to his eye, but that’s all we have right now. I’ll let you know the minute I know more, I promise.”
It wasn’t an outright lie, at least. She hated to deceive them at all, but she couldn’t have them drawn away from the case at hand, not yet. Not when they were so close.
“That’s good news though, isn’t it?” Marcus asked.
“I hope so, puppy. I hope so. Okay, let’s get to work. Who has an eye on Glenda the Good Witch? Or did she wrangle her broomstick home?”
“I’m here, Lieutenant.” Taylor jerked around-she hadn’t heard the woman walk into the room. Ariadne had her usual beatific smile in place, appearing completely un-perturbed by Taylor’s barbs. Taylor wasn’t sure she particularly liked the access this woman had to her. It was making her very uncomfortable.
“We don’t really ride the brooms, you know,” she said.
“She was in your office, LT.” Lincoln had the good sense to look chagrined. “It was the only place to stash her, outside of the conference room.”
“And you don’t want me in there, near all those piles of information. You never know what might go missing.” Ariadne smiled sweetly at Taylor.
Taylor narrowed her eyes and said, “My office, please. Now.” She turned to her team. “The rest of you, get to it.”
