“Jack, when you and Agent Smalls finish here, I want you both to meet me back at the field office.”
“Where you headed now?” Jack asked.
“Downstairs to the property manager. I noticed cameras in the halls. I want to see if they have any footage of anyone entering Tiffany’s apartment.”
Jack nodded. “Call me when you finish.”
Sin was given access to view the security footage taken over the past twenty-four hours. She watched a man with a ball cap pulled down low walking toward Tiffany’s apartment at twelve minutes after three in the morning. He was looking at the ground and carrying a duffle bag.
Her heart beat quickened and her brain sparked as she quickly stopped the video. Calling Victor over, she pointed at the monitor. “Do recognize that person?”
He leaned in. “Can’t say I do. Let me enlarge the picture.”
It was a little grainy, but Sin was able to see an insignia on the man’s shirt: Beach Plumbing.
“Does that name ring a bell?” she asked.
“I wish it did, but it doesn’t.”
Sin ejected the disc from the computer. “Mind if I take this with me?”
“Take whatever you need,” he said. “I know Tiffany can seem obnoxious at times, but she’s really a sweet kid. I want to help in any way I can.”
Sin placed the disc in her backpack, thanked him, and stepped out into the early afternoon sun. So in her head with what she had just witnessed, Sin didn’t take notice of her surroundings, including the white van parked across the street from the apartment building.
31
Lieutenant Smalls put on a demonstration of exactly how the killer had set up the remote control gun. From the height of the stand and the angle of the mounting plate, he was able to show that the flamethrower was set to shoot its deadliest fire at a height of five feet, four inches.
“Tiffany is about five-four,” Jack said. “Why wasn’t she burned worse than she was?”
Sin hopped off the table, moved to the whiteboard, and drew a stick figure on the empty slate. “He was aiming for her face. The bastard wanted to kill her but if that failed, he was hoping to take away her beauty.”
Smalls agreed. “The kickback on the weapon caused the flames to shoot high. Lucky girl.”
Sin picked up the wall phone and called Evelyn’s desk. “Evelyn, find out if Tiffany’s condition has been released. I want guards posted at her room and at the entrances and exits. No press.”
No one had to state the obvious that Tiffany would most likely be safer if the killer thought she was dead.
Sin could feel Jack’s eyes on her. “What?” she said.
“There is more going on in that brain of yours than you’re saying. What are you thinking about? I don’t like that look in your eye. The last time I saw that look you went to Nicaragua and almost blew your career.”
“I went to Nicaragua to stop a madman, Jack. That’s the part you seem to be forgetting.”
“This time I’m not going to let you do it alone. Whatever it is you’re thinking about doing, I’m with you.”
Sin squeezed his hand and kissed his cheek. “That means a lot; it really does. But right now the only place I’m going is home.”
“Home?”
“Something has been bugging me since I was down in the Keys, and I think I just figured it out. I need to go check on some information. I’ll let you know if I was right. In the meantime, I need you to check on Gonzales. He was petty shaken up, and then I want you to head over to the hospital. Make sure everyone’s in place and nobody can get near Tiffany.”
32
Something clicked when Sin mentioned playing games. She wasn’t sure exactly what, but she knew she needed to dig deeper into Miranda Stokler’s background.
She or her art is at the center of these killings. I just feel it, she thought as she rode. Let’s see if I’m as intuitive as everyone keeps saying.
Her mind was swirling and the trip was a blur. Before she knew it, she was back at the houseboat. She unpacked the laptop Charlie had left her and was soon pecking away at the keyboard.
She brought up a picture of Miranda Stokler and studied it. “Let’s see what hidden gems you placed on this baby, Charlie.”
Sin scanned the programs until she found what she hoped to find: the NSA’s Facial Recognition program. She dragged Miranda’s picture into the program and clicked, “Find.”
Lighting a cigarette, she sat back and closed her eyes.
Two cigarettes and three cups of coffee later, she heard the computer beep. Her pulse quickened as she studied the screen. A picture of a much younger Miranda filled the screen and under it was a date: June 9, 1971. Her vital information followed.
Name: Joanna Ash
Age: 19
Height: 5’6”
Sin leaned in, shocked at the name under the photo. She quickly opened another window and searched Joanna Ash.
An aspiring young artist, Joanna was married at the age of seventeen to Vincent Ash, a college poetry professor.
The name Vincent Ash was familiar to Sin, so she again began a new search.
As Sin continued to read, her skin began to crawl. Soon after Joanna and Vincent married, the murders of young coeds began to occur on the campuses of small colleges throughout Iowa and Illinois—schools where Vincent just happened to be an adjunct professor. For three years the FBI tracked the killer with little or no progress, until finally, in the spring of 1971, they caught a break.
Prints left on the scene of the last victim had led the FBI to a home in Davenport, Iowa. It was there they found Vincent Ash dead, and his young wife cut and beaten. Joanna had shot and killed her husband in self-defense.
Sin was elated to have found the information, but something still didn’t sit right.
Trying to follow a
