“Thx,” I typed.
At the end of the email, Angela had also included background on the Eco-Tech members whose photos I’d forwarded to her. Ted Rusk had the most extensive hacking experience of the group and had earned a Carnegie Mellon undergrad computer science degree. Other than that, two of the others were ideologues who’d participated in various protests and civil demonstrations, and one, Clifton White, was a felon who, based on his record, might have been working for Eco-Tech as security or maybe as a bodyguard.
After the chat, I recalled my conversation with Alexei and found myself staring into space, thinking of Eco- Tech’s connection, the ROSD hack. After a moment I noticed Lien-hua looking my way. “Yes?” I said.
“Something’s going on in that head of yours.”
“What motivates professional hackers?”
“Professional hackers? Well, the same thing that motivates mountain climbers.”
“Challenge. Wait…” It took me a moment to see where she was going with that. “Maybe telling them it’s unclimbable. Newbies will walk away, but the pros will be more committed than ever to be the first one to scale it.”
“You understand motives better than you like to admit.”
“You must be rubbing off on me.”
She accepted that with a kind nod. “Besides challenge, add in the rewards that come from accomplishing what no one else has. Why do you ask? What are you thinking?”
I tapped my computer knowingly. “There’s more going on here than meets the eye.”
“Really.” There was a friendly touch of sarcasm in her voice. “And let me guess, Captain Cliche-you’re going to find out what it is.”
“Bingo.”
“I think you’ve been reading too many pulp fiction novels.”
“Nope. Thrillers. My favorites are the stories that have a good twist at the end.”
“You mean like when someone who seems innocent for the whole book turns out to be the killer?”
“Sure. Or when everything you thought was true turns out to be an artifice, a giant house of cards.”
“And the truth”-now she gave me a diminutive smile, and it lifted me more than anything else had in the last two days-“was something you never even saw coming.”
“Exactly.”
For a moment I thought of darker twists, those in the other direction, in which innocent people you think will survive don’t, or hope that seemed guaranteed disappears in a final dramatic plunge, but I pushed those thoughts aside.
Lien-hua went back to work but a minute later rested her chin in her hands; it was her turn to be deep in thought. “The Reiser case, Pat. Some of the things Jake told me don’t seem to fit.”
“Those are?”
“If the autopsy is correct, Reiser would have already been dead when the eyewitness said she saw him enter his trailer. The date of the unopened mail in his trailer supports that.” She leaned forward. “But if Basque did kill Reiser because we were getting too close, why linger in the area another day after killing Reiser? Or more specifically, why chance getting caught entering his trailer disguised as Reiser when that’s not even where Reiser was killed?”
“Good point.” I drummed my fingers on the desk for a moment. “Hang on. We’re already assuming too much. We don’t know that Basque killed Reiser and we don’t know if it was Basque at the trailer. In the search for truth, it’s only by chance that you can find the right answers without asking the right-”
“Questions,” she inserted, then quoted directly what I’d been planning to say: “So it’s always better to begin with inquiries rather than assertions.” A slight smile. “Yes, I know.”
“I’ve said that before.”
“Once or twice.” She stood, paced toward the window. “Okay, let’s back up for a minute. Is it possible that Reiser wasn’t even Basque’s partner at all, that he was set up for the crimes from the beginning? After all, he was a drifter and an ex-con, the perfect kind of person to lay blame on for a series of crimes like this. He lived in half a dozen different places while those crimes were occurring.”
“No,” I said, “that doesn’t work. Last summer his DNA was matched to that found at four of the original Basque crime scenes fourteen years ago. That’s a long time to sustain framing someone.”
“But the very thing that makes that unlikely also makes it unlikely that Reiser has been Basque’s accomplice all along.”
I looked at her curiously. “Why’s that?”
“Time, Pat. Fourteen years? Could Reiser really have made it that long without leaving any DNA at any other crime scene? Even if Basque was the dominant partner, serial killers almost never go that long between crimes.”
“You can’t just turn it off,” I reflected. She was right. Of all the hundreds of serial killers I’ve studied over the last fifteen years, unless they were incarcerated, only a handful had ever managed to stop committing crimes for more than a few years. A murder spree with Basque, then thirteen years of good behavior? It didn’t fit. “It would be almost unheard of.”
“Right. So think about it-all those years, no evidence left, and then suddenly he reconnects with Basque- who’s smart and meticulous-and Reiser starts leaving his DNA behind again?”
And now we only find news clippings and news coverage footage of the crimes with Basque? Why? If he was a scrapbooker, why only follow Basque’s crimes?
I let the implications sink in. Out the window I noticed a snowmobile approaching the motel. Two people on it, but at this distance I couldn’t tell who they might be.
“But if Basque has a different partner,” I observed, “it’s unbelievable they would have planted another individual’s DNA fourteen years ago and then picked up where they left off.”
“But fourteen years ago when the state of Wisconsin first prosecuted the case, the DNA hadn’t been identified. Could Basque or his partner have somehow recently switched the lab samples to point to Reiser now?”
“I don’t see how anyone could have done that. I’m more involved with this case than anyone, and even I couldn’t have pulled off something like that.”
She went on, undeterred. “But what if the unidentified DNA was never entered into the court records? Or, even if it was, those were all digitized two years ago; if a person had access to the online case files, she could-”
Her phone vibrated on the desk.
“I’ll get it,” I said. With a small flutter of apprehension I picked it up.
A text: “One hour. Woodborough hospital. Lower level. Come alone.”
The hospital? Why the hospital?
I noticed Lien-hua eyeing me inquisitively. “Who’s it from?”
Beyond her, outside in the storm, I identified Sean and Tessa on the snowmobile. My stepdaughter wore a pink snowmobile suit that must have been Amber’s. Pink was in no way Tessa’s favorite color, and it might have been comical if everything else going on right now wasn’t so serious.
“Pat?” Lien-hua indicated toward the phone. “What’s up?”
“It’s a source who might know something about the Pickron murders,” I said honestly. I had until 1:45 to get to the basement of the Woodborough hospital, but the road in front of the motel hadn’t been plowed in hours, and I didn’t have time to wait around for the trail groomer. “I’m sorry, but that’s all I can tell you right now.”
Before she could follow up with another question, I grabbed my coat and left for the lobby to get the thing I would need if I was going to make it to that meeting with Alexei Chekov.
55
I met Sean and Tessa by the front door. Snowmobile helmet off, my stepdaughter’s midnight-black hair swirled endearingly around her shoulders.
