‘Notice anything?’ Fletcher asked, tapping the stack of order forms resting on his lap.
‘All the orders were placed by men,’ Karim said.
‘And none from Colorado.’
‘So not only does our lady shooter live in another state, she took steps to conceal her identity.’
Fletcher nodded. ‘I noticed one other thing,’ he said.
‘Just one?’ Karim grinned. ‘Where?’
‘The page containing the agreement order and the liability waiver.’ Fletcher removed three earmarked pages from his stack and, pushing the cheese tray aside, placed them on the table. ‘These three men from Virginia. Barry Johnson, from Purcellville. Jon Riley, from Leesburg. And Jessie Foster, from Ashburn. Take a look at the signatures. The slope of the writing and the connecting lines used between the letters are similar. The letter “J” is the most telling example. It’s identical in each case — and see how the writer connects it to the adjoining letter?’ Fletcher pointed for Karim’s benefit.
‘Bloody hell,’ Karim said. ‘You’re right.’
‘All three men placed orders for 9-mm rounds. Johnson placed the first order in November of last year, followed by Riley in December and then Foster last month.’
Karim’s brow furrowed. ‘So this person used three different names to create three separate orders using, what, three different sets of human ashes?’
‘It’s a possibility. The name of the deceased is different on each death certificate. I wouldn’t put too much stock in the names. Death certificates can easily be doctored using templates readily available on the Internet, and Sacred Ashes only requires a copy of the death certificate. They wouldn’t be checking its validity.
‘The weight of cremated remains depends on the weight of the individual,’ Fletcher continued. ‘A 200-pound man, for example, would yield six pounds of human ash. When I entered the house, I saw opened boxes containing roughly a cup of human ashes — about eight ounces. So you would have plenty of leftover remains to use for additional orders.’
Fletcher returned to his stack. Out of the corner of his eye he could see M watching him intently.
‘Are you aware of Virginia’s gun laws?’ he asked Karim.
‘I’m not, but I’m assuming they’re fairly liberal.’
Fletcher nodded. ‘Take a look at this,’ he said, and placed three new pages on the table. ‘Here are the shipping instructions provided by Johnson, Riley and Foster. They all ordered the same 9-mm rounds, and in each case Sacred Ashes mailed the ammunition to a local firearms dealer for pickup. This would make sense in a state that has restrictions on the type and/or amount of ammunition that can be delivered to a person’s home. Virginia, however, has no such restrictions.
‘If you took out a map, you’d see these three Virginia towns are close to the Maryland border. And Maryland does have strict ammunition guidelines. If our shooter lives there, all she would have to do is drive to the Virginia dealers and pay their out-of-state FFL-transfer fees.’
‘If we contact the dealers and ask to see their records, we may tip off our shooter.’
‘You’re assuming they keep strict records. Some ask for a licence while others ask for nothing at all. And if our shooter hid her identity from Sacred Ashes, I think it’s safe to assume she would have taken similar precautions when picking up her ammunition. Exploring that avenue is a waste of time.’
‘What would you suggest?’
Fletcher turned to M, saw that she was already looking at him, waiting, her hands folded on the table.
‘The three names I wrote down for you, were you able to find their emails?’
She nodded, her emerald eyes glowing in the MacBook screen’s light.
‘I traced the ISP for each email,’ she said. Her tone was neutral, her expression almost phlegmatic. ‘All three emails originated from the same place.’
Karim swung round in his chair. ‘Where?’
‘A house in Maryland,’ she said.
26
Jimmy Weeks’s eyes fluttered opened to darkness. It swam around him, as impenetrable as a wall. While he couldn’t see anything, he could feel things, minor sensations that seemed to be calling to him from a great distance, like an orbiting space satellite thousands of miles away relaying vital information to an earth base. He knew he was lying on his left side, on something cold and hard and flat. His knees were tucked against his chest. Something had happened to his back; he felt pain between his shoulder blades, and it seemed to be trying to draw his attention, urging him to investigate.
Had he been in some sort of accident? Was he in a hospital and being given drugs? Or was he drunk? He did feel drunk, and a little sick to his stomach. It reminded him of that party at Tim Doherty’s house when he’d chugged an entire six-pack of Milwaukee’s Best within an hour. Huge mistake. He had got so shitfaced that he could barely stand. After he threw up, Tim had brought him to the basement and put him on a sofa. Jimmy remembered how he’d forced himself to sit up, everything spinning around him. Then, mercifully, he’d passed out.
He didn’t feel like he was going to puke. More than anything, he felt tired. He shut his eyes, thinking about the cold trapped in this darkness. Yeah, it was weird, and yes, these tingling sensations crawling all over his body were disturbing, but his brain… it was like it had gone on holiday, leaving a fog in its place. A moment later he drifted off into a restless sleep plagued with fevered dreams.
Like any normal person, he suffered from the occasional nightmare. The ones from his youth — involving a faceless alien creature that roamed the house at night and hooked its tentacles on to him and his family and drank their blood — had been replaced by more typical, standard fare: falling from the top of a building or being trapped inside a strange house full of endless halls and ever-changing rooms. His dreams turned really odd once he’d entered his present oh-so wonderful adolescent phase, with its constant bounty of boners that occurred during class for no reason at all, and acne that spread across his face, back and shoulders like the indestructible crabgrass in his parents’ lawn. Now his nightmares became more personal, more rooted in reality. The one he was having right now involved a recurring fear: public speaking. Principal Shelly told him it was time to address the students and pulled back the curtain. Jimmy walked on to the auditorium stage, his stomach doing flip-flops, and was immediately greeted with gasps and shrieks. Now came gales of laughter. It was at that moment he realized he wasn’t wearing any trousers. Or underwear.
Jimmy resurfaced from the dream, sensing it had been prompted by a real-life event. His mind served up a real memory: showering after last week’s hockey game. The coach, a tiny moustached man named Peter Walsh, insisted that his players take a shower after each practice or game. Why, Jimmy didn’t know, but the guy stood guard like a cop in the locker room to make sure you did. Jimmy had been standing in the school’s big prison-type shower with half a dozen other guys, his buddy Michael Hauptman standing right next to him and soaping up when Haupy nodded with his chin to Jimmy’s crotch and said, ‘Dude, what’s up with your junk?’ Jimmy felt cold all over — the same way he felt right now.
As Jimmy’s eyes fluttered open again to the darkness, he consulted his brain for an explanation. It failed to provide one, so he moved his right hand up and touched his chest. Bare skin. He felt his knees. Bare skin. He moved his hand round to his back and felt his bare ass. His junk was, in fact, exposed. He wasn’t wearing his boxers.
Embarrassment more than terror parted the fog, and he managed to get himself on to all fours. Dizzy and still feeling drunk, he reached out and his fingers got caught in some sort of barrier made of chain link. He grabbed it with both hands and stood. Slowly he turned to his right, feeling the chain link, hearing it rattle. Then the barrier ended and turned to his right. More chain link. He followed it with his fingers and when it ended he felt something cold and hard and rough. Concrete. A concrete wall. He followed it and felt another chain-link barrier.
I’m buck-naked and locked inside a… what? What is it?
At that moment his brain returned from its holiday. The fog lifted and memories started to trickle in. Being pulled over by that undercover woman FBI agent, who’d claimed his father’s car had been involved in some robbery. Sitting handcuffed in the woman’s Chevy SUV, her stabbing him with a needle, and then… He couldn’t remember what happened next, but none of that mattered. A cop wouldn’t inject you with a drug. A cop or an FBI agent wouldn’t strip off your clothes and place you in this -
