webcam, probably hidden webcam or homemade sex tapes. The ‘WC’ is rated by the fetish-up-skirt, hidden videos, et cetera. It’s become all the rage now for teenagers to record themselves having sex and post the tapes on the Internet.” She shook her head. “They really don’t understand what they’re doing with their future.”
She handed Noah a sheet. “Hans wrote that when he got here a few hours ago. It gives us a cheat sheet of priorities.”
“What’s ‘P’ stand for and why is it in red?”
“Anything with a ‘P’ means a minor likely under the age of fourteen is involved. Hans sent those immediately to our child pornography task force. They can run them through their offender database, which will save us a lot of time and give us a better chance to save some of them. However, Morton wasn’t creating these files. He was creatng a clearinghouse of sorts, which makes tracing the evidence to the source next to impossible.”
Very little riled Noah; crimes against children was one of the few things that made him see red. While the FBI and local law enforcement had made great strides in investigating and prosecuting child pornography, the sheer number of cases was staggering. If they couldn’t identify the victim or the offender, there was little they could do except put the images in their database in case they popped up again. Working cybercrimes against children was emotionally the hardest job in the Bureau, hands down, and one of the few squads that agents could transfer out of without difficulty.
Kate said, “I’m not going to do anything stupid, Noah. I understand the trust you’ve placed in me, and believe me that I want to stop whoever Morton was working with as much as you do. The legal way.”
Noah stood. “I hope to be back before long. When Abigail went to the motel yesterday, the part-time clerk was there. Today the manager is back, and he’s the one who checked Morton in. I hope he has more information, but yesterday we got squat.”
Though Lucy’s internship was part-time Monday through Friday, most full-time morgue staff rotated shifts, so she knew nearly everyone who worked there. She always made it a point to talk to everyone, even though her position wasn’t permanent. She found that she could learn far more about a job, the
She also learned that no one cared about the details of why she wanted to look at files, so when she walked into the intake room to pull the file on Brad Prenter no one questioned her. If someone had, she’d have come up with something plausible-such as making sure she’d filled out forms right. But no one questioned what she did.
The autopsy had been done yesterday afternoon, and she was correct-the body was scheduled for pickup by a local funeral home on Monday morning. Because it was a homicide, all evidence was in the evidence room. Clothing and other contents on Prenter’s body were still in the drying chamber. They had to dry the clothing and then comb it for any trace blood evidence. The articles would be packaged for possible trial.
Crime scene photos and the corpses that surrounded Lucy when she worked at the morgue didn’t bother her, but this was different: in a weird way, she had known Brad Prenter. He’d been out Thursday night because he thought he was meeting her alter ego, Tanya. A chill went through her body, causing the hair at the base of her skull to rise as she opened the file and saw a picture of his body on the autopsy table. A DVD was attached to the file-homicide autopsies were routinely recorded.
She couldn’t view the DVD without breaking the evidence seal, so she put that aside and read the report. Three entry wounds to the abdomen fired from two to four feet away. No exit wounds. Bullets had been sent to the laboratory, standard procedure for ballistics testing. They’d also go to the FBI to add to their database and run against other ballistic reports to determine whether the gun had been used in a previous crime-solved or unsolved.
According to the pathologist, the wounds to the torso were fatal-the liver had been hit, a lung, and the stomach-but the killer had also shot Prenter in the back of the head at an angle that would have had Prenter on his knees. He died instantly from that final shot.
Three bullets to the front, then one in the back. Lucy closed her eyes to picture a possible scenario. Killer faces Prenter-either Prenter knew him and didn’t try to run, or the killer startled him and shot him without giving Prenter the chance to run. Prenter falls to his knees, suggesting a low-caliber bullet. Higher-caliber bullets would most likely force the victim back, not down.
Then the killer walked around and shot Prenter in the back of the head. To ensure he was dead.
But Prenter would have died
A copy of the evidence log was in the file, including the whereabouts of each piece recovered. Items found on Prenter’s body were here at the morgue or the lab, though from experience Lucy knew that some personal effects and drugs would be separated and sent to the laboratory or evidence room. Vials found in his pants had been sent to the lab for analysis, but the results weren’t back yet. Blood samples-they’d done a standard tox screen in the autopsy room and already had his alcohol content, just barely legally drunk, low enough that he shouldn’t have been grossly intoxicated.
A copy of the initial police report was included, but not any of the follow-up investigation. Damn, she really wanted to see the rest of the police report and hoped Cody would get it for her. Was it asking too much? She hoped not; she didn’t want to abuse their friendship, but she had to know what had happened with Prenter.
Something felt very wrong, and until she knew the circumstances surrounding his murder she wouldn’t let it go.
THIRTEEN
Sean left the city early Saturday morning and drove an hour to an assisted living facility in Baltimore to meet Dustin Fong, another former employee of Trask Enterprises, who had been with the company longer than any other employee.
Fong could barely remember his own name let alone who Roger Morton was. The staff nurse said he’d been shot in the head and left for dead four years ago. He had no memories and while he could function on a minimal level, he had the attention span of a five-year-old. His only visitor was his sister, who came the first weekend of every month from her home in Maine. She’d been there on Sunday, January 2, and before that Saturday, December 4.
Sean crossed him off his list-he’d been promising on paper, but if he had any valuable information, it had been destroyed by the bullet. Roger couldn’t have gotten anything from him. Had the sister been in D.C. during the window of time Morton was there, Sean would have tracked her down, but it didn’t seem likely. He sent Jayne at RCK West an email to check out Danielle Fong Clements and her husband, Bruce, just to cover his bases, but neither name had come up as a possible associate of Morton or Scott, then or now.
Sean drove back toward the city, stopping at a club in Silver Spring owned by Sergey Yuran, a known trafficker. Yuran brought in whatever was in demand from Russia: prostitutes, drugs, or weapons.
Sean’s brother Duke would never have let him talk to Sergey alone. But one thing Sean had that Duke didn’t was the ability to hide his emotions and play the game. Duke wouldn’t have been able to disguise his loathing of the criminal. Though the club didn’t open for another couple hours, the door was unlocked. Sean walked in, face blank, leaving his judgment at the door.
He assessed the club within seconds; five booths were occupied, but the scarred, good-looking blond man in the back sitting with an illegal Russian-Sean could tell simply by how she responded to a stranger walking in-was Sergey Yuran.
There were four bodyguards in the room at every entrance and one next to Yuran. Overkill, in Sean’s opinion, but it would give Yuran the sense of complete control in any situation because he had multiple shields. It also told Sean that Yuran was paranoid. He tucked that tidbit away for future use as he approached the largest of the four and handed him a business card. “Sean Rogan to see Mr. Yuran.”
The bodyguard told him to stay, and Sean obeyed. Now wasn’t the time for sudden movements or disagreements.
He didn’t make any pretenses of ignoring the exchange, but watched the bodyguard approach Sergey Yuran
