Happy Birthday Evelyn: We had so many hopes for you and your future. You were bright and smart and beautiful and a dreamer. I will never stop hoping for a medical solution, or praying for a miracle.
Lucy didn’t notice the tears running down her face until they dropped onto her desk. She felt the mother’s pain. Her brother Patrick had been in a coma for nearly two years, all because of an explosion that Adam Scott had rigged. He’d been alert after the explosion, but pressure on his brain had necessitated emergency surgery, and he hadn’t woken up for twenty-two months.
She wiped away the tears, furious with Brad Prenter and angry with Evelyn’s peers who hadn’t told the complete truth.
She couldn’t see the Oldenburgs going after Prenter using such an elaborate ruse as WCF’s parolee project, but she certainly understood how ordinary people could kill.
She pulled the binder where she kept every sheet on every predator she’d worked on at WCF. Not all of them were part of the parolee project-some were predators luring kids on the Internet whom she’d identified and referred to law enforcement for investigation and prosecution. But the bulk of her work was on the parolee project.
There were twenty-seven special cases in which she chatted with paroled sex offenders. They’d been identified through a variety of means, but most were creatures of habit and walked in the same cyber-circles. Once a sex offender’s preferences were identified, he rarely deviated from his preferred victim type. Lucy’s computer program helped identify those types and where on the Internet the predator was most likely to lurk. WCF monitored numerous message boards and chat rooms looking for keywords and phrases. If someone sparked the interest of WCF staff or volunteers, they’d track the screen name and, if possible, the email. They’d compare that data with known parolees, and if there was a match, that sex offender was targeted.
Most of these guys had already broken their parole by returning to chat rooms, but most judges would not put them back in prison for that. Overcrowding and cost controls in the criminal justice system were a huge problem, and law enforcement didn’t have the time or manpower to follow up on every paroled sex offender who logged into a chat room. WCF selected only high-risk repeat offenders, sexual predators who should never have been let out of prison.
Of the twenty-seven Lucy had worked on, nine hadn’t taken the bait. Predators were notoriously good at sniffing out police activity. Seventeen were arrested and returned to prison. There was no trial, since they were all in violation of their parole. And when it came to sexual predators, most judges simply revoked their parole when they crossed the line. However, two parolees had a judge who felt the violation wasn’t severe enough to warrant reincarceration. They were still on the streets.
Frustrated that she didn’t have an answer, and not wanting to go to Fran without something tangible, Lucy wondered whether there was another connection to Prenter. Perhaps he’d pissed off someone in prison. But she needed greater access to information.
Her sister-in-law wasn’t home, which was good because Lucy needed to use her computer.
Kate had access to public and prison records through her FBI credentials, and Lucy knew her password. Whether Kate knew she had access or not, Lucy didn’t know, but Kate probably never thought she would use it. Lucy could legally obtain the information she needed on her own, but it would take time to jump through the hoops and fill out the request forms, and time was not on her side. Not when Cody Lorenzo thought she had been party to murder.
One by one, Lucy went through the names on her list and using Kate’s access to federal records, wrote down which prison they had been incarcerated in and the year they would be released, who their cell mates were, if any, and any problems they’d had in prison. When she had all the information, she’d cross-reference it to Prenter, his victims, and WCF employees and volunteers and see if there was a connection that wasn’t obvious.
There was nothing that seemed unusual. Next, she used Lexis-Nexis to search newspaper archives, wondering if the parolees who had been no-shows had gone to a state prison or a county jail on unrelated charges.
Lucy checked each name.
Tobias Janeson was dead. Murdered in Raleigh, North Carolina.
She felt the blood drain from her face. One by one she looked up each of the nine parolees.
It didn’t take Lucy long to learn that seven of the nine men she thought hadn’t shown up for their “date” were, in fact, dead.
And each had been killed the night Lucy had set them up to be arrested.
TWENTY-ONE
Lucy hugged Sean tightly as soon as he arrived. He’d either run or sped the six blocks, because it took him less than five minutes.
“What has you so panicked?” Sean asked quietly, though his eyes were deadly serious.
“I need to lay it all out for you,” she said and led him to the dining table, “otherwise you won’t believe me.”
“Of course I’ll believe you.”
Last week it was two FBI agents shaking her foundation, but she’d gotten through it. Now? It was far worse. She reached for Sean’s hand.
“Lucy, tell me.”
“I’ve volunteered with WCF for nearly three years,” she began. “We’ve had so much success-taking hundreds of predators off the Internet and putting them in prison.” Lucy realized she was stalling-at the fundraiser the other night, if Sean hadn’t already known this, he would have picked up the basics then.
“And. Well.” She drank half a water bottle. “Another WCF project focuses on high-risk repeat offenders on parole. We know that fifty to eighty percent-depending on which study-of sex offenders who target children or teens and are paroled will be arrested for a like crime within three years. Those are the ones who are caught. We find them in chat rooms popular with their target victim, and wait for them to contact one of us. We create a profile that fits their preferences, and it rarely takes longer than three months to identify and locate them. Most of these guys, by virtue of talking online with a minor, have already violated parole, but because of overcrowding, we usually need more than that to put them back in prison. We need them to try and meet up with a potential victim.
“I was involved in twenty-seven of these cases,” she said. Then added, “Twenty-eight. Brad Prenter was the latest parolee we targeted. He had a strict parole-no alcohol, mandatory AA meetings, for example-and was easier to put in a situation where he’d break parole. I chatted him up in a popular college chat room. He made a move immediately; I drew it out until the time was right. Then I set it up for last Thursday at the Firehouse Bar amp; Grill in Fairfax.
“Cody Lorenzo takes many of these cases when he’s off duty. But Prenter didn’t show Thursday night. He was killed in a robbery outside a different club.” She slid over a copy of the autopsy report to Sean. “I pulled the autopsy report. Look at those entrance wounds. Three in the abdomen, one in the back of the head. Then I found out that Prenter’s online account was deleted. Wiped. Gone. I couldn’t get it back. Cody found out from the bartender that Prenter was meeting someone at the club that he’d met online, and then he found an email in the police investigation files that came from my alias ‘Tanya’ sending Prenter to the other bar. He thought I had written it.” She hesitated, then added, “On purpose. To kill Prenter.”
Her bottom lip quivered, but she bit it to control her emotions.
Sean said, “Sit down.”
“I can’t-”
Sean grabbed her hand and pulled her into the seat next to him. “Why would your ex-boyfriend think you had done something like this?”
“I-he knows I killed someone before.”
Sean’s expression turned stony. “Adam Scott?”
“Yes, I told him when we were involved. And-and he thought-” She shook her head, unshed tears burning the back of her eyes. “He apologized. But I am capable of murder-”
Sean pulled her to him. His eyes flashed, darkened, and he said in a stern voice imbued with restrained fury,
