“Or just,” she said, “a dumb joke. You might be overthinking it, Joe.”
“Maybe. But put your friend Miggie on it, anyway.”
“He’s probably already ahead of us, but I will.”
Fifteen minutes later, Reeder, Rogers, and Woods were seated in a corner booth at a Denny’s, having coffee. The Homicide man was using a tablet to run through the photos.
The detective found the file and they crowded around the screen looking at seven thumbnail photos.
“We’ll start at the top,” the detective said, clicking on the first photo.
They stared at a black plastic cube on a table. And it stared right back at them.
Rogers asked, “Anyone know what we’re looking at?” Reeder said, “Looks like a Rubik’s Cube in basic black.”
“A what?” Woods asked.
“Never mind. Suffice to say none of us know what that is or why Chris Bryson had a picture of it.”
Second photo.
Nondescript gray cement-block building with dirty windows, no signage. Parking lot in foreground, no cars.
“Anybody?” the detective asked.
Rogers said, “Just an anonymous building.”
Reeder, still studying the image, said, “So far, seems like random pictures.”
Third photo.
Well-dressed African American man in his thirties, formal-looking pose.
Reeder asked, “Could his name be ‘Sink’?”
“No,” Rogers said, sitting up. “That’s Michael Balsin, congressional aide. My team is investigating his murder.”
Woods perked. “Murder? When?”
“September. Two in the back of the head. No robbery, no clues, no apparent motive.”
Reeder met Rogers’s eyes with urgency. “What the hell is a vic of yours doing on Chris Bryson’s SIM card?”
“No idea... but it’s not like it’s a surveillance photo, which you might expect from an investigator like Bryson.” She nodded at the screen. “That’s the photo that ran with Balsin’s obit.”
Photo four.
Blond guy, blue eyes, double chin, dark-framed glasses.
“Pattern’s forming,” Rogers said, frowning. “That’s the obit picture for Harvey Carroll — an accountant. Our victim number two, double-tapped just like Balsin — in his home, no witnesses, no robbery.”
Reeder felt that familiar combination of excitement and unease — the former because a pattern was indeed forming, unease because a brutal killer or killers had been revealed.
Photo five.
Latina, black hair, dark eyes, high cheekbones.
“Carolina Uribe,” Rogers said, “a librarian, also double-tapped — our third victim. Died early November.”
“Jesus,” Reeder whispered.
Photo six.
Middle-aged white man with a receding hairline and an ugly cardigan.
“William Robertson,” Rogers said. “Supervisor in the shop at Dunnelin Machine. Victim number four.”
“A series of serial-killing victims,” Woods said, quietly astonished, “on a SIM card Bryson hid away?”
“Maybe,” Rogers said, “maybe not. The similarity of method got these killings onto our radar. We’ve been looking at them as a possible serial, yes. But the MO is execution style.”
“Contract killer style,” Reeder said. “And somehow, Chris got on a similar track. What do we think the building and the black cube might have to do with it?”
“No idea,” Rogers said, shaking her head, shrugging.
They now all knew more, yet felt like they knew less.
Photo seven.
Blond man in his thirties, walking down a street. Shot from some distance.
Reeder and Woods turned to Rogers, but she said, “Not one of ours. Not yet anyway.”
“Maybe this is Sink,” Reeder said.
Woods frowned and almost snapped, “You said that before — who the hell is Sink?”
Reeder arched an eyebrow at him. “When you talked to Beth Bryson, she never mentioned Sink?”
Woods shrugged. “I don’t remember that coming up...” Then the young detective’s eyes tensed. “Wait. Damn. I do remember. She said her husband told her he shouldn’t have looked into ‘sink.’ You think it’s a name, Mr. Reeder?” He nodded to the tablet. “You think that’s him?”
“You got me,” Reeder admitted. “Could be anybody. Might be the guy I wrestled with tonight, back at Bryson’s office. In the dark.”
“Or,” Rogers said, “could be the next victim.”
A waitress came over with coffee. “Refills anyone? Anybody work up an appetite yet?”
Nine
“We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.”
The morning was cold and dreary and overcast, which seemed about right to Evan Carpenter, the way his week was going.
In parka, jeans, and work boots, his close-clipped blond hair under a shaggy black wig, blue eyes concealed by sunglasses, Carpenter walked along at an easy pace. He passed a few other strip mall shoppers pausing for a momentary gawk at the crime-scene-taped-off Bryson Security storefront. Cops and CSIs long gone now.
Finally, a break. Otherwise, you could have this goddamn born-under-a-bad-sign week, as far as he was concerned. From the moment Carpenter and his boys figured Bryson was onto them, the son of a bitch seemed to know he was blown, and blew. At least the bastard had been easy enough to track down, easier still to deal with. Tough guy in his time, but his time was up.
Carpenter alone had been dispatched to deal with the wife — first, to see what she knew and if she had anything of her late husband’s that might lead back to his employers. Then the grieving widow would become a second tragic suicide.
Only the wife had company. Her son was with her, though that might be expected; wait for sonny to head home, and then Carpenter would call on mom. But the son wasn’t the visitor that concerned him — it was the guy he’d seen being let into the house, who belonged to the candy-ass Prius in the drive.
The mercenary made a call, ran the plate, and goddamnit! The guy paying a visit wasn’t just anybody, but Joe fucking Reeder himself.
Reeder, the ex — Secret Service guy who was a national hero these days. Just one man, yes, but a guy who could handle himself, despite the years he had on him, and whose death would ring bells all the way to the White House.
So his visit to the mourning family would have to be postponed.
In the meantime, he’d gone on to Bryson Security, figuring to come back later, after Reeder had gone, and tie up the loose ends that were the dead man’s family.
At the security office, his key would work in either front or rear door; but with the strip mall so after-hours dead — his rental Nissan the only car in the small lot — he said what the hell, and went in the front.
If picking the lock had been necessary, he’d have gone in the back way; dressed all in black as he was, people driving or walking by just might get suspicious, seeing some ninja-wannabe asshole hunkered over a lock — even if only for the thirty seconds or so picking the thing would take.
He knew of no other key to the office, other than the one on Bryson’s key ring, which would likely be in police custody. The key Carpenter used was courtesy of laser etchings one of his guys had made while their target dangled and died from that industrial-strength shower rod.