“Unlikely.”
“Just tread lightly.”
The prior twenty-four hours had produced more evidence than the entire year combined, but the leads weren’t pointing to any quick answers. Meticulous lab work took time, a commodity Jennifer wasn’t sure they had enough of. Slater would strike again, and sooner or later they would have bodies to contend with. A car, a bus—what was next?
The city was reeling from news of the bus. Milton had spent half the day preparing and issuing statements to hungry reporters. At least it kept him out of her hair.
She sat at the corner desk Milton had graciously given her and stared at the loose sheets of paper spread before her. It was 4:30, and for the moment she was stuck. A Subway veggie sandwich she’d ordered two hours ago sat on the edge of the desk, and she considered unwrapping it.
Her eyes dropped to the pad under her fingertips. She’d split the page horizontally and then vertically, creating four quadrants, an old technique she used to visually compartmentalize data. Kevin’s house, the warehouse search, the knife tattoo, and forensics from the bus.
“Who are you, Slater?” she mumbled. “You’re here, aren’t you, staring up at me, chuckling behind these words somewhere?”
First quadrant. They’d swept and dusted Kevin’s house and turned up exactly nothing. Hundreds of prints, of course—it would take time to work through all of them. But in the high-probability contact points—the phone, the doorknobs, the window latches, the desk, the wood dinette chairs—they had found only Jennifer’s and Kevin’s prints, and some partials that were unidentifiable. Probably Sam’s. She’d been in the house, but according to Kevin she hadn’t stayed long or handled anything except for the phone, where they’d found the partials. Either way, the chances that Slater had walked around the place pressing uncovered fingers against dense surfaces had been absurd from the beginning.
No eavesdropping devices turned up either, again not surprising. Slater had used the six bugs they’d uncovered because they were convenient at the time. He had other means of listening in—remote laser transmitters, relayed audio scopes—all of which they would eventually track down, but not likely soon enough. They’d found disturbed ground at the oil rig’s base, two hundred yards from Kevin’s house, and taken casts of four different shoe prints. Again, the evidence might help them incriminate Slater, but it wasn’t identifying him— at least not quickly enough.
The writing on the milk jug was in for analysis at Quantico. Same story. Comparisons could and one day would be made, but not before they actually had Slater in their sights.
They’d affixed the AP301 recording device to Slater’s cell phone and were monitoring the house using an IR laser.
Let the games begin.
Jennifer had left Kevin in his house at noon, pleading that he get some sleep. She watched him wander around his living room like a zombie. He’d been pushed beyond himself.
You like him, don’t you, Jenn?
Don’t be stupid! I hardly know him! I feel empathy for him. I’m attributing Roy’s goodness to him.
But you like him. He’s handsome, caring, and as innocent as a butterfly. He has magical eyes and a smile that swallows the room. He’s . . .
Naive and damaged.His reaction to driving through his old neighborhood had been in part precipitated by the stress of Slater’s threats, granted. But there had to be more.
He was similar to Roy in many ways, but the more she thought about it, the more she saw the dissimilarities between this case and the ones in Sacramento. Slater seemed to have a specific, personally motivated agenda with Kevin. He wasn’t a random victim. Neither was Jennifer nor Samantha. What if Kevin had been the Riddle Killer’s prime mark all along? What if the others were just a kind of practice? Warmup?
Jennifer closed her eyes and stretched her neck. She’d made an appointment to see the dean at Kevin’s seminary, Dr. John Francis, first thing tomorrow morning. He attended one of those huge churches that held a service on Saturday evening. Jennifer picked up the sandwich and peeled back the wax paper.
Second quadrant. The warehouse. Milton had somehow convinced the bureau chief to speak to her about his involvement. The man was starting to become a major irritant. She’d reluctantly agreed to give him the warehouse search. The fact was, she could use the manpower and they knew the territory. She made it clear that if he breathed one word of his involvement to the media, she’d personally see to it that he took full responsibility for whatever negative consequences resulted. He’d taken four uniformed officers and a search warrant to the warehouse district. The likelihood that Slater was watching the neighborhood was minimal. He might be a surveillance crackerjack, but he couldn’t have eyes everywhere.
Based on Kevin’s story, he might have stumbled into any of a couple dozen warehouses that night. Milton’s team was searching each one now, looking for any that might have a subterranean storage room, an oil pit, a garbage dump—anything similar. Most warehouses today were built on slabs, but some of the older buildings featured underground units that were cheaper to cool.
She could understand Kevin’s subconscious erasure of such a traumatic location. It would either be stamped indelibly on his brain or gone, and there was no reason for him to hide any knowledge at this point. Discovery of the basement would be a windfall. If indeed the boy was Slater.
Third quadrant. The knife tattoo. Jennifer took a bite out of the sandwich. Hunger swarmed her with the first taste of tomato. She’d missed breakfast, hadn’t she? Seemed like a week ago.
She stared at the third quadrant. Again, assuming the boy was Slater, and assuming he hadn’t removed the tattoo, they now had their first bona fide identifier. A tattoo of a knife on the forehead—not exactly something you see on every corner. Twenty-three agents and policemen were quietly working the search. Tattoo parlors that had existed twenty years earlier in the immediate vicinity were first to be scrutinized, but finding one that had any records was near impossible. They were working in concentric circles. More likely was finding a tattoo parlor that remembered a man with a knife tattoo on his forehead. Not all tattoo bearers frequented parlors, but ones with Slater’s profile might. For all they knew, he was now covered in tattoos. All he needed was one—a knife in the center of his forehead.
Fourth quadrant. The bus. Another bite. The sandwich was like a slice of heaven.
Same guy, no doubt. Same device: a suitcase bolted behind the gas tank, loaded with enough dynamite to shred a bus, detonated using tungsten leads stripped from an incandescent bulb on a simple five-dollar, battery-operated alarm clock. A mechanical servo could override the clock and either terminate or trigger the detonation. The bomb had been planted days, even weeks ago, based on the dust they’d lifted off one of its bolts. If they could ID what was left of the servo, they might have a shot of tracing its origins. Unlikely.
How long had Slater been planning this?
The phone chirped. Jennifer wiped her mouth, took a quick swallow from a bottle of Evian, and picked up the phone. “Jennifer.”
“We think we found it.”
Milton. She sat up. “The warehouse.”
“We have some blood here.”
She tossed the rest of the sandwich in the waste bin and grabbed her keys. “I’m on my way.”
Kevin looked out between the blinds for the fourth time in two hours. They’d decided to place one unmarked car a block up the street—FBI. Slater seemed ambiguous about the FBI. Either way, the agent behind the wheel would watch only. He would not follow if or when Kevin left at Slater’s next beckoning. Static surveillance only.
Kevin released the slats and paced back into the kitchen. In the park, Jennifer had reached out to him and he’d let her. He found her fierce nature compelling. It reminded him of Samantha.