Deadly Sins (9 page)

When Rosa shook her head, Adam felt the fledgling idea he’d gotten at the interviews yesterday die. It gained new life in the next instant, however, when she said, “Well, leastways, not one of his own. He couldn’t never have afforded it. But he carried one every day when he was selling out on his own. It belongs to Mr. Hardt, though. That’s how he kept tabs on how Danny was doin’. If he was havin’ a real good day in the summertime, Mr. Hardt might send someone out to restock him.”

“Did you know that Byron Reinbeck was one of Danny’s customers?”

Rosa straightened, tension settling into her limbs as her expression grew stern. “Danny didn’t go round bragging on himself, if that’s what you mean.”

Which of course was a yes. Adam eyed her steadily. “You were probably asked that already. Whether your son recognized who and what Byron was. Whether anyone had talked to him about it. Asked for times and dates Byron had been by.”

The sigh that emanated from her sounded weary. “They’s thinkin’ that he tol’ someone that man came by sometimes. I tried to explain, but they didn’t listen. Danny wouldn’t think to tell people ’cuz he didn’t understand why’s Reinbeck was so important. People was all people to him. Some nicer than others. Danny liked Mr. Reinbeck ’cuz he always treated him real good.”

“But you knew who Byron was.”

Reluctantly she nodded. “Mr. Hardt tol’ me. When the weather was cold, Mr. Reinbeck, he’d stop at the shop sometimes. He’d always call first, and Mr. Hardt would have Danny stay open late to wait for him.”

Adam could imagine that the absent Mr. Hardt had also entertained a visit from the feds. And that they’d had quite a few questions for him. “Did Mr. Reinbeck ever call a day or so in advance?”

“Once in a while, Mr. Hardt said, but usually it was like yesterday. Last minute.”

There were voices approaching in the hallway. Adam suspected the reverend had arrived. He rose. “I don’t want to keep you any longer, Ms. Shelton. My condolences on the loss of your son.”

The nod the woman gave held a surprising dignity. “I thank you for that, Mr. Raiker.”

Adam moved to the door, halted with one hand on the knob. After hearing what Rosa had had to say, his mind was already on a couple phone calls he needed to make after leaving here. One to Jo Reinbeck and the other to Paulie. Half turning he asked, “Did Danny have that cell phone with him the day of the shooting?”

The woman shrugged. “I can’t say, but I ’spect he did. Like I said, that’s how Mr. Hardt kept up with him. He’d tell ’em when it was time to close up. Danny would take any flowers he hadn’t sold back to the shop. He had a key. It was his job to put the unsold flowers back in the cooler and then sweep up.”

Adam took a notepad from his suit breast pocket. “Do you happen to know that number?” And was unsurprised when Rosa rattled it off without missing a beat.

“I’d check up on Danny, too, sometimes. Or my grandsons would. He’s been robbed twice, out on the street like that. Never got hurt, though.” This time her effort to stem the tears failed. She snatched a tissue from a box on the table and dabbed at her face. “Leastways, not ’til the other day.”

“Reinbeck’s car was clean,” Assistant Director Hedgelin was saying as Adam slipped into the man’s office. “And there was no GPS device planted on any of his personal belongings, either.”

“What about his chambers?” Jaid crossed one black-clad leg over the other and tried not to wonder where Adam had been. Or what had caused that knot on his forehead. It hadn’t been there when they’d parted last night.

“There was a sweep done on his quarters at the court. On all the areas where he would have spent time. No listening devices were detected. We’re looking at the flower vendor, Shelton, and at his boss, who owns the shop that supplied him.” He looked at Adam then, but the man said nothing. “We know Justice Reinbeck called Shelton an hour before leaving. We can assume he asked about the availability of the flowers.”

“And maybe Shelton tipped someone else off.” Shepherd leaned forward, a note of interest in his voice. “He or his boss. Anyone studying Reinbeck’s movements would be looking for a routine. If he’d used that vendor in the past, the shooter might have reached out, paid them to tip him off.”

“He had,” Adam verified. He inclined his head slightly toward Hedgelin. “As I’m sure your agents have already informed you. Mary Jo Reinbeck isn’t one for jewelry, but she has a weakness for flowers. Byron regularly surprised her with some, not always from the same place. But he frequently bought from Danny Shelton, either on the street or at Hardt’s shop.”

The assistant director’s gaze sharpened. “We know that. Which is why we’re looking into Hardt and Shelton. Their backgrounds. Acquaintances. Anything they might be into.”

“Maybe something will show up there,” Adam allowed, “although it’s doubtful Danny Shelton was into much. He was intellectually limited, his mother said.” He waited for Hedgelin’s nod before going on. “Which might have meant he could be easily manipulated by others. But surely by now you know if Shelton had a cell on him. And if he did, whether he placed a call after Reinbeck called him.”

There was a glint in Cleve’s eyes, there and gone almost too quickly to be identified. “You talked to Rosa Shelton?”

“This morning, as a matter of fact.” Silence stretched, long enough to be uncomfortable.

Hedgelin removed his glasses and polished them with a handkerchief he removed from his suit breast pocket, a mannerism Jaid always found a bit fussy. “You realize that was outside the scope of your team’s assignment.”

“Are we going to rehash the parameters of my involvement every day, Cleve?” Adam’s voice had lowered. A damaged rumble that sounded like an irritated tiger. “I’m already getting a bit weary of it.”

The director made a dismissive gesture with his hand before settling his glasses back on the bridge of his nose. “I suppose it can be delayed for the moment.” His tone could only be described as pissy. “As you say, Shelton wasn’t batting at the top of the intellectual lineup. He didn’t make any calls after Reinbeck’s, but he did receive one from his boss minutes later. Hardt claimed he was just checking up on him, telling him to get back there by dark. When he heard that Reinbeck was coming by, he agreed that Shelton should stay put. Of course, he isn’t acknowledging that he knew who the customer was. But there’s no way of backing up his claim that he didn’t.”

“And you’ve been combing through his cell phone and landline LUDs since yesterday.” Jaid didn’t need his nod to know she was right about a team working on the local usage details. It was their best lead at this point. Certainly more than they’d managed to get from the interviews at the Supreme Court building yesterday.

She also knew that if Adam weren’t on the team, pushing the assistant director in a way she and Shepherd would never have dared, none of this information would have been shared with them.

“The warrant for Hardt’s phone records came through quickly, given the victim. But there was no call made on the shop’s phone or on Hardt’s personal cell immediately following his call to Shelton.”

“Might have been using a TracFone,” Jaid observed. “Or maybe the phone of an employee.”

“Both possibilities are being followed up on.”

But Adam didn’t look convinced. “Mary Jo said this would have made the second time Byron got her flowers since returning from the last recess. A stalker would have had to follow him, learn his routine. I’m willing to bet there were damn few instances of him returning to the same place in that time period. As Jaid mentioned yesterday, it’s likely the shooter scouted out two or three possible kill spots. Waited for his opportunity to present itself.”

Jaid turned toward him, frowning. “The problem with my theory is that it requires different informants. The only knowledge Hardt and Shelton would have had would be that of Reinbeck stopping for flowers. It’s hard to believe that the shooter would risk making contact with informants for every possible kill site. Neither would he be likely to rely on the flower angle, if Reinbeck used it only once before recently.”

She switched her focus to her boss. “What about a bug on Reinbeck’s cell phone?” Recalling the note Adam had scribbled on his pad yesterday, she recognized he’d gotten to that idea long before she had. “Or spyware of some sort?” She was a little out of her element here. Unlike Shepherd and Hedgelin, she hadn’t come up through the ranks via the e-crimes unit.

A note of impatience entered Hedgelin’s tone. “As I’ve said, we’ve got the cyber techs going over it. If there’s anything there, they haven’t found it yet.”

“Paulie is unmatched in this area,” Adam put in. “He says to look for an incoming text between the time Byron left the building and his death. High-end spyware can be installed via text message or e-mail, but the victim has to download a link first. He’s also seen some newer versions that can also be set to self-destruct remotely.”

“As I said . . .”

Shepherd leaned forward, interrupting his boss to address Adam. “Either way it would have been discovered. E-mail, even deleted, is likely still on the victim’s server. Texts would appear in the SMS log. The agents would have found that.”

“Two months ago Paulie consulted on a similar case in Chicago. The spyware was the best he’d ever seen. Trojan horse installation via a text message containing a link. None of the usual tells. Phone didn’t turn on when it wasn’t in use, no audible clicks heard during conversations.” Adam adjusted the crease in his pants. Stretched his leg out. “The only evidence left behind was likely caused by its self-destruct mechanism. There was a miniscule burned patch on the SIM card. If he hadn’t already narrowed it down to spyware, hadn’t been looking for it, he would have dismissed it as normal wear.”

Interest gleamed in Hedgelin’s eyes. “A singed SIM card wouldn’t have been evidence enough. How did he prove the spyware existed?”

“He used data recovery to work backward from the text message senders in the in-box list, recovered all the text senders’ numbers.” His shrug was negligible. “From there it was just focusing in on the right person.”

The assistant director scribbled a note on the pad in front of him. “Our lab is second to none. But I’ll double-check that. In the meantime, I’ve got a delicate assignment for the three of you.” With deliberation he laid down his pen, clasped his hands on the desk. His pointed gaze swept them in turn. “There were a couple names that popped from the threat assessments. They were deemed very low risk, but that doesn’t mean that interviews don’t have the potential to turn into a shit storm.”

“Who are they with?” Shepherd asked.

“One of them is Congressman Jonas Newell, senator from Virginia.” He smiled thinly at their immediate attention. “You see the need for delicacy here. Senator Newell has made no attempt to hide the fact that he was no fan of Byron Reinbeck’s. He led the fight to derail Reinbeck’s nomination to the court and never misses an opportunity to invoke Reinbeck’s name when he rails against activist judges. The feud has been long-running, stemming back to the judge’s time in juvenile court.”

Jaid wasn’t aware of Newell’s public animosity toward Reinbeck, but his name was familiar for another reason. “The way I remember it, he also isn’t a fan of our agency.” Newell was an outspoken critic of the bureau, often going on news shows to call it antiquated and ineffectual. She didn’t know much about the man’s politics, but his ravings hadn’t placed her in his fan club,.

Hedgelin said, “He has agreed to speak to us and has very generously carved out fifteen minutes from his schedule. You’re due in his office,” he checked his watch, “at ten thirty. You’ll be early. He’ll keep you waiting. Regardless, you’ll be polite, professional, and thorough, without giving him any reasons to use your visit to further fuel his distaste for our agency.”

Jaid and Shepherd nodded, although the barb seemed directed at Adam. She’d been in on interviews with Raiker before. He was masterful with suspects, extracting information without them even being aware of what they were admitting to. But he didn’t suffer fools gladly, either. He’d need to summon all his diplomatic skills for the upcoming meeting.

The assistant director was continuing. “I want an immediate report following the interview. And I want it to come from you, not in the form of a phone call from the senator.”

“Are there any recent incoming or outgoing phone messages between Reinbeck and Newell, either on Byron’s cell or landline?”

Hedgelin shook his head at Shepherd’s question. “No. But Newell’s questioning of Reinbeck was pretty pointed, and that was all over C-SPAN at the time. After his appointment to the Supreme Court, the senator took aim at him on the media circuit.” Hedgelin glanced at his watch again and rose. “I have another appointment in a few minutes. Adam, if I could speak to you for a moment?”

Jaid refrained from casting a look over her shoulder as she preceded Shepherd out of the office. She’d included a brief summary of her and Adam’s visit to the priest last night in an e-mail to her boss early this morning. It was ridiculous to feel guilty about that. Not when Adam had guessed her mission last night.