Snapped (34 page)

“How’d you sleep?” His tone was smug, and she narrowed her gaze at him.

“Fine. You?”

“Fine.”

She glanced around. The bed had been straightened, and she looked longingly at the mattress. Then she glanced back at Jonah. He was still scowling.

“What’s wrong?”

“Damn coffeepot’s not working.”

Sophie looked over her shoulder at the kitchen. A lousy night’s sleep she could handle. Lack of coffee was another matter. She got to her feet. He handed her a blue pill and rested a cup of water on the table beside her. She took the pill without comment but couldn’t bring herself to thank him.

“I’ll be gone all day. Stay out of trouble.” He grabbed
his keys off the table and left, leaving her staring out the window after him as he trekked across the grass to meet the approaching pickup. She recognized Wyatt Macon behind the wheel.

Sophie watched them talk to each other through the open window. Jonah was in his full detective outfit—slacks, button-down, holster, badge. He had a big day ahead of him, apparently, despite the fact that it was Sunday.

He was a dedicated cop. And she admired him. And as angry as she felt, she knew that she was half in love with him, too, and that scared her. Because as good a cop as he was, as good a
man
as he was, he could be infuriating. And controlling. And arrogant. She wasn’t sure she could handle a man like that for any length of time. She wasn’t sure she even wanted to try.

She went into the kitchen and discovered a dismantled coffeepot in the sink beside a mug. All of it was covered in a layer of wet coffee grounds.

Jonah had gone to war with the French press and lost.

Sophie rinsed the pot. She found a saucepan and set some water to boil on the propane stove. As she waited, her gaze landed on a familiar gym bag sitting in the corner.

He’d been to her apartment.

Her chest tightened with remorse. She went over to the bag and crouched down to look through it. He’d packed T-shirts. Gym socks. Sneakers. A dizzying amount of racy underwear. Sophie sighed. What was she going to do with this man?

She picked the most practical items she could find and got dressed. She compiled a mental to-do list and
resolved to have a better day. Then she made two cups of strong black coffee and went out to greet Wyatt.

Allison watched the sun come through the trees lining the winding highway. She passed an S-curve sign and tapped the brakes as a plastic orange fence came into view.

Allison slowed as she neared the spot where Sophie Barrett’s Tahoe had sailed off the road. She cut a glance to the side and noticed the singed patch of brush that marked the site of the explosion. More than three days had gone by, and now Allison had even more questions than answers.

Focus
.

She trained her gaze on the road in front of her. She worked on mapping out the day ahead. She worked on ignoring her emotions. She worked on analyzing her case objectively, instead of letting this gut-churning anger get the best of her.

Five victims, and those were just the ones they knew about. There could be more. And it wasn’t even the body count that shocked her, it was the way in which they’d all been killed. So coldly. As if a human life was worth nothing more than the squeeze of a trigger or the toss of a match.

She rounded a bend, and the sun flashed in her eyes. She pulled her shades from her pocket, and her fingers brushed over the business card she’d tucked there days ago at the sandwich shop.

Allison slid on her sunglasses. She pictured Tyler Dorion, with his hearty handshake and ambitious smile.
In his quest for headlines, he’d gotten in over his head. He wasn’t the first journalist to do it, but he had to be one of the youngest, and Allison couldn’t seem to get a handle on the rage that had been consuming her since she’d seen his charred remains.

When she finally reached the Delphi Center, she was feeling calm and determined. She badged her way past the security gate and parked in the nearly empty lot. Not too many people working this holiday weekend, but she’d managed to pull in the expert she needed. She collected the brown paper evidence bag from the passenger seat and made her way up the wide marble stairs for the third time this week.

A few minutes later, she stood inside a sterile laboratory, with a visitor’s badge clipped to her lapel and a lab-coated scientist at her elbow.

“This is the subject’s backpack?” he asked.

“The victim’s, yes.”

Allison watched as Dr. David Lemberger unzipped the bag and lined up the contents neatly on a worktable, atop a piece of fresh butcher paper. As head of Delphi’s QD section, Lemberger specialized in questioned documents, and his talents included everything from tracing printer toner to authenticating ransom notes. Mia had described him as a word wizard. With his round spectacles and trimmed gray beard, he seemed to fit the image.

She watched him gaze down at the tattered spirals of a budding reporter. “Three notebooks, eighty pages each,” he muttered, stroking his beard. “And what is it you need exactly? I assume you’ve read through these.”

“I have, yes. They were recovered from the victim’s apartment. I’m interested in the story he was working on at the time of his death.”

He reached for a box of gloves, but to Allison’s surprise, they were made of cloth. He must have seen her curious look.

“Cotton,” he said. “Latex can smear pencil and ink.”

After donning the gloves, he lifted the corner of one of the reporter’s pads. “There are some pages torn out.”

“Exactly.” Allison looked at the torn paper caught in the spiral. “I think those pages might have been important, because of what came immediately before. In one case, he writes the name and cell phone number of another murder victim—Eric Emrick—and then starts taking notes, like from a phone interview. Next page, it cuts off.”

Lemberger made a
tsking
sound as he counted the pages. “Seventy-four here, so six missing. Not necessarily consecutive, although we can find out. He used a ballpoint pen, which is good.”

“It is?”

“Requires more pressure. I can most likely recover the words for you.”

Allison sighed with relief. “I was hoping you’d be able to do that. Can you rub over it with graphite or something?”

He smiled up at her. “You’ve been watching too much television, Detective Doyle.”

“Allison.” She’d dragged him in on a Sunday morning—the least she could do was keep this informal. “And, what? That’s not how it works?”

“The rubbing method typically fails to visualize the
indented writing and also destroys it for other, workable methods. As a general rule around here, we prefer to use nondestructive techniques when dealing with evidence.”

“Other methods being?”

“Oblique lighting should do the trick.”

He walked over to the wall and switched off the lights, then took a handheld spotlight and positioned it beside the first page beneath the missing interview notes.

“Let’s just hope all the important stuff was on the last page,” Allison said. “Deeper indentions, right?”

“It’s easier that way, but I can go several layers deep.”

“You can?” Allison looked at the page he was examining. The task was made more difficult by the fact that several pages’ worth of writing were overlaid. “Doesn’t the writing get all jumbled together?”

“It does, but we can pull it apart. Determine which words go with which page based on the depth of the indentions, the angle of the writing, the meaning of the words.”

“You can sort through all that?”

“Absolutely.” He smiled slightly. “That’s why we’re called tracers.”

Allison stared at the page, trying to decipher the shadows.

“I’m seeing numbers,” she ventured.

“Dates, it looks like. And the word ‘D-Syst’?”

“D-Systems.” Allison’s heart skipped. “The company where the victim interned this summer and last. How are you getting that? It looks like chicken scratch to me.”

“Years of practice,” he said. “Hold the light, please?”

Allison tried to hold it at the same angle he had as he
pulled a magnifying glass from his pocket and studied the page.

“Something about ‘Project Shadow Tracker.’ That’s underlined three times, heavy pressure. Possibly something important.”

Allison had never heard of it. “Are you seeing any names?” she asked hopefully. “Dates?”

“Says here ‘07 AFG’ and a few more acronyms: SO, AR, USNS, RM.” He glanced up. “That mean anything to you?”

“Nope.” Allison pulled a notebook from her pocket and jotted it all down.

“I’ll prepare a report,” he told her. “But you said this is a high-priority investigation, so maybe you can at least get started.” He flipped to the next page, but the indentions there were so faint, they were practically invisible.

“We can try one more method. Ever heard of an Electrostatic Detection Apparatus?”

She shook her head.

“It’s an instrument that uses a toner that collects within the indentions so they can be visualized. It’ll take me some time to complete an ESDA analysis, though. It’s a bit more complicated.” He checked his watch. “I’ll have to get back to you later today.”

Allison gazed down at her cryptic notes. What did these letters mean? She wished she had an audio recording to work with instead of all this jumble. But she remembered what Sean had said after their meeting at D-Systems. He was an investigator, and so he investigated. Allison should adopt that attitude. This was a homicide, not a bike theft, and no one had promised it would be easy.

She tucked her hand in her pocket and fingered the
business card. She planned to keep it there as a reminder, until whoever killed Ty Dorion was in jail or hell, whichever came first.

Jonah spotted four familiar cars when he pulled into the station and found the better part of the task force gathered around a box of doughnuts. Looked like the hub of the investigation had moved from the bullpen to the break room. Noonan’s constant hovering and spin-doctoring had the effect of quashing creativity, which was what they needed right now to crack this case open.

“I knew Maxwell was holding out on us,” Sean said. “I should go right back there and kick his scrawny ass.”

Allison rolled her eyes. “Perfect. Just what we need. How about a police brutality lawsuit on top of everything else?”

Jonah stepped into the room and traded looks with Ric. “I miss something?”

“Project Shadow Tracker mean anything to you?”

“No. Should it?”

“I took Dorion’s reporter notebooks to Delphi to be looked at by their questioned documents expert,” Allison said. “He uncovered a bunch of writing from an interview with Eric Emrick. Acronyms, mostly, but there are a few full words.”

“Lemme see.” Jonah took the notebook from her.

“Those are just my notes,” she told him. “Dr. Lemberger has the originals. He’s trying to get more for us with some high-tech method.”

“‘2007 Afghanistan,’” Jonah read. “Looks like abbreviations for different spec-ops groups: Army Rangers, U.S. Navy SEALs, Recon Marines.”

He glanced up, and everyone was staring at him.

“How the hell’d you get that?” Sean demanded.

“Years in the military.” He handed back the notebook. “Place is a fucking alphabet soup.” He glanced at Allison. “Sorry.”

Another eye roll. “Yeah, apologize for swearing as you
break open our goddamn case
. Jesus, Macon. We should have had you in the interview with Maxwell. This whole thing has to do with some military project—I’d bet my life on it.”

“I knew that guy was dirty,” Sean said. “Everything out of his mouth was a fucking lie.”

“Back up a sec.” Jonah leaned against the door frame. “Someone wanna explain why any of this is a break in the case? So Eric worked for D-Systems. And they were working on some defense department project. You think that’s what got him killed?”

“We think it’s possible,” Allison said. “What I’d really like to know is what this Project Shadow Tracker thing is about. Any chance one of your army contacts might know?”

“I wasn’t exactly on the Joint Chiefs, but I can poke around.” Jonah looked at Sean. “I don’t much like all these leads pointing to some off-the-grid spec-ops stuff. Shadow Tracker. Shadow Warriors. We have any actual names?”

“Mia’s still working on that DNA from the Beetle,” Ric said, tossing a half-eaten doughnut in the trash. “No hits yet. Our best hope right now is that suspect sketch.”

“What about Himmel’s ex?” Jonah looked at Sean.

“I left her a message to call me so I can fax her the suspect sketch. No answer.”

“Convert it to digital, then e-mail it,” Jonah suggested. “She might get it faster. Where is she, anyway?”

“Laying low with her sister and her children.”

Ric’s eyebrows tipped up. “She’s worried about her children?”

“Wouldn’t you be?” Sean asked. “So far, whoever’s doing this has killed a grandfather, two college kids, and a pregnant woman, and tried to blow up a receptionist. Looks to me like the gloves are off.”

“You tell him about the teddy bear blanket?” Ric looked at Jonah.

“What teddy bear blanket?” Sean asked.

“It was a rabbit,” Jonah said. “Looked like a kid’s security blanket. We found it in Himmel’s motel room. Someone cut the ears off it.”

“A veiled threat against Himmel’s kids if he didn’t complete the mission?” Allison suggested.

“Veiled?”
Sean looked at her like she was crazy. “Ears cut off is veiled? Fuck, these witnesses need to be in lockdown!”

Jonah understood Sean’s frustration, but it wasn’t getting them anywhere. He looked at Allison. “Speaking of motel rooms, what’s the sheriff’s update on that surveillance cam at the fire scene?”

“No go,” she said. “They had one pointed at the parking lot but—you’re going to love this—the motel manager said it’s a ‘decoy.’ Thing conked out years ago, they never bothered to get it fixed.”

“There goes our chance of getting a look at whoever Dorion was out there meeting,” Jonah said.

“How do we know he was meeting someone?” Ric asked.

“He told a friend he had a meeting Friday evening with a ‘source’ for some big story he was working on.” Allison gave Jonah a somber look. “And Kelsey just called, by the way. Tyler dorion’s identity has been confirmed.”