“Show me,” Eve demanded.
“Coming through, on screen and hard copy, projected, and with cap and shades.”
She leaned over her unit, studied the images that popped in split screen. Roarke walked to the printouts sliding out its slot.
Young, she thought. Early to mid-twenties by her cop gauge. Caucasian male, with even, attractive, somewhat feminine features. Small, straight nose, full lips, soft eyes, a bit heavy-lidded. The face was oval, almost classically so, and the hair dark, shaggy, trendy.
She studied the image with it, where the features were obscured by the cap and shades. And nodded.
“You gave me good, Yancy.”
“If you’re confident with it, we can send it out.”
“No media. Team members only for now. He’s going to come to the vic’s memorial, odds are. I don’t want to alert him, scare him off. Get this to the other members, with a lock on it. I’m going to start an image search, see if I can ID the bastard.”
“Good luck.”
“You gave me more than luck. This could make the difference. Send it out, Yancy, and go home.”
“You can count on it.”
When Yancy signed off, Eve considered her options, then contacted Jamie.
“Hey, Dallas.”
“You’re going to have an image coming through,” she said without preamble. “Take it and get over to Columbia. I’m going to set it up for you. I want you to start using their imaging program, see if you can get me a match.”
“It’s him.”
“It’s what we’ve got. This is locked, Jamie. Nobody but you, or McNab if you need him. It doesn’t go to any of your e-pals.”
“I get it. I know. I’ll work it, Dallas.”
“I’ll get you cleared. Work good,” she said, then blew out a breath and once again contacted Peach Lapkoff.
“Well, Lieutenant, we’re getting to be best friends.”
“I apologize for interrupting your evening. We have an image, and I’m sending Jamie over to the university, as an expert consultant, civilian, to work with your imaging program.”
“Now?”
“Now. I need you to clear this, Dr. Lapkoff, and to keep it confidential. I can’t afford a leak.”
“I’ll take care of it personally.”
“You’re making my job easier.”
“My grandfather would expect no less.”
“She’s okay,” Eve mumbled as she broke transmission. “So.” She nodded at the images on screen. “There you are, fucker. Now who are you? Computer, initiate search and match, all data on individual in current images, begin with New York City residents.”
Acknowledged. Initiating . . .
“Auxiliary search, same images, same directive, for match with students listed in File Lapkoff-Columbia-C.”
Acknowledged. Initiating Auxiliary search . . .
“Could get lucky there, find him on the short list before Jamie’s halfway to Morningside Heights. Okay. Now when I get the data you’re running, I can add that into the mix and—”
He nudged her aside, tapped a quick series of keys. “It’s finished, a few minutes ago. And yes, we did an upgrade on that system the third week in March. You want a third search, with this data, I take it.”
“Affirmative.”
He ordered the task himself. “I’d say it’s time for more coffee, and I should take myself off to the lab to have mine.”
“We may not need—”
“That’s not the point, is it? I’m not going to let that git beat me. Carry on, Lieutenant, and so will I.”
She got her own coffee, then added both sketches to her board. As her computer worked, she circled the board and considered Roarke’s theory. Hacking or ID theft. A boy had to hone his craft, didn’t he? And a younger version of the man on her board might have made a couple of mistakes. Slipped a little as he learned all the ins and outs.
A little smudge on his juvenile record, she mused. We can add that in, yes, we can. We can add that possibility. Maybe back home, wherever the hell home was.
Sticks close to the truth, she recalled. He’d told Deena he’d had a little brush with the law over illegals. Maybe he’d had them with cyber crimes instead.
She let the computer continue its search and sat with her PPC to run criminal, focus on juvenile offenses, with the data she’d accrued from Roarke and Columbia.
It didn’t surprise her to find so many. The cop in her was more surprised when anyone got through life without a smudge or a bump or a bust.
She began the laborious process of scanning, eliminating, separating into possibles. Once again, she lost track of time, and nearly bobbled her third mug of coffee when her ’link signaled.
“Dallas.” Jamie’s face told her what she wanted to hear. “I’ve got him. I think I’ve got him. It’s a ninety-seven-point-three probability match. It’s from five years back, and he only had a semester and a half in but—”
“Send him to me. On screen, now,” she ordered when the transmission hummed.” She stared at the ID photo. “Good work, Jamie. Shut everything down there, wipe the search.”
“It’s him, isn’t it? It’s the bastard who killed Deena.”
She looked into Jamie’s tired and furious eyes. “You did good work,” she repeated. “We’ll brief in the morning. Go home. Get some sleep.”
She knew he wanted to argue, it was clear on his face. But he pulled it in. “Yes, sir.”
She cut transmission then turned back to the screen to study another young, attractive face.
“Hello, Darrin Pauley. You son of a bitch.”
In the lab, Roarke finessed, twisted, prodded. He’d grabbed the amorphous tail of the ghost and was fighting to hold it. “Do you see it?” he demanded.
On a wall screen, Feeney’s eyes were narrowed to slits. “I’ve got eyes, don’t I? You need to recalibrate the bypass, then—”
“I’m bloody well doing that.” Roarke swiveled to another comp, keyed in another code.
“I can box it from here.” On another screen, McNab paced. “If we ride the back end from here—”
“Keep working the enhance,” Feeney snapped. “I’ve got it.”
“Roarke.”
“Not now!” the order shot out at Eve from Roarke, and from the two males on the wall screens.
“Jesus, wall of geek,” she muttered. Then saw the other image, a shadow on shadows.
“You’re pulling him out.”
“We’ve got him, but by our bleeding fingernails. Quiet. If we can’t lock this, we’ll have to do it all again.”
As she watched, the screen began to blur with white dots. She heard McNab say, “No! Damn it, no! It’s another strain. Jesus.”
“Not this time,” Roarke snapped. “The pattern’s there. Reverse the code, every other sequence.”
Eve could see the light sheen of sweat on Feeney’s face, hear the steely determination in Roarke’s voice.
The dots on screen faded.
“We did it!” McNab cried out.
“Not quite yet,” Roarke’s voice eased slightly. “But we bloody well will.”
She didn’t know what they were doing, but the shadow on screen shimmered so she feared it would vanish. Then it steadied, stilled.
“Locked!” McNab called. “We locked the bastard. Rocking-freaking-A.” He leaped up into a victory dance.
“Christ.” Roarke leaned back. “I could use a pint.”
“I’m damn well having one. Good work, every damn one of us,” Feeney said.
“Ah . . . is that it?” As Eve gestured to the shadow, every eye, on screen or in the room, turned a jaundiced look on her.
“We broke through the virus,” Roarke told her. “We pieced together this image from distorted pixels. We performed a bloody miracle. And no, that’s not it. That’s it for now.”
“We’ll start enhancing, defining, cleaning it up,” Feeney told her, then took a long pull from a bottle of brew. “It’s going to take hours, ma
ybe a day, but it’s there, and we can pull it out. And while we’re doing that, we’ve got the sequence and coding locked down to get the rest of it. We’ll be able to give you the little son of a bitch walking right in the door.”
“That’ll be a cap on it. Meanwhile, thanks to Jamie, I’ve got a name, and a point of origin. Darrin Pauley, age twenty-three. Data claims he lives in Sundown, Alabama, south of Mobile, with his father, Vincent Pauley. I’ve got no connection to either Pauley with MacMasters—yet, but he fits right down to his shy smile.”
“He’s no more in Alabama than my ass is,” Feeney put in.
“No, but his father is. I ran him, and he’s gainfully employed, living with his wife and twelve-year-old daughter, in Sundown.”
“Could be a blind,” Feeney suggested.
“Could, but the family resemblance is striking. He needs to be interviewed, now, and face-to-face.”
Roarke glanced at the equipment he’d begun to enjoy again. “I suppose we’re going to Alabama this evening.”
“You suppose correctly.”
14
SHE HAD TO APPRECIATE BEING MARRIED TO A man who could call up one of his own private jets in a fingersnap and pilot it if he had a mind to.
In this case, he did, which was a big advantage. She could sit, continue doing runs, argue with Peabody, bounce theories off her personal pilot, and basically ignore the view out the windscreen.
“I’d’ve been ready in five minutes,” Peabody complained. Her face sulked on screen while in the background McNab continued his e-work in incomprehensible geek.
“It would’ve taken you thirty minimum to get to the transpo. He’s not going to be there, Peabody. You’re not going to miss the collar, for Christ’s sake. And I need you right where you are, digging down to find a New York address or contact for Darrin Pauley. Employment, driver’s license, criminal, finances, medical. Each and every fucking thing.”
“I could do that while—”
“You can have a plane ride another time.”
Peabody’s pout perked, just a little. “When?”
“God. Dig. Now.”
“I will. Am.”
“And work the shoes and the outfit angle. Check to see if he has a credit or debit under that name. If not, we’re going to cross the data you have with males with the initials DP. He used Darian Powders’s ID. Stick with the familiar, so maybe he has other aliases with those initials.”
“That’s good. I’ll—”
“That’s it. Bank a few hours’ sleep because we’re briefing a full team at seven hundred. Book the conference room. I’m out,” Eve said and broke transmission.
“While I find myself, as always, excited by your commanding demeanor,” Roarke said, “this member of the team isn’t available at seven tomorrow.”
She suppressed the urge to swear, because damn it, she could’ve used him. “Civilians get a pass.”
“I can reorder a few things if Feeney can use me, and be available to him about the same time I managed it today.”
“If it works for you. He’s not going to be in Alabama. He needs the payoff of seeing, firsthand, MacMasters devastated. And he’s been in New York for some time. Maybe not for five years, maybe not the whole time since his stint at Columbia, but for a while now. Keeping an eye on things, spinning his web. He’s going to come to the memorial, so I can’t release the sketch to the media and tip him off. Which I may do by pushing at his father.”
“Then why are you? Wait until after the memorial.”
“Calculated risk.” She wanted to stand up, pace, but the size of the plane, the expanse of the night, the emptiness outside the windshield kept her in place. “Off chance he is there. Very off chance, but it can’t be ignored. Better chance, his father knows where he is, and I can get it out of him. Then shut the father’s communications down until we take the bastard down. The other end of it is, I get nothing, the father tips Pauley off, and he’s in the wind. But . . .”
“You don’t think so.”
“Family man, long marriage, another kid. No criminal other than a minor bust for disturbing the peace when he was in his twenties. Solid employment record, mid-level salary, small house in the ’burbs, mortgage. Is this guy going to risk his wife and daughter, that little house, the job, the life, to dodge a police investigation into the rape-murder of a girl? Risk charges of obstruction, accessory after the fact, and anything else I can use to pressure him?”
“Depends, I’d say, on how much he loves his son, and how far he’d go to protect him.”
“I wouldn’t understand that kind of love, the kind that shields monsters. I don’t think it is love. If he does love this sick, son of a bitch, I’ll use that. He needs help. Help us to help him. If I don’t find him, someone else might. He killed a cop’s kid, and someone else might put that above the law.”
She drummed her fingers on her thigh, tried to ignore the shimmy of the plane as they started to descend. “I’ve got to take another risk.” She tagged Baxter at home. “Take the sketch,” she ordered without preamble. “Get Trueheart and canvass the coffeehouses, clubs, hangouts around the university, and on campus.”
“Now?”
“No, gee, whenever you feel like it. Jamie worked an imaging program at Columbia. Check in with him, let him know you’re in the field. And, if it isn’t too much trouble, if it doesn’t interfere with your plans for the evening—”
“Jesus, Dallas, bust my balls.”
“Your balls have never interested me, Baxter.”
“Again, ouch.”
“Take the sketch around MacMasters’s neighborhood. Anything pops, tag me. Otherwise, briefing at seven hundred, Central, confer ence room.”
“Fine. fine. Where the hell are you?”
“I’m about to be in Alabama.” Her stomach flipped. “I hope, sincerely, in one piece. Peabody has the details if you need them. Move it, Baxter.”
“Moving it.”
Lieutenant Dallas, who would charge through a firefight to do the job, closed her eyes with her stomach quivering as they dipped toward touchdown.
She was better when they were zipping along the roads in some spiffy, topless rental with the heavy Southern air whipping around her head.
“A little late for a cop call to a family man,” she said. “Good, it gives us another advantage.”
“It’s not that late. We’re on Central time,” he told her. “We’re an hour earlier here.”
She pressed her fingers to her eyes. “So we’re here before we left. How does anyone keep their brain from frizzing over stuff like this?”
Unable to resist, Roarke gave her a poke and a grin. “And when we go back, we’ll lose an hour.”
“See? It’s senseless. How can you lose an hour? Where does it go? Can someone else find it? Does it get reported to the Lost Time Division?”
“Darling Eve, I have to inform you the world is not flat, nor is New York its center.”
“The first part, okay, but the second? Maybe it should be. Things would be simpler.”
He slowed, sliding onto a suburban street where the trees were plentiful and the houses jammed so close Eve wondered why the occupants didn’t just live in apartments. They’d probably have more privacy.
Tiny yards spread until the wash of street and security lights, and the scent of grass along with something deep and sweet, wound through the air.
Following the vehicle’s navigational assistant, Roarke turned left at a corner, then stopped at a house—much like all the other houses—in the middle of the block.
Eve frowned at the house. Had she become spoiled and jaded living in the enormity of what Roarke had built, or was the house the size of your average shoe box? Two little cars sat, nose to butt, in the narrow driveway. Low-growing flowers crawled along its verge.
Lights beamed against the window glass. In their glow, she saw a bike parked beside the front stoop.
“These people couldn’t afford to send a kid to Columbia. Unless he bagg
ed a scholarship—and that’s out of profile—how could they pay that kind of freight?”
“Well, the wise and foresighted often begin saving and investing for college educations while the child is still in the womb. Even then, yes, it would take considerable.”
She got out, started toward the house. Stopped dead with her hand resting on the butt of her weapon. “Do you hear that?” she demanded as she cocked her head at the repetitive basso belch that rose into the steamy air.
“Of course I hear it. I’m standing right here.”
“What the hell is it?”
“I’m not entirely sure, but I think it may be some sort of frog.”
“Frog? Seriously? The green hopping things?” She scanned the dark and the streams of streetlights. “It sounds really big. Like alien-frog big.”
“I don’t have much personal experience with frogs, but I don’t believe they have alien frogs in Alabama. At least not the sort that require stunning with a police-issue.”
“We’ll see about that.” Just in case, she kept her hand on her weapon.
Through the front window she saw the movement on the entertainment screen, and the man kicked back in a recliner, the woman with her feet curled up on the sofa.
“Quiet evening at home in front of the screen,” Eve murmured. “Could they, would they, if they had any part in . . . what’s she doing? The woman? What’s she doing with those sticks and the fuzzy thread?”
“I have no idea. Why should I have the answers to these things?”
“Because,” she said and made him laugh.
“Well, at a guess again, it appears to be some sort of . . . craft.”
She continued toward the door, studying the sticks, the yarn, the woman. It popped out of some file of buried facts. “Knitting!” Eve punched Roarke’s shoulder. “I got one. She’s knitting.”
“If you say so.”
“I saw that stuff—the sticks, the thread, somewhere, some case. She’s knitting, he’s watching the screen and having a beer, and the girl’s bike is parked by the door—and not chained down. These aren’t master criminals who helped plan the murder of a teenager, and if they’re involved in hacking or identity fraud, I’ll take up knitting.”