Jayne and Steelie - 01 - Freezing (25 page)

‘Put it on speaker-phone, SA Ramos.'

Eric paused momentarily but he did it and they heard the southern accent of the man who answered.

‘Officer Lake, Chesterton PD.'

‘Officer, this is FBI Special Agent Eric Ramos. I'm the originator of the APB you just responded to. Can you give me further details, please?'

‘OK, Agent Ramos but I gotta tell ya, it ain't such good news.'

‘Just give it to me.'

‘Well, we've got your vehicle all right, but the unidentified man who was driving it is AWOL.'

‘Wait. Your response says the driver was taken to hospital unconscious.'

‘Apparently, the boys on the scene thought he was unconscious or as good as. Maybe he just regained consciousness. Either way, by the time our units caught up with the ambulance at Chesterton General, the man had absconded from the stretcher and they'll be damned if they can work out where he went. He
was
wounded.'

‘And no one got an ID?'

‘No, but the vehicle was wearing plates registered to a male, name of King, DOB nineteen sixty. I'm faxing you the sheet now.'

Eric almost got goose bumps. He spoke rapidly. ‘I need you to put out a BOLO on that individual with whatever descriptions you have and I need it to maintain that he is armed and dangerous.'

‘You got it, Agent Ramos. I already had a BOLO underway. We sure are sorry about this but we're on top of it.'

Eric disconnected the call by lifting and replacing the handset but he kept his hand on the phone as he said to his Supervisor, ‘I need to call Scott.'

Turner shook his head. ‘First, Tony establishes for me that you two are not conducting this case like a bunch of cowboys. Call him now.'

What Eric really wanted to do was smash the telephone against the wall while picturing his old boss Franks' smug face but he steadied his hand and dialed Tony Lee.

When the Critter arrived and saw their supervisor was there as well, now sitting in Scott's chair across the room, he looked at Eric. ‘What do you need?'

‘Tony, SSA Turner needs your chain of custody protocols for when Weiss brought Steelie Lander and Jayne Hall up to Critter Central.'

Tony cleared his throat. ‘Agent Ramos gave the scientists from Agency Thirty-two One access to the main room of the lab. I then escorted them into the cool room once they were fully suited up in protective gear. I was present the entire time they observed the body parts they had been asked to review. I handled the body bags, body parts, and all the equipment.'

Turner's tone was brusque. ‘Photographs?'

‘I took images but retained those images at the lab. Later use of the images for the purposes of analysis was conducted by the scientists at our laboratory and in my presence.'

‘So, you're saying that neither scientist even touched the body parts?'

‘They barely breathed on them.' Tony crossed his arms.

The telephone on Eric's desk rang and he looked at the digital read-out. It identified the call as coming from the colleague who took over his desk in Atlanta, Georgia. He pressed the speaker-phone button before Turner could order him to do it.

‘Ramos here.'

‘Eric, it's Nicks. You got me on speaker or something?'

‘Yeah, Angie. You're broadcasting to SSA Turner and Tony Lee. Go.'

She resumed, speaking fast. ‘OK, Wilson and I got a PIN-to-PIN from Houston this afternoon.'

Eric hoped that, in light of SSA Franks' witch-hunt, Turner didn't find it suspicious that Scott had used his government-issued BlackBerry to send the type of instant message that was more difficult to track than a text or voice message.

Angie was still talking. ‘He asked us to check the shortlist of suspects you guys drew up on the missing women before you got transferred out. He suggested that we use the APB you guys just put out on that vehicle, on the thinking that the driver might be our Georgia perp.'

‘Tell me something good, Angie,' he said, trying to make it sound like he'd been aware of his partner's request all along while simultaneously trying to place when Scott had leapfrogged to a Georgia focus instead of sticking to the idea that they would find Tripper somewhere on the road between Arizona and Georgia.

‘We've got a lead,' Angie said. ‘We've been checking through the shortlist since we got the search warrants and all your suspects were home in the time period you're looking at for this guy being in California and Arizona except for one. We're not clear if he wasn't at home then, but he's not at home now, then we saw the BOLO go out on him from Chesterton PD.'

‘King?'

‘Yep. He hasn't been seen for weeks but as soon as we saw that BOLO, we got a search warrant that would allow us to enter the property in his absence. House seems clean but his backyard reeks of decomp.'

‘Yesss!' Eric sounded triumphant.

‘Hang on, Eric,' Angie warned. ‘The reason I'm calling is that we've just had the ME down there to take a look. The yard is apparently full of bones buried pretty shallow and the doc says he can't handle it. Can't tell which ones are human or animal and he thinks there's some of each. Says he's got some university students – volunteers – who'd probably be glad to go through all of it but it could take them weeks and they don't have a lot of experience. So we're in a holding pattern here. What do you want to do? It's yours and Houston's case.'

Eric looked over at his supervisor, who was leaning forward in the chair, elbows on knees. He liked what he saw in Craig Turner's eyes and liked the man even more when he stood up while crumpling the sheet of paper he'd been carrying with the notes from SSA Franks' phone calls.

Turner spoke, his tone authoritative. ‘Call in Agency Thirty-two One.'

He turned to leave the office, then turned back. ‘And clear it with Houston first.'

Eric smiled at Tony Lee and then said toward the phone, ‘Got all that, Ange?'

‘Ten-four.'

‘I'll call you back ASAP.' Eric's tone was jubilant.

Scott slid his hands up Jayne's back until they were on her neck, in her hair, pulling her to him. He wanted her even closer but they couldn't get any closer. Their kisses were turning into something else altogether and Scott could feel his pulse speeding up. But the roar in his ears wasn't related. There was a vehicle exiting the freeway and rolling too slowly toward them. He and Jayne surfaced simultaneously but he held her to him as they watched the pick-up truck pass, then turn right at the bottom of the exit ramp. Scott became aware of other noises now . . . cars on the freeway, a fly buzzing past, Jayne's fast breathing, her chest rising and falling in syncopation with his. And something else . . . his cell phone. He looked to the Suburban where the driver's door was wide open.

He started for the car and drew Jayne with him by taking her hand with a familiarity he didn't want to lose. She let him pull her into the confined space between the door and the seat, let him keep contact between them even as he reached for his phone in the center console. In the first seconds of hearing Eric's voice, Scott was still in the moment with Jayne, whose gaze was fixed on his mouth, causing him to look at hers, wanting to kiss. Then the import of what Eric was saying broke through. Scott tensed.

Jayne looked up at him with a questioning expression but it was faster to simply hold the phone out to her. ‘I need you to listen to Eric.' He activated the phone's speaker.

‘Jayne?' Eric's voice sounded thin but audible. ‘We've got a situation where we need the Agency's help. We may have a multiple or mass grave in a backyard and the ME's out of his depth. We don't need you to exhume it but Thirty-two One could assist us to get a lead if you could do a day's assessment and some training of the volunteers they've corralled to help the ME. This is urgent but it does involve traveling to Georgia, to the premises of a suspect who is still at large. I'm not going to pretend there's no danger quotient but you and Steelie would be under Federal protection. Can you do it?'

Scott thought he read excitement, concern, and then duty on Jayne's face before she said, ‘I'll need to confirm with Steelie but, yes.'

‘Good,' Eric replied. ‘Because Steelie's already on her way over here with your overnight bag. Scott, see you at LAX as soon as you two can get there. We're all booked on the red-eye.'

DAY TEN

Thursday

TWENTY-TWO

F
BI office, Atlanta. 9.45 a.m. Scott rolled his shirtsleeves above his elbows and leaned on the briefing room's long conference table. The lights were dimmed to allow a screen at the end of the room to take center stage.

Eric contemplated the blurry portrait of a man projected on the screen, while Agents Mark Wilson and Angela Nicks looked at Scott from the other side of the table. Scott looked at his watch. ‘OK, Jayne Hall and Steelie Lander will be here in fifteen and I want to make sure we're all on the same page before they arrive.'

He pointed to the portrait on the screen. ‘Starting with descriptors on our suspect, King: white male, forty-five years old, six-foot-four, blond and blue. Holds the title to Thirteen twenty Mead Street and witness statements suggest he is also resident there. Eric and I put him on our list of suspects for the prostitute abductions about a year ago because he was alleged to have associated with some of the missing women. We never had any hard evidence on him, thanks in part to a lack of surveillance. So we never got a search warrant for his property.'

Eric pointed at the screen. ‘This image is the most recent photograph we have of him. It's the one on file at his work. The facilities contractor at Atlanta Airport employs him part-time, primarily cleaning floors and he alternates between employee areas and the arrivals transport section. Right now, they have him down as on vacation. He's had the job for a year and a half. No previous employment record.'

Scott used the remote to bring up the next image.

‘This is the photo of King on file at the Department of Motor Vehicles. It's five years old.'

The man in the portrait hadn't smiled for the shot. His narrow face was pale in a manner that made him appear older than his age.

Scott continued. ‘His appearance is a good fit for the man local police had contact with last night and it was his Georgia plate on the car we were tracking from Arizona. The address for the license plate is the Mead Street one. What's the latest from your house-to-house?' He directed the question to Angie.

She was pulling her thin braids into a ponytail, exposing a neck that was slender despite a well-known penchant for daily workouts. ‘Usual story from the neighbors,' she replied. ‘He's quiet, don't see him that much, puts his trash out on time. Can't track down any friends or social set and no one at his work has socialized with him or been to his house.'

Mark added, ‘He doesn't own a cell phone – in his name, at least – so we can't track him that way.'

Eric nodded. ‘He has used the Internet, however. We've been following info we had from this website, off-the-grid-dot-net, where we believe King was operating under the screen name Tripper. And if he is Tripper, he successfully masked his identity while online. The IT guys are monitoring the site but there's been no recent activity under that screen name. There are no leads there right now. Catch is, if King
is
Tripper and he's gone to ground, he probably knows how to stay there.' Eric looked to his partner.

Scott forwarded the image on the screen and a map came up. He used a laser pointer to point out a street on the map. ‘Here's where police recovered the vehicle that was wearing King's license plate. The man driving the vehicle matches King's description on the basic levels and we are working on the assumption that the man, who was wounded and wearing a police uniform or replica, was indeed King.'

He pointed to another location on the map on the screen. ‘Here's Chesterton General, where King escaped on foot. And here –' he pointed at another location two miles away – ‘is King's residence. At about the time he was escaping from the ambulance at the hospital . . .' Scott paused to consult his notes.

Mark finished his sentence. ‘We were breaking down his front door on the search warrant. If he's tried to come home, then he knows we're crawling all over it.'

Angie's cell phone rang but she addressed the room as she pulled it from her pocket. ‘We've got surveillance at both ends of the street in case he does turn up. Nicks.' This last was said into her phone. ‘Thanks.' She stood up. ‘The scientists are here. I'll escort them.'

Jayne and Steelie still had damp hair from the quick wake-up showers they'd taken at the motel after the overnight flight from Los Angeles. But hot water could do only so much and they'd maintained a fatigue-induced silence during the ride in a government vehicle to FBI Headquarters. The woman who met them in Reception introduced herself as Agent Angela Nicks and they hurried to follow her to the security station. Her swift pace befitted her short but compact stature and she led the way as soon as they had their Visitor badges.

She glanced back at them as she walked. ‘Motel OK? You need anything?'

Steelie pulled her glasses from the pocket of her shirt and began cleaning them. ‘Weirdly, I think I'm ready for breakfast.'

‘We've got stuff in the briefing room. Muffins, bagels, coffee. Sound OK?'

‘Sounds like I should come 'round here more often.'

They were passing offices that came off both sides of the hall and open doors revealed agents at work. Jayne half expected to find their way barred by the infamous Supervisory Special Agent Franks about whom Eric had told infuriating stories last night at the airport. She was still smarting over the fact that SSA Franks had acted on an anonymous tip about impropriety between Scott and Agency 32/1 without vetting anyone who called in with such specific information.