Agent X - Boyd Noah - Страница 27

“What is it?”

Vail held up both his hands and spread the fingers apart. “What am I holding up?”

“Two hands,” she said. “Ten fingers.”

“Another name for fingers.”

“I don’t know . . . ‘digits.’ What?” Vail didn’t answer but watched her face. All of a sudden, it dawned on her. She took the loupe from Vail’s hand and locked her eye against it, running it over both sheets. When she straightened up, she smiled. “You’re right, it is ingenious. He’s using fingerprints as a code.”

“Each finger has a number on the fingerprint card we use. The right thumb is number one, all the way to the left pinkie being number ten—or, for code purposes, zero.”

After a few seconds, she again scanned the larger sheet. “The message is on this page, but we wouldn’t be able to assign a number to each one without a control set of prints. The fingerprint card, so to speak”—she bent over the smaller page and ran the magnifier across it to confirm what she was about to say—“has a set of ten in the same order in which they’d be rolled during an arrest. From them we know what number to assign to the latents on the big page, which is the code to lead us to the next mole,” Kate said. “But then what do the dates mean?”

“I don’t know. First we’ve got to get both of these pages fumed so we can see exactly what Calculus is telling us.”

Vail’s cell phone rang. It was Luke Bursaw. “Steve, remember we talked about seeing if the police department had any similar patterns of missing females? Well, they do. I got copies of their reports and was wondering if you could give me a hand for a couple of hours.”

“Hold on a second.” Vail covered the phone. “It’s Luke. He needs some help. An hour or two. It’ll take that long to get those pages processed, won’t it?”

“With the fuming process, yes. Go ahead, I’ll get this done.”

“Luke, why don’t you come over here. . . . Okay, I’ll see you then.”

After he hung up, Kate asked, “You’re going to let him see all this?” She waved a hand at all the documents and photos covering the wall.

“First of all, he is an agent. Second of all, he’s Luke. I’ll ask him to pretend that it isn’t there, and he will.”

“You’re right.” As though they were as fragile as archival material, Kate cautiously packed up the two sheets of paper, threading them into a clear plastic envelope before putting them into her briefcase. “I’ll call you when I’m done. You and Luke aren’t going to get lost, I hope. Remember, we’re in a race here.”

“He said a couple of hours. If it takes longer, you’re going to have to yell at him.”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last six months it’s who to yell at.”

11

Luke, do yourself a favor and ignore the stuff on the wall,” Vail said.

Bursaw let his eyes briefly scan the documents and said, “You always did thrive on chaos.” He took out a sheaf of papers. “These are homicide reports on three women who were killed in the last six months.”

“Give me a few minutes to read them.” The ability to ignore agency boilerplate was a necessary skill for anyone in law enforcement, and Vail had regained his in the few days of being back to reading Bureau reports. “I think there’s some coffee.”

“I could use a couple of cups.” Bursaw got up and started toward the kitchen. “What is this place?”

“Across the street is the old Russian embassy. You know, before they built the new one up on Tunlaw Road.”

“Then this was an observation post?”

“Tough duty, huh?”

“You want some coffee?” Bursaw called over his shoulder as he entered the kitchen.

“No!” Vail yelled after him. “All three of these women were prostitutes.”

Bursaw came back in with a cup in his hand. “I know that Sundra doesn’t exactly fit into the victimology pattern of these women, but she disappeared during the same six-month period as they did,” Bursaw said. “Does that mean you don’t think they’re related to her disappearance?”

“Not necessarily. If it is the same guy, she could have known him or unwittingly presented him with an opportunity. His MO is to take women in very low-risk situations. Prostitutes have to go with him. It’s unlikely that he would try something risky like grabbing Sundra anywhere she would have a chance to resist.”

“If you’re suggesting it might be someone who knew her, I’ve already interviewed everyone I could find, from names in her address book to people my cousin knew, including casual acquaintances like the UPS guy or anyone else she might know without really knowing. So far nothing.”

“Then I’d say this is your best bet right now.”

Bursaw took a sip of his coffee. “Come on, Steve.” He waved at the wall. “I can see you’ve got a lot going on, but I need you to fire up that twisted brain of yours in Sundra’s direction.”

“Give me a few minutes to think about it.” Vail walked into the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee. When he came back, he said, “You told me that Sundra had a new computer. Was it taken into evidence?”

“Yes. I’ve already gone through it. There really wasn’t much on it.”

“Take it to the lab and have them go through it. I read about a new forensics technique called Volume Shadow Copy. It allows them to reconstruct a computer’s hard drive on any given day. Start with the day she disappeared and then each day before that to see if anything was purged. If it was, get a copy of it, and we’ll take a look at it.”

Bursaw made a note. “Volume Shadow Copy. Okay.”

“What about her work computer?” Vail asked.

“I know they’ve downloaded everything off it from the server and then dry-cleaned it so no one else could get access to it. As far as I know, nothing was found.”

“Again, get a printout, and we can take a look at it. Maybe the two of them together will tell us something that each alone wouldn’t.”

“Actually, that’s not a bad lead. Although it was strictly against Bureau policy, she was known to copy files onto her personal computer and work on cases at home. I’ll get on it.”

“In the meantime we should look into the three dead prostitutes. I assume you’re checking to see if there are any women out there who’ve gotten away from this guy.”

“As we learned in Detroit, a surviving victim is still the best way to find out who’s killing hookers. I’m having them put together a list of serious assaults on ladies of the evening in that general area right now.”

“All you need is one.”

Bursaw drained his cup. “Thanks, Steve. So, you staying here? I saw the cots in the room off the kitchen.”

“Free room and board. Life is good.”

“I thought maybe you were staying at Kate’s.”

“At the moment it’s all business.”

“Moments pass.”

“Evidently you don’t know Kate as well as you think you do.”

Vail was just dozing off on the couch when Kate called. “I’ve got the pages fumed. Are we going to need someone to figure out which finger is which?”

“How clear are they?”

“As clean as if they’d been inked,” Kate said.

“Then I can do it.”

“I’m on my way.”

“Hi,” Kate said as soon as she came through the door. “How’d it go with Luke?”

“More tilting at windmills than finding lost women, I’m afraid.”

“So you’re done with it now?”

He looked at her, and she knew his answer before he said anything. “Probably not. Sorry.” He pulled on a fresh pair of gloves. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

Amused, Kate said, “So you came here to go to a cocktail party, and now you’re working a third case. Sounds like somebody needs to learn how to say no.”

He gave her a sarcastic grin. “Should I decide to get some instruction, I know an expert who delivers the word with extreme malice.”

“I’m willing to bet you know several.” Carefully, she pulled out the sheets of paper, which now had a purple cast to them.

He took the fingerprint loupe and said, “On the code page, there are three prints on each line and three lines, nine impressions. So we’re going to get nine numbers out of this. With any luck they won’t represent something else. Start thinking about what has nine numbers and can identify a person.”