The Murder That Never Was: A Forensic Instincts Novel (20 page)

Claire’s eyes flew open. She was gasping for air. Her entire body was in a cold sweat, and she was shaking uncontrollably.

She could still see the scene playing out. The tattooed man snatched up the bag of papers. The killers drove off as rapidly as they’d arrived.

Russian. That realization came to Claire in a flash of insight. They were Russian.

She couldn’t see the shooter clearly, not yet. Nor could she make out his tattoos to the point where she could draw them.

But she wasn’t letting go of this wallet until she could give Casey descriptions of both.

It had been only a few hours since they’d left New York, but Marc and Ryan were like two little boys as they fought over which radio station to play. Marc preferred classic rock like Whitesnake. Ryan preferred hard rock like Nickelback. If SiriusXM were tracking their station changes, the company would be afraid the satellite signal would crash, and they’d automatically terminate the account.

“I’m the one at the wheel; I should have final say,” Marc pointed out.

“Well, I’m the one doing the technical research…” Ryan held up his laptop. “So I need the right inspiration.”

“Fine.” Marc turned the dial once more and was happy to hear Bon Jovi playing. “Good compromise?”

“I can live with it. On a prayer.” Ryan grinned at his own cleverness.

Marc rolled his eyes. “Done.” Happy to be finished with this bullshit battle, he turned the radio down a notch and switched his attention to the mission ahead of them.

“I’m clear on my role once we get to Chicago, but how is Otter supposed to tell us the necessary information about cell phone calls?”

“So glad you asked,” Ryan replied. “As you know, Shannon was able to provide me with Jim’s cell phone number. I checked. Jim used U.S. Cellular for cell phone service. I was able to grab the last month of cell phone records before their intrusion detection systems shut me down. From there, I found a few phone numbers of interest. Some of them were to other trainers in the area. Those guys generally had regular cell phones. Maybe they were friends, colleagues, or maybe they were drug dealers like Jim. That’s part of what your investigative skills will need to determine when we interview them. But one number in particular kept popping up—and with greater frequency right before Julie was murdered. I traced the number to a TracPhone. Nontechnical types and some senior citizens prefer TracPhones, but a disposable cell phone—a burner phone—is the communication tool of choice for criminals. Phones are purchased with cash and tossed when the minutes run out.”

“Boy Genius, I was with the FBI, remember? I know what a burner phone is and how it’s purchased. In fact, I’m pretty sure everyone who watches TV crime shows knows that.”

“Sorry.” Ryan had the decency to look sheepish.

“Forget it. Let’s get back to your analysis. So Jim called his distributor’s TracPhone. How are we going to find out who this guy is?”

“Otter.”

Once again, Marc rolled his eyes. “So Otter is clairvoyant like your girlfriend?”

Ryan shot him an irritated look. “Careful with your choice of words. Claire and I are…well, Claire and I. No label’s been assigned to it.”

“Fine. Whatever. Go on.”

“Otter’s not psychic, just curious.” Ryan stopped talking to glance out the window, his attention temporarily focused elsewhere. “Before I give you more than you can absorb in one shot, I need an Egg McMuffin and a large cup of coffee. Pull off at the next exit. The golden arches I just saw made me hungry.”

“No health food today?”

“Not unless you know of a health food restaurant right off the highway with a drive-through window. I’ll have to make do.” A grin. “Plus, your body needs an Egg McMuffin every once in a while.”

“You don’t have to twist my arm. I’m starving. And I need some coffee, too.” Marc pulled into the right-hand lane, cruising until the exit ramp appeared and those familiar golden arches rose through the trees, beckoning hungry travelers.

They zipped through the drive-through, grabbing their food and getting right back on the road, this time with Ryan at the wheel. He was the king of eating, talking, and driving, all at the same time.

“To continue. Otter will navigate the digital rivers of Verizon’s Chicago network operations center, which TracPhone uses to handle its customers’ calls. He’ll find every cell tower that was ever involved in handling a call to or from that TracPhone number and send all the detailed information stealthily back to Yoda. Yoda will align the cell phone call information with cell tower log files using time stamps recorded down to microseconds.”

“So how is this going to tell us who Mr. Anonymous is?” Marc interrupted to ask.

Ryan raised a hand. “I’m getting to that part. Yoda will be able to triangulate a geographic ‘red zone’ from the cell tower data. You see, when a cell phone places a call, it contacts cell towers in the area. The idea is to use the one with the best signal strength. Usually, it’s the closest one to the subscriber. Sometimes it’s not, because of some natural or man-made obstacles—like a hill or a building that impacts the signal strength. By doing a ‘mashup’ of the cell tower locations—Google Earth for the terrain assessment and signal strength data on the TracPhone calls—Yoda should be able to narrow the location of the distributor to within a block or so.”

He took a belt of coffee. “People are creatures of habit. They place the bulk of their cell phone calls from home, their office, or their favorite Starbucks. When the same tower handles cell phone calls at the same time of day, that can give us a clue as to where this guy hangs out. For example, if Yoda comes up with a location during the day in a business district, then we can guess that the distributor has an office in the area. At night, especially late at night, he’s probably home. I suspect this guy will be doing business out of his car and his apartment.”

“Okay,” Marc said, processing all this information. “So we know that this scumbag lives within a block or two of some address. We can’t go door to door interviewing people. I don’t have my FBI credentials anymore, remember?”

“No worries on that score,” Ryan assured him. “We won’t have to. Once Yoda figures out the area we’re interested in, Otter will switch gears and head in the opposite direction. He’ll focus on calls made using the same geographic pattern of cell towers but from another cell phone. In my experience analyzing communications in criminal networks, bad guys will protect themselves from discovery by using a burner phone to talk to people on the street. In this case, that’s what the distributor did with Jim. So if Jim were arrested, the cops would only have a disposable cell phone number and no leads back to the distributor.”

“Dead end.”

“Yup. But a distributor has multiple business relationships and, at some point, would be talking to someone higher up in the food chain. That person wouldn’t want the hassle of dealing with revolving phone numbers for all his distributors. He might have thirty people he needs to talk to on a regular basis, spread out all over the US. Imagine the chaos. The person above the distributor would only accept phone calls from known phone numbers.”

“Got it.”

“So, in a long-winded way, we’ll use the burner phone to find a location. We’ll use that location to find a regular cell phone number that is being used by the same person. Then we’ll go on to use that info to find who the distributor called. My hope is that someone at the top is not concerned about cell phone anonymity, but if they are, we can track them to within another block or two radius. Otter will keep plying the digital rivers of cell phone data and, with Yoda’s help and computation resources, build a map of the criminal network using their communications to uncover the players.”

Marc snorted. “Between the government listening in to our cell phone conversations, surveillance cameras everywhere, people capturing conversations, pictures, and videos using smartphones, and tech prodigies like you designing, integrating, and hacking all this, there really is no place to hide any longer.”

“That’s right. If you’ve got any secrets I don’t know about, I will soon.”

Marc chuckled. “No such luck. You’ll have to play spy somewhere else. I’m as clean as a whistle—other than my work at FI, which is no secret to you. But it does sound like I underestimated Otter.”

“You did. But I don’t expect you to get my level of genius.”

“Just drive, Ryan,” Marc said and turned up the radio. “The sooner we get there, the better.”

“Casey?” Claire poked her head around the conference room door. Even though Casey had her own office, the whole team knew that this was her favorite place to work.

Sure enough, she was sitting at the oval table, typing information into her laptop, Hero relaxing at her feet.

She and Hero both looked up at the sound of Claire’s voice. Hero wagged his tail, and Casey beckoned Claire in, a hopeful glint in her eyes. She knew that look on Claire’s face—and what it usually yielded.

“You made some kind of sensory connection?”

“More than one,” Claire replied. “You have time?”

“Are you kidding? I’m losing my mind because of how slowly we’re moving forward. Sit.”

Claire complied. “By the way, where’s Ryan? He’s not in his lair. And I need his input on a couple of drawings I made.” She indicated the pieces of paper in her hand, which she now placed on the desk in front of her.

“He and Marc are on their way to Chicago. They’re going to be there for a few days. Ryan’s got a new gadget that he says will yield detailed call information all stemming from Jim Robbins’ burner phone.” Casey gave Claire a wry grin. “As usual, I only half understood Ryan’s explanation, but you and I both know that he and Marc will come back with something significant.”

Claire nodded. “Fine. Then we’ll muddle through my stuff without him.”

She spread out the three sheets of paper, angling them toward Casey. “These are fairly accurate depictions of Julie’s killer’s tattoos. It took me a while to be able to visualize them, but I finally did. This one”—she pointed at the first sheet, which was a sketch of a bull—“is etched on the killer’s upper right arm. Next”—she pointed at the second drawing, which was birds flying over the horizon—“is on his upper left arm. And the last one”—she pushed the third drawing, a sketch of a sailing ship, toward Casey—“is on his right forearm.”

“Wow.” Casey studied each drawing carefully, marveling at Claire’s detail. “Wow. That was quite a connection you made. And obviously, these particular symbols stand for specific things. I wish we knew what nationality we’re dealing with. That might narrow down our research.”

“The killers are Russian. The symbols are, too. I was hoping Ryan could dig up a tie between whatever basic information we come up with to an actual gang or sect who wore this combination.” Claire blew out a breath, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “On the other hand, it could be a random combination of symbols, not tied to any one group.”

“We’ve got to find out.” Casey was picking up her burner phone. “Only I’m not sure Ryan is our best source on this one. I’ll let him know what you picked up on when he checks in, but we need inside info—crime families, gangs.”

“Hutch?” Claire guessed.

“Yup.” Casey punched in a number. “I’m calling Lisa and getting her permission to bring Hutch in, at least on this peripheral level. He doesn’t need to know the case details. He just needs to offer us his expertise. And Hutch has seen everything.”

She paused as Lisa answered, and then tersely explained that they had an FBI contact who might be able help them out without knowing names or case specifics. Sure enough, Lisa agreed.

Casey hung up and used her own cell to call Hutch. She knew she’d probably get his voice mail, since he was busy orienting himself to his new job.

“Hey,” he surprised her by answering, although his head was definitely elsewhere. “Everything okay?”

“Fine. Sorry to bother you,” Casey replied. “Can I borrow you for a few minutes after work?”

This time, he chuckled. “Sweetheart, you can borrow me for a lot longer than a few minutes.”

Casey’s lips tugged into a smile. “Get your mind out of the gutter, SSA Hutchinson. What I need you for is work related.”

An exaggerated sigh. “You sure know how to hurt a man’s ego.”

“Your ego and your libido are in excellent shape. No worries on either score. And I do promise to give you as much time to address the latter as you—we—want. But first…”

“I know. Help on a case. I’ll come by the brownstone around six thirty.”

“Thank you,” she said gratefully. “Now go back to work. Make them wonder how they ever lived without you.”

She hung up and turned to Claire. “He’ll be here. And he’ll zero in on what we need fast.”

Quietly, Claire added, “I can also give you descriptions of the killer and the guy driving the car. The descriptions aren’t as detailed as the drawings, but I jotted down every physical characteristic that came to me.”

Hearing the shaky note in her teammate’s voice, Casey looked up.

“There’s something else,” Claire stated.

It wasn’t a question. She could tell that some revelation had profoundly affected Claire.

“It’s Julie,” Claire managed, her throat clogged with unshed tears. “I was inside her head. It’s like I was her. I know what she was thinking, what she did, and where she did it. And then…I felt her die. Every second of it.”

“Oh, Claire, I’m sorry.” Casey covered Claire’s hand with hers. She knew how traumatic these kinds of connections were to her claircognizant teammate, how severely they impacted her. And how could they not? She’d lived inside other victims while they were being brutally raped, assaulted, or murdered. Casey couldn’t imagine the emotional toll that would take on a person, especially one as gentle as Claire.

“Thank you,” Claire replied, swallowing hard and then shoving back her emotions in lieu of the facts. She told Casey about Julie’s distress over Shannon’s condition, her rage at Jim, and her determination to get evidence on him—leading to what she’d done.