The Naked Eye (29 page)

FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, KENDRA, LYNCH,
and Griffin stood in a small, windowless room looking over the shoulder of a chubby, young A/V tech named Nate Copley. Nate sat at his video console, looking up at a flat-panel monitor as he turned a shuttle-wheel control next to his keyboard.

Kendra felt a wrenching pang as Stokes’s agonized face appeared on the screen. “It was around five minutes before the end. Please skip as much of this as you can.”

“Gotcha,” Nate said. “I logged this myself. I hoped I would never have to see it again.”

Kendra turned around to avoid the Stokes video as it sped past. Behind them, a tech was at another console, scanning through parking-lot security-camera footage that also happened to capture a busy street. He slowed the footage whenever he saw anything that resembled the elusive white van, then resumed the high-speed scan each time it proved to be nothing.

Nate pointed to his monitor. “Around here?”

Kendra turned back to the monitor. “I think so … Go a little slower.” She studied the image. “Stop when you see Stokes’s head angle slightly to the right. It happens someplace around … There!” She touched Nate’s shoulder. “Play it at regular speed.”

She moved in for a closer view of Stokes’s final moments. His face twisted in agony, and his lips moved as if muttering a curse. Yet no sound came out.

He did it again.

“See that?” Kendra said. “Still no sound, but I think his lip movements were identical.”

Seconds later he did it once more, then settled back on the table in a state of collapse.

Kendra turned back toward Lynch and Griffin. “Stokes knew I broke the Van Buren case by reading the lips of the murderer on the phone at the crime scene. He might have been trying to tell me something.”

She turned toward Nate. “Can you zoom in on his face and play it again?”

He turned back the shuttle dial. “Yes, but it’s going to get blurrier. I’ll enhance it as much as I can.”

He scanned back and used his keyboard controls to zoom in on Stokes’s face. He used another control to adjust the sharpness, finally finishing with a setting that was slightly more defined than where they started.

She leaned forward, tensely examining the shape and movement of the detective’s mouth.

What are you saying to me, Stokes?

I’m here. I’m listening.

“Play it again, please.”

Nate punched a key and leaned back in his chair. “It’s now on a loop. It will keep repeating until you tell me to stop it.”

Lynch leaned closer to the monitor. “Can you even get a read from this angle?”

“It’s not the easiest, but I…” She was silent, her gaze on the ever-repeating video. Detach. Focus. Take the movements one at a time. Then bring them together. Her eyes narrowed. “Wingate!”

“What?” Griffin said.

“Hush.” She stared at the screen for a moment longer. “That’s it. I’m positive.”

“Wingate?” Griffin repeated.

“Yes. The ‘g’ is hardest to pick up, but you can see it bouncing on his throat.”

“
You
can see it,” Lynch said. “I can only trust you. But what does it mean?”

“I hope it’s someone’s name,” Kendra said. “How the hell do I know? But whatever it is, it was important enough to Stokes to get it out to me even though he was in agony.”

“It might be a name,” Griffin said. “Though it could be a street, a building, or a development of some kind. Or it could be the raving of a man out of his head with pain.”

Lynch shook his head. “Kendra is right, Stokes tried to get it across three times while he was being slowly murdered. And did it in a way that he knew that Kendra could pick up on it yet Colby wouldn’t.”

Griffin shrugged. “I’ve learned my lesson. I’m not about to overrule Kendra on anything to do with this case.” He picked the phone on the desk next to Nate’s workstation. “I’ll have my team start a search for it.”

“I want to help,” Kendra said. “Get me a desk and a computer.”

“Right away.”

Kendra couldn’t take her eyes off Stokes on the monitor screen, still locked in that loop. He was sweating and bleeding, mere minutes away from death. But there he was, still heroically giving his all.

Wingate.

Lynch House
10:25
A
.
M
.

“OKAY, LET ME INTO
that inner sanctum, Sam,” Beth called through the door. “I’ve got a tray, and I’m not going away.”

“I’m busy.”

“I’m not going away,” she repeated. “You very rudely refused to come to breakfast with Lynch and Kendra. Even though I took the trouble to cook. So now you have to eat alone. But you
will
eat, Sam.”

“It’s not rude to sacrifice myself to finding that son of a bitch. You have a wrong set of values.”

“Open the door.”

She heard him mumbling, but he was coming toward the door. The next moment, he’d thrown it open and stood scowling at her. “I’m not hungry.”

“Your stomach has probably shrunk in the last few days.” She sailed into the office, deposited the tray on the coffee table and settled in a corner of the couch. “I haven’t been able to get you to eat. Stupid, Sam. Very stupid. I let you get away with it because the pressure was over the top, but now you’re back to a steady pace.” She poured herself a cup of coffee. “Omelet, bacon, and toast. Eat.”

“Why don’t you go bother Kendra and Lynch?”

“They went to the FBI office. I just got a text from Kendra. They want me to come in for some kind of forensic computer meeting and bring the research and sources I’ve pulled together on Colby’s possible computer consultants.” She grinned mischievously. “Think maybe Griffin wants me to teach his people a thing or two?” She changed the subject. “But before I go anywhere, I want to see you eat.”

“So you’re going to stay and watch me?”

“Yes, because you’ll forget it’s there. Then it will get cold and unappetizing, and you won’t eat it even when you do remember.”

Sam sat down on the couch. “Nag.”

“Just doing my job.” She smiled. “I told Kendra that it was a competition thing between you and Griffin’s fair-haired computer guy.”

“Not true. I’m better than he is.”

“Without doubt.”

He nibbled at his bacon. “But Sims is smart, and I wouldn’t want him to think that he can get ahead of me. Just because he’s been up there in Quantico with those FBI directors kowtowing to him all those years is no sign that his thinking is any more innovative than mine. That would be embarrassing.”

“You’d live through it.” She tilted her head. “And you can’t tell me that you couldn’t get a job there with all that kowtowing if you wanted it.”

“Yeah, Sims has already mentioned it. I told him when I got as old as him, I’d think about it.”

“Ouch. How old is he?”

“Oh, fifty or so.” His smile was brimming with malicious mischief. “I couldn’t resist. He was being patronizing. Can you believe it? Patronizing to
me
.”

“Criminal. All I can say is that you’d better come out on top of this horse race.”

“I will. In the meantime, Sims is being helpful. We’re going at it from two different directions. He’s able to request logs from the Internet service providers for Kendra’s place, my house, and here, and he has a lot of resources at his disposal to analyze the data and try to figure out where Colby’s streams are coming from. I’m actually hacking a lot of those ISPs to find out the same thing. There’s some duplication of effort, but we each come up with stuff that the other can’t easily find.”

“I can see that. He has the full weight of the FBI behind him, and you have the freedom to skirt the law. That makes you a good team.”

He scowled at her. “But it’s not as if I’m with him night and day. For your information, we haven’t been online since yesterday afternoon. We just check in when one of us has had a breakthrough. Then it’s natural that we have to work together.”

“Perfectly natural,” she said solemnly.

“Do I detect sarcasm?” He glanced at his watch. “I don’t have time for this.”

“You do if I say you do. Eat. It’s the quickest way to get rid of me.”

He took his fork and began cutting his omelet. “I didn’t really say I wanted to get rid of you. I just don’t want you to interfere. I kind of like having you around.”

“Sam.”

“Okay, I told you that I have privacy issues when I’m working. It’s true. But lately, you’ve been like Old Dog Tray.”

“I beg your pardon.”

He chuckled. “You know, the dog that lies in front of the fireplace, and you don’t notice he’s there. But the song says he’s the best friend around.”

“How flattering … I think.”

“Look, you’re gorgeous and smart, but you don’t want me to flatter you. I save that for other women. You want the real thing.”

“Old Dog Tray.”

“Yeah, because it means something, like the way I feel about Kendra.”

“Are you saying that she’s Old Dog Tray, too?”

“In a way. We’ve been together for years, and we know we can count on each other.” He looked at her. “We’re like that now, aren’t we?”

She nodded, smiling faintly. “I believe we’ve fought our way through to that status.”

“Except I don’t know how you think sometimes. You know pretty much everything about me, but I don’t know—” He grimaced. “I didn’t ask Kendra much about how you got into that mental hospital. All I know is that you were imprisoned without cause.”

“But you’re asking now.” She was silent for a moment. “I saw something I shouldn’t have seen, and my grandmother wanted to get rid of me.”

“Something you shouldn’t have seen?”

“Murder,” she said baldly. “I was only a teenager, and I was easy to get rid of. I had a supposed skiing accident, a blow to the head, and she shipped me off to Seahaven, the posh mental hospital that she funded, to be ‘cared for’ by her tame crew of doctors.” She took a sip of her coffee. “And I stayed there for years and years. Until Eve and Kendra came to find me.”

“My God.” He shook his head. “Your grandmother?”

“She wasn’t your usual grandmother. She was beautiful, clever, and ambitious. And our relationship was … not warm and fuzzy.”

“I’d say that must be an understatement. What a nightmare.”

She nodded. “But it’s a nightmare I don’t allow myself to dwell on. It’s over, and I won’t let one moment of my present or future be held hostage by it.” She said fiercely, “I was a zombie in that place. They were planning on finally killing me when Eve found out she had a sister in that hospital. You can see why I’m grateful to you for helping to spring me.” She held up her hand. “So don’t you dare downplay what you did for any reason. I’m free, I live my life to the hilt, I learn something new every day.” She smiled. “Including bits and pieces of some of that computer know-how you dazzle everyone with. If I stay around long enough, I may even give you a run for your money.”

He nodded. “You might at that.” He cleared his throat. “And I’d like to be around to see it. You’re an extraordinary woman, Beth.”

“I’m getting there.” She finished her coffee. “Every day, every way, every person I meet.” She got to her feet. “You’ve finished everything but your coffee. I’ll let you work on that while you go back to your computers.”

“You could stick around.”

She threw back her head and laughed. “What a sacrifice. My sad story must have really impressed you. Don’t worry, I won’t take you up on it. That wouldn’t suit either one of us. I don’t have time to hold your hand even if you could stand me in here.”

“It wouldn’t be that bad.”

“No, because I wouldn’t do it.” She picked up the tray and headed for the door. “I’ll bring you a pot of coffee before I leave to go to the FBI field office. If you need anything else, let me know.” She slanted him a look over her shoulder. “You’re a good guy, Sam. And I suppose I have to forgive you for being so rude to me the first time we met.”

“It took you long enough.”

“I don’t forgive easily. Ask my grandmother.”

“What do you mean?”

Her smile was both enigmatic and teasing. “As Scheherazade said, that’s another tale.”

She closed the door behind her.

San Diego FBI Field Office
12:05
P
.
M
.

“BETH AVERY, TOM SIMS.”
Griffin smiled. “It should be the start of a beautiful friendship. You definitely have something in common.”

“You mean someone,” Beth said as she shook Sims hand. She had watched him speaking to Griffin’s other three local computer experts before Griffin had brought her forward to introduce her. She had been impressed. Confident but not lacking in respect for them or their work. He might be in his fifties as Sam had told her, but he was a young fifty. A lean, fit body, gray-streaked hair, tan skin with just a few wrinkles around his dark eyes, a great smile. “I didn’t realize you were going to be at this meeting. But it’s obvious now you
are
the meeting. Sam has been talking about you ever since you started working together. I’m very happy to meet you.” She grimaced. “But I’ll be more happy when you two finally manage to track Colby and aren’t working until the wee hours.”

“So will my wife. She’s becoming very impatient with me,” Sims said. “And I’ll be happy, too. I’d never admit it to Sam, but I’m not quite as spry as I once was. The tennis helps, but lack of sleep can be hell. If this case weren’t so important, I might have delegated it to someone else.” He ruefully shook his head. “But I couldn’t do it. Sam would have been scornful. And I would have been humiliated.”

“I don’t know how the two of you managed to get caught up in this rivalry.”

“Vanity,” Sims said. “I know it’s immature. But it’s getting the job done. We’re making amazing progress.”

“I know. Sam told me.”

“Sam tells you a lot, doesn’t he?” He gazed curiously at her. “He talks about you to me. Did you know that?”

“No, I’m sure it isn’t in-depth conversation. I’m just on the peripheral of Sam’s life.”

“No, the mention is always just in passing. But I could tell that there was a comfortable affection there.”