Every Second

37

Manhattan, New York

Varner clawed at his collar button and yanked his tie loose as he stepped into his office after his exchange with Kate at the news conference.

He dropped into his chair, jabbed the keys of his keyboard looking for the data Bill Kendrick in Los Angeles had promised to send him on Lori Fulton’s connection to Jerricko Titus Blaine.

This was a critical lead, and Varner was sickened that it could be handed directly to the suspects by a reporter, which could lead Blaine and the other subjects to destroy evidence and jeopardize prosecution of the case, ruining any element of surprise that might work in their favor when it came time to close in.

How did Page get on to this? Is she that good? Or is someone leaking to her?

Varner’s monitor came to life with the report from LA and he raced through it twice, devouring Lori’s history with the Santa Ana PD-including the shootings, the fallout and the toll.

There’s a strong motive here for Blaine, he thought.

Blaine must have targeted the Fultons in revenge for Lori killing his brother, Malcolm. It still left Varner with many unanswered questions. He was certain Blaine wasn’t acting alone, so who were his associates-and why didn’t they just go after Lori directly? Why escalate to such an extreme, taking hostages, using bombs and robbing a bank? There had to be a reason, but the deeper they dug, the more questions they had. Why did Malcolm take his mother’s name? What about Malcolm’s time in prison and the family’s connection to Afghanistan-was any of that related to what was happening now? Varner had submitted the name Malcolm Jordan Samadyh to Guardian and other national security databases, but nothing had come back yet.

Meanwhile, investigators analyzed and assessed the physical, factual and theoretical aspects of the Blaine/Samadyh link to Fulton: Blaine’s fingerprints on the duct tape, Blaine’s blood tie to Samadyh and Samadyh’s connection to Lori Fulton. It was often a matter of degrees of separation, but all it took was one key piece of information to bring everything together and Varner was certain that piece would surface soon.

Still, the fact that Kate Page had the inside track didn’t sit well with him.