Love me to death

SEVENTEEN

The morning sky seemed an even more vibrant blue in the icy cold, and while last night’s snowfall had been cleared from the roads, the delicate blanketing of white across small yards, parked cars, and roofs sparkled in the sun. The walk to Holy Trinity usually allowed Lucy a chance to reflect, but today the quiet and subtle beauty of winter gave her no peace of mind. She walked into the church late and slid into the back row.

Her lack of sleep showed in her lackluster responses to the Mass. She thought through possible scenarios as to why Prenter’s account had been deleted. An account could be accidentally deleted, but that seemed too coincidental. Or Prenter himself might have deleted it to avoid a trail of evidence. That was more likely, but why? Because he’d planned to drug and rape “Tanya”?

That went against type. He hadn’t gone to any lengths to cover up his rape of Sara Tyson, which yielded physical evidence that had aided in his conviction. Still, he could have learned from that experience and become more cautious.

After communion, Lucy knelt and prayed, pushing all thoughts of Prenter from her mind. Someone knelt next to her, and she automatically shifted away while glancing at the person. She didn’t like being snuck up on.

“Cody,” she whispered.

“I’m sorry about last night.”

“Shh.” She wasn’t going to argue with him in church, even if he was apologizing.

Ten minutes later, Mass was over, but Lucy didn’t leave. She turned to Cody after the recessional and said, “Prenter’s chat account was deleted.”

He looked confused. “Why is that important? Lucy, anything could have happened to his account. The police could have locked it.”

“It’s been deleted.”

“They could have archived it, then deleted the public copy.”

“There are no archives on that site, except for private messages. I never sent him a private message.”

“I think you’re making a big deal over nothing.”

At first Lucy was enraged-it wasn’t nothing; then she noticed Cody’s brow was furrowed. He was at least thinking about her concerns.

“I need to know what happened, Cody. I have run the scenario every way I can think of and some are plausible, but I need to know.”

“Why is this important to you?”

“Because-” Why was it? Why did she care? She glanced at the corpus of Christ suspended on the wall behind the altar.

She’d killed Adam Scott and didn’t regret it. He’d deserved worse, but her lack of guilt had bothered her for years. She’d talked to her brother Patrick about it, only him, and he’d dismissed it. “You feel guilty because you don’t feel guilty about killing the man who raped you, who nearly killed Dillon and Kate? Don’t.”

Lucy had become desensitized by the violence in the world around her. She’d experienced pain and humiliation, she’d killed a human being, and she was immersed in an online world where sex predators were the norm, where they constantly hunted for victims. She didn’t want to take murder in stride, even the death of a convicted rapist.

“I don’t want to take anyone’s death lightly,” she said.

“I understand.” Maybe he did. “I’ll look a little deeper.”

“Thank you.”

“Want to go for breakfast?”

Sean. She glanced at her watch. It was already after ten. “I have plans,” she said.

“Oh, maybe a rain check then-” Something over her shoulder caught Cody’s attention and he straightened into his alpha cop stance.

She looked behind her and saw Sean walking toward them. Her heart quickened when he caught her eye and smiled.

“You didn’t tell me you were seeing someone,” Cody said, his voice hard, as if she were cheating on him.

“I’m not,” she said automatically.

“You were with him last night.”

Cody didn’t believe her. She wasn’t sure if she believed herself, either. “I mean, it’s not serious.” Yet. “We’re just …” Why did she have to explain anything to her ex-boyfriend?

Sean came up to them, putting his hand on Lucy’s back. “Officer Lorenzo,” he said in greeting.

“Rogan.” He said to Lucy, “I’ll call you if I learn anything.” Then he left.

“Did I say something?” Sean asked.

Lucy shook her head. “He’s my ex-boyfriend.”

“How long ago?”

“Over a year. Sorry-I don’t know why he’s acting so strange.”

Sean raised his eyebrow. “You really don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“He’s still in love with you.”

She shook her head and looked toward where Cody had walked out, but he was gone. “I don’t think so.” Was he? No, she didn’t think so. Maybe.

“Luce, I’m a guy, I can tell.” He kissed her lightly on the lips. “Tell me he doesn’t have a chance of getting you back.”

She let Sean’s words sink in, her eyes widening. “He doesn’t.”

“Good.” He kissed her again. “You look tired.”

“I didn’t sleep well.”

“Hungry?”

“I could eat.”

“You’ll need the energy for what I have planned.”

“What is that?”

“It’s a surprise.” He took her hand. “Let’s go.”

“You’re going to burn out,” Noah said to Kate when he walked into the computer room at Quantico at noon on Sunday.

She shot him a glare that might be described as the evil eye. “You’re here.”

“It’s my case.”

“It’s my family.”

Noah wasn’t going to win this battle. “Abigail spoke to the regional vice-president at the rental company, faxed him the administrative subpoena, and he said he would give us the GPS logs tomorrow morning if possible-it’s a holiday, but he’s working on it.”

“Good.”

Kate was back staring at the computer. “I have something, too. I have a list of every email address in Morton’s address book. I still haven’t recovered the messages themselves, but I’m getting closer.”

“How do we match those up to real people?”

“Some are easy-names attached to the emails. Some are harder, but I know some tricks.”

“What about going to the ISP?”

She glanced at him, eyebrow raised. “So you’re not as technically incompetent as you act.”

“I know the basics.”

“Internet service providers are less likely to turn over any private customer information without a warrant-they’re not as friendly as the rental company. So we need probable cause, such as an email exchange that is obviously criminal in nature, or that we can show is criminal based on other evidence. Here’s a list of everyone I’ve found so far-I highlighted those who are in Morton’s file as being a known associate.”

“I’ll pull addresses and see who’s local,” Noah said, feeling the familiar excitement in his gut telling him this was a turning point in the investigation.

“I have dozens I haven’t identified yet. The second list are those I have names for but aren’t on Morton’s associate list. That’s a little longer. My guess, those are the people who sent in disks for his porn site.”

“Why are they doing it? Morton didn’t have money to pay them.”

“Some people send in for free-those are usually amateurs who do the up-skirt videos or home movies. Some people have a deal with the site to be paid per view, so when someone watches the video they get paid. Trask had recorded more than half of his own material-he used prostitutes, drug addicts, anyone who’d do anything for a couple hundred dollars. But he’d make tens of thousands of dollars off the recording.”

Noah shook his head. “And that’s all legal.”

“Most of it is, and he worked damn hard to keep Trask Enterprises off the radar. But Adam Scott was a sick bastard, and he couldn’t help himself-he killed women for pleasure, and that’s what tripped him up. It was when he started killing online that we could finally pursue him.” Kate rubbed her temples. “Sometimes, the system is fucked,” she mumbled.

Noah didn’t exactly disagree with her but still thought their system was the best in the world. In his ten years in the Air Force, most of it in the Ravens security force, he’d been in dozens of countries and had seen the worst governments and justice systems in existence.

Noah sat at an extra terminal and pulled up the names Kate had identified. “There are only two who are local-both with criminal records. And one is already dead.”

Noah looked at Andrew “Ace” Shuman, who’d been in and out of prison most of his life. Prostitution, racketeering, assault. According to Morton’s file, Shuman had been a bodyguard. His official title with Trask Enterprises was “Head of Security.” He’d been out of prison for three years and seemed to have kept his nose clean, but as Noah knew, most were criminals for life: career criminals-few changed their stripes, they just got better at hiding.

“I’ll talk to Shuman,” Noah said. “He knew Ralston and Morton.”

“Shuman is a piece of work, and dangerous,” Kate said. “I had a couple of run-ins with him, but couldn’t nail him for anything substantive. He was in prison before Trask went into hiding-assault, I think. I tried to get him to turn on Trask, and he wouldn’t.”

“Good to know. He sounds like a possible.”

“Oh yeah, if Morton pissed Shuman off, there’s no doubt Shuman could kill him. But why?”

“That’s the million-dollar question.”

“Anything on Ralston?”

“ERT is processing the evidence. His computer was trashed, the hard drive destroyed.”

“The killer didn’t want us to find anything.”

“They haven’t narrowed time of death. The autopsy is scheduled for later this afternoon. The killer left the windows open; the apartment was a friggin’ icebox. But the ERT said he’d been dead for more than forty-eight hours, and the last witness we spoke to saw him coming home Friday night at approximately six-thirty in the evening.”

“So the big question is whether he was killed before or after Morton,” Kate said.

“I don’t think that really matters. He was dead before his flight left on Sunday morning. I’d like to find out what kind of information he gave to policeman Jerry Biggler.”

“Biggler?” Kate frowned.

“Ralston was a CI-a criminal informant. He talked only to Jerry Biggler, a D.C. cop who died of a heart attack six months after he retired-back in 2006.”

“You think Ralston was murdered because he’d been an informant? Why now? It doesn’t make sense.”

She was right, but Noah suspected there was something here. He just hadn’t been able to figure it out yet.

But he would. He always did.