Split Second

CHAPTER 65

Tully punched at the laptop’s keyboard. He knew the computer down in his office was much faster, but he couldn’t leave the conference room. Not now that he had had all the calls forwarded, and every last file on the case was spread out over the tabletop. Agent O’Dell would be furious about the mess. Though he doubted she could get much angrier. He hadn’t seen or talked to her since she had stormed out of his house yesterday.

Assistant Director Cunningham had informed him that O’Dell would be spending the morning in D.C. at a previously scheduled appointment. He didn’t elaborate, but Tully knew the appointment was with the Bureau psychologist. Maybe it would help calm her down. She needed to keep things in perspective. She needed to realize that everything that could be done, was being done, and as quickly as possible. She needed to get past her own fear. She couldn’t keep seeing the bogeyman in every corner and expect to handle it by running after him with guns blazing.

Although Tully had to admit, he was also having a tough time waiting. The Maryland authorities were hesitant to go storming onto private property without just cause. And no government department seemed willing to admit or confirm that the metallic mud could have come from the recently closed and sold government property. All they had was Detective Rosen’s fishing story, and now that Tully had repeated it over and over to top government officials it was beginning to sound more and more just like a fish story.

It might be different if the property in question wasn’t miles and miles of trees and rocks. They could drive down the road and check things out. But from what he understood, this property had no road, at least not a public one. The only dirt road available included an electronic gate, a leftover from when the government owned the property and had allowed no unauthorized access. So Tully searched for the new property owners, hoping to find something that would tell him who or what WH Enterprises was.

He decided to use a new search engine and keyed in “WH Enterprises” again. Then he sat, elbows on the desk, his chin resting on his hand as he watched the line crawl along the bottom of the screen…3% of document transferred…4%…5%…This would take forever.

The phone rescued him. He wheeled his chair around and grabbed the receiver.

“Tully.”

“Agent Tully, this is Keith Ganza—over in forensics. They told me Agent O’Dell was out this morning.”

“That’s right.”

“Any chance I could get hold of her? Maybe her cell phone? I was wondering if you had the number.”

“Sounds important.”

“Don’t really know for sure, but I figure that’s up to Maggie to determine.”

Tully sat up straight. Ganza’s voice was a constant monotone, but the fact that he didn’t want to talk to him alarmed Tully. Had O’Dell and Ganza been on to something that she wasn’t letting him in on?

“Does this have anything to do with the luminol tests you did? You know Agent O’Dell and I are working on the Stucky case together, Keith.”

There was a pause. So he was right. There was something.

“Actually, it’s a couple of things,” he finally said. “I spent so much time analyzing the chemicals in the dirt and then the fingerprints that, well, I’m just getting to that bag of trash you found.”

“It didn’t look too unusual except for all the candy bar wrappers.”

“I might have an explanation for those.”

“The candy wrappers?” He couldn’t believe Ganza would waste his time with those.

“I discovered a small vial and a syringe at the bottom of the trash bag. It was insulin. Now, it could be that one of the previous owners of the house has diabetes, but then we should have found more. Also, most diabetics I know are fairly conscientious about properly disposing of their used syringes.”

“So what exactly are you saying, Keith?”

“Just telling you what I found. That’s what I meant about Maggie determining whether or not it was important.”

“You said there were a couple of things?”

“Oh yeah…” Ganza hesitated again. “Maggie asked me to do a search of prints for a Walker Harding, but it’s been taking me a while. The guy has no criminal record, never registered a handgun.”

Tully was surprised Maggie hadn’t stopped Ganza after they had read the article and discovered that Harding was going blind. He couldn’t possibly be a suspect. “Save yourself the time,” he told Ganza. “Looks like we don’t need to check.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t able to find anything. The cold search just took a bit longer. The guy had a civil servant job about ten years ago, so his prints are on file after all.”

“Keith, I’m sorry you went through all that trouble.” Tully only half listened to Ganza as he watched the computer screen. The search engine must be accessing something on WH Enterprises if it was taking this long. He started tapping his fingers.

“Hopefully, it was worth the trouble,” Ganza went on. “The prints I lifted from the whirlpool bath were an exact match.”

Tully’s fingers stopped. His other hand gripped the phone’s receiver. “What the hell did you just say?”

The fingerprints I lifted off the bathtub at the house on Archer Drive…they matched this Walker Harding guy. It’s an exact match. No doubt about it.”

The pieces of the puzzle were falling into place, but Tully didn’t like the picture they were forming. On an obscure Web site designed to look like some clearinghouse run by the Confederacy, he found computer video games for sale. All were wholesale priced, and the search could be completed by clicking on the tiny Confederate-flag icons. The games were available though a company called WH Enterprises. Most of them guaranteed graphic violence and others promised to be of pornographic nature. These were not the types of games kids could pick up at Best Buys or Kids “R” Us.

The sample that could be viewed with a simple click of the mouse included a naked woman being gang-raped, with the player being able to gun down all the assailants, only to be rewarded by raping the woman himself. Despite the animation, the video clip was all too real. Tully found himself sick to his stomach. He wondered if any of Emma’s friends were into this sort of garbage.

One of the Web site’s features was the “Lil’ General’s Top Ten List,” including a note from the CEO of WH Enterprises. Tully knew what he’d find before he scrolled down to see the message ending with, “Happy hunting, General Walker Harding.”

Tully paced the conference room, walking from window to window. Walker Harding may have been going blind, but he sure as hell could see now. How else could he run a computer business like this one? How else could he be at each crime scene, helping his old pal, Albert Stucky?

“Son of a bitch,” Tully said out loud. O’Dell had been right. The two men were working together. Maybe they were still competing in some new game of horror. Whatever it was, there was no denying the evidence. Walker Harding’s fingerprints matched those found on the Dumpster with Jessica Beckwith’s body. They matched the umbrella in Kansas City, and they matched the prints left on the whirlpool bath at the house on Archer Drive.

Earlier, the Maryland authorities had finally confirmed that there was a large two-story house and several wooden shacks on the property. All government buildings had been bulldozed before the sale. The rest of the property, Tully was informed, was surrounded on three sides by water and covered with trees and rock. There were no roads except a dirt path that led to the house. No electrical lines or telephone cables had been brought in from the outside. The new owner used a large generator system left behind by the government. The place sounded like a recluse’s dream come true and a madman’s paradise. Why hadn’t he realized sooner that, of course, WH Enterprises would belong to Walker Harding?

Tully checked his wristwatch. He needed to make some phone calls. He needed to concentrate. He took several deep breaths, dug the exhaustion out from under his glasses and picked up the phone. The waiting was over, but he dreaded telling Agent O’Dell. Would this be the final thread to unravel her already frayed mental state?