‘Good work Maynard. Go home and get some rest, it’s going to be a full day tomorrow. I need you on your A-game.’
Joshua steepled his fingers under his chin and smiled. He had to admit to himself, he did rather love it when a plan came together. If Chris played the game properly, he might even live to see his next paycheck. Only time would tell.
There was nothing worth watching on TV. Ben flicked through the channels, irritated, he’d probably skipped around all the programs at least once before finally giving up. He was trying to relax, but couldn’t help but think about work. The investigation was going nowhere, Margot had tried to help but had drawn a blank, Chris was a dead end, that poor bastard, he hoped that he was somehow managing to get his life back together.
He drained the last of his Budweiser and went to the refrigerator to get another. He hadn’t really wanted to cook after the wonderful meal he’d shared with Margot the night before and so he’d ordered takeout pizza. Now he was feeling full, a little drunk and thoroughly miserable.
The case was stuck, that was a fact. Had he taken off on the wrong track and followed it at the expense of the truth? He’d started with the basics, interviewing those close to Jasmine and looking for suspects. He knew that most often murder victims were killed by someone they knew, a family member, a romantic involvement or a colleague. The interviewing of people close to the victim, coupled with a good cop’s instincts tended to shake things loose. In this case it hadn’t worked. Chris Sanders had interviewed well, he didn’t seem to be involved in any way, other than a purely professional and platonic relationship. He hadn’t wriggled on the hook, and yet Ben had ignored his instincts when the evidence seemed to point unmistakably towards Chris. Had he been set up or was it coincidence? It seemed ridiculous that anyone would go to the lengths required to frame someone for such a murder unless the real motivation was to get rid of Chris.
He took another pull on his beer and found a football replay, the Redskins were playing the Bears and were down by three points in the final quarter. He could pretend to watch while his brain churned through the evidence. What would he do if he had to start again? Maybe he should repeat the interviews, though deep down he knew this was pointless. He flicked again through the channels looking for something more interesting to watch, maybe something that would take him out of this miserable state. As he was flicking something caught his eye and he went back to a news article, no it wasn’t news, it was one of those documentary programs on unsolved crimes.
How ironic
, he thought,
maybe I’ll be on one of these shows next year
. He smiled to himself and took another drink. Then he saw the thing that had caught his eye. A murder in a park, late last year. He edged to the front of his seat and watched with interest.
The victim had been a loner, a young professional woman, out for a morning run. Ben put down his beer, and started hunting around for a pen and paper. She’d taken the running route regularly, but one morning had been found dead on the running path with a single gunshot wound to the head. Surely this was too close to be a coincidence. Why hadn’t he looked for similar cases? He knew the answer. He had looked, but not everywhere. He wondered how many more there could be. That was a job for tomorrow. Tonight he wrote down as many details as he could and treated himself to another beer. With his mind in a better place, he flicked back to the football in time to see the Redskins kick a winning field goal.
Chris arrived home a little after nine. Michelle was in a good mood and had a bottle of wine open and there was cheese out with some crusty bread and pickles.
‘How was work?’ she asked.
Chris grabbed a roll and some cheese.
‘Interesting,’ he said. He started to feel a little foolish about his earlier worries. ‘How are things with you?’
‘Great,’ she said. There was no mistaking her excitement. By the looks of things, she’d spent the evening looking at law schools and reading through brochures and syllabuses, several of which had been printed and were now strewn across the floor.
Chris wondered whether now was a good time to tell her that one of his old army buddies was coming to visit. He figured that now was preferable to her finding out when Wyn knocked on the door.
‘Honey,’ he said. ‘I got a call earlier on today from one of my old army friends.’
‘Oh? Anyone I know?’
‘Wynyard Spicer. Remember him?’
Michelle thought about it for a while but she couldn’t conjure any image. She’d met a few of Chris’s friends when they were in London, but she’d been so focused on Chris that she hadn’t really paid much attention. They’d seemed nice enough. A bit loud and vulgar, but otherwise OK.
‘No, not really,’ she said. Then she remembered, there was one friend of Chris’s a Welsh guy, good looking and cocky as hell. He’d flirted with Michelle every opportunity he got and said that if it didn’t work out with Chris, he would show her a good time. What an asshole.
Chris smiled. ‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘Well Wyn is hitching his way over from New York. I said he could stay with us for a few days. Is that OK?’
‘You did what?’
‘It’ll just be a few days. It will be good to catch up with old friends, don’t you think?’
‘I remember him now,’ said Michelle. ‘Do you know your so called friend hit on me every chance he got?’
Chris couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Yep that sounds like Wyn.’ He walked up to Michelle and put his arms around her and kissed her on the neck. ‘He can be a bit of a prick sometimes,’ he said, ‘but he’s a good man. He saved my life, you know? I owe him. And he only wants a place to crash for a couple of nights. Are we good?’
‘OK,’ she said, ‘but if he tries it on this time, he’s out of here. Friend or not.’
‘I’ll make sure he knows. Don’t worry I’ll keep him under control.’
‘Oh yeah?’ said Michelle, ‘And who’s going to keep you under control?’
Ben grabbed his morning coffee and logged on to his workstation with renewed vigor. He brought up the national crimes database and ran a new search, starting with unsolved murders where the victim had died from a gunshot wound to the head. After a pause of a few seconds hundreds of results came back. He sighed and took a sip of coffee. He wondered about Margot and whether he should try and set up another date. He didn’t want to appear too pushy but he’d had a great time the previous night. He’d give her a call later on.
Concentrate
.
He added the .50 caliber slug, which was pretty unusual, to the search criteria hoping to narrow the results. The search took less than a second. Four results. He scanned down the list and saw the number included his own case, the murder of Jasmine Allan and one he thought he recognized from the TV show last night.
Ben printed the search results and started to browse the case details for the first of the murders. This one happened on the West Coast, in LA of all places. A man in his early thirties had been shot on his way to work. Single gunshot to the head and a .50 caliber round was recovered at the scene. After thirty years as a cop he had never stopped being amazed at just how fucked up the world really was. The case investigators had gotten nowhere. Their favorite theory had been a military-trained sniper, but they had no suspects and Ben knew that in a town like LA, the priorities quickly shifted. He considered the notion of a sniper taking potshots at people.
Why the hell would he do that?
It would have been one hell of a ballsy shot to drill a guy in daylight in downtown LA, but isn’t that what snipers were trained for? He wanted to talk to a sniper to find out more about their profile and as the thought popped into his head he almost choked on his coffee. He did know a sniper. He put that thought to the back of his mind. Something to follow up on later maybe.
There had been witnesses to the shooting but all they’d seen was the man drop to the ground. One minute he’d been walking along, talking on his cell phone and the next, bam. Down he went. Ben scribbled a few notes and then clicked the links to the next case.
Ben recognized this as the woman from the TV documentary. It was very similar to his case except the murder took place on a beach close to Lincolnwood, Chicago. The police suspected a failed abduction attempt or a crazy, but the detective on the case had been confused by the unusual caliber. Ben knew how that felt. There didn’t seem to be anything to connect these victims, other than the bullet that remained at the crime scene. Maybe there wasn’t anything to connect them. What if this was all the work of a lone sniper that had made it his mission to travel the country and kill civilians with a long range sniper rifle? Someone that was a hell of a shot but really hated runners.
The final match was a man visiting from Paris, France. He’d been in the US on vacation in Vegas and had been shot as he stood on his hotel balcony, twenty stories up. Again police were baffled, including, according to the case notes, the French detective that came over to investigate. Ben grabbed the printout and went looking for a US Map. He pinned it to the board covering the map of D.C. and the surrounding area that was permanently pinned there.
He pushed pins to plot the locations on the map. They covered such a large area he found it difficult to imagine that one person was driving around the county taking potshots at strangers, plus the dates of the shootings would have meant driving from one side of the country to the other and back again in the space of a month. Why go to all that trouble? For one thing, it had stopped anyone from making a connection between the killings. Until now that is.
Chris left Michelle to her application forms and went back to work. He felt happier about going back to his office, probably because he knew there would be more people around than when he left the previous night. His office was exactly as he’d left it. He’d half expected to arrive and find the place had been tossed. He decided he was just being paranoid. He went to the cafeteria and grabbed a coffee and a plate of bacon and eggs and two pieces of dry wholegrain toast. He stuffed the bacon pieces and scrambled eggs between two slices of toast and took his breakfast back to his desk after taking a bite.
He settled himself down at his desk and then got up and locked the door. Then he pushed his table out so he could sit with his back to the wall with a view of the door and the windows. He checked the firewall logs. There had been no unwelcome guests last night. He took a bite of sandwich and wondered why bacon always tasted so good.
Chris took the thumb drive from his pocket and copied the files from it, then restored the database he had copied last night. He started to look through the data. There had to be something in here that would tell him who he was dealing with. He found some records that he thought might have been purchase invoices. He looked for something from a local firm, someone that would have made a delivery. There was one for a box of printer toner. Perfect. He cross-referenced the invoice against the vendor record and found the phone number. The call was answered on the third ring.
‘Max Office Supplies, how can I help you?’
‘Oh hi,’ said Chris, ‘I’ve got a query on an invoice, I wonder if you could help me.’
‘Just one second, I’ll put you through to accounts receivable, please hold.’
Chris listened to the hold music. Black Eyed Peas. Nice.
‘Accounts Receivable how can I help?’
‘Yes, hello, I’ve got a query on an invoice, it’s number SI4388.’
He heard keys tapping in the background and then the voice came back on the line.
‘Three toner cartridges. What seems to be the problem?’
‘They never showed up, that’s the problem. Can you please confirm the delivery address?’
‘Sure thing.’ More key taps. ‘I have here 451 North George Mason Drive. I also have a signature from a Joe, something, I can’t quite read it. Joe Smith?’
‘Ah OK,’ said Chris, ‘never mind. I think I know what’s happened. Just wait till I talk to Joe. Thanks for your help.’
‘No trouble. Have a nice day.’
Chris keyed the location into Bing maps. The address was in Arlington south of the river. Not in Silicone Valley. And not that far away. He looked at his watch, it was a little after twelve and he was starting to get hungry again. Maybe he should grab something to eat and take a drive out that way. Chris grabbed his keys from the desk and was unlocking the office door when his phone rang. Unknown number, he knew who this was.
‘Don’t tell me you’re here already?’ he said.
‘Hello mate,’ came the unmistakable Welsh voice. ‘I’m here alright, how do you fancy a spot of lunch?’
‘Whereabouts are you, I’ll pick you up?’
‘I’m on Georgia Avenue. Did you know there’s an actual place here called Chevy Chase?’ He was laughing.