When the Storm Breaks (31 page)

Washington, D.C.

Wednesday evening

A
fton paced around the conference table, stopping occasionally to sift through the framed photos and criticize herself for not putting the pieces together sooner. “It’s been so long since I even looked at these pictures. They were all taken before my sister died, before I was involved with Camelot. Still, I should have thought of it.”

“It’s okay,” Sean said. “We all assumed Claire had seen the guy in the catalogue. And you know what they say about assumption.”

“No, what?”

“It’s the mother of all fuckups.” He laid the police artist’s sketch alongside the photos of several men. He moved down the table, comparing the drawing with the pictures, until he found one with a superficial resemblance.

Afton looked at the sketch, then at the photo, and frowned. “Other than the smile, I don’t see much similarity.”

Sean grunted.

She studied the picture Sean had selected. From the date, the photo had been taken at a corporate mixer a year ago. It featured a man in a business suit with a bored smile holding up his drink and wryly saluting the photographer.

“I think I’ve seen that man before,” she muttered.

“You’ve been in the conference room a lot.”

“No, I meant more recently.” She flipped the picture over and read the caption, hoping it would jog her memory.

She frowned over the name, then turned the frame to look at the photo again. “I think he was in the office not long ago, but he didn’t use the name Richard Wilkes the Second.”

“Are you sure?” Sean asked.

“Absolutely. I would have remembered, because the Wilkeses—father and son—are executives with Wilkes Brothers Software. The company was one of my sister’s biggest clients, so I would have paid special attention if I’d seen their name in my appointment book.”

“Did you ever meet him or his father?”

“No. They ended the contract before I moved here. But I know I’ve met this man before. And his name wasn’t Richard Wilkes the Second.”

“Do you remember where you met him, and why?”

“We met here—recently. He wanted to join Camelot right away, but only if he could look through the catalogue first. Basically, he wanted to see if the women were worth paying to date.”

Sean looked up. “Did you show him the catalogue?”

“No, it’s strictly against our new policy. I told him he’d have to fill out a questionnaire and wait for a background check before he saw our female clients.”

“Did he fill out a questionnaire?”

Afton shook her head. “He tried to pressure me to change the rules for him, but I wouldn’t. So he put away his wallet and walked out.”

“Did he say why he chose your dating service?”

“He must have read the name in the papers, because he asked about the police investigation.”

Sean went still. “What name did this guy use?”

“I don’t know, I’d have to check my calendar.”

She hurried down the hall toward her office, with Sean following close behind. When she opened her computer calendar and ran through the appointments for the last week, he was leaning over her shoulder.

“There it is. Tuesday. Initial consultation with John Wilson,” she said.

“Wilkes, Wilson. It could be he was trying to hide his identity. Did he act embarrassed to be signing up with a dating service?”

Afton shook her head. “Too arrogant. Too confident, as well.”

“Okay. I’ll have Aidan check out John Wilson and Richard Wilkes the Second as a priority.” Sean shook his head in disgust at the work that would go into following up this new angle. “There have to be ten thousand John Wilsons in this country. We’ll start with driver’s license photos of the ones who are geographically close to D.C. and see what happens.”

“I have a better idea,” Afton said. “Follow me.”

He hesitated, then went down the hall with her to a place that looked like some kind of equipment room.

“After the murder investigation started,” Afton said, “and especially once a question had been raised about some clients, I had my IT manager set up a hidden digital camera in the reception area. We should have a photograph of everyone who stopped at the desk and signed in.”

“You’re shitting me.”

She grinned. “No. My IT manager said it would be easy to store the photos short term, as long as we didn’t accumulate too many of them. Didn’t want to use up his precious disk space. I’ll call him and ask where the files are saved.”

Sean handed Afton his cell phone, then waited as she called her technician and got instructions on how to call up the files on the server.

“Okay,” she said. “Here’s last week, so it should be under the folder marked Tuesday.”

They clicked through the photos in silence, pausing when they reached Afton’s noon appointment. Sean held up the framed picture he had brought from the conference room and compared it with the grainy digital image on the screen in front of him. Then he compared it to the sketched image of the man who had threatened Claire in Afton’s backyard.

Gotcha, you smug bastard. You took one risk too many, and now you’re mine.

“I’ll need a copy of this digital photo to send to the lab,” Sean said, looking at the computer. “Then we’ll just pick up Mr. Wilson and ask him a few questions.”

Sean took back his cell phone and dialed his partner’s number.

“Aidan, rush the background check on Richard Wilkes the Second. He had a meeting at Camelot last week, tried to look at the catalogue. He was using the alias John Wilson. I’ve compared photos of the two and they look good.”

“Hell, Sean, are you reading minds now?” Aidan asked.

“What have you got?”

“Richard Wilkes the Second has a juvenile record. I just put in a call to the lead investigator on the case.”

“Was it a violent offense?” Sean asked.

“Looks like it. Reading between the lines of the closed case file, aggravated assault charges were initially brought against him, but they were later bumped down after the victim and main witness boarded a plane and returned to Costa Rica. She’d been working as a maid and cook in the home of Richard Wilkes, the father.”

“Hispanic female, mid-twenties,” Sean said, thinking of the string of murder victims.

“Shit, I hadn’t thought of that. We can verify with the lead investigator. I’m guessing that Richard’s daddy managed to get the charges pleaded down to harassment, and got his son enrolled in court-ordered counseling. But not before the little bastard was booked and fingerprinted.”

“You’ve got prints on file?” Sean asked sharply.

“I’m in the Latent Fingerprints lab right now. The technician is doing a quick search of prints from the crime scenes we’ve linked to the killer and comparing them to Richard Wilkes the Second. I’ve asked the technician to expedite manual verifications of any computer matches on the prints.”

“We need to run a location check on Mr. Wilkes, as well,” Sean said.

“I called both his legal addresses already. The first is his father’s estate, where a housekeeper answered and said the
son had been in Aruba for the last month or so. The second number is an upscale apartment complex in Alexandria. No answer.” Aidan paused as the fingerprint technician came rushing over. “Hang on a sec, Sean. We might have something.”

The technician waved the enlarged fingerprint she was holding. “I ran a second computer check of Wilkes’s prints against all known fingerprints in the system, in addition to the ones from the crime scenes you requested,” she said. “The computer showed a potential match between the old Wilkes prints and a partial that was recovered at a homicide in Northwest D.C. today. I’ve done a manual verification, and it looks solid to me.”

“Nina, you’re beautiful,” Aidan said. “Who’s the investigating detective on the D.C. homicide?”

“Ron Garvey.”

Aidan picked up his cell phone again and raced down the hall. As he did, he explained to Sean about the potential match. “I’m going to hang up and call you on my desk phone, then conference in Garvey. I’d be very interested to see what Richard Wilkes the Second was doing at this dead guy’s apartment.”

“I’ll be right here with Afton,” Sean said. “Call me.”

Sean hung up, looked over at Afton, and squeezed her hand reassuringly. “Stop beating yourself up. You did great.”

“Really?”

“Really. Thanks to you, we’ll nail the little shit.”

Fairfax County, Virginia

Wednesday night

T
he man sat quietly behind a lilac bush, waiting for the police officer to make his six-minute circuit of the property where Marie Claire was staying. The officer constantly kept moving and checked in regularly via his radio. Presumably he was checking in with his partner in the house, or possibly one of the dispatchers.

It would make the timing of this operation critical, because he’d have to strike as soon as possible after one of these brief radio conversations. That would buy him the maximum amount of time to get into the house and get Marie Claire before the alarm went out.

He was confident he could get to her in the short time he would have. He’d spent most of the morning and all of the afternoon watching the house, and he already knew which room belonged to Marie Claire. Although the curtains had been closed, he’d seen her silhouette as she sat by the window. That curly hair of hers gave a very distinctive profile.

Things were running smoothly so far. The only possible
glitch was the fact that the roving police officer was wearing body armor. That would make his usual method of attack impossible, because the knife wouldn’t penetrate a bullet-proof vest. He wasn’t eager to try to slit the officer’s throat—even if he managed it, the result would be too messy. In addition he risked losing the element of surprise, because he wasn’t sure he could get the job done on the first pass. He was used to being much stronger than his victims.

He supposed he could use his gun, but the noise would be unmistakable. He’d brought it along to ensure Marie Claire’s cooperation, not to start shooting people—at least until he had her and both officers under control. Then he would use whatever he wanted, knife or gun or both together. The idea made him smile, even though it was another departure from the script he had laid out in his mind.

It’s a good thing I react quickly under pressure and can improvise
, Wilkes told himself.

The properties in this neighborhood were large and had dense vegetation, which would be to his advantage. And the ground was damp and covered with a layer of fallen leaves, which would muffle his approach. He picked up one of the large landscaping stones that formed a border around the bush where he was hiding.

Wilkes hefted the weight of the rock in his hands and ran through what he would do several times. Then he checked his watch and waited in the dark for his chance.

Forty seconds later, the cop walked by on his umpteenth circuit of the property. He didn’t notice the additional shadow in the bushes. Wilkes rose up and smashed the rock into the back of the officer’s head with both hands. The cop went down and stayed there, motionless.

Wilkes crushed the police radio under his foot and threw the officer’s weapon deep into the bushes. Then he hit the man again several times for good measure.

With the first part of his mission accomplished, Wilkes crept slowly toward the house.

Washington, D.C.

Wednesday night

S
ean pounced on his cell phone when it rang. “Aidan?”

“Yeah. I’ve got Garvey on the line, and he was just about to tell me about the homicide case that came across his desk today. Go ahead, Ron.”

“We had a call this afternoon after some computer consultant didn’t make it in to work,” Garvey said in a gravelly voice. “Seems our caller and the consultant were in the middle of some computer game and he was impatient to get on with it. Anyway, the guy went over to the consultant’s apartment after lunch and found the body.”

“And?” Sean asked impatiently.

“I’m getting there. The consultant—a kid, really—had been shot in the back of the head as he sat at his computer, so the place was a mess. But he did have a shitload of high-tech equipment, and his friend hinted the kid might have been a semi-pro hacker who pissed off a customer.”

Sean told himself to be patient. Garvey was one of those people who told a story in his own way and at his own snail’s pace. Pushing him just made him go slower.

“Who did he do his hacking for?” Sean asked.

“No idea. But he collected a paycheck from Wilkes Brothers Software.”

“Bingo,”
Sean said softly.

“Told you I’d get there,” Garvey retorted. “So imagine my surprise when Burke called me with a match for the partial print we got off a monitor in the victim’s apartment, and it belonged to none other than a VP at Wilkes Brothers Software.”

“It could be coincidence,” Sean said. “Wilkes might have an explanation for being there. He was the kid’s boss, after all.”
And the guy who’s after Claire uses a knife and only kills women.

“I’d still like to talk to him,” Garvey said. “I’ve had the computer technicians here going over the victim’s equipment since we brought it in. I figure if the kid was a hacker, whatever he was last working on might have something to do with why he was killed.”

“So what was he doing?” Aidan asked.

“The computer and printer had both been shut down improperly, so my guys are working on getting stuff from document recovery or some such thing. According to the browser history, the kid had been on a web page that enables reverse phone number searches—you know, getting the address and name when you only have a phone number?”

Sean didn’t like that at all. “Any record of who he was looking up?”

“We couldn’t tell until we powered up the printer. The techie here is a genius, and he managed to pull the last print job from the buffer memory thing, or whatever the hell it’s called. Hang on, I’ve got a copy of it in the file.”

Garvey made rustling sounds as he flipped through the
papers on his desk. “Here it is. The document isn’t much—just an address. Three two three Crepe Myrtle Lane, in Alexandria.”

“Jesus Christ.
That’s our safe house
.” Sean’s hand clenched tightly around the phone. He heard Aidan dropping Garvey off the conference with a promise to get back in touch soon.

“I’m less than ten minutes from there,” Aidan said to Sean. “I’ll go.”

“Damn it, I—” Sean stopped, knowing his partner was right. Sean was half an hour away, and he didn’t have a unit with lights and siren. “I’ll call Diaz and have him put the women in a secure upstairs room until you arrive. Call me on my cell the instant you get there.”

“I’m gone,” Aidan said and hung up. He raced down the hall, shouting at people to get out of his way.

Sean wanted to keep his cell phone line open, so he ran back to Afton’s office.

She took one look at his pale, grim face and said, “What’s wrong? Is Claire all right?”

Sean held up a hand to keep Afton quiet while he dialed the safe house’s number on Afton’s desk phone. He got Officer Diaz on the line within one ring.

“Where are the women right now?” Sean asked.

“Upstairs playing cards.”

“Secure the house and get up there with them. The killer has your location.”

“What! How in—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Sean cut in. “Burke is on his way right now. I want you to move the women into the upstairs room with the best locks and most limited access.”

“The master bathroom,” Diaz said instantly. “There’s only a small window and two doors to protect.”

“Good. Get them in there. Tell Brown to be extra careful on his foot patrol.”

“You got it.”

Sean hung up the phone and looked at his watch, counting off the minutes, and willing his cousin to call.