3 The Braque Connection (26 page)

“Anything up to twelve hours.” Vinnie had kept his word about finding out more about 3D printing. “It’s printed by putting layer upon layer. The design is of utmost importance. If the blueprint is off by a millimetre, it is a disaster.”

“Blueprints!” My heart was racing when that one word clicked a few elements into place. “Vinnie, you said that photo of the blueprint I emailed myself was for a gun. Could that be a blueprint for the 3D guns? The guns that were used to kill all these people?”

My outburst brought a shocked silence. Manny spoke first. “Holy hell.”

“The question now is where you saw that blueprint to photograph it,” Colin said. “It had to be in England since that was where you had access to the phone.”

“It could’ve been anywhere. In Dukwicz’s car or anywhere else they might have taken us.” I sighed. I wanted to get to my viewing room to have access to my computers and all the information on it. It would be easier to show them the conclusions I had reached. Without my computer, I had to order my thoughts so I could give a clear explanation. “On Hawk’s computer we found that shipment of five 3D printers to Tall Freddy. Can it be that Hawk also sent Tall Freddy blueprints of guns? As we already suspected, he could then have used that to print and sell the guns used by the killers, who said they had bought their guns from the Printer who had an Italian accent.”

“Oh, mother of all that is holy.” Even Manny’s lips had lost colour. “We should’ve looked into this much earlier.”

“We’ve been overwhelmed with incoming information,” I said. “There is never a guarantee that the clue one pursues would be the one yielding key results.”

Colin sat up. “What about that large shipment of unnamed electronic devices that Hawk received two months ago? Did your guys find it in the warehouse, Millard?”

Manny shook his head. “How would they know what that shipment was?”

“I think we can safely presume it was 3D printers.” Colin sounded confident. I thought it to be speculation.

“They didn’t list any 3D printers on the report I got from them. I actually looked for it when it was first mentioned.”

“Let’s work with my presumption.” Colin smiled at me. I frowned. “Do we know how big that shipment was, Jenny?”

“Whatever he had ordered, there were a thousand five hundred units of it.” I was not willing to commit myself to Colin’s theory, but taken into the context of the last week, it did make sense.

“If each unit can print a gun a day, the European market will see more than ten thousand untraceable guns a week, most of which are single-use.”

Manny and Vinnie spent three minutes swearing in the vilest of manners about how grim this situation was. I agreed with them and quietly waited for them to calm down. Manny was the first to take a deep breath. “Okay, Doc. First things first. We need to find that shipment. Dear mother of all that is pure, I hope it is still in storage somewhere.”

Colin tensed. “Nobody needs to look into anything right now. It’s half past two in the morning. We should be sleeping.”

“Colin is right,” I said. “We need to find that shipment, but we also need to sleep.”

Colin leaned back a little and stared at me, his eyebrows raised, his eyes wide. I had surprised him. My concern was for him. I knew he would not let me work alone and would join me. His body needed time to recover from being drugged. Again. And this was more important.

I couldn’t really blame him for assuming I would immediately want to start working. My obsessive behaviour had formed a distinct pattern. It gave me unexpected pleasure to be unpredictable. This one time.

“And that is me being told I’ve overstayed my welcome.” Manny got up and walked to the front door. “Be in the team room eight sharp. I know it’s Sunday, but we’re working against the clock here. And Doc, get that super brain of yours ready to make other connections. We need to put this monster to bed.”

I also got up and followed him to the door as he opened it. “Manny.”

He turned and waited.

“I wasn’t asking you to leave. You know I would say it if I didn’t want you here.”

He relaxed a little. “I know, Doc. We are all tired. I am tired.”

“I… uh…” I pulled at my sleeves and immediately stopped when I realised what I was doing. “Thank you for always picking up the phone and coming every time I need you.”

A softness that Manny seldom showed settled around his eyes. He leaned towards me. “For you, Doc? Anytime.”

I thought he was going to kiss me on my forehead, but he pulled back when Vinnie asked mockingly if Manny would come if he phoned. Manny sighed, looked at me, sighed again and left.

Chapter TWENTY-ONE

“Okay, so which one of you mastermind criminals is going to tell me everything I need to know about 3D-printed guns?” Manny looked around the table in the team room. Everyone was seated at the round table, coffee and croissants in the centre, surrounded by papers, laptops and tablets.

Manny had been in the office before any of us, working on his computer. The speed with which he typed using only his index fingers never ceased to amuse Francine. Her teasing had chased away his tired look. The alertness in his eyes did not show any signs of his lack of sleep, rushing to my aid in the small hours of the morning. “Anyone? I need to know more than I do.”

“The most common gun printed at the moment was the one some idiot uploaded the blueprints for on the internet,” Francine said. “Anyone and his psychotic brother could’ve downloaded it. And most likely did. By the time the big shots got it removed from the internet, over sixty thousand blueprints had already been downloaded. That gun is printed with ABS plastic and has sixteen parts, fifteen plastic and the firing pin.”

“How is it that you know all this, supermodel?”

Francine tapped him on the nose with a manicured finger. Her nails were dark brown today. “Always on a witch-hunt. Don’t you get tired of it sometimes, super-cop?”

Vinnie snorted a laugh and even Phillip smiled. I had to admit that Manny’s longsuffering expression was entertaining.

“Stop farting around, supermodel, and tell me what else you know.”

“That funny-looking handgun is not the only weapon that can be printed. Any gun, even a semi-automatic, can be printed, but at a great risk. Without any reinforcement and only made of plastic, the printed gun cannot handle much stress. It is quite flimsy. If the printer head moves a tiny little bit while printing the layers, it won’t handle the pressure of a bullet travelling through the barrel at crazy speeds. As we already know, quite a few have exploded in the shooter’s hand.”

Vinnie nodded his agreement. “That is why not many hardcore criminals want to take the risk of printing guns, even though it is totally untraceable. Today anyone can buy a 3D printer. Even though those blueprints were taken offline pretty quickly, they are still available if you know where to look. You can even choose the colour plastic you want to print your gun with. Anything printed by a 3D printer would have to be pressure-washed to remove a waxy coating and then it must be doused in alcohol.”

“Which again coincides with the ballistic reports.” Most of what they had said was new to me. My knowledge had been as limited as Manny’s. I had never considered 3D printers or 3D-printed guns to be a threat worth watching out for. I had been naïve.

Francine straightened in her chair. “My lip-reading guy got back to me.”

“Is this for the video clips of Genevieve and Colin being kidnapped?” Phillip asked.

“Yes, it is.” She tapped on her tablet and the large screen against the wall sprang to life. My association with this video was not that I was being abducted, but rather that it was evidence of my meltdown. Francine started the video, but stopped it after the first two seconds. “Oh yes, the whole conversation was in Russian. My guy so happens to have a Russian roommate who translated this stuff for him.”

“Christ, supermodel. Are these people trustworthy? You’re just handing out sensitive stuff all over the place.”

Francine laughed. It was a laugh not communicating mirth or amusement, but rather anticipation. “Let them just try to double-cross me. They know their balls are on the line here.”

I had learned in the last year of our friendship that Francine frequently threatened men’s genitals. It got her good results. Not that it surprised me. There was never a trace of deception in her threats. Rather worrying.

“Also, some of the conversation was said with their heads turned, so obviously we didn’t catch that, but here goes.” She tapped the tablet again and the figures on the large screen began moving. I watched myself trying to get out of Dukwicz’s grip. It was a relief when Francine started talking, focussing my attention on the men’s mouths rather than the image of my squirming body. “There he says that this bitch needs to calm down. Sorry, Genevieve.”

“You didn’t say that. You don’t need to apologise.”

She smiled, quickly looking back to the action. “Ooh, there the other guy is saying that with Dukwicz being such a big hotshot and all, he doesn’t understand why they still have to do this dirty work. That should mean they can get others to do this. He asks again why they have to do this.”

At that exact moment Dukwicz slapped me in the face. My breath caught and Colin’s hand closed over mine.

“Dukwicz says that he’s doing it because he enjoys it. Doing that butler was especially pleasurable. He always wanted to do one of those rich servants. But he also liked doing the VIP’s. Like the professor and this one.” Strain had entered Francine’s tone. We watched Dukwicz punch me in the stomach. “Here he’s saying that you are important to the plan, and that he didn’t want to give someone else this pleasure. He is the best there is.”

This was the point in the video where Dukwicz pushed me into the car and turned to the other man, still holding Colin. “This is a really bad part where my guy couldn’t get a clear shot of their mouths no matter what he did with the video. All he got here was that Dukwicz said he wanted it big. We don’t know what ‘it’ is. Then the other guy responds by saying that of course the Printer has to something, something. Sorry. We missed a few words there when he turned.”

We watched a little while longer, but the men were either not talking or their mouths were obscured.

“Was that all you got?” I asked.

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“It is not quite so unfortunate,” Vinnie said. “We have him on video admitting to murdering the butler and Susan Kadlec.”

“He admitted to ‘doing’ a butler.” It wasn’t easy for me to be so realistic. I want this video to exonerate Colin from any suspicion. “He didn’t say he killed Susan or Kathleen McCarthy’s butler.”

“She’s right.” Manny sank deeper into his chair. “I’ll find a way to nail this guy, don’t you worry.”

Francine changed windows and brought up a document that looked like an order form.

“What are we looking at now?” Manny asked.

“You remember that large shipment of unnamed electronics that were delivered two months ago? Well I know what it is.” There was triumph in her voice. “These days you can’t be a successful criminal unless you can outdo the best hackers, or if you go old school. If criminals communicated and did business without any electronic trail, it would be much harder to catch them. That’s why the Russians are back to using old typewriters. The moment something is entered into a computer system, you’re screwed. And I will find you.”

“Well, congratulations on being the best hacker out there.” Sarcasm. It gave me immeasurable pleasure to recognise it from Manny’s tone and expression. “Could you now please tell us what you found, supermodel?”

“It took some time, but I traced the order to its origins.” She pointed at the monitor. “This document tells me that one thousand five hundred 3D printers were delivered to Hawk’s warehouse.”

Manny squinted at the monitor. “I don’t see anything saying it’s printers. Where do you see that?”

“It’s in the number given in the product description. I traced that number to the stock this supplier had and those are Halo 3D printers.”

“One thousand five hundred.” This number had been bothering me since last night. Data my mind had registered somewhere along the line were coming to the fore. This number had significance, but I couldn’t place it.

“A lot of printers, right?” Francine said. “Why would he need this many printers?”

“Shit. Frey, you were right.”

Colin laughed. “Did that hurt, Millard?”

Manny ignored Colin. “Supermodel, we need to find those printers.”

“What makes you think Hawk or Kubanov or whichever shithead hasn’t already handed them out like candy?” Vinnie asked.

“The number of murders with ballistic evidence pointing to 3D-printed guns,” I said.

“Doc is right. If other scumbags had printed guns, we would be looking at hundreds of cases, not tens.”

“Halo.” I pressed my palm hard against my sternum the moment this connection clicked in my mind. “That was one of the words I emailed to myself.”

“Halo as in the Austrian producer of electronics,” Francine said. “Then these 3D printers are definitely connected to this craziness.”

The number one thousand five hundred was still an itch in the back of my mind. Absorbed by what I thought might be the clue I had been waiting for, I got up and walked to my viewing room. A few minutes later, I had the necessary document open and stared at it, waiting for that moment where everything became clear. I didn’t close my eyes to mentally write Mozart, but continued to stare at the columns in front of me. The moment of clarity came when I finished doing a few calculations. This was it.

“What is it, Jenny?”

“Where’s Francine?”

A slight frown told me Colin had not expected me to ask for someone else.

“What do you need, girlfriend?” Francine was standing in the open door to the team room, Manny next to her and Phillip behind them. I was sure Vinnie was lingering behind the wall, listening in. It appeared they had been waiting in suspense for me.

“Did you check this document?” I nodded at the monitor.

“I did. All those names belong to organised crime leaders, gang leaders and other more prominent criminals around Europe.”

Manny walked closer. “That list of who’s who in the criminal world in Europe. What did you find, Doc?”

“I was wondering what the purpose was for Hawk to have this list.”

“I thought he had this list to keep track of his competition, his enemies or his potential clients. Whatever you prefer to call them,” Francine said.

“Possibly, but look at the column next to their names.”

“It has a number.” Manny leaned closer. “Each number is different.”

“There are three hundred and fifteen names. When I added the numbers next to each name, it came to one thousand four hundred and eighty-nine. Almost one thousand five hundred.”

“Holy freaking hell.” Manny stepped away from the monitors. “Okay, let me get this clear, Doc. You are telling me we have proof that Kubanov or Hawk or Tall Freddy ordered fifteen hundred printers to send a bunch to each of these violent criminals?”

“I’m not telling you that. I’m telling you that I’m suspecting that.” There was a big difference even though Manny’s expression didn’t agree with me. “If each of those violent criminal received their allocated number of printers they can distribute, it will arm a lot of people across Europe.”

“What about plastic cartridges to print this crap?”

I pointed to another monitor, showing a document also opened from Hawk’s computer. It was a spreadsheet with four columns only showing numbers. “The first column is the date delivered. He ordered a lot of cartridges. The second column’s numbers correspond with the number next to the names on the printer delivery form. The third column is a number I’m not sure of. If Francine can check, it might be the number of guns that can be produced with all this plastic.”

“Why would Kubanov do this? Or Hawk? Or Tall Freddy?” Francine asked.

“Kubanov would do this despite what Hawk or Tall Freddy wanted,” I said. “If he is as ill as I think he is, he would do this simply to leave Europe in chaos. Sending complimentary equipment to produce guns to all these violent criminals would be a disaster for law enforcement. The idea of this would be greatly pleasing to Kubanov.”

Silence fell in my viewing room for a few seconds. Manny was the first to break it. “I have a shitload of phone calls to make. This is… this is… I don’t know what this is.”

“I’ll leave you to it, as well.” Phillip pulled at his cuffs. “I still have a few concerned clients to calm down. I tried, but couldn’t keep the thefts quiet. Now I have people with one little painting phoning me in panic.”

I watched them leave, followed by Francine and Vinnie. My mind was consumed with all the unclear elements. “Why did I send myself that email about the frame of reference? I really believe it has a bigger meaning than you being framed for the butler’s murder.”

“The murder could just be a distraction. Something to send us looking in the wrong direction.”

“Possibly.” I grunted and slumped in my chair. “What are you going to do now?”

“If you don’t need me, I’m going to look at all the puzzle pieces we have. An analogy,” he said quickly when I frowned. “We have all these bits and pieces, so it’s like a puzzle that needs to be built.”

“Using your analogy, we’ve built quite a bit of this puzzle already. But you are right. It will be good to look at it again from the beginning. Let me know if you find something.” I turned back to stare at the monitors, wondering where next to look. It might be a good idea to also look at the evidence we had accumulated in chronological order instead of in discovery order. It took me an hour to run through the information we had, to no avail.

I got up and left through the door leading to the hall. Walking through the team room would attract attention and possible questions. Sometimes their interest was difficult to process and categorise as such when it felt so intrusive. I stood in the hall for a few seconds, deciding where to go. It didn’t take long for me to realise where I needed to be and I walked to the conference room.