Blood List (6 page)

*   *   *

October 24th, 8:31 AM MST; Sheila Jones' Apartment; Salt Lake City, Utah.

Gene looked around the apartment, his head throbbing in spite of the cocktail of Benadryl, Advil, and Sudafed he'd downed an hour before. Between a brutal sinus infection and being the Special Agent-in-Charge of this botch-job of an operation, he had good reason for misery. He glared at Marty with unbridled anger, his red face turning redder with the exertion. "How can a guy just disappear out a window barely big enough for a cat?"

"Don't know, Gene," Marty said. "I don't think he ever got in the fucking shower in the first place. Probably wasn't even in the bathroom when Carl went in there." Marty sneered and held up his thumb and index finger. "We were
this fucking close
to nabbing that motherfucker, Gene.
This close.
" He dropped his hand. "Still, we didn't come away entirely empty-handed. Whoever LRJ is, he's safe. For now." With a glance at Carl he continued. "Hey, Carl, show him what we got."

Carl limped over with two sealed plastic bags, the latex gloves a sharp contrast to his dark brown skin. He held up the bags with the arm not in a sling and winced at the effort. The left side of his face was a swollen, purple bruise. Gene almost felt bad for whining to himself about his own head. Almost.

Carl sounded confident, though he looked ready to collapse. "Two wallets, four IDs, six credit cards, two debit cards—both local—and a cell phone, prepaid I-590, same one Sam was tracking, and the same one that sent the text this morning.
LRJ, Poplar Grove
. We're monitoring the account—these things have 'net-accessible mailboxes—even though we know he's too smart to use it again. Sam's checking the balances on the bank accounts so we can seize them."

Sam broke in. "Yeah, not much. A couple grand in each account. The credit cards are all identity-theft. The aliases are all bunk. We're sending some people to check on the addresses, though."

Darn it,
Gene thought.
The addresses never check out.

Carl continued. "I think the woman's worthless, met him through one of those online dating services. Last night was their first date. Jerri and Doug are interrogating her now."

Carl inclined his head toward the bedroom where Sheila Jones sat in a flimsy nightgown, flanked by Doug and Jerri.

Gene's headache was relentless. "Yeah, okay, Carl. Let me know what Sam turns up. In the meantime, get some rest." He turned to his brother. "Marty, talk to local and have them set up interviews with all our LRJs. How many of them do we have?"

"Eighteen," Marty said. "I'm on it." He walked out of the apartment and down the steps to the car.

Gene entered the bedroom and glowered at the woman they'd found in the kitchen. Doug spoke while Jerri stared at the wall. Gene motioned to her, and they stepped into the hallway for privacy.

"Sorry, boss," she said.

"Not your fault, Jerri. It was a clean Op. We were just outsmarted." They'd been outsmarted for three years, and the team before them for another seven.

Jerri sighed, her face doubtful. "If you say so." 

Gene's expression, already worried, became downright grave. "What exactly does that mean, Agent Bates?"

She snarled. "Guy had me cold, Gene. I was dead. Dead." She frowned at the tile floor where they had found Carl. "He didn't do me, didn't do Carl. Hell, he barely even touched me." She gave an apologetic look through the doorway. Gene followed her gaze to Carl, leaning against the wall in the next room. Carl might never regain the use of his arm. "It doesn't make any goddamn sense. Why let us live, especially now that he knows that we know what he looks like?" Her eyes shone with such ferocity that for a moment Gene could see what Marty saw in her.

"Shouldn't surprise us, Jerri. The only M.O. this guy's got is that there isn't any M.O. No serial in the books would have let you or Carl live."

Jerri looked at the floor and said, "There's no money in it."

"What?" Gene asked, confused.

She repeated herself with more certainty, looking him dead in the eyes. "'There's no money in it.' That's what D Street said just before he took me down. What's it mean?"

Gene grimaced. "I don't know, Jerri. But I think we ought to find out."

Over the next three days, two text messages were sent to the phone recovered in Sheila Jones' apartment. They were encrypted, and both a single line in length. Sam knew they were gibberish code-phrases. Phrases that, even if they hacked the encryption, wouldn't mean anything unless she knew what each word represented. "Blue moon sits on the hen's egg" or some crap like that. Even if they weren't gibberish, they were too short to bust open. She'd sent them to cryptanalysis anyway.

November 14th, 5:18 PM EST; J. Edgar Hoover Building; Washington, D.C.

Gene sat at his desk, working on the Salt Lake City report. He'd been staring at a computer monitor for six hours straight and felt like it. His team, along with countless behind-the-scenes forensics experts, had been working sixteen-hour days for two weeks straight. His phone chirped, and he hit "speaker."

"Palomini." 

"Hey," Sam said. "We have our LRJ."

"Fantastic. Who is it?"

"Lawrence Reginald Johnson, Jr., retired garbage man and grandfather."

Gene put his head in his hands and rubbed his temples. "Any pattern matches?" 

"None so far. No correlation between Mr. Johnson and any of the other victims."

"No surprise there," Gene said. "Why do we think it's him?"

"We
know
it's him," Sam said, "because Larry has a blog that almost nobody reads. But he was logged six times in the past three months through municipal firewalls. Once from Los Angeles; once from Syracuse, New York; once from Rochester, Minnesota; again from Los Angeles; and twice from Des Moines. In that order. Do those locations sound familiar?"

Gene played dumb. "Gee, Sam, they almost sound like D Street's travel patterns. I assume the dates match what we have from the phone?"

"Yup. Sure do!" Sam's enthusiasm matched his own.

"Awesome work, Sam. Double-check the rest of our LRJs, and let PC know they'll be able to let them go soon."

"Will do. FYI, I'm still trying to crack the encryption on those text messages, but I'm not hopeful. Chad DelGatto from crypto has an idea about using area-code iterations and an Apex-Lucinda approach to break the—"

Gene cut her off. "Sounds good, Sam. Let me know how it goes." He'd never studied cryptography, and she'd never stop explaining once she got rolling.

"Right." She hung up.

Gene turned back to his paperwork. Another hour or two, and he'd be done for the week. But first, he had to figure out what to do with Larry Johnson, Jr. An idea came to him, and he picked up the phone.

*   *   *

November 16th, 8:20 AM CST; Home of Agent Robert Barnhoorn; St. Louis, Missouri.

Doug walked up the sidewalk, hand in hand with Maureen, to the yellow, two-story colonial. Maureen opened the door and called out, "Hi, Robbie!" A cute little projectile in the form of Evan Barnhoorn flew across the living room and leapt into the air with a gleeful cry. Doug intercepted the squirming child and flipped him upside-down. Holding him up so that they were face-to-inverted-face, Doug gave his best bad-cop face.

"Who are you?" Doug asked, digging his fingers in just enough to tickle with every word.

Evan squirmed and giggled. "Uncle Doug!" he said reproachfully. "I'm Evan!"

Doug gave him a thoughtful stare while Maureen suppressed a smile. "Can't be. Evan is a little tiny thing. You're all grown up!" Evan giggled again. "How old are you now?" Doug asked.

"Six!"

"Six? That's impossible. You can't be six yet."

"Can, too!" Evan said. "Someday I'll be as old as you! As old as Aunt Maureen!" Marcy Barnhoorn stepped into the living room, smiling. A plump woman in her mid-forties with disheveled strawberry blonde hair framing her face, she had a vitality about her that outshone her appearance, even through her flour-dusted hands and apron. She raised her eyebrows and mouthed the word
coffee
?

Doug flashed her a smile and a quick nod, then flipped Evan right-side up. Maureen stepped around him to greet her sister-in-law.

"And how old is your Aunt Maureen, little man?" Doug asked.

"Old!" Evan said.

Doug set him down and tousled his hair. "Brave little guy, aren't you? Now where's your dad?"

"Robbie's out by the garage," Marcy said. "Why don't you go find him, and I'll brew the coffee and catch up with my favorite girl?"

"Sounds like a plan, ma'am," Doug said. He gave Maureen a quick kiss and headed for the back door.

"For how long?" Robbie asked as he flipped the steaks on the grill.

"We're not sure," Doug said. "We're assuming he's in danger until we catch D Street, so think of it like witness protection." The steaks smelled fantastic, but Robbie always overcooked them.

"And this guy is how old?"

"Sixties. Retired. Wants to get back to his grandchildren. Wants to not get murdered even more."

"Good plan," Robbie said. "It'd probably ruin his year."

"Yeah. Can you do it?"

"Yeah," Robbie said. "We've got a couple of apartments we use as safe houses. There's no reason we couldn't put him up for the foreseeable future. I'll make it happen."

"Great," Doug said. "I'll let Gene know."

"Speaking of Gene, how did he take the news?"

Doug froze. "I haven't said anything yet."

Robbie held up a finger. "Wait a minute. You haven't said anything to him about leaving the team, or you haven't told Mo you aren't?"

Doug looked uncomfortable. "I haven't decided yet." He turned to face Robbie directly. "I'm kind of hoping I can talk her out of it. I can't imagine doing anything else."

Robbie let out a low whistle. "I'll pretend we didn't have this conversation then. Let you deal with Big Sis."

"Good idea," Doug said. "Because if I have to hear it from her that she heard something from you, I'll have to kill you. And then Marcy will kill me. And then Mo will kill her."

Robbie smiled. "So are you excited?"

"Thrilled," Doug said, taking a sip of beer. "Terrified. She's an amazing woman. I can't imagine the forces of nature her kids will be."

Robbie rolled his eyes. "With your luck they'll have her temperament and your size."

*   *   *

November 16th, 9:55 AM CST; Glenview Manor Apartments; St. Louis, Missouri.

Robbie Barnhoorn parked the car in the back lot of a gargantuan white building, one of ten just like it scattered across the landscape. He killed the engine and looked at his passenger. Larry Johnson was bald, heavily wrinkled, and grotesquely tan. He looked like a shriveled apple in a heavy sweater. "Well, Larry, we're 'home.' Apartment 4B is yours. We've got guys in 4A, and the rest of the floor we keep empty in case we need them."

Larry looked out the window and sighed.

Robbie patted him on the shoulder. "It's just until they catch this guy."

He sighed again. "I know. Let's take a look."

Upstairs, Robbie knocked on the door to 4A. After a few seconds it opened, revealing a stocky man with a bristly gray beard, wearing nothing but green boxer shorts. The man's eyes widened, and he stepped back. "Sorry, Robbie, I didn't realize we had company."

Smirking, Robbie stepped into the apartment, revealing a kitchen to the left and a small living area straight ahead. "Larry, this disgrace to the Bureau is Josh Santee. Josh is an undercover who needs to lay low for a while. If you need anything, just ask. He looks like a wild boar even with clothes on, but he's a pushover. Josh Santee, Larry Johnson. Larry is staying across the hall for a while."

Josh stuck out his hand. "Pleased to meet you."

Larry shook his hand. "Likewise."

"Put some pants on," Robbie said. "It's almost ten in the morning." As Josh ducked into a bedroom, Robbie called out, "Hey, where's Nick?"

"Shopping. He'll be back in a while."

"Nick Faughn is Josh's roommate," Robbie said to Larry. "He's a VICAP guy in town to help us with a case." Larry raised his eyebrows questioningly. "Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, similar job description as Palomini's team, but he does kidnapping, not mass killers." Robbie helped himself to a cup of coffee. "Coffee?"

"Herbal tea if you've got it," Larry said. "Or just water."

Robbie rummaged through the cupboard and emerged victorious with a box of Chamomile. He put a cup of water in the microwave and started it.

Josh emerged from the bedroom in jeans and an Arizona Cardinals T-shirt. "Better?"

"Much," Robbie said.

Josh raised his chin at Larry. "You from Jersey?"

Larry smiled. "Orange. Way back. How'd you know?"

"Newark." He thumbed his chest. "I could hear it in your voice. Not much, but there's a little in there, hiding under all that Southwest."

"Huh," Larry said. "You'd think a couple decades in Utah'd take care of that." He shrugged. "You're good."

"I can mimic most accents pretty good, and hear them better than just about anybody in the Bureau. When I'm not undercover, I do some forensic linguistics stuff."

"Wow," Larry said.

"Don't let him fool you," Robbie said. "He's every bit as dumb as he looks."

"Thanks, Rob," Josh said. He knocked on the counter twice. "You guys want some breakfast? I'm starving."

May 17th, 12:28 PM EST; Kendall Memorial Park; Washington, D.C.