Corrector (11 page)

Agent Carlson’s mind latched onto the term the detective was using to describe the deceased.  Victim, indeed!  The dead man had been found with a loaded semi-automatic rifle and sixty rounds of ammunition on his person.  Given the location he was found, there was little doubt what he had been intending.  Carlson let her eyes wander to the intersecting maze of freeways adjacent to where the body had been.  Whoever had killed him had prevented  a serious incident and probably had saved a significant number of lives.

How did he know?
  Carlson had seen the same kind of thing in many of the other cases.  It was one of the characteristics that linked the various instances together.  In every case, the “victim” appeared to have been preparing to take some kind of  deadly action before being killed.  They weren’t able to always identify the intended target, but in each case with a bit of investigation it was clear that the dead man had been about to go out and kill.  Whoever was doing this had stopped those events from happening.  At first Carlson had wondered if the shooter was somehow involved and had backed out, killing the other man to cover his own involvement.  That no longer made sense.  The cases stretched across the country. She could see no way anyone could have been involved with so many very different individuals.  That meant he had a way of ferreting out their intent and acting before they could execute their own plans.  She applauded the intent, but the shooter was still a criminal.  He should be contacting the local authorities and allowing the properly appointed organizations to deal with the situation.

The shooter had chosen his spot with some care, which further told Carlson he knew exactly where the sniper, a better term than victim in Carlson’s mind, was going to set up.  The range was short and the shots were taken at right angles to the freeway and into the stand of thick trees where the sniper was hidden.  None of the bullets had any likelihood of passing through and striking an innocent in the background.  Carlson was just surprised at how open the position was and that the shooter hadn’t been seen by the sniper.  He made the observation to the detective.

“We’ll go down and have a look,” the detective said.  “From here it looks completely visible as you look downward past the trees and brush.  From down below, the trees break up the view, and it’s a lot more difficult to see that anyone might be up here.  If our man was careful, he would have been concealed when the victim arrived, and then set up for the shot while the man down below was getting situated.”

Carlson ran her hand along the rough and scratched wood of the table.  “Were your people able to retrieve any evidence from here where the shot was made?” she asked knowing the answer.

“Nothing useful.  They found dozens of fingerprints.  A lot of people have used this place and fingerprints have a tendency to last, especially while the weather is good.  I’ll bet our man used gloves anyway, so even if we run them all and were lucky enough that all were in the databanks, none would be his.  Lots of generic fibers.  Again, nothing useful, but they are all logged in the report for you.  The only thing were a couple of footprints.  Those were very clear.  We got imprints,” the detective said smugly.

Useless, Carlson knew.  The prints would be from a generic and popular shoe.  New shoes, worn especially for the day and almost certainly thrown in some dumpster in the greater LA area before the day of the shooting was past.  Nothing would come of the prints.

“A grounds keeper found the body?” Carlson asked, as they started down the hill to where the body had been found.

“That’s correct.  He saw the bike parked there when he made an early pass and it was still there two hours later when he came by again.  He went down to check, thinking someone was sleeping off a drunk or something.  That’s when he found the body.”

“No one saw anything else?”

“We talked with everyone who normally works here, and put out a public request for witnesses.  I can’t say if anyone was in the area and hasn’t been willing to come forward, but those we’ve talked with never saw a person.  One of the ground’s keepers says he saw a car come through late a day or two before, later than people usually come here so he sort of took notice.  The same car, or one similar was noted by another witness on the morning of the shooting.”

“What kind of car?”

“A gray reasonably new Chevy Malibu.”

“Rental?”

The detective shrugged.  “Who knows?  Might have been.  But why would you make that assumption?”

Carlson ignored the question.  “Did your witnesses see the license or even from which state it came from?”

“It was a California plate,” the detective added belatedly.  “The witness who saw the car on the day of the shooting thinks the plate had a number “8” on it. That’s the only thing he can recall.”

“Did you run a search?”

“On a gray Malibu of unknown year with a possible “8” in the plate number?  Do you have any idea how many such cars must exist in the area?  No, we haven’t followed up on that clue.”

Carlson filed the information away.  It was tenuous, but if she assumed the car was a rental, she might be able to get a lead from it.  It was a favorite rental car, but how many would have been out on those days and she might be able to get names or credit cards for the renters.

They had reached the spot where the man had been found.  Carlson knelt and looked at the stain in the dirt.  Then she looked back up toward the picnic bench.  She could see what the detective had meant.  The table was there, but without looking carefully, it would have been very easy to miss anyone sitting there.  Carlson stood and looked out at the freeway with the cars whooshing by thirty feet below.  It would have been a massacre she realized.  Once again she wondered how the shooter had known.  She was certain they owed the man thanks for his actions, however illegal, and intended to ask him his secret if she ever was lucky enough to catch up with the man. 

*
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Susan Carlson looked up from her desk at the sound of the discrete knock on the frame of her open door.  She had been back in Washington D.C. since yesterday afternoon and was using the morning to catch up on the paperwork that had accumulated during her brief trip across country.  She noted the smiling face of Shaun Hansen peering around the edge of the frame, the half height glasses pushed down on his nose so as to allow him to see better over the tops of the rimless lenses.  While only in his early thirties, Shaun had very poor eyesight, and needed the glasses to be able to read written material on his computer monitors where he spent most of his time.  Carlson had suggested to the man more than once that he check into laser surgery to correct his vision, but Hansen was deathly afraid of anything that might affect his vision, and wouldn’t consider such an action.  Today the computer specialist’s hair was especially unruly, indicating he had been working on a particularly vexing problem.

“Got a minute?” Hansen asked, when he observed that Carlson had seen him.

Carlson waved for the man to enter, and pointed toward the chair across from her as Hansen walked toward her desk.

“Did you find something?” she asked hopefully.  She had asked Shaun to see if he could find any records of a rented Chevy Malibu in hopes they might find something in the way of a lead.

“I think so,” Shaun replied happily.  “Take a look at this.”

He pushed a single page printout across the desk for Susan to look at.  Four license plate numbers were shown, with a credit card number next to each.  All of the license numbers had an “8” in them, although the positions of the number was different in each case.

“Four Chevy Malibus with an “8” in the number rented in Los Angeles between the dates you specified.  One is an off-white color, but I kept it on the list anyway.”

“Where were they rented?”

Shaun pointed a pencil at the list and the small markings he’d made next to each number.  “These two were rented at LAX.  The white one was rented in Orange County near the airport down there, and the last was rented in Santa Clarita, up near Magic Mountain.”

Carlson wanted to read something into the rental at an airport but she knew that a large portion of the rentals in an area like Los Angeles were made there for obvious reasons.  None of the locations were particularly close to where the vehicle had reportedly been seen, but that didn’t mean anything.  Los Angeles was a maze of freeways, and the killer would have probably wanted to put distance between the location of the crime and the rental of his vehicle.

She glanced carefully at the four credit card numbers.  None of them looked familiar to her, but there was really no reason to expect them to.  They had a huge database of card numbers obtained from rental agencies near to all of the other suspected incidents, and not a single match had been found.

“Do any of these match up with our previous lists?” he asked hopefully.  The car description and the digit in the plate had offered the best hope of narrowing the field they’d had to date.

Hansen shook his head.  “None of them,” he said pointedly. 

Susan looked up at the happy face of the computer genius with a perplexed look on her face.  “I guess I don’t understand.  I assumed you had something to show me.”

Shaun’s head bobbed up and down.  “I do.  I do.  Look, I ran the numbers through the name retrieval program like you asked before to look for a name match.”

“And you found a match?” Carlson asked hopefully.

“Not exactly.  Let me show you.  Look at this.”

Shaun laid a second sheet of paper in front of Carlson. This one had card numbers with a list of names opposite the numbers.  She could see that some of the names were similar, but not exact matches to one of the four names that appeared on the first sheet. 

“These aren’t the same,” Carlson objected.

“No, they’re not,” Shaun agreed.  “But look at the similarity.  These two have the same last name, but one has a first initial “E”, whereas this one has a “B”.  This one has a complete first name.   This one has a different last name, but if you look carefully, you’ll see it has the same letters in the last name and starts with the same letter.”

“What are you saying?”

“I think our shooter is being clever.  If you give someone an ID with a name, perhaps one of these, and then flash a credit card with any of these other names, I’d bet it would pass.  People don’t look that close and they expect to see a match.”

“Did you check these names against the incident databases?”

“I did.  One of these names shows up in five of the nine suspect cases.”

Carlson suddenly had a sense of movement.  Shaun may have found something important here.

“Did you run a search on the names to see what you could find?”

“I did.  I found numerous matches to every name, both using the initial and the full name where we had it.  There is no way to tell without more information if any one of the people might be our suspect.  The names selected are simply too common.”

“What about the credit cards?  Can you trace them back to an owner?”

“That’s one of the things that make these instantly suspicious.  Each of them trace back to a corporate account with offshore holdings.  None can be used to locate the individual on the card.”

“I’d like to see a map with the suspect incidents and these names,” Carlson said.

Shaun grinned and laid the last sheet of paper he had brought into the room on Carlson’s desk.

“I plotted the nine cases and the names here.  I also added the dates of the incidents for reference.”

Carlson looked at the familiar map, recalling each case that she’d either read about or personally visited.  The cases which had a credit card and name attached were scattered randomly around the country.  There didn’t seem to be a location factor at work.

“Look at the dates,” Shaun urged.

Carlson did as Shaun suggested.  The man was right.  The four cases where they didn’t have a match were the oldest of the incidents.

“He changed names and cards,” Carlson concluded immediately.

“That’s my guess as well.”

“Can we search the older databases for a similar set of matches?”

“It can be done, but it’ll take longer.  There are a lot of names, and we don’t have a small list to start with.  I’ll have to program some kind of search conditions and turn the computer loose.”

“That’s task number one,” Carlson directed.  “For the five cases where we think we have names, did you run these names and the associated credit cards through the computer records we obtained from the airports at the time?”

They had acquired a massive list of names and cards from all of the airlines at nearby airports, but having nothing to check against, nothing had been found.  Now they might have the key to learn where the individual was coming from or going to.

“I did,” Shaun confirmed.  “There were no matches.  The vehicles were always rented at or near an airport, so it seemed natural to expect something.”

“He might be using a different set of cards and identification for the flights.  Perhaps even his own real ID,” Carlson mused.  “As a second task, have the computers sort through all of the lists and see if there are any names, identical or suspiciously similar, between the databases from the different incidents.”