Drained (12 page)

“Was she dating anyone?” I asked.

“No,” Mrs. Taylor said.

“Yeah, she was,” Cassidy said.

Mrs. Taylor looked at her daughter. “I didn’t know that. Who?”

“I don’t know. Some guy. She said he was older.”

“Do you have a name?” I asked.

“Rick.”

“Last name?” I asked.

She shook her head.

In my notepad, I jotted down the first name and the fact that Kennedy Taylor had been dating.

“How have I never heard of this?” Mrs. Taylor asked.

“I don’t know,” Cassidy said. “The guy was older. She thought you guys wouldn’t approve. The guy had money, though. Kennedy said he had a black Ferrari.”

I wrote the piece of information in my notepad.

“I actually think she was only seeing the guy because of his money.”

“Do you know how she met this guy?” Beth asked.

“I think he had an ad up on the singles section of Classified OD.”

I wrote that down. I knew the website. Everyone knew the website. What the OD stood for, I didn’t know—it could have been “overdrive,” “overdose,” or “on demand”—I’d heard it referred to as each. What I did know was that it was one of the larger classified websites in the US. You could buy, sell, trade, offer services, hire people for jobs, and meet people with their singles section. Everything on the website was completely free to use. If she’d met the guy there, we wouldn’t find any bank records to verify it, which got me thinking that all of our victims could have met the guy there and we wouldn’t have known it. However, a browsing history of websites on their computers might show us.

“How certain are you on the fact that she met this guy on that specific site?” I asked.

“I’m pretty sure that was the site,” Cassidy said.

“Sure enough to give us a sworn statement that she did?” I asked.

She shrugged and slowly shook her head. “Um, I don’t think so. I know she used the site, and I’m pretty sure, but not one-hundred-percent, without a doubt, sure.”

“Okay. Did she ever show you a photo of this man?” I asked.

“No,” she said.

“Did she use her phone or a computer to access the website?” Beth asked.

“Her phone and tablet. She had a regular desktop computer, but she never had it set up since she moved back in here.”

I looked at Mr. Taylor. “Do you have access to this tablet she owned?”

“It’s in her room. Hold on, I’ll go and get it.” Mr. Taylor rose from his desk chair and left the room.

“She has a password on it,” Cassidy said. “Well, not a password but one of those things where you swipe your finger around a group of dots and it has to be done in a certain arrangement to unlock it.”

“Do you know the arrangement?” Beth asked.

Cassidy shook her head.

I looked at Mrs. Taylor, who also shook her head.

Beth reached into her pocket, slipped out her cell phone, and looked at the screen. “I’m actually going to have to take this. Excuse me.” She left the voice recorder with me and left the room.

A moment later, Mr. Taylor returned with his daughter’s tablet and what looked like its power charger. “Do you have a way to get past the passkey thing?” he asked.

“The FBI’s tech department can. If you don’t mind, we’d like to go through it and see if there is anything that could potentially help us catch whoever did this.”

He didn’t respond.

“I know there may be personal things and information contained inside. Just know that the bureau will handle it with respect for your daughter.”

He pursed his lips and slowly nodded. “Would we be getting it back?” he asked.

“As long as it’s not needed for evidence, yes,” I said.

He held it out toward me. “I think the battery is dead. It doesn’t power on. Take the charger with it.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“I can get something for you to put it in,” Mrs. Taylor said.

She stood, walked behind the office desk, and came back with a large padded envelope then placed the tablet inside. I continued asking questions with the family for another ten minutes, and Beth hadn’t returned. I was out of things I needed to know and was keeping the family from their guests. I turned off Beth’s voice recorder and put it in my pocket. Then I thanked the Taylors for seeing us and let them know I would be in touch. Mr. Taylor walked me from the house, where I saw Beth standing outside near the street, still on the phone. I walked over just as she was hanging up.

“Sorry. Are we done in there?” she asked.

“I went through a few more things with them. It’s on the recorder. Figured I’d let them get back to their guests. If we need anything else from them, we can call.”

“Is that the tablet?” Beth asked.

I held up the envelope. “Yup.”

“Okay.”

She started toward the car, and I followed.

“That was Andrea Fradet, Jasmine Thomas’s friend, on the phone,” Beth said.

“And?”

“Jasmine met a guy in the personals section of the same classifieds website Cassidy just mentioned. This girl, Andrea, will give us a statement to the fact. The soonest she can meet with us is tomorrow. I guess she’s out of town. I set us up for ten in the morning. She lives out in Shaumburg.”

“Okay. She’s one-hundred-percent sure?” I asked. “Give a name of the guy?”

“She didn’t know his name but swears to the site. We need to get the computer in the trunk—and that tablet—over to the local bureau’s tech guys.”

“It’s our next stop either way,” I said. “Hopefully, they can do something with them while we’re there. We don’t have to be out to the sixteenth district to view the dump sites until eight, right?”

“Yeah. Figure an hour of driving between going to the Chicago bureau and getting out to the sixteenth district. It will leave the tech guys a couple hours to come up with something. That’s if they can get on it right away.”

We got in the car, and Beth started it up and pulled a U-turn.

“What is our turnaround time on getting warrants and subpoenas?” I asked.

“Pretty quick, provided Jim is in the office. Why?” Beth asked.

“We need the information from Classified OD. I know how the place works—they make you create a profile. They have a messaging system. I want to see who Jasmine and Kennedy were talking to.”

“Absolutely. We’ll need to subpoena the records from their corporate office, I’m guessing.”

I pulled my phone from my pocket and logged on to the classified site. I navigated through the links but found nothing on the site as far as a corporate-office location or phone number—only generic e-mail contact forms were available. The website had a link dedicated to law enforcement, but I didn’t put much stock in getting anything in a response that wasn’t some generic form letter.

“They don’t make it easy to get in touch with them,” I said.

“Call Ball. He’ll have the twins find who to contact. Jim will be able to get us the required paperwork,” Beth said. “But I’m betting we need a sworn statement first.”

“Let me call and see.” I dialed Agent Ball, who answered within a few rings.

“Ball,” he said.

“It’s Rawlings. We have something that needs to be looked into.”

“Sure. What have you got?” he asked.

“Communications from our victims through the Classified OD website. We have two victims that may have met men through the website’s personals section. I’d like to get the transcripts of who they were communicating with as well as see if the other victims were using the site. I’m guessing we’ll have to subpoena them for the information.”

“Okay. Well, a big company like that is going to lawyer the crap out of us, so we’ll damn well have to know for certain that the victims were on that site. Do we have any kind of hard evidence that they did in fact use it?”

“We have a friend of Jasmine Thomas who will give us a sworn statement. We can’t get it until tomorrow, though. We have a sister of Kennedy Taylor that also says Kennedy used the site but can’t swear to it.”

“Do we know that they were planning on meeting with these men prior to going missing?”

“No,” I said, “but that’s where the transcripts would obviously help. We do have confirmation that all the victims were dating. We have a computer and a tablet from two victims, which we are taking to the local branch of the bureau now to see if we can get something from them.”

“Okay. Let me make a few calls and see if I can get anything as far as friendly cooperation. If I can’t get anywhere with that, we’ll at least need a sworn statement before we can get the required documents to force their hand. I’ll call you back shortly.”

“Thanks,” I said.

Ball hung up.

I looked at Beth. “He says he is going to make a few calls and see if he can get a little friendly cooperation.”

She nodded.

Brett pulled the final needle and tube from Monica—she’d been dead since the morning, before he left for work. He took a few steps back from the side of the embalming table to observe his trophy wall, a grid of papers. All were copies of newspaper classified pages, ads on cards left in truck stops, want-to-sell listings from grocery stores, and the like. The most recent were personals listings. Each paper had a photograph of the victim attached.

In the beginning, he used to visit his victims, posing as a buyer for whatever they were selling. He would stop at place after place, looking for the perfect scenario—a woman, alone, not near others. The hunt had been enjoyable, yet it simply took too much time and presented too much risk—a nosy neighbor, a family member showing up, an unexpected guest—countless things that could get him caught. Brett had decided he needed to be able to control the environment.

He ran his finger through the air to the first ad he’d posted on his own website. It was a photo of a different man seeking a woman. Brett had posed as the man and met the woman for lunch. She was pleasantly surprised that he was, in fact, more attractive than his posting. He waited two weeks before asking her over for dinner.

She had come to the house, eaten, and been choked to death before dessert.

A noise from upstairs broke Brett’s reminiscing. His cell phone was vibrating and chirping. Brett grumbled and went to the sink. He washed his hands, dried them and headed upstairs.

His phone lay on the coffee table in the living room. Brett walked over and scooped it up. The screen of the phone showed a text message from Carrie, his secretary. The message simply read:
Call the office.

Brett dialed as he walked down the hall.

“Classified OD. This is Mr. Bailor’s office. How can I help you?”

“Hi, Carrie. It’s Brett. I just saw your message. What’s up?” Brett took a seat at the desk in his home office.

“Well, I was just shutting down for the evening, and I got a call from an FBI agent.”

“FBI agent?” Brett asked. “What did he want?”

“He was trying to get a hold of you. He just said that he had an important inquiry and was looking for a call back.”

“The nature of the inquiry?” Brett asked.

“He didn’t give that information. He just wanted me to pass along the message to you. Did you want me to hand it off to legal, public relations, another executive?”

“Um.” Brett thought for a moment. “The agent gave you a callback number, right?”

“Yes. I have it here.”

“Let me get that,” Brett said. He slid open his desk drawer and grabbed a pen and a pad of paper from inside.

Carrie gave him the number.

“What was his name?” Brett asked.

“Supervisory Agent Art Ball.”

Brett wrote the name down. “And he didn’t state the nature of his call at all?”

“No.”

“Okay. I’ll take care of it. Thanks for the call, Carrie.”

“Sure. Did you have your schedule of appointments for tomorrow, or did you need it?”

“I think I have everything. Thanks.”

“Have a good night, sir.”

“You too.”

She hung up.

Brett leaned back in his chair, contemplating why an FBI agent would be trying to contact him directly and how they got the number for his office and how they knew who to call. He woke his computer and punched in the FBI agent’s name—he found nothing. Then he dialed the company’s legal department. The secretary answered and put him through to Tom Mears, the company’s lead attorney.

“Tom Mears,” he answered.

“It’s Brett Bailor. I just got a message regarding an FBI inquiry.”

“FBI inquiry?” Tom asked. “How did that get to you?”

“No idea,” Brett said.

“What was the inquiry about?” Tom asked.

“The agent didn’t say. My secretary took the call. I’ve been out of the office since after lunch.”

“Did you get a name and number of the person inquiring?”

“I did.”

“Why don’t you give that to me, and I’ll make a call to see what he wants.”

Brett gave it to him.

“I’ll give you a call back after I see what this is about.”

“Thanks, Tom.”

“No problem. You’ll hear back from me shortly.”

Brett hung up.

An uneasy feeling brewed in his gut. His website had dedicated links for law enforcement—they could include the nature of the inquiry, and someone from legal would contact them to provide the required information. For his office to get the call, someone had to specifically search him out. They would have needed to bypass public relations, the company’s legal department, the board, and everyone else to get to him. Brett tried searching the agent again, weeding through pages of Internet search results—again, he found nothing. He left the office and went to the kitchen to pour himself a drink. His cell phone rang—Tom was calling back.

“Yeah, Tom.”

“I talked to the guy. It was a pretty quick conversation.”

“Okay. What did he want?” Brett headed back to his office, whiskey in hand, and took a seat at his desk.

“They are running some kind of an investigation. Basically, they are looking to see if a couple of people were users, and if they were, they’d like the transcripts of their activity and messages—pretty standard law-enforcement inquiry. I basically told them that we couldn’t share that information without being subpoenaed specifically for each one. I gave him the information that we would need to be able to provide them with what they sought. How that kind of call got to you, I have no idea.”