Drained (20 page)

Mercer shook his head. “Never. You should be able to see in those messages that we never got to the point of asking each other to meet up. Even if they asked, well, then I would have run my pitch about money.”

Beth wrote something down. “Can I ask what you were doing last night?”

“Um, working until sixish, stopped at home for about an hour, and then went to a concert. I was at the concert until about midnight, and then I went out to a couple of bars with some friends until bar close.”

“And these friends, what are their names?”

“Ugh, are you really going to call people and check?” Mercer asked.

“You better believe it,” she said.

Mercer’s shoulders sank. He rattled off a bunch of names then pulled out his phone and gave Beth a handful of phone numbers.

“Here, look.” Mercer passed his phone to her. “Scroll to the right. Photos from the concert last night and a couple from the bar after.”

Beth briefly looked at the phone and slid it back across the table to him.

“Okay,” Beth said. “And after bar close, you did what exactly?”

Mercer put his phone back into his pocket. “Got dropped off at my house and passed out.”

“Anyone who can verify all of that?” Beth asked.

“Sure. Everyone I went out with and my wife when I got home.”

“Your wife?” Beth asked.

Mercer nodded. “Yeah. She was pissed. Waited up for me so she could read me the riot act for coming in late, drunk.”

“Does she know about your online ventures?”

“No. And I’d prefer if it stayed that way. I don’t cheat on her. I never meet the women I contact, ever.”

“Right,” Beth said. “Give me a minute, and I’ll be back with you.”

“Yeah, okay,” Mercer said.

Beth stood from her chair, grabbed her notes, and left the room.

The door for the observation room opened a moment later. Beth walked in, closed the door, and leaned back into it. “Well?”

“What were the pictures he showed you?” I asked.

“They were posted on a social media site—him and some other people with a stage and band in the background. The date was last night,” Beth said.

“Okay. The friends’ names and numbers?”

Beth tore the page of notes from her notepad and handed it to me.

“I’m going to get back in touch with the owner of Classified OD and get all this guy’s transcripts. We’ll see if in fact he’s running his woman-scam deal,” Andrews said.

“What do your guts say? Our guy or no?” Beth asked.

“I don’t think so. Let me call these people quick to verify that he was with them,” I said.

“Okay,” Beth said. “I’m going to head back in and get his whereabouts on the other dates, as well as what concert he was at last night. He’s a talker. I’ll keep him talking while you guys check some things out.”

“Sounds good.” Andrews picked up the phone in the room to call Classified OD.

I rocked back in my chair but said nothing. I slid out my cell phone and dialed the first number on the sheet.

Brett’s cell phone vibrated and buzzed across the nightstand next to his bed. He cracked his eyes open, let out a grunt of frustration, and reached for it. The number on the screen showed the call was coming from the legal office. Brett scooted himself up against his headboard, to a sitting position, and clicked Talk.

“Brett Bailor,” he said.

“It’s Tom. One of the feds that was in here earlier is calling back. He’s looking for you. I told him you were out of the office for the rest of the day.”

“What did he want?”

“He didn’t say. He called the office here, and Brittany up front sent the call back to me. He basically just asked for you.”

“Did he give you a callback number?” Brett asked.

“Yeah, he did. Did you want it?”

“Sure. Hold on.” Brett slid open the drawer on his nightstand and pulled out a pen and paper. “Okay, what is it?”

Tom gave him the number.

“I’ll give the guy a call back and see what he wanted. Which agent was it?” Brett asked.

“Agent Andrews.”

“Okay. Thanks, Tom.”

Brett hung up, rubbed his eyes, and rolled out of bed. In the bathroom, he splashed some water over his face, and then he headed down the hallway to his home office. After taking a seat in front of the computer, he woke it up by wiggling the mouse. He caught the time in the bottom right-hand corner of his desktop: 4:08 p.m.

The hour-and-a-half nap he’d had would have to do for the time being.

Brett dialed the fed back and cleared his throat as the phone rang in his ear.

“Agent Andrews,” a man answered.

“Hi, Brett Bailor calling back,” he said.

“Hello, Mr. Bailor. We were wondering if you could give us a hand with a bit more information.”

“Absolutely, if I can. Though I won’t be back in the office until tomorrow.”

“Well, let me tell you what we need, and we’ll take it from there,” the agent said.

“Sure.”

“We went through the women’s transcripts you’d sent us off with and found a common user that both women were speaking with.”

“Okay, that’s a good thing, right? I mean, as far as your investigation goes,” Brett said.

“Well, we’re getting somewhere, so that’s something. The thing is, we have the man in for questioning as we speak and we’re trying to check out his alibi. We’d like his transcripts to see who else this man was in contact with and the nature of the conversations.”

Brett was quiet for a moment. He knew as soon as he gave the FBI Mercer’s transcripts, he’d be cleared. Brett began to second-guess his idea of giving the feds a suspect in the first place.

“Ugh,” Brett said. “Well, I’d have to be there to get them for you. I don’t have access to the system at the moment, and in order to get them from the system files, they would need to have administrative access, which only I and my development manager have. The problem is he’s on vacation. Tell you what, I’ll be back in the office tomorrow morning, I can get it put together and either faxed over to you or e-mailed as soon as I get in. Will that work?”

The agent let out a breath. “Um, if that’s the soonest we could get it.”

“Yeah, unfortunately, it’s going to be. I’m on duty for my son’s soccer game. That means hauling the whole gang around, pizza after, the works. Do you have children?” Brett asked.

“I do. Two daughters. I know how it goes. That’s fine. As soon as you can get it to us in the morning, that would be fine.”

“Sure. I’ll call this number and get the information as far as where to send it in the morning.”

“I appreciate it, Mr. Bailor,” the agent said.

“Yup, no problem,” Brett said. “We’ll talk in the morning. Have a good evening.”

Brett hung up and dropped his phone onto his desk. “Shit.” Brett scratched at his hairline in the front, trying to think of what to do. He debated going into the system files and creating messages to seal Mercer’s fate—it was an option. However, that would give the feds further cause to look into his company—something Brett had no interest in, for there was always a chance they could find something if their tech guys started sniffing around. Aside from that, Classified OD would be dragged through the mud in the press, giving the company a bad image, which meant angry shareholders. In the morning, Brett would give them what the agent had requested and hope that would be the end of it.

Brett grabbed his phone and headed back for the bedroom. He heard a phone ringing as he walked down the hallway—not the one that he was holding. Brett stopped and realized the ringing was coming from behind him, back in the office.

“Prepaid,” he said. “Hmm.”

Brett turned and headed back the way he’d come. He took a seat back in his office chair and opened the rolling drawer to the side. He reached inside and scooped up the phone—the number was from the area, but not one he recognized. He let the call go to the automated voice mail and stared at the screen, waiting to see if the caller left a message. A moment later, the voice-mail icon lit up in the top left of the screen, so he hit the button to check the message.

Hey it’s Mandy. I hope I have the right number. I wanted to see if maybe you were interested in lunch tomorrow. Give me a call back and let me know. No worries if you’re busy. We could maybe try another day or something. Hope you’re doing well. See ya.

Brett smiled widely and hit the button to erase the message. He pulled up the call log on his phone and hit the button to call her back. The phone rang in his ear.

Beth and I got back to the hotel around seven o’clock. Andrews had said he couldn’t get the transcripts from Classified OD until the morning, so we’d be waiting on that. I spoke with each of Mercer’s friends, and then his wife. His alibi checked out with everyone. His wife seemed to be well aware of his online activities but never brought it up to her husband.

Beth got his whereabouts for the times the other women had last been seen and found. The main thing saving him was that he raced dirt bikes on the weekends, sometimes taking Fridays off and leaving Thursday nights. He’d provided proof of events attended and locations that put him out of the area when two of the women were last seen and their bodies found. The logistics of him having committed the crimes and traveling for his racing just didn’t line up. We still planned to go through the transcripts when they showed up, but Mercer wasn’t looking like our guy. They kicked him loose from questioning a bit after six.

Beth sat in my room on the wingback chair, one leg resting on her other knee. She was jotting down notes in her notepad. “What time were you meeting with Angela Wormack’s mother tomorrow?”

I turned in my desk chair and faced her. “Ten.” I rolled my head to the side. “Shit.”

“Shit what?” Beth asked.

I let out a breath. “Andrews wanted to do that press conference at nine. Son of a bitch.”

“I’ll handle meeting with her if you need to be with Andrews at the press conference.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, that’s fine. Where does she live?”

“Hold on. I’ll get you the address.” I spun back in my chair and found it in my file then walked it over and handed it to Beth.

She took the piece of paper and found the address. “Oh, okay, Bolingbrook. That’s about an hour from here. No problem.”

“You’re sure you don’t mind?” I asked.

“Anything that keeps me away from speaking under pressure, I’m fine with.”

“All right.”

“So she’s giving us a computer?” Beth asked.

“She said she would, yes. The mother’s name is Hilary. Same last name, Wormack. I’ll send you with my notes from the phone call I had with her as well, so you can see what we talked about and see if there’s anything you want to follow up on.” I walked back to the desk, grabbed my notepad, and flipped through the pages until I found the notes from the phone call. I ripped the two pages out and walked them back to Beth.

She slipped the papers into a folder and closed the top as I went back to my desk.

“What the tech guys found is bugging me,” Beth said.

“How’s that?”

“Well, from what you described when we were driving over to the Classified OD office, the virus could kill cell phones and tablets and erase histories.”

“That’s what the tech guys said, yeah,” I said.

“And there was also login information from Jasmine for Classified OD on her computer, but the credentials no longer worked.”

“Right,” I said.

“Well, who is to say that the virus—or person behind the virus—couldn’t have deleted their accounts at Classified OD?”

“Fair question.”

“You said the tech guys at the Chicago office had the virus?”

“Um.” I scratched my cheek. “I mean, I guess that’s what I was looking at. The tech guy—ah, what the hell was his name—O’Neil, showed me something on a screen that was just numbers and symbols and commands, computer gibberish. He said it was the virus.”

“Okay. I’m wondering if there is a way he can send that to the twins back in Virginia and see if they can come up with anything on it,” Beth said.

“Probably worth a shot if it’s possible. The guy running the tech unit there was named Skip.”

“Okay, I’m going to head back to my room and call there and then call back to Virginia. Speaking of which, Ball wanted you to call him.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Okay, I’ll be back over here in an hour or so. We’re going to go get a drink. No excuses, no bullshit, and no talk about the investigation.”

I flashed her a smile. “We’ll see,” I said.

Beth nodded. “That’s pretty close to a yes.” She grabbed her paperwork and left my room.

I picked up my phone and dialed Ball. He answered in two rings.

“Ball,” he said.

“Hey, it’s Hank. Beth said you wanted me to call.”

“Yeah. How’s it going out there?”

“Oh, I thought Beth gave you an update a little bit ago.”

“She did. I want to hear it from you,” Ball said.

“Well, we’ve been running pretty much nonstop. We thought we had a suspect, but it’s looking like that fizzled out. We have some leads, but actual evidence seems a little hard to come by.”

“When you look at the investigation as a whole, what is sticking out at you?” Ball asked.

“Classified OD and whoever is doing this has some form of a personal relationship with the victims. We got the transcripts from the place for the two latest victims, but it didn’t show them corresponding with anyone in common other than the guy we questioned—that was the suspect that fizzled out.”

“We should look into every correspondence and the people behind them, not just what matches on the surface. This guy could be using different handles, different IP addresses, things like that. You can send the transcripts back here, and I’ll have Marcus and Lewis get on it.”

“Sure. I’ll have Andrews get them back to you guys,” I said.

“Okay. What else?” he asked. “The tech stuff.”

“A computer with a virus that looked like it was capable of frying cell phones and tablets. Beth was actually going to see if the virus itself could be sent to the Phillips guys in our tech department so they could have a look at it.”

“Okay. What do you have tomorrow?”