Vail 02 - Crush (41 page)

Brix’s eyes flicked past her to their witness. “Well, let’s do it in the conference room. I’ve got a techie waiting for us who’s gonna go over texting stuff. I’ve been trying to get her in to talk to us, and she’s billing the department a hundred fifty an hour. So if you’re done with this guy, kick him loose and meet me in there.”

Dixon and Vail rejoined Wirth in the break room.

“Ian,” Dixon said, “we have a meeting we’ve got to get to. But you started to say something about Isaac hiring an attorney.”

“Yeah. I don’t know if it means anything, but he was looking at suing to get Crystal removed from the board.”

“Remove Crystal—why?”

“You’d have to ask him. But I got the sense Victoria was involved with the attorney, too.”

“The attorney’s name?”

Wirth pulled his Windows Mobile Phone from its holster and poked at the screen. He scrolled, poked again, and said, “Marc Benezra. Downtown Napa.”

Dixon wrote down the name. “Okay. Now listen to me, Ian.” She shoved the pad back into her jacket pocket, then looked up at Wirth. “We’re not sure what’s going on here, with your board, and the players involved in its business dealings. But something’s amiss. I can’t say any more. But you seem like a good guy. Keep a low profile for now. Don’t tell anyone you met with us. Don’t say anything to anyone. Okay?”

Wirth looked at Dixon out of the corner of his eye. “Should I be . . . concerned?”

“A little bit,” Vail said. “No one’s said anything to anyone about you specifically. But just . . . be careful.” She glanced at Dixon, then turned back to Wirth. “Ian, if we tell you something, do we have your word you won’t tell anyone? And I mean, anyone. No one.”

Wirth studied her face. His cheeks sprouted sweat. “I’m not sure I like the sound of this.”

“I can understand that,” Vail said. “I need you to summon those cop instincts you developed being around your father.”

He bit his bottom lip and spoke with it sandwiched between his teeth. “Okay.”

Vail leaned forward and held his gaze. “Remember we talked about Victoria’s stroke? Well, Isaac also had a stroke.”

Wirth’s mouth fell open. “Are you saying—”

“I’m saying he had a stroke,” Vail said. “Now, given that information, I want to reiterate that we have no direct information indicating you’re in danger . . . of also having one. Having said that, of the three people who opposed Superior’s contract renewal, two are now dead.
Be aware of your surroundings. Be careful. If something doesn’t seem right, you call us. Okay?”

Wirth nodded without saying a word.

“Can we get him a uni to keep an eye on him?” Vail asked.

“I’ll have to ask. I don’t know if the sheriff will go for that.”

“I have private security,” Wirth said. “For the winery. Retired Secret Service. I’ll take care of it.”

Dixon called over to a deputy who was standing across the room at the coffee maker. “Greg, can you escort Mr. Wirth out?”

“Hang on to my number,” Dixon said. “Remember, call if you need anything. Anything.”

Wirth nodded uncertainly, then walked out with Greg.

“You’re worried about the guy,” Dixon said.

“His colleagues have been brutally murdered. And no one knows. The rest of them don’t even know to be careful, that someone might be targeting them. I think we may need to get them all together and level with them.”

“If we do, it’ll be all over the news. If we’re going to do that, let me find a way of using it to our advantage . . . as a way to catch this jerkoff.”

Vail watched as Wirth disappeared into the stairwell. “You’d better think of something fast.”

B
efore joining the others, Dixon got Marc Benezra’s phone number and explained to his assistant that they needed to meet with him today. The woman fit them into the attorney’s schedule for ten o’clock, one hour from now.

“We’re all set,” Dixon said.

Vail, a dozen feet down the hall, was tapping out a note to Jonathan. “Excellent. Can you tell Brix I’ll be right in? I’ve just gotta finish this email.”

“Roxxi, you got a minute?” It was Eddie Agbayani, coming down the hall.

Dixon turned. “What’s up?”

Agbayani stopped in front of her and shoved his hands in his rear pockets. He looked down at his feet.

Vail sensed the awkward tension and glanced up from her email.

“When this is over,” Agbayani said, “when we catch this guy, maybe we could have dinner. Talk. Just the two of us.”

Roxxann rubbed at her brow. “I don’t know, Eddie. Yes. Maybe . . .” She shook her head. “Let me think about it, okay?”

“Is that where we’re at? You have to think about whether we can sit down and talk?”

“Eddie, I can’t do this. Not now. Let me—yes. I’m sorry. You’re right, we should talk. As soon as we get some time, let’s have dinner.”

Vail shoved her BlackBerry in its holster, then pushed through the conference room door. The rest of the task force was there—Mann, Gordon, Lugo, and Brix. And a woman they hadn’t yet met; presumably, she was the person they were there to see.

A moment later, Dixon and Agbayani entered and took their seats.

Brix stood at the front of the room by the whiteboard. Their assignments were still laid out in colors. A few had lines through them, while others were encircled because they were still pending resolution. Unfortunately, there were more circles than lines.

In the fluorescent lighting, Brix’s sun-weathered, deeply lined face looked ashen. He resembled a man who was carrying the weight of several deaths on his shoulders—the unsolved murder of his boss’s son and the pressure of going public with the Crush Killer versus the impact of keeping it under wraps. And time was running out before the decision might be made for him. Once that happened, his stress would increase several fold as the media descended on him.

Vail felt the same pressure. Billed as the expert in solving this case—the serial killer tracker, the famed profiler who has helped break the most heinous of crimes—she was impotent to provide useful, hard information that would lead to the apprehension of this offender. Making matters worse, she could not get a handle on what she was missing. And she was undoubtedly missing something.

Brix cleared his throat. “I’ve asked Austin Mann and Burt Gordon to stay on with us a bit longer, even though their work on the arson is largely done. We can use the manpower, and I’d rather not bring in fresh bodies that have to get up to speed. Hopefully we’re closer to catching this UNSUB than we think.” He extended his right arm and indicated the visitor. She rose from her chair and walked to Brix’s side.

“This is Amanda Sinclair from AirCom Consulting. Amanda’s here to explain text messaging, and give us a handle on how we can track, and hopefully apprehend, the UNSUB next time he contacts Karen.” He moved toward his seat. “Amanda.”

The woman, early thirties with frosted brown hair, took the center stage. “I know you’ve all used text messaging, or what we in the industry call SMS, or Short Messaging System. We don’t think much about those little notes we send each other. But they can be useful in law enforcement if we know how to use them. And if the criminal doesn’t. I think it’s important for you to know what we can’t do, as well as what we can do.

“So here’s the crash course. And I’m leaving a lot out, so if you’ve got a question, don’t be afraid to ask.” She opened a file and set out
some papers. “The texts that go through a wireless provider’s system are not viewed by the carrier. They don’t read them—they simply store the technical transmission information for varying periods of time. Very few carriers actually store the ‘text’ of text messages. The storage space required, multiplied by the billions of texts exchanged between users, is staggering.”

“How long do they keep this transmission information?” Lugo asked.

“Good question. The answer depends on the carrier. Basically, there are several different systems for storing message information. The two most common are CDR and SMS Center. In CDR, or Call Delivery Records, the information is stored for seven days. These CDRs list information such as the time stamp—year, month, day, hour, minute, second, character length—and a variety of other technical info. The International Mobile Subscriber Identity, or IMSI, is also stored; it’s like a thumbprint for the SIM card that houses all the phone’s user specific information. You all know what a SIM card is, right? It’s a little flash memory chip that fits into certain phones. You pull the card out of your old phone, slip it into a new one, and you’re ready to go, without having to reenter all your contacts and such. With me so far?”

“Go on,” Brix said.

“We also store the IMEI, or International Mobile Equipment Identity, a unique thumbprint for the exact phone equipment that’s used. But it’s got no permanent relationship to the individual subscriber. It’s mainly used to identify valid users of the network, so if the phone is stolen, the carrier can shut off that IMEI and the phone will be a useless hunk of metal and plastic.

“The other commonly used system is the SMS Center, which is the E.164 address that lets everyone know which carrier the SMS is originating from or terminating to, the phone number the message is being sent to, how the digits were dialed, and so on. Here’s an example.” She moved to the overhead projector, set one of her pages on top, and turned it on. A document that resembled an Excel spreadsheet was displayed. A bar at the top read, SMS Center Log Window.

Everyone studied the screen. Vail and Lugo were taking notes as Amanda oriented the task force members as to what they were seeing.

“Any questions?” she asked.

“You said there are other ways of storing messages,” Lugo said.

“Yes. Another common method is called SMSC, or Short Message Service Center. It shows where the messages originate and terminate from a carrier’s system. This info is kept for a period of time based on message capacity. Sometimes, if there’s a lot of messages, they’ll only have the data for a week. Other times they may be able to go back a month.”

Amanda slipped a different page onto the projector, showing a gray table with eleven columns aligned horizontally across the document. “The SMSC printout shows the millisecond messages are submitted from the handset and delivered out of the SMSC to the other carrier. It also shows the destination phone number. Now, it gets more complicated, because some carriers have third party vendors that send their intercarrier traffic for them.”

Agbayani pointed at the screen. “Can we use this to determine the location of a perp who’s transmitting a text message in real time?”

“Yes. If the carrier uses GSM technology, you can triangulate within a seven-to twenty-mile radius.”

“Miles?” Lugo tossed down his pen. “You’ve gotta be kidding.”

“Point is,” Brix said, “we can determine the type of phone used and where he may’ve bought it.”

“That
might
give us an idea as to where he lives or works,” Lugo said. “But what do we do, watch weeks of surveillance tapes—if the store even has security cameras? We don’t even know who we’re looking for.” He looked around at everyone in the room. “This ain’t gonna help.”

Gordon rocked forward in his seat. “I think we should plot the messages the asshole’s already sent to Vail and set it up so we’re monitoring her cell in real time. If and when this scumbag texts her again, we can at least triangulate on him.” He spread his thick hands. “Better than nothing.”

Amanda said, “Not to make things more difficult for you, but one thing you should be aware of is that the texts sent to Agent Vail’s phone were from different disposable, pre-paid phones.”

Mann slowly shook his head. “I think Ray’s right. Waste of time.”

Brix sighed. “Look, we do what we’ve gotta do. We use the tools available to us. Anyone got a better idea, now’s the time.”

Everyone looked at one another.

Dixon thanked Amanda for her assistance and dismissed her. She then recapped the information she and Vail had learned from Crystal Dahlia, Ian Wirth, and Robert Friedberg. “Karen’s still got a problem with the motive because it just doesn’t fit with how serial killers operate, their whole psychological makeup, and why they do what they do. But I think we should follow the course, see what we turn up.”

“We’re always learning and seeing new things,” Vail said. “So this offender could be a new breed, or just something we haven’t seen before. Right now, I wouldn’t discount anything. I wish I could offer more, but I’ve had a hard time putting it all together.”

“Let’s have you guys stay on it, dig deeper into the AVA board and its players,” Dixon said. “Karen and I have a follow-on appointment in half an hour with the attorney. We’ll keep you posted.”

Brix opened his notepad and flipped pages. “Last order of business. I’ve got something from the Special Investigations Bureau on the prosthesis request Karen had.” He shot a glance at Mann, then Vail, and continued: “This is preliminary stuff, but there were a total of a hundred-fifty-seven males with upper limb prosthetics. Only eleven in the age range Karen specified. Two were alibied, three were out of town and unreachable and the other six are being interviewed, or are scheduled to be interviewed. Just going by their sheets and backgrounds, it doesn’t look promising. But I told NSIB to ride it out. Questions?”

No one spoke.

“Okay, then. Keep at it. You find anything, let us all know.”

A
s Vail and Dixon descended the stairs of the sheriff’s department, Marc Benezra’s secretary phoned Dixon and moved their meeting to the nearby Artesa Winery, ten minutes down the road off Highway 12.

“You’re in for a real treat,” Dixon said. “Artesa has one of the more picturesque views of the valley. And judging by the weather and rainfall we had last month, you’re going to get an eyeful.”