All eyes were on the screen.
Reeder continued: “We need to figure out what the black cube is... and what and where that building is... and who our blond man-on-the-street is. A potential victim... or Chris Bryson’s suspect? And it follows there is indeed a connection between these five victims... and my late friend’s murder.”
Luke Hardesy, who had mostly just been listening, said, “Mr. Reeder... Joe... we have been digging. What we have so far mostly falls into the negative column — victims who didn’t know each other or frequent the same places or live in the same towns. No work similarities, no social connections.”
“Understood,” Reeder said. “But something is there. And now with DeShawn Davis and, yes, Chris Bryson, we have two more victims to look at.”
“We?” Rogers said with a smile. “Sounds like you plan to do your typical brand of hands-on ‘consulting.’”
He grinned at her. The others in the room were almost surprised, because Reeder was usually so deadpan, and his smiles barely visible. Not this time.
“Patti,” he said, “you were looking for a possible serial killer, and I was trying to find Chris Bryson’s murderer. Those inquiries have clearly converged.”
She grinned back at him. “Should I say ‘welcome aboard’?”
Looking around the room, he said, “I was thinking of saying the same thing to all of you people.”
That got smiles and a few laughs.
Reeder and Rogers took seats at the conference table and they dug in, beginning with their new member briefing the team on Chris’s murder, concluding with the possibility that the blond man might have been last night’s attacker at the Bryson Security office.
Rogers said, “Even when our unknown subject deviated and killed Robertson away from home, he used the double-tap method. The faked suicide is an entirely new one.”
Reeder said, “Chris was ex — Secret Service. You don’t execute a former agent with two bullets in the back of the head without calling undue attention to the crime. Make it a suicide, and it goes away.”
“And doesn’t get connected,” Hardesy said, nodding, “to the double-tap killings.”
Nodding back, Reeder said, “And the ‘suicide’ buys the killer time to search out and find... and destroy... anything an investigator like Chris might’ve come up with.”
“It’s a workable theory at least,” Rogers said. She slapped the table. “So we see what we can find out about Bryson’s activities in the week before his death, and DeShawn Davis, too. Got to be something.”
Miggie chimed in: “Maybe I can help... Mind if I take your pictures down?”
“Go ahead,” she said.
Miggie used his tablet, tapped some virtual keys, and the photos were replaced by a grainy video image of a man in black walking down a corridor, doors on either side.
Ivanek frowned at the screen. “What’s this?”
“Security footage,” Miggie said, “from the hotel the night Bryson died.”
Nichols asked, “How did we get this so fast?”
Rogers said, “When Joe told me he was looking into his friend’s suspicious death, I had Miggie get that footage for him. As a favor.”
“Do we get a better look at this guy?” Bohannon asked. “Working pretty hard to keep his face a secret.”
Miggie said, “At the very end, we do.”
A few seconds later, a hand came across the lens, then a forearm, and the picture went to snow.
Hardesy frowned. “That’s the better look?”
“Tattoo,” Reeder said.
“Gesundheit,” Wade joked, but he was staring at the snowy screen.
Reeder said, “Run it back slow, Miggie.”
Rogers had seen it, too, a hint of something on the wrist where the shirt and coat sleeves tugged down as the arm reached up.
Miggie froze the image, the inked skin still half-hidden under the cuff of the shirt.
“What is it?” Wade asked.
Bohannon said, “A banner of some kind...?”
Nichols said, “Lettering, but I can’t tell...”
Hardesy stood with a suddenness that startled everybody a little. He took off his jacket, unbuttoned the cuff of his shirt, folded it back and showed his own tattoo: a sword pointed upward, two arrows crossing it diagonally, a black banner, the ends touching the tip of the blade on either side, forming a shield. Within the banner, in white, the words De Oppresso Liber.
It matched the one in the video.
“Finally we have a suspect,” Wade said. “Somebody put the bracelets on Luke here.”
A few laughed; most didn’t.
Rogers had seen that tattoo plenty of times back in her days as an MP. She said, “United States Army Special Forces.”
Hardesy nodded. “That’s the Special Forces motto — loosely translates to ‘liberate the oppressed.’”
Rogers sighed, nodded, and said, “It’s a beginning.”
Ivanek said, “It is, but not enough to tell us if our guy is current military or a mercenary.”
“Almost certainly a merc,” Reeder said in a quiet way that brought all eyes to him. “Currently serving Special Forces guys aren’t running around DC over a period of four months committing executions.”
Wade said, “Guy in the video’s blond, and so’s the guy in Bryson’s photo. Are they one and the same? Before, I thought the SIM card blond was our next possible victim. Now I’d vote for suspect.”
“If,” Reeder said, “they’re the same guy.”
Ivanek was shaking his head. “Hard to say. Video’s worse than the crappy picture.”
“I’ll take a swing at a comparison,” Miggie said to Rogers, “and get back to you.”
Rogers’s cell phone rang. She would have preferred to ignore it, but caller ID said it was Woods, the DC homicide detective.
“Shit news,” Woods said.
“What?”
“Somebody torched Bryson’s office.”
“Damnit.”
“It gets worse. The uniformed officer we left on the door last night? He went back this morning, looking for a coffee cup he left behind. Walked right in on the guy torching the place, apparently. Wasn’t expecting anything, so the arsonist got the best of him somehow.”
“When you say ‘the best of’...”
“Shot him. Execution style. Two in the back of the head.”
She sucked in breath, the news hitting her like a blow. “I’m so very sorry, Detective Woods. We’ll do everything we can for you. I’ll have agents out there ASAP.”
“Well, I appreciate that, Special Agent Rogers,” he said, his voice conveying the opposite. “But this is our case. Please keep that in mind. I’m just calling as a courtesy.”
“I do understand. You’ve lost one of your own. But we’re in this together now. You take lead on this aspect, okay?”
“Fine,” he said, in an I’ll-believe-it-when-I-see-it manner, and clicked off.
She did the same, then answered the question that every face in the room was silently asking.
“Bryson’s office has been torched,” she said.
“Good,” Reeder said.
Rogers suddenly recalled how cold he had at first seemed to her, on their case last year.
She said, hollowly, “Joe, an officer’s been killed,” and filled them in on that, leaning hard on the double-tap that made this part of their case.
“I’m sorry to hear about the officer,” Reeder said without apparent emotion. “But we’ve picked up a valuable piece of the puzzle.”
“Well, I’m glad there’s a silver lining to an officer’s death.”
He ignored that. “The killer doesn’t know that we found what he was looking for — the SIM card that gave us those photos.”