There.
The lock clicked.
I popped open the trunk.
All three men and Natasha leaned close to peer inside.
Blue carpeting.
And a series of black smeared dints on the metal body on the passenger side. “She was conscious when they transported her.” I didn’t realize I’d said the words aloud until I saw Natasha looking at me curiously. I pointed to the marks. “Same color as the soles of her shoes. She kicked. Hard.”
“She was in here awhile.” Doehring was staring at them. “Struggled a lot.”
Timing, location.
Timing.
I pulled out my cell and speed-dialed Lien-hua. “Any word on the security cameras?”
“Same angles, Pat,” she said. “Whoever deleted the footage didn’t redirect them. Why did you want that checked anyway?”
“The killer deleted footage-so he obviously knew the system-but then he would have had to leave the building after doing so, and the cameras would have been on when he left. I wanted to see if he redirected the angle of one of them so he could exit undetected. If he had, it would have told us which door he used to leave the scene, or if he used the parking garage.”
A moment of reflection passed as she processed what I’d said. “Good call. Another thing: someone using a cell phone captured footage of an electronics store that’s been airing a live feed from the security cameras here inside the research facility. They sent the clip to CNS News. We’re all over the airwaves.”
Oh, bad.
She told me the name and location of the store.
“We need to cross-reference a list of store employees with people who might work at the research facility. Also check credit card receipts, find the most recent, most frequent customers.”
These weren’t Lien-hua’s duties, she knew that, I knew that, but she understood the way I work and she would make sure they got done. There’d never been any professional jealousy between us. No rivalry. We complemented each other.
Or at least we used to.
I leaned away from the phone. “Doehring, see if Mahan had any connections with Williamson’s Electronics Store over on Connecticut.”
Doehring nodded, went for his walkie-talkie.
I returned to my phone conversation with Lien-hua. “Come down here as soon as you can. We need to talk.”
After hanging up I noticed that Natasha had called for two additional ERT agents and the three of them had started processing the car. When Doehring ended his transmission, Ralph began to bring him up to speed on what we knew so far, and I stepped to the entrance of the parking garage and stared into the night to sort through my thoughts and wait for Lien-hua.
If Mahan was the killer, why go to all the trouble of bringing her in here? Why leave your car at the scene? Why leave her purse and its contents in the habitat…
Rain spattered on the roof. A thin, constant drumbeat of water.
The nearby Nationals Park rose like a great black beast blotting out the skyline.
At the end of the block, traffic lights moved through their slow, methodical three-step dance from green to yellow to red.
Slashing rain. Curling lights from emergency vehicles. Dark DC streets.
Time of death-between 6:00 and 7:00.
Green.
She was last seen at the Clarendon Metro stop…
At least it gave us a location to work with. To try and follow her movement patterns.
Yellow.
Lien-hua arrived, and I caught the gentle scent of her presence. So familiar to me, but also, now, so much more distant than it had been a month ago.
Red.
“Pat. I’m here.”
I took a moment to tell her about the car and Rusty Mahan, then said, “I know you don’t like doing this on the spot. But can you give me the preliminary profile? Just whatever your first impressions are.”
“I don’t trust first impressions, you know that. I trust critical assessment.”
“Yes, I know,” I said. “So do I.”
“The way you feel about profiling, Pat. I’m surprised you’d ask me to-”
“Please.” It wasn’t just the gruesome nature of this crime; I couldn’t seem to wrap my mind around the context of what we had here. “What are you thinking?”
At last Lien-hua closed her eyes. Entered the profiler’s world of empathy and understanding, the world I’ve never really understood, never stepped into. Using one careful finger, she traced her thoughts through the air as she spoke.
“The abduction, the sophistication of rerouting the video feed, drugging the guard, using the chimps, along with the ability to get in here, tells me he’s experienced, highly educated, organized. Early to mid-thirties. Computer programming background. Hacker maybe. Demographics and Mollie’s race suggest a Caucasian offender.”
So far I agreed with her.
“However, it would have been difficult for someone working alone to abduct a woman undetected, subdue her, access the building, drug the chimps and the guard, transport her into the chimps’ cage-”
“He had help.”
A nod. “Considering Congressman Fischer’s position, it might have been an attempt to hurt him, some kind of political statement.”
I disagreed. “The political angle seems weak to me. There’s no note, no threat, no demands. And a team of killers who could pull off a crime this elaborate could certainly go after the congressman if they wanted to. Why not just kill him?”
She opened her eyes. “This sends a stronger message.”
When I thought about it I had to agree, although I had no idea what that message might be. “But,” she added, “you’re right; we need more information.”
A moment later Doehring joined us.
“It’s not the boyfriend,” Lien-hua went on. “His age doesn’t work for this, and the crime is too involved to put together in twenty-four hours. Besides, Mollie didn’t break up with him. They might have argued, but that’s all.”
“How do you know that?” he asked her.
“Mollie was still wearing the locket with Rusty’s initials on it. If she broke things off, she wouldn’t be wearing it.” Lien-hua averted her eyes from me, looked toward Doehring. “I’m a girl. Believe me. She would have taken it off.”
Her words made sense, but I caught myself wondering if she still had any of the gifts I’d given her. It was painful to picture her throwing or giving them all away.
I buried the thought.
“Also, the sadistic nature of the crime points to a different-and I don’t care if you don’t like the term, Pat-but a motive other than jealousy or anger over a breakup.”
She might have been right about that too, probably was-but that’s the problem with psychoanalyzing someone: you can never be sure.
She finished, “We need to find Mahan and talk with him not as a possible suspect but for information about who else might have wanted to harm Mollie or her family.”
“Why would someone send a video feed to a television store?” Doehring asked.
“Just like the killers who return to a scene to watch,” she replied, “it was his, or their, way of being present, but also of being safe.”
“They knew procedure-that we photograph those who gather at the scene.”
Or the killers could have learned that by watching just about any episode of CSI or Law and Order.
I noticed that the rain was finally letting up. A small tilt in the weather.
“Do we know if there are any security cameras at the store?” I asked Doehring. “Focused on the street? The crowd outside?”
“They’re checking.”
Traffic lights.
Red.
Green.
I let the facts flip though my mind. Tried to lock them in place, but I found myself threading things together with unsupported assumptions rather than evidence.
Yellow.
I slid my speculation aside and went back upstairs to have another look at Mollie Fischer’s body.
12
I spent two more hours at the scene, and by the time I was ready to leave, neither Georgetown’s campus security nor the Metro PD had been able to locate Rusty Mahan.