As he waved them through, I eased forward.
“Evening, sir,” he said as he approached my window.
“How are you, Sergeant.” It was more of a greeting than a question.
“I’m good, sir.”
He finished verifying our creds, and as Lien-hua and I were putting them away, I realized Hastings looked slightly disappointed as he inspected the inside of the car. I wondered if it was because my cute stepdaughter wasn’t with me. The father in me didn’t like that possibility, but for the moment I held back from commenting. Now wasn’t the time.
Not now, but later. Eric’s gotta be at least three years older than she is…
He opened the gate, told us good-bye, and I drove through.
“I’m concerned,” Lien-hua said. “About Angela.”
I was still caught up in my thoughts about Hastings. “I’m sure she’s okay.”
“Her office is just down the hall from the evidence rooms.”
It was an obvious hint, and I took it. “All right. We’ll swing by and check on her on the way.”
I parked near the FBI Lab’s east wing, and we headed inside.
Brad parked the car.
In one sense, Bowers was right about motives-the offender in this case had more than one. The game wasn’t just about revenge, it was about revealing the bigger picture.
About stopping people from playing God, stopping them from tampering with the fabric of human nature he had designed.
He stepped out of the car.
Brad figured it would be about a fifteen minute walk through the woods to the house, which meant he’d get there just as dusk was deepening into night.
Good. Because he needed it to be dark for the climax.
He sent the text message that would put everything into play, and, carrying the third and final license plate, he entered the forest.
Angela has a big heart but usually wears a slightly concerned expression. Late thirties. Slightly overweight. Thick glasses. Big loopy earrings. Kind but anxious eyes.
Three computer screens sat on the desk in front of her. The one on the left was scrolling through hundreds of names, presumably from the credit card search. The right screen was filled with tiny icons of live video feeds from the mass transit system, scanning faces.
The center screen showed a spam email ad.
I wondered about the letter permutations, but for the moment, I didn’t ask.
Angela glanced at us only momentarily. She looked more worried than normal.
“Are you all right?” Lien-hua asked.
“Take a look at this.” She directed our attention to the middle screen, then slid the ad to the left to more clearly reveal a timer I hadn’t noticed when we first walked in.
A countdown.
Endgame: 49 minutes 15 seconds
Endgame: 49 minutes 14 seconds
Endgame: 49 minutes 13 seconds
Immediately, I thought of the traces of military grade C-4 found in the back of the van the killers had used.
“A bomb?” I said.
“I don’t know,” Angela replied. “The timer was embedded in the email I pulled up.”
“When did the countdown start?” Lien-hua asked.
“The message arrived earlier this afternoon, at 3:29.”
Endgame: 48 minutes 53 seconds
Lien-hua looked at the computer’s clock, did a quick calculation. “So 9:29. But what happens then?”
“It might be nothing,” Angela said.
“No,” Lien-hua replied. “It’s something.”
An explosion?
Another murder?
What’s the endgame?
Taking into consideration the C-4 and the explosion that occurred at the gas station last night Endgame: 48 minutes 22 seconds
“Could this laptop itself be an explosive device?” I said.
Angela shook her head. “I inspected it inside and out this morning. It’s just a laptop, nothing more.”
“Is it possible it’s a detonator though?” Lien-hua asked. “Or could it be used to initiate a detonation sequence?”
A slight hesitation. “It did send an auto reply to the ad.”
I was a bit surprised she hadn’t already looked into it. “Pull it up.”
The reply appeared, mostly techno-jargon, but the subject line included a “return to sender” notice. That was all.
“Return to sender,” Lien-hua said reflectively. “If there is a bomb, it could be a message: ‘return to sender,’ i.e. ‘return to God.’”
That seemed to be on track with the way these killers thought.
“Can you back trace this?” I asked Angela. “Find out where the ad was sent from, or who received the reply?”
Endgame: 47 minutes 4 seconds
She typed, then said, “The ad was sent to this computer from a Motorola Droid.” She pointed to the longitude and latitude coordinates on the screen.
Lien-hua drew out her phone and called the command post to have them send a car to the downtown DC location.
I leaned over Angela’s desk. “Can you tell where the reply went? Who received it?”
Angela explained something about a mail server host and a Cybrous 17 cellular modem relay sending out bits of code that could have been accessed from anywhere. “We might be able to trace it, but it’ll take time. An hour, maybe more.” She tapped at her keyboard. “I’ll get a team on it.”
An hour.
That’s too long…
“You’re sure there’s nothing explosive in this laptop?” I asked her.
“Yes.” But she sounded more uncertain this time. “I guess you can have the bomb squad check it out though, just in case.”
Lien-hua nodded, ended one call, made the other. My attention went back to the computer monitors. “Do we have anything on Basque or Adkins?”
“No. But I did finish those permutations for you.” Angela tapped at her keyboard, and the middle screen switched to a seemingly endless display of letter combinations.
“I think you should stick with interpreting it, ‘I promised you are,’” she said. “Lacey analyzed the other letter combinations that contain actual words, but she thinks that the letters in their original order make the most…” She paused for a long time and stared at the screen, at a small portion of the list that contained nearly 120,000,000 sets of letters.
“What is it?”
“Patricia E.,” she muttered. “How could I have been so stupid.”
“You know who Patricia E. is? Who is she?”
Angela pulled up Lacey’s permutations calculator and typed in the name PATRICIAE.
Instantly, thousands of nine-letter combinations began scrolling down the screen.
Angela tapped the keyboard, paused the list. Scrolled up a few dozen lines. Then pointed.
ARIAPETIC.
“An anagram,” I whispered. “Angela, you’re a genius.” I tried to process the implications. Calvin had uncovered the clue about Patricia E. three weeks ago, which meant that somehow he knew about these crimes.
Or the killers knew about his note.
But how…?
“The bomb squad’s on the way,” Lien-hua said, pocketing her phone.
“Angela found Aria Petic,” I told her.
“Where?”
“Not where, who,” Angela said. “It’s Patricia E.” She explained the connection but was eyeing Mollie’s laptop computer uneasily the whole time. “Listen, if this is a bomb I don’t want it anywhere near Lacey.”
She had a good point. If the laptop was an explosive device, it didn’t make sense to leave it in the building. “I’ll take it to the parking lot,” I said.
“No, Pat. Just leave it,” Lien-hua objected. “The bomb squad will be here any minute.”
“Angela already checked the laptop this morning,” I said. “There’s no indication that it’s a bomb; all we have is this timer. Besides, it’s been shuffled around all day and there’s still over forty minutes before the countdown ends. I’ll be fine.”
I donned latex gloves to avoid leaving yet another set of prints on the laptop. “Call Cassidy and Farraday,” I told Lien-hua, “and find out where they are. It might be good to… touch base.”