“What we’re exploring toxicologically,” I then say to my commander-in-chief, “is the possibility of a volatile organic compound like chloroform being used. Possibly some inhalant that would quickly render the person unconscious so he can take his victims wherever he wants, for whatever purpose.”
“You’ll make sure our friends in Edmonton screen for that and anything else that’s in your differential.” Briggs looks past his camera, as if someone is in his doorway now.
“An important question,” Burke says, “is if he took Emma Shubert someplace first.”
“If he doesn’t live around there,” Briggs replies, and he’s distracted, “it seems like that would be risky. A motel or motor inn, and what if she struggled or screamed?”
“More likely he had her in his own vehicle or whatever he’d rented,” Benton says. “A van, a camper, an RV that he could park in a remote area.”
“We’re checking all rentals and purchases in a several-hundred-mile radius for the time frame in question,” Burke says to Briggs, who is barely listening. “From Class A’s like Airstreams to fifth-wheel travel trailers, in other words towables. Something he could pull up into the very campground where she was staying and it wouldn’t draw attention on a dark rainy night.”
“It would solve a lot of problems for him if she’s unconscious,” Benton says to me. “Without the messiness of having to hit her in the head or attempt to force her at gunpoint. No guarantees, and things can go south in a hurry. Far preferable to knock her out with a chemical and get her inside his vehicle and drive away to do whatever he does, to act out whatever his fantasy might be.”
“Which seems to include cutting off her ear,” Burke states. “Demonstrating a decompensation, a deteriorating self-control, a compulsion that’s gaining in force like a hurricane. If Emma’s the most recent victim, he’s into mutilation, becoming more violent. It’s taking more to relieve what builds up inside him,” she says, and she’s the profiler now, and Benton doesn’t comment.
“We’re not likely to know if an ear was cut off,” I reply. “All that’s left of the head is the skull. Unless there’s a cut mark to bone, we won’t be able to tell.”
“It needs to be pointed out that Channing Lott has significant professional and philanthropic ties with this part of Canada.” Burke is talking faster and more aggressively. “Specifically, his worldwide shipping company transports petroleum and liquid petroleum gases that are carried by rail from Fort McMurray, the epicenter of Alberta’s booming oil fields, and on to various seaports.”
Benton is looking at her now, his face expressionless.
“He’s made numerous trips to some of the oil refineries.” Burke has gotten louder. “And last year one of his subsidiaries made a sizable contribution to the dinosaur museum being built in Grande Prairie.”
“Which subsidiary?” Hahn frowns, as if this is information Burke hasn’t shared.
“One called Crystal Carbon-Two,” Burke says to Briggs.
He is looking down at something on his desk again, and I can always tell when he’s done with a conversation.
“Green cleaning equipment used in food processing, in paint stripping, for cleaning printing presses and machinery used in the paper industry,” Burke says. “No harmful emissions or toxic chemicals. Solid carbon-dioxide blasting, which also is becoming an increasingly popular technique in oil refineries.”
“Yesterday was a bad day for our Marines,” Briggs says, and Burke has no intention of being silenced.
She tells us that Channing Lott has been marketing his equipment in northwest Alberta, and flight plans filed with the FAA indicate he has flown his Gulfstream jet into Edmonton and Calgary half a dozen times in the past two years. Emma Shubert was a very outspoken environmentalist, and what she was excavating in the bone beds was going to end up in this very museum that he was helping to fund.
“I’ve got several articles pulled up.” Hahn has started digging into what she’s just now being told. “Announcements about his donation, five million dollars last year. He was definitely in Grande Prairie.”
Briggs nods at someone we can’t see, gesturing that he’ll be right there.
“Mr. and Mrs. Channing Lott attended a Dino Ball, were the guests of honor, were presented with a proclamation. An announcement was made about the gift from Crystal Carbon-Two.” Hahn reads as she scrolls through what she’s searching on her computer. “This was a year ago this past July.”
“I’ve got a lot of cases, a hell of a bad day.” General Briggs has heard enough. “Another damn chopper, that Chinook that went down in eastern Afghanistan yesterday. The C-Seventeen carrying those twelve fallen heroes is on final, about to land. I’ve asked Dr. Lopez to call you as soon as he knows more, Kay,” Briggs says to me, and he stands up and the LCDs are filled with his teal-green scrub shirt. “So you can see what overlapping there is, if any.”
Then he’s gone, his webcam disabled.
“What about personal effects? Clothing, jewelry, anything found with the body?” I ask Benton. “In addition to her clothing, the rain jacket? What about her phone?”
“No phone,” he replies.
I don’t mention what Lucy has to say about Emma Shubert’s early-generation iPhone and bogus e-mail accounts and proxy servers.
“I can’t figure out what the significance is,” Hahn says to Benton, and she knows.
Maybe Benton found a discreet way to suggest what Lucy discovered almost instantly and illegally, but Hahn has found out what she needs to know. She has the information that the video footage of Emma Shubert’s last jetboat ride was taken with her own iPhone. I suspect it was recorded by a colleague while the paleontologists were headed to the Wapiti bone bed on a rare sunny morning, a file innocently made and saved and then later looked at by a monster. He probably went through every file saved on her phone, the same phone he used to take a photograph of a severed ear, what we’re supposed to assume is her ear.
The same phone that e-mailed the video and the jpg to me.
“He got what he wanted.” Douglas Burke pushes back her chair, and no one answers her. “He’s out, a free man, right?” She looks incensed. “Channing Lott benefited from what’s going on, and in fact is the only individual who has benefited from it.”
She gets up and walks to the closed conference room door. She looks angry enough to hurt someone.
“He was in jail when Peggy Stanton vanished.” Benton calmly looks at her, and she defiantly stares back at him. “He was in jail when Emma Shubert disappeared. He certainly didn’t kill them or anyone while he was locked up in jail.”
“Crimes elaborately staged so we’re thinking serial murders. Why?” Burke is saying this to Benton, as if Val Hahn and I aren’t here. “To cover, to obfuscate the ultimate goal, which is getting rid of his wife and getting away with it.”
“He was locked up. That’s a fact,” Benton says.
“So someone did his bidding,” Burke answers him. “Someone makes sure Peggy Stanton’s body shows up exactly when it did and is filmed and he gets acquitted. Genius, I have to say. Amazing what money can buy.”
“This killer acts alone,” Benton says. “Elaborate, yes. But not so we’ll think serial murders. They are serial murders.”
“You know what, Benton?” She opens the conference room door. “You’re not always right.”
thirty-eight
I WANT PASTA OR PIZZA AND HAVE ASKED BENTON TO stop on his way home, which won’t be anytime soon, he warned me, when we were leaving the CFC separately.
Both of us alone. Prepossessed and preoccupied. Off to where we need to go, and that is the sum of us individually and together. I know full well when something isn’t important to anyone but me.