“She was.”
Anderson got a Sharpie out of his pocket, then started marking the different towns around the country where attacks had occurred.
Harrow said, “Mr. Gershon said our suspect was likely a man.”
Pall nodded. “We have two puzzle pieces. That they don’t fit together doesn’t mean that we’re not closer to solving the puzzle.”
Anderson looked up at the boss. Even though Harrow knew all this before they went on the air, and the dialogue had been loosely scripted (no prompter, but essentially canned), the host still looked gravely disappointed.
Was that just good acting? Anderson wondered.
Turning to the young chemist, who rose from his chair, Harrow introduced him to the viewing audience.
Anderson tried to keep his breathing even as he did his best to ignore the black hole in the center of the camera. He was also conscious of the hovering boom mike, but managed not to look up at it.
“Chris, have we had any luck matching the tire marks from this crime to the ones Billy Choi sent you from North Dakota?”
“They don’t match — at least not completely.”
Harrow appeared confused (for the sake of the TV audience, anyway). “What do you mean, ‘not completely’? Either they match or they don’t, right?”
Harrow had set this up for Anderson to look good, and the young man appreciated it.
“The tires in North Dakota were nearly bald, Mr. Harrow. Though the tires here in New Mexico show some wear, they’re nowhere near the same age as the Dakota tires.”
“So they don’t match.”
“That’s right, sir — they have the same tread design, which means they’re the same brand, Michelin, and they’re the same size, 275/70R18. It’s possible that the suspect has changed out the old tires for new ones on the same vehicle.”
“Are there other possibilities?”
“Sure. There could be two separate suspects, who both own light pickups that have the same brand tires — one worn, one fairly new. But if you believe that... and remember we have two separate gun matches... then the killer in North Dakota killed a public servant’s family in Florida, and a different killer murdered the families of George Reid here... and yours, Mr. Harrow, in Iowa.”
“That would make one hell of a coincidence.”
“Yes, sir, it would. Particularly since forensics evidence indicates the same gardening implement was used in the removal of the wedding-ring fingers of both Mrs. Ferguson and Mrs. Reid. Distinctive characteristics of one garden-shear blade, and plant DNA, make that conclusive.”
“Thanks, Chris,” Harrow said, moving slightly to let Arroyo get the sheriff into the shot, so the boss could interview him.
With his part finished, Anderson dropped back into the chair, Sharpie in hand, as he went back to the list and the map.
He had something — he didn’t know what — but he had something.
Chapter Nineteen
In his dreary, dusty living room, sitting on the edge of his seat, the Messenger watched Crime Seen! intently. When it had gone off the air with J.C. Harrow’s familiar “war on crime” homily, the man of the house kicked back in the aged Barcalounger and smiled.
Finally!
After years of planning and delivering his messages, and fearing that these fools could never stop him, he finally had someone’s ear — someone who could make everything all right.
Despite a slow start, J.C. Harrow seemed to be the one who could and would put the pieces together... though it did take plenty of help. No matter by what process, however, at last the Messenger’s signals were coming through. Maybe the help Harrow was receiving from his much-vaunted team was the key to making sure the world eventually understood completely.
He had watched the young woman who co-hosted with special interest. What was her name? Carmen Something. He would rewind the tape and get it.
She might prove just the one to help him deliver his next and, he hoped, final message.
His sighed and allowed himself a relieved smile. After all these years, the end was in sight. He had to clean the house, and there was planning to do, one more trip to make, one more message to deliver...
After all, company was coming.
Chapter Twenty
The Crime Seen! viewer tip line had received calls about every single blue Ford F-150 in the United States — or at least so it seemed to Jenny Blake.
As the team’s computer expert, she was the beneficiary of this sort of grunt work, tracking down the vehicles in tips and running checks on them. Funny how they’d all been hired as “superstar” forensics experts, with the media playing that up, the Internet too. But none of the Killer TV team had any underlings to pass off work to.
The chemist, Chris Anderson, had said it best: “We got a great starting line-up, but no bench!”
Still, she wasn’t complaining, though the tip line stuff tended to come to her, and while the team was obviously making progress, she was feeling a very small part of that. She wanted to do more.
Her drive to succeed, to please, and her loyalty to Harrow and his cause, kept her going. The Wyoming crime lab had provided her plenty of tough cases, but never a challenge this great.
At least being with new people gave her a new chance to overcome her shyness. So far she hadn’t been able to take much advantage of the new start; if anything, she felt more isolated, living on the road with strangers.
The rest of the team, though they all seemed nice enough, were obviously out of their comfort zones as well. Everybody seemed vaguely on edge, not only because of the life on the road — motel, work, eat, ride the bus, motel, work, eat, ride the bus — but because of the complicated job at hand.
And not the least of the complications was having the leader of the team so emotionally vested in the case, not that Harrow had slipped up in any way or shown the emotions that must have been churning beneath the surface.
Jenny knew all about such emotions.
With the bus rolling south now, heading for Pratt, Kansas, where the halved team could reunite, she had a little quiet time in the back by herself. Today, she wore a PETA T-shirt and her usual jeans with canvas tennis shoes, her normal work clothes at both the Wyoming crime lab and on the bus. The only time she wore anything else was on those painful Friday broadcast nights, when they dressed her up like a Barbie doll.
This bus was set up with only a dozen regular seats up front, six rows of two seats on either side, and another half dozen in back, beyond the restroom. Behind the front seats was a work area with a pair of compact desks and bolted chairs. Before you got to the bathroom were two facing chaise lounges, windows blacked out, the lounges mostly used for catching naps. They were equipped with seat belts, but Jenny didn’t have hers on as she sat back there in the dark, her computer on her lap providing the necessary light.
She knew she shouldn’t be bitching. The tip line stuff was culled before she got it — PAs back in LA were battling under Everest-sized piles of mail, e-mail, text messages, and phone calls, an onslaught that had begun right after the first show.
When Crime Seen! made the connection that Harrow was former law enforcement and Ferguson current — implying the families of lawmen might be targets — the tip lines exploded with everything from actual leads to communiqués insisting the Killer TV team investigate the death of all family members of every former or current law enforcement official that had not died in their sleep at 101 or over, and in the sight of a dozen eyewitnesses.