Triple cross, p.13
Triple Cross, page 13
“The vision of finding commonalities and anomalies?”
“Among other purposes, that is correct,” he said, leaning forward again and tapping on the glass tabletop, which lit up like a large computer screen.
A bewildering stream of numbers, text, and images flooded the screen until Malcomb stopped it. “That’s what a huge data dump looks like when we get it,” he explained. “But then we pour it through our filters—our algorithms. Our digital sieves, if you will. We’re looking for crossovers and singularities, commonalities and anomalies, as you said, in the data we’re searching. In this case, the data is everything we could get on the six-block area surrounding each of the Family Man crime scenes.”
Malcomb tapped the tabletop once more and the data stream began again. A holographic keyboard appeared; he gave a command, and the avalanche of information spewing across the rest of the table became a series of thin trickles that entwined in several places.
Gesturing to those knots, Malcomb said, “There is your first commonality. In the hour surrounding each attack, cell phone and mobile data service was spotty or interrupted in the six-block area.”
“How’s that possible?”
“A jammer of some kind, we believe,” he said.
“Could the jamming have come from the cell service itself?”
“We don’t think so. This appears to be aggressive outside interference directed at the cell towers most likely to carry calls and data into and out of those six-block areas.”
He typed on the keyboard again. The waterfall of data again covered the tabletop for a moment before it filtered down to thin entwined streams.
“Here’s the second commonality,” Malcomb said. “Once the jamming begins, satellite phones are used.”
I sat forward. “Really? How many?”
“At least two, maybe three.”
I felt a ripple of excitement. “You have the phone numbers?”
“We do, but they’re worthless,” he said. “They belong to SIM cards that anyone can buy loaded with minutes on the satellite. The sat phones themselves are neutral nodes. It’s the disposable cards that talk to the satellites, and that’s what keeps the users anonymous for the time being.”
“Time being?”
Malcomb held up one slightly tremoring hand. “I’m not promising anything, but I asked several of my smartest people to design a new kind of search, one that might at least give you a direction to move in.”
“How would that work?”
“We’ll look for electronic signatures that we did not pick up the first time through, something that might indicate the manufacturer of the satellite phone chips being used and perhaps their points of purchase. And the signature of the jammer.”
I thought both angles were something of a long shot but nodded. My focus turned elsewhere.
Satellite phones and jammed cell towers. So this is a conspiracy of some kind. We are facing more than a lone wolf.
“What time is your flight?” Farr, the company’s counsel, asked.
“Eight?” I said, looking at my watch. It was a quarter to five.
Malcomb said, “There’s been endless construction slowing traffic going out to Logan, but you should make it in time. Where are you off to now?”
“Charleston, South Carolina,” I said. “Can I get your bright minds to sift for anything tied to Thomas Tull in those areas?”
Malcomb frowned. “The writer?”
I nodded. “The crime writer.”
Chapter
44
Bree left Phillip Henry Luster’s office feeling as if she’d taken a crash course in the business of fashion and the hidden life of Frances Duchaine, the stuff that never made the news stories or official biographies of the icon.
Perhaps more important, Luster had called two friends in investment banking to suss out Duchaine’s current balance sheet. Barry, the first of them, had no clue, but he asked the designer to dinner, which Luster accepted for later in the month.
“For a moneyman, he’s a hunk,” Luster had told Bree.
The second investment banker, Sammy, was a different tale altogether. When asked about Duchaine, he had gone conspiratorial. He whispered that he had to close his door, then returned and asked, “What are you hearing? Is she going down? Chapter Eleven? We have a big position in Crescent Partners, Ari Bernstein’s hedge fund, and he’s got her leveraged out the wazoo. If Duchaine’s going under, I could really use a heads-up here, Phillip.”
“And here I came to you for the same reason, Sammy,” Luster replied. “And you’re doing business with a snake like Ari Bernstein? Since when?”
“Since he started crowing about his ten percent annual return.”
“Tell me, what would Frances crashing and burning do to Bernstein’s fund and his vaunted annual return?”
“We’d be hurt, but Bernstein would take a biblical hit. Maybe enough to take him out. So is Duchaine going down?”
“How much debt do you think she’s carrying?”
Sammy hesitated. “That’s private.”
“Until she’s in court.”
After another pause, the investment banker said, “You don’t know where you got this, Phillip, but her company’s awash in debt and she’s personally on the hook for four hundred and twenty-five million with balloon payments coming due in three months.”
Luster whistled. “Four hundred and twenty-five million!”
Bree’s heart had pounded. There it was. Frances Duchaine was under big-time financial pressure. It could explain the human-trafficking allegations. It could explain why she’d take the risk.
By the time she reached her hotel, Bree believed in her gut that it was all real, that the instincts of whoever was paying her were dead on, that Duchaine was the worst kind of criminal, a creature who ruthlessly preyed on human foibles, desires, and weaknesses.
But who is paying me? And why?
She put those questions aside as she changed her clothes, ordered room service, and settled down at her laptop to write her report for Elena Martin’s eyes only. Bree forced herself to be cold while she wrote; she noted which statements were facts supported by documents and which were conjecture, and she was succinct in her conclusions.
“While I have no concrete proof yet of Duchaine’s ties to sex and human trafficking,” she wrote, “it is clear now that her personal and business lives are indeed threatened by crushing debt and looming payments due, which could easily have created the need for her secret life of crime.”
Bree marked the report Urgent and e-mailed it to her boss just as her dinner arrived: a medium rare New York strip steak, steamed broccoli and mushrooms, sweet potato fries, and a glass of red wine. She finished her meal and was carrying the rest of her wine back to the desk when her phone rang.
Phillip Henry Luster.
“Hello, Phillip,” she said.
“I hope you believe in the law of attraction because it has just been proven once again,” he said, the din of a bar in the background.
“Okay?”
“I just met one of Frances’s victims, though he doesn’t know he’s her victim, of course. His name is Brad Jenkins and he’s from Louisville, Tennessee. He’s twenty-three and very sweet and handsome but not handsome enough, you know?”
“You’re saying he fits the pattern.”
“Plus or minus,” Luster said. Jenkins had been spotted by a Duchaine representative in Nashville three years ago. Like the others, he had been lured to New York with vague promises of a modeling career with the fashion designer, only to be told that his looks weren’t quite up to snuff. They recommended a lower-jaw advancement, a nose job, and veneers, for which he now owed close to one hundred thousand dollars.
“Let me guess,” Bree said. “He was approached by someone named Victor after Frances left him hanging.”
“You’re clairvoyant,” Luster said. “Brad now works for Victor as a gigolo.”
“Can he give me Victor?”
“Better than that. Brad said Victor has been working on Brad’s behalf with none other than Paula Watkins, who has agreed to reconsider his portfolio at a special gathering Wednesday evening at Paula’s place on the Upper East Side.”
“Define special gathering.”
“Victor, who will be there, told Brad that the gathering will include other aspiring models whom Paula and Frances are considering for international work. And there will be talent agents from overseas.”
“International work. Talent agents from overseas.”
“Exactly my thinking,” Luster said. “This could be it, Bree. The sex-slave auction.”
Chapter
45
Bree felt as jittery and excited as she used to when a big case came together and the possibility of arrests was visible on the horizon.
Would Watkins be this bold? Have a sex-slave auction right in her own home? “How big is this place?” she asked Luster.
“Two adjoining brownstones Paula opened up and renovated—quite a space,” he said. The noise of the bar in the background diminished.
“How many people can it hold?”
“I was there once for a party of fifty and it felt roomy.”
“So the place could accommodate more,” Bree said.
“You can’t get in there,” Luster said. “They’d turn you away at the door.”
“But not you,” Bree said. “You could get in. Be my fly on the wall.”
“Not without an invitation, I couldn’t.”
“You’ll be Brad’s date. Someone in the biz looking out for his well-being, eager to meet Victor, perhaps as a customer.”
“I don’t—”
“You got Brad’s phone number, I assume?”
“Well, yes.”
“You’ll ask him, then?”
The fashion designer hesitated, then said, “Oh, why not?”
“Last question: Would you wear a wire?”
“A wire?” Luster said and chuckled. “Bree, you just gave me goose bumps.”
Luster said he’d text Bree if his young friend agreed to bring him along to Paula Watkins’s special gathering. Bree figured the odds were against Luster getting inside. But you never knew unless you tried.
After they hung up, Bree stood and paced the hotel room. She glanced at her watch. Eight thirty. Alex’s flight had left Boston at eight, which meant they couldn’t talk until at least eleven.
She was thumbing through her contacts, looking for Detective Salazar’s number, when the phone rang. Bluestone Group. A number she recognized. “Elena,” Bree said.
“That was quite the impressive report. Do you believe it?”
“Wasn’t I convincing?”
“Well, to be honest, from the thirty-thousand-foot perspective, I’m still skeptical because you don’t have witnesses willing to go on the record. And this banker, Sammy, he knows for certain Duchaine is carrying that kind of personal debt?”
“He has a financial position that will be negatively affected by that debt if she goes bankrupt,” Bree said. “So, yes, he sounded upset enough to know. And don’t forget Detective Salazar has heard the same kinds of stories about money pressures.”
“And she has been unable to get a search warrant because none of the stories came with hard evidence or a group willing to step forward and speak against Duchaine.”
Bree took a deep breath, actually glad for the challenge. “Elena, I agree there’s a long way to go to get it nailed down, but just in the half an hour since I submitted my report, I got the kind of break that could flip things. Paula Watkins is having a party the day after tomorrow, in the evening.”
“Okay…”
Bree explained and Martin was quiet for a long time. Finally, she said, “I wore Frances Duchaine clothes for more than a decade. They make my skin crawl now. Be careful, and I’ll send your report to our client to get approval for you staying on up there. Have you told the NYPD detective?”
“She’s my next call,” Bree said.
“Really impressive work, Bree,” Elena said.
“Thank you, and you still have no idea who we’re working for?”
“An attorney in Cleveland who represents other parties. That’s as far as I’ve gotten. But Tess Jackson is originally from Cleveland. Maybe she knows more than she’s letting on. Maybe that’s why Luster’s been helping you.”
“To end competition from Frances once and for all?”
“I’ve heard worse motives in my time.”
Chapter
46
Charleston, South Carolina
Due to a flight delay, I didn’t get into Charleston until one a.m. on Tuesday. The desk clerk at my hotel in the French Quarter could not find my reservation until nearly two. My luck finally changed around ten that morning.
After six hours of sleep and a breakfast heavy on the creole coffee, I’d gone to the Charleston police headquarters on Lockwood Drive, presented my credentials to the desk sergeant, and asked to speak with Detective Heidi Parks of the violent crimes unit.
Before he could answer, a woman behind me said, “I’m Detective Parks.”
I turned to find a tall, attractive brunette dressed in a black polo shirt, jeans, and running shoes and wearing a gold badge on a chain around her neck.
“Alex Cross,” I said. “I work as an investigative consultant for the FBI and the DC Metro Police.”
Detective Parks cocked her head, smiled, and shook my hand, oozing Southern warmth. “I know you, Dr. Cross. Back in the day, I attended several lectures you gave on criminal psychology during a six-week investigative course I took at Quantico.”
“I hope my talks were helpful?”
“Very much so,” she said. “To what do I owe this honor?”
“I wanted to talk to you about the Doctor’s Orders murders.”
Parks frowned. “I closed the file on them a long time ago. The right man is sitting on death row in Kirkland.”
I held up my hands. “I’m not here to reopen your case, Detective Parks. I just want to talk.”
“About what, exactly?”
“Well, among other things, Thomas Tull.”
The detective stiffened, looked past me at the desk sergeant, who was filling out paperwork, and blew out her breath in resignation. “I figured someone official would come sniffing around about Thomas eventually. I’m actually glad it’s someone of your caliber, Dr. Cross.”
“Okay,” I said, a bit surprised by her answer. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”
Parks hesitated. “This is supposed to be my day off. But sure, just not here.”
She gestured toward the doors. We walked outside. It was gorgeous weather, low eighties with a light breeze that caused the palm trees to sway.
“How much do you know about the case?” Parks asked.
“I read the first hundred and fifty pages of Doctor’s Orders last night on the flight down from Boston.”
She gave me a sidelong glance. “You were up there looking into the Electric murders?”
I nodded.
“Well,” Parks said and cleared her throat. “That is interesting.”
“Can you bring me up to speed on this case? From your perspective?”
Parks thought about that and then shrugged. “Why not? Let’s take my car.”
For the next few hours, the detective drove me around old and new Charleston, showing me the locations of the pivotal scenes in the murders of five prominent physicians. All of the victims had lived in gated communities.
“The first two were out on Johns Island,” Parks said. “The last three were up on Daniel Island, facing the Wando River.”
Dr. Carl Jameson was the first to die. A divorced surgeon with a thriving practice who was part owner of a private surgical center, Jameson had lived in a big home on the eighteenth fairway of a golf course in Kiawah River Estates.
The detective stopped her car across the street from the house and said the killer had been meticulous in the Jameson case. Parks had been the first detective on the scene after a housekeeper discovered the surgeon dead on his kitchen table, his throat cut with a razor.
“Blood all over,” she said. “Which was amazing because there was no sign of the killer walking away through it and very little forensic evidence other than the body and the box cutter.”
The early investigation had focused on Jameson’s ex-wife, Claudia, and their tempestuous marriage and acrimonious divorce. Claudia had recently petitioned the court to increase her alimony payments, which the surgeon had opposed.
“She seemed like the obvious choice,” Parks said. “Or her live-in boyfriend, the top tennis pro on Kiawah. But both Claudia and the pro had ironclad alibis for the evening of Jameson’s murder.”
Parks started driving again. The second killing, she told me, came five weeks later, when Dr. Sandra Handle, an ob-gyn, was strangled in her home across the street from the seventh tee in another golf-course community on Johns Island. Her husband found her corpse upon his return from a fishing trip.
We pulled up in front of the Handles’ former home.
“Different method but the same attention to detail,” the detective said. “Even though it was a violent death, we found no DNA under Dr. Handle’s fingernails or on her body or anywhere, for that matter.”
“Enter Thomas Tull,” I said.
Parks’s jaw shifted a little. She put the car in drive and headed for Daniel Island. “That’s right. Within a week of Handle’s murder, he showed up, said he felt in his bones that this was going to be his next book.”
“You just let him into the investigation?”
She did that thing with her jaw again. “Thomas sort of slid in after sweet-talking the police chief and the mayor. I mean, he was kind of a celebrity. Everybody I knew read his books, including me.”
I waited until we were on Daniel Island and approaching the third murder scene before I said, “When did you start sleeping with the writer?”
