Lines of departure front.., p.19
Cold Heart: Ellie Kline Series: Book Ten, page 19
“That’s why I think seeing a specialist—”
Ellie shot her palm in the air. “Not now. I appreciate your worry, but I can’t talk about this now.” On the list of words she was tired of hearing, therapist and specialist were at the top. She’d admit to screwing up by zoning out at Soul Mates but making a mistake that had lasted only a few seconds didn’t mean she was ready to cave to the incessant suggestions of her friends and family. That wasn’t happening. She could deal with it herself.
He nodded, and they sat in silence until a door at the far end of the hall opened. Two men stepped out and headed their way. One of them, a short guy with a pencil mustache, poked a finger toward Ellie and Clay. “You the two from Charleston?”
Clay rose. “Yes, sir. I’m Agent Lockwood, and this is Detective Kline.” He and Ellie pulled out their badges to show the other detectives. The tall guy with no hair studied their badges and glared but didn’t speak.
The mustached man smacked his tongue, providing Ellie with a fantastic view of his cotton-candy-colored gum. “Y’all know you’re way out of your jurisdiction, right?” He side-eyed Ellie. “Well, at least she is.” His chubby arms crossed over his chest. “What you lookin’ at this fella for?”
“That’s classified information.” Clay crossed his arms as well. The fabric of his suit jacket tightened against his biceps, emphasizing their size and bulge.
“You don’t say?” The mustached man uncrossed his arms, popped his gum, and nudged his partner.
The man who hadn’t spoken yet cleared his throat. “We did a background on the guy. Linscom has no priors and no hint of criminal misconduct. Clean as a whistle.” His voice was soft, almost feminine.
Ellie couldn’t help interjecting. “Innocent people don’t run as soon as they’re introduced to law enforcement.”
Even as the words emerged from her mouth, she knew they weren’t necessarily true.
The quiet man called her on the statement with a rigid smile. “They do, Detective, when they are plain old scared. In my experience, at least.”
“Scared, whatever, he’s all yours now.” The mustached man moved to allow Ellie and Clay past his bulbous frame. “We’ve got no beef with him, and he’s welcome to leave, but he’s agreed to speak with you two before he does.”
“Thank you for your assistance, Detective…?” Clay raised his eyebrows at the two men. He held out a hand and waited for a response.
The mustached man curtly shook Clay’s hand. “If you need any further assistance, I’m Detective Spritz.” He placed his hand on the quiet man’s shoulder. “This here is Detective Zimmer.” Both men sauntered off, but not before Detective Zimmer shot them one last skeptical glance.
Ellie and Clay paused outside the interrogation room door. Ellie lowered her voice. “What was that about?”
“You’re stepping on people’s toes here. That’s all.” Clay cupped the doorknob with his hand. “How do you want to play this? Good cop, bad cop? Singles, doubles?”
“Why don’t you go in first. I’ll watch from behind the window.” She pointed at the observation area adjacent to the interrogation room. “I’m curious how this guy will react. You’re FBI. Maybe that’s enough to get him talking.”
Clay nodded. “Remember, though. This guy’s actually doing us a favor. We don’t have him on anything. Yet.”
Fifteen minutes later, Ellie knocked on the window, signaling for Clay to switch with her. Despite flashing his fancy FBI clout, Clay was getting nowhere with Dave Linscom.
When she entered the interrogation room, Linscom’s body slouched. She spun a chair around and straddled the seat. “Why’d you run, Dave?”
He rolled one of his shoulders in circles. “You startled me, is all.”
“That’s all? Someone who’s startled falls down. They scream. They jump back. You ran, and then kept on running. You tried to escape. Why?”
He dragged a hand through his messy hair. “You were coming at me, and I didn’t know what to do. You’re pretty scary, you know?”
Ellie stopped herself from grinning. “I’ll take that as a compliment, but here’s the problem with your story. We walked into a room, Dave. Your boss introduced us. The only thing startling about that event was that you felt the need to get away from us as fast as possible. Why? The truth.”
“Do I need a lawyer, Detective what’s-your-name?” So surly, this guy.
She pulled her badge out and slid it across the table to him. “Kline. Detective Ellie Kline.” He showed no interest, so Ellie retrieved her badge. “And you only need a lawyer if you’ve done nothing wrong. So, come clean with me, Dave. Have you done something that would require a lawyer?”
Linscom exhaled and threw his hands toward the ceiling. “I thought you were federal auditors, okay? I didn’t know you were cops.” His elbows landed on the interrogation table. The knuckles of his left hand knocked softly against the wood. “That other guy, he mentioned a murder, but I didn’t kill anyone. Falsified audit records, that’s all I did.”
Ellie softened her demeanor. “Oh? For how long?”
“Years. Since that breach.” He fiddled with a loose strand of thread on his short-sleeved shirt.
Yes.
Triumph flared to life as Ellie leaned forward, pinning him with her gaze. “What can you tell me about that breach?”
Linscom scratched his nose. “Am I going to get in trouble? Maybe I should get a lawyer here.” His head swiveled toward the observation window behind him.
“I’ll level with you, Dave. I don’t give a crap about you falsifying your audit records. What I need to know about is that data breach. Everything you can tell me about it.” Ellie could barely keep from boosting herself across the table and shaking the information out of him.
“It was bad. A lot of Soul Mates customers were pissed. After the breach was made public, the company made this big deal about their renewed focus on security measures to protect customer data.” He rolled his eyes and ran his tongue along his lips. “But did they? No.”
Ellie leaned closer to him. “What did they do?”
Give me the good stuff, Dave. Tell me what I need to know.
“Not a damn thing. Hired me, but no additional security personnel to help me. It takes more than one person, you know. The shifts alone are murder.” He fell back in his chair and slapped his arms together. “I mean, they’re really difficult. Sorry.”
“How have they been passing the audits with flying colors all these years, then?” Her brain gnawed on the information. There was a clue here. She knew there was. She couldn’t pick out the proper hint, though. Did the audit reports have information relevant to the Cupid Killer?
“I falsified the audit reports. Mack Porter, the old tech VP, asked me to do it. After he died, I just kept doing it. Haven’t had a chance to talk with that new kid yet. Don’t know what he’s going to want me to do.”
“Why did Soul Mates lie? They’re a tech company. Wouldn’t it be more prudent to hire the people they need and be on the up-and-up? From what I read about the company, they have a pretty decent revenue.” Ellie bit her lip. The audit angle was turning out to be a dead end. What was she missing?
“Soul Mates wanted their customers to think they’d patched the gaps, but they didn’t want to spend any extra money on it. Or the CEOs didn’t want to. There are still gaping holes in Soul Mates’s security. I’m talking Hoover Dam size craters. If the public found out they never fixed them in all these years, the Soul Mates stock would drop. For sure. It would be catastrophic.” He spread his fingers in the air. “Boom!”
Ellie rapped her nails on the table. Linscom had been a bad boy, no doubt, but as far as her investigation was concerned, he’d done nothing overtly criminal. “C’mon, there’s got to be something else you can tell me about that data breach in 2010. Who else knew about the audit scam, besides you and Matt?”
He held a finger up. “Mack, not Matt. And Mack was a pretty private dude. Other than him and me? Probably no one.” Linscom tilted his head and puckered his lips, then shook his head. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure any secrets Mack had, they went with him. You know, to the grave.”
She refused to accept that the former VP of Technology’s secrets died with him. Maybe his wife knew? Or a friend? A Soul Mates employee Dave didn’t know about?
Wait.
Ellie snapped her fingers. “The security analyst you replaced. The breach happened on that person’s watch. Where is he?”
“Oh yeah, him.” Linscom shrugged. “How should I know? I can tell you his name. William Krell. But it’s not like we were buddies or anything. I only know the name because it was all over the previous audits and stuff. He was gone before I even got there.”
The name was a good tip to follow up on. Better than nothing, anyway. The fact remained that Ellie was essentially back to square one. Worse, her little trip to Durham was going to land her in hot water as soon as Detective Stoddard found out. Which, judging by Detectives Spritz and Zimmer’s smug attitudes, would be any minute now.
35
Traffic on I-95 South clogged near Florence. Clay meandered their vehicle in and out between other cars, trying to figure out which lane was the fast one. None of them seemed to be what he wanted. “You want to pull off at the next exit and grab a bite to eat? Maybe this’ll clear out some in the meantime.”
Ellie covered the mouthpiece on her phone. “No, I need to get back to the office.” She focused back on her call. “What was that you said, Carl?”
“I said I’ve tracked it down. That information I told you about. See, I got my hands on the historical records from the database. After that, I just had to cross-reference every single name with it. Was able to get a cloud-based backup and the local files.”
The pride in his voice was promising. If only she had any idea what he was trying to tell her. “In layman’s terms, please.”
“Oh, yeah…sorry. Every one of your victims was in the Soul Mates database. We missed a few originally because they weren’t all active users at the time. But here’s the real head-scratcher.”
A chorus of honking erupted around their vehicle. “People are getting antsy.” Clay craned his neck higher. “Probably an accident up ahead. Hopefully, they’ll have it cleared soon.”
“Huh?” Carl halted his explanation.
Ellie shoved her finger to her lips and motioned for Clay to keep quiet. “Nothing. Go on.” She plugged her exposed ear with her finger.
“Okay. So, someone went in after the breach and deleted names from the database. Kind of diabolical, actually. A cursory look at the information wouldn’t have revealed them.”
“Someone deleted the victims’ names from the database?” Ellie’s stomach jumped. The acumen of the Cupid Killer in capturing and disposing of his victims terrified her. He left no substantial clues behind, even covering his digital tracks. What other horrors had this guy committed that they didn’t know about yet?
She shook her head to toss the bad options from her mind. Focus. Would this new information about the database bolster her case with Detective Stoddard? The information certainly implied fishy goings-on at Soul Mates. Combined with the phony audit reports, Soul Mates was turning out to be a hotbed of suspicious activity.
Their car neared an exit already crammed with other vehicles. Clay merged into the lane to leave I-95. He clocked Ellie’s annoyance and whispered that he needed a bathroom break.
Ellie hid her annoyance at the added delay and gave him a thumbs-up. They’d never get back to Charleston at this rate. “Did you find out anything on that name I texted to you? William Krell? The security analyst when the breach happened?”
“Guy’s a ghost. Off the radar. No social media, no employment records after Soul Mates, nothing. It’s like after 2010, he stopped existing. Which, in this day and age, is really hard to do unless you specifically intend to do it.”
“So, we have a suspicious security analyst with access to the victims’ personal information.” Very odd. And possibly the break she needed, especially after such a disappointing day.
“Yep. My official opinion is that Krell purposely opened the back door to Soul Mates and then disappeared from the grid.”
Ellie chewed on her fingernail. Carl had already done a lot for her. How rude would she be if she asked for more? “Any chance you could work your magic and find out what hole William Krell’s hiding in? Without a location, I’ve got nothing to go to Detective Stoddard with.”
The pause on Carl’s end worried her. Finally, his voice piped back up. “Yeah. I have an idea. It’s a little risky, but I think it could work.”
“Thanks, Carl. Let me know if anything else comes up.”
Clay maneuvered behind a semi-truck onto a highway. A sign indicated fast-food and gas stations were just ahead. “Progress?”
“Maybe?” Ellie’s phone buzzed in her hand, and she scrunched her face. Detective Stoddard. This was not going to be a fun phone call. In fact, painful would probably be more accurate. She took a long breath and answered.
“I do not understand, Detective Kline, and it is my sincere hope that you will enlighten me.” Each word was like a knife in Ellie’s ear. “Explain how you ended up in Durham, North Carolina when I explicitly made it clear you were not to actively pursue that angle?”
“I told you I was going to follow up with Soul Mates.” Ellie twisted a piece of hair around her finger. Not exactly a lie. Just not the entire truth.
Clay pulled into a gas station and unbuckled his seat belt. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Want anything?”
Anxiety tightened her throat as Ellie shook her head, praying for him to leave the vehicle.
This was going to be a bad call. No way did she want him around for the dressing down she expected to receive.
“Yes. On the phone. Via email. A little back and forth regarding Tyson Leed.” Detective Stoddard practically growled the words. “Not an unapproved day trip to another state.”
“In my opinion, going straight to the source seemed like a better plan. An opportunity opened up, and I took it.” How much more could she finesse the truth on this one? More importantly, how much more would Stoddard let her get away with?
“In no way did I clear you to drive five hours away to chase down and interrogate suspects. Do you know how irresponsible I appeared when the Durham PD called to inform me that one of my detectives was in his city causing chaos? And I had no idea what he was talking about?”
A car pulled into the empty parking space beside Ellie. The door swung open, and a young guy in a ratty polo shirt spilled out. He stumbled into the gas station while his car continued to pulse with the beat of his music.
Ellie switched the phone to her other ear and ducked away from the boom-boom-boom of the music. “Listen, I found out something. The security analyst running things when the breach happened needs to be looked at, but he’s disappeared.”
Detective Stoddard breathed long and hard on her end of the line. “When you go in search of coincidences to support a theory, you’ll usually find them. But that’s all they are. Coincidences. Do you believe the Kennedy family is cursed? They’ve certainly had their share of bad luck.”
“I have more.” Ellie cringed at the whine in her voice. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Each victim, every single one, was in the Soul Mates database. Meaning there is a connection between Soul Mates and the Cupid Killer. Or, at the very least, his victims. And I have a hunch the guy who’s disappeared is involved. He might even be the Cupid Killer himself.”
“I don’t have time for these fancies you keep following. Nor do I have the resources for them. Let’s discuss what we know for sure, shall we? Your suspect? He’s in Durham complaining of blurred vision and a possible concussion. Do you watch the news? Perhaps you’ve heard the term police brutality tossed around?”
Ellie sank into her seat. Damn. That wasn’t good. Had she really tackled the guy so hard? The coppery taste in her mouth suggested that maybe that question was best left unasked.
If she was so banged up, she hated to imagine how Linscom felt. “Things may have gotten rough, but we have a serial killer with ties to Soul Mates on the loose, and the suspect ran when I approached him.”
“You’re right, a killer is out there, and we will catch him. But we may have to do so without your assistance.”
Ellie bit her tongue. Now is not the time to engage. How could the detective even suggest taking her off the case? She was the only one getting any results.
There was a pause long enough that Ellie figured they’d been disconnected. A disgruntled sigh broke the silence.
Detective Stoddard’s next words dripped with ice. “I want you in the office as soon as you’re back in Charleston. The very second. Captain Browning and I will be waiting for you.”
36
Detective Stoddard ignored Ellie when she entered Captain Browning’s office. Her boss’s attention remained fixed on a map of North America filled with pushpins on the wall as she roosted stiffly in one of Captain Browning’s uncomfortable chairs.
Their only communication since the phone call on the road had been a terse text from Stoddard, telling Ellie to get her butt to Browning’s office ASAP. Without being told, Ellie slid into the empty chair beside her boss and waited.
Captain Browning stood behind his gleaming desk, his back to both of them. “Durham. What the hell were you doing in Durham today?” His body tremored slightly, like the boom of his own voice startled him.
Uh oh. Ellie dug her nails into her thighs and stiffened her spine. “Following a lead, Captain.” Simple, straight to the point.
The captain whirled, digging one hand through his inky black hair. “Detective Stoddard, were you made aware of Detective Kline’s little field trip?”
Stoddard’s shoulders went back. “No, Captain. I was not informed of her visit until Detective Zimmer from the Durham Police Department contacted me this afternoon.”
