Steven James - The Queen

“No,” Ellory answered. “If there was I don't know what it would be.”

The web history had been deleted, but the hard drive hadn’t been wiped. It wasn’t difficult to click into the terminal window, enter a few lines of code that Angela Knight, my friend in the Bureau’s Cybercrime Division, had taught me, and pull up the files.

Someone had been surfing through the naval archives of Ohio Class fleet ballistic missile submarine, or SSBN, deployment records from the 1980s. I could hardly believe the information was made available to the public, but then again, the data was three decades old. A few mouse clicks told me that the Cold War archives weren’t considered matters of national security any longer, and a Freedom of Information Act request had apparently been filed by a group known as Eco-Tech four months ago.

Interesting.

Following up on that, I discovered that Eco-Tech had done some consulting for half a dozen Fortune 500 companies and two foreign governments-Brazil and Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, Jake kept his questions coming to Ellory. “Did Donnie have any mental or emotional problems that you’re aware of?”

“Not that I know of.”

I checked the time the sub archives were last opened.

Just minutes after the murders.

After the murders.

Odd.

Donnie was in the Navy. Maybe he was searching the sites.

But why then?

I heard a car crunch to a stop out front, possibly Agent Farraday. After I finished downloading the web history and email records to my laptop, I headed for the front door.

“Job dissatisfaction?” Jake asked Ellory behind me.

“Nope. He works at the sawmill over on Highway K. Far as I know he had no problems at work. Nothing like that.”

Boots on again, I stepped onto the porch. The frigid air bit at me, and I tugged on my wool hat. Natasha Farraday exited the car.

Natasha smiled. Early thirties. Dark hair. Demure. Spot-on professionally. Even though we’d never dated, I’d sensed for a while that she had a thing for me. However, because of my relationship with Lien-hua, who also worked for the Bureau as one of its top profilers, I’d made sure to keep things with Natasha completely on the friends-only level.

After she greeted me, a stern-looking fiftyish man with shaggy, wolfish eyebrows followed her out of the car, stuck out his hand, and introduced himself as the county coroner. “Jeddar Linnaman, good to meet you.”

I wasn’t sure I’d heard that right. “Jeddar?”

“Full name’s Jedderick, like Frederick but with an extra d. Everyone just calls me Jeddar.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“Agent Farraday told me all about you, Dr. Bowers. It’s an honor to work with you.”

The PhD wasn’t something I liked drawing attention to. “Thank you. Just call me Pat.”

After filling in the two of them on what we knew, I asked Natasha to pay special attention to the carpet fibers in the house and prints on the laundry room doorknob. “We’ll also want to compare the boots by the door to the size and visible wear patterns of the sole impressions outside the laundry room.”

“Got it.”

“The computer was accessed after the murders, websites having to do with submarine deployments. I’m going to want to pull all the sectors to get a byte-level data analysis.”

“That’ll take time,” she said, mirroring my thoughts.

“Yes.”

Depending on the size of the files and the computer’s processing speed, it could take up to twenty-four hours to upload the entire drive to the Cybercrime Division’s FTP server.

“Go ahead and do a cursory review of recently accessed files,” I said. “I’ll get the emails and web history to Cybercrime, but I’d like your eyes on the registry as well; see what else you can find.”

She agreed, then, carrying her forensics investigation kit, she entered the house with Jeddar Linnaman.

Already there was a lot to think about, and I needed to sort some things through. Taking a walk helps me collect my thoughts, so I stayed outside, zipped up my jacket, donned my leather gloves, and stepped into the night.

The two state troopers who’d been stationed on the porch had left when Natasha and Linnaman arrived, and with no one else around, the night closed in on me, embraced me, stinging and cold and quiet and still.

I headed down the driveway, mentally evaluating the clues.

Every crime occurs at the nexus of five factors:

(1) offender desire

(2) target availability

(3) location

(4) time

(5) lack of authority figure or supervision

Take away any of the five and you have no crime. Entire schools of criminological theory have sprung up over the last 130 years focusing on how to eliminate one or another of the factors from the crime equation.

Some investigators, mostly profilers and forensic psychologists, focus on the first issue-the offender’s motivation: Why does he do it? What’s going through his head at the time of the crime? Personally, I’ve found it’s more helpful to just accept the fact that this person was motivated, for whatever reason-and probably for more than one-to commit the offense.

Other theorists study victimology or location: Who was victimized? How can you keep these people from being in high-risk areas at high-risk times? Some researchers study how people perceive public and private spaces and the likelihood of crime in those locations. Others track the temporal fluctuations of crime. And, of course, some criminologists try to increase (or give the appearance of increased) law enforcement presence, such as leaving empty police cars on busy roads or installing fake video surveillance cameras in conspicuous places.

Five factors.

Stop one, stop the crime.

Yet even though it’s vital to deter crimes whenever possible, I’ve always been more in the business of solving them after they do occur.

Like today at 1:48 p.m.-if the recollection of Mrs. Frasier was correct.

Three initial questions rolled through my mind: Why then? Why there? Why Ardis and Lizzie?

As I walked toward the mailbox, I clicked through what we knew so far about the progression of events:

1:48 p.m.

Shots fired-Still need to confirm the time.

2:41 p.m.

Snowmobile tracks veering off the trail are discovered entering a stretch of open water on Tomahawk Lake. Deputy Ellory photographs the tracks, then calls the FBI, emails the photos to the Lab.

3:30 p.m.

The Lab identifies the tracks, and local law enforcement narrows down the pool of possible victims to four people in the area who own that model snowmobile.

4:02 p.m.

Officers follow up on the owners and find Ardis and Lizzie Pickron murdered; Donnie missing.

4:30 p.m.

Admiral Winchester, the Chief of Naval Operations, is already pressuring FBI Director Wellington to have agents look into the case.

A thought: So why the FBI and not NCIS? But the answer was immediately obvious: the Naval Criminal Investigative Service only investigates crimes involving active duty military personnel, and Donnie was retired military rather than active duty.

That left the Bureau rather than NCIS, but still-why the high-level interest in a sawmill worker’s disappearance?

That was the big question. The hinge upon which all the other facts swung.

The Navy’s interest in the crime and the recently accessed websites on Ohio Class submarines didn’t support the theory that the snowmobile’s trip off the ice and Donnie’s disappearance were the result of a simple suicide or a haphazard accident during a flight from a crime scene.

It didn’t appear to be a robbery gone bad either.

When you move through a case, it’s best to ask the sensible, obvious questions first, just like a reporter might do: Who? What? Where? When? Why? How?