Allison Brennan - Silenced

“Have you talked to the runaway that Jocelyn relocated?” Kate asked, trying to break the tension in the room. “She might have some insight.”

“An agent from the Richmond office had an interview this afternoon with the girl and her mother.” He looked at his watch. “She said she’d have the report to me this evening.”

He said to Lucy, “We’re going off the theory that the three crime scenes are interconnected, but we have no suspects and the one witness who can help ran. We need her in custody.”

“I agree, to protect her. Her house is gone, her friends are dead, she’s terrified, and she’s trying to protect her sister.” Lucy didn’t like how Noah was putting Ivy in the role of suspect.

“All signs of desperation-and that’s what I’m worried about. She’s going to do something desperate and get someone killed. Genie Reid is damn lucky that bullet didn’t kill her. If it was a higher caliber, or she was turned only a few degrees, it would have hit her chest, not her arm.” Lucy had rarely seen Noah angry until this week. Now, every time they talked about the case, he seemed to be angry.

But Lucy was confident Ivy was as much a victim-and target-as those who had already been murdered. “I agree, we need to get her into protective custody, but someone is targeting all the girls in the Hawthorne house. There were at least six, and we know about five of them. Maddie and Nicole were murdered; Ivy, Mina, and Ivy’s sister are in hiding.”

“The pastor of His Grace Church near their house knows more, and I have a team outside the church watching for any sign of Hannah Edmonds or her sister. I also have a lead on the virtual phone number you ID’d on Nicole Bellows’s body.”

Noah glanced at Sean, who had been oddly silent during the entire conversation. “You were right, Rogan. Someone bought a prepaid credit card to use for the virtual phone service. We have a vague description of a forty-year-old white male of Italian or Spanish descent who last reloaded the card. Now that we have that number, we’re going back to the virtual phone company to run a reverse program, to trace that credit card to any other virtual numbers it purchased, under any name.”

Sean nodded and said with mock surprise, “Smart.”

Noah snapped back, “The FBI has a good cyber crimes team.”

“They’re adequate,” Sean said.

“Hey,” Kate said, “I’ll take you on head-to-head with a computer anytime, Rogan.”

“You’re not on cyber crimes, you teach them,” Sean grinned. “You’re head and shoulders above anyone else there.”

Noah sighed and rubbed his eyes. “I don’t have time for this, Rogan.”

Noah was showing signs of strain and fatigue, and Lucy realized there was a lot of pressure on him from all angles-Congress, Matt Slater, AD Stockton, DC Metro, Reverend Edmonds.

She forced herself to stay calm and not take his anger personally. “Let’s put the Ivy-Harris-as-suspect theory aside for a moment. Consider her as a target. Wendy was killed the day before the fire. Ivy and the others at Hawthorne Street were in the house when the fire was set-which is still ruled as inconclusive and a possible arson. We know this because of the clothes found in the hotel room. Ivy calls Jocelyn and asks for help. The girls split up for some reason-”

Kate interrupted. “That has me perplexed. Wouldn’t there be safety in numbers?”

“Maybe not everyone was home during the fire,” Lucy said. “Or they felt hiding individually was safer. Or maybe they had a falling-out.”

“And we won’t know until we talk to Hannah Edmonds, but,” Noah said with rare sarcasm, “she ran from the authorities.”

Everyone turned to Noah, equally surprised by his tone.

He didn’t notice, and said, “Just get to the point, Lucy.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sean tense and lean forward, just a bit. Couldn’t he tell Noah was on edge? Did he want to push him even more?

“My point,” she said crisply, hoping to defuse the tension for everyone, “is that when we know why these girls were targets, we’ll know who the killer is.”

“That’s a big revelation?”

Again, Lucy tried not to take the slight personally, because Noah was under strain, but it hurt. Was she stating the obvious? Except everyone was focused on finding Ivy Harris, and no one was looking now at why she was on the run.

“I think the focus has changed from finding the killer to finding Ivy. We need to do both,” Lucy said.

“We are.”

“Okay, then we have no problem.”

She swallowed her frustration and embarrassment. Her voice cracked just a bit when she said, “I’ve been thinking about the killer’s strategy. He started by trying to cover up his motive. First the attempted rape, then a fire that he tried to make look like an accident. But when that fire didn’t give him the results he wanted, he grew bolder. Killing Nicole and leaving the rat. Jamming security at a hotel, killing three people and then showering in the same room. He’s arrogant, thinks he’s smarter than most everyone and definitely smarter than the police. He will not hesitate to kill again. While he has above-average intelligence, he’s not wholly focused on self-preservation. Coming after Ivy in daylight was dangerous for him.”

“Especially,” Kate said, “because she jumped into a cop car.”

Lucy shook her head. “He might not have known. Genie’s car is unmarked-not even a government plate. But if you get closer-like he did-he might have been able to see the radio panel, or maybe he knew what Detective Reid looked like.”

“You think he went back to his crime scenes?” Noah made a note. “We photographed bystanders.”

“No, he’s not the type of killer who would go back. He’s not killing because of a thrill. I can’t say whether he gets any personal rush from murder, but that’s not the reason he kills. He does like to play games, however. That’s why the messages are important. He’s taunting his victims, but there’s no guarantee his targets will even see the messages. He is the type who would monitor the investigation. Listen to the media. Read the newspapers. Follow online media for any rumors or theories. He doesn’t want to be caught, but he definitely wants to finish his mission. And his mission is to kill the six girls who lived at the Hawthorne Street house.

“And the only thing that makes sense,” Lucy continued, “knowing what we know about Ivy Harris and Wendy James’s secret room, is that together they knew something that was dangerous to one of their clients. That maybe they worked together to record men like Alan Crowley to blackmail or threaten them.”

“So far, finances on Crowley and the other men we know Wendy was involved with are clean. No unusual payments. But,” Noah added, “Stein’s team is going through them again at different angles, as well as those zindividuals who rented apartment seven-ten. Maybe there’s something there, but it’s buried. And Stein’s team is going through all the public filings of DSA, to see if something matches up to the other records.”

“DSA?” Kate asked.

“Devon Sullivan and Associates, James’s former employer. They’re lobbyists.”

“They fired Wendy after the affair with Crowley was exposed,” Lucy said.

Kate rolled her eyes. “So a single female secretary gets fired for having an affair with a married guy, but the said married guy is still a sitting congressman pulling in over a hundred thou annually, with perks? That sucks.”

“Things haven’t changed much over the centuries,” Sean interjected. “Look at Hester Prynne.”

Noah cleared his throat. “Psychologically speaking, do you think we can bluff the killer into making a move?”