Blood List (14 page)

The three of them watched Jerri smooth her skirt and sit across from Paul Renner. After a few calculated moments arranging her notepad and pens, she looked up at Paul. "Mr. Renner, this isn't a standard interrogation, as it's at your request. You claim to have information to provide. Please begin."

Doug Goldman stood near the door. A practiced look of complete boredom as he leaned into the wall typically had even experienced perps assuming he was there for muscle or intimidation. In truth, Doug did provide bulk when necessary, but his keen mind had already begun examining Paul's body language and mannerisms.

"Seven people," Paul said. "A man hired me to assassinate seven different people. He's hired at least one other person to kill two more. He made efforts to conceal his identity, and I don't think that he knows that I know it was the same guy each time, and there is, as far as I can tell, no rhyme or reason to the targets.

"I'm going to give you the targets' names." He paused for a drink of water. Unless Renner was stupid, and Gene had no reason to believe he was, he knew full well that once he gave them names they might change their minds and put him away forever.

Jerri interjected. "How do you know he hired another killer for these other two jobs?"

"That, I'm not going to tell you. If it makes less paperwork for you, pretend I did them," Renner said. Jerri motioned for him to continue. Behind the glass, Marty sneered. Gene put his finger to his lips and kept watching.

"And?" she asked.

"And I need you to use your fancy databases to find the link," Paul said.

"Mr. Renner," Jerri began with her first scripted question. "Sometimes the insane will pick targets at random. What makes you so sure there's a pattern here?"

"No one, not even the richest of the filthy stinking rich, spends fifty-thousand dollars a pop killing people at random. There's no such thing as a psychotic who hires out his killings. That means there's a pattern, and I just don't see it. The only thing I know that they all have in common is that they're all over forty."

Marty, Gene, and Carl shared knowing glances, having plenty of first-hand experience with how difficult it was to find a pattern to Paul's kills. "Let's start with the most recent contract," Jerri's voice came through the glass.

"The most recent contract, or the most recent completed contract?"

"Part of the pattern may be the timeline itself, so let's start with the most recent event and move backward." Gene knew that Jerri deliberately avoided words like "murder"' and "killing."
Let him use them all he wants,
he thought.
But there's no sense putting him on the defensive. Not yet, anyway.

"The last time I was called I turned down the job. It was for a retired guy in Lincoln, Nebraska," Paul began. He fingered one of the electrodes stuck to his chest and frowned at the mirror. "His name is Kevin Parsons."

Sam broke in through their ear-beads. "Paul, do you know his street address?"

"271 Hawkes Drive," he said with annoyance, though Gene couldn't tell what annoyed him.

"One moment," Sam said. After a brief pause, she rattled off information into their ears. "Okay, got him. Kevin Sean Parsons. Born May 17th, 1945…." Her voice trailed off. "A missing persons report was filed on him seven months ago. He never showed up for church. His house was destroyed. Arson. Is Mr. Renner sure he turned that job down?"

Renner looked even more annoyed. "I'm sure."

Sam was obviously lost in thought, so Jerri jumped back in. "What date were you contacted for this contract?"

"This past June. I think the 22nd or 23rd."

"Do you remember the time of day?"

"Not really," Paul said. "It's just a text to a cell phone. I don't even check it every day."

Jerri continued with question after question. Even though they recorded all interrogations, she wrote down every detail in stenographer's shorthand. "The contract that preceded Kevin Parsons involved whom?" 

"Larry Johnson." 

It was as if the temperature had dropped by fifteen degrees. "Here we go," Carl whispered to Marty as Gene looked through the glass.

"And how did you eliminate Mr. Johnson?" Jerri asked.

"You know damn well I didn't get him. You interrupted me."

"But…." Jerri hesitated. "What about the psychotic break?"

Paul leaned forward, his eyebrows raised. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

Jerri looked at the mirror, then back at Paul. "You're telling me that you didn't kill him while he was in custody?"

Paul's eyes widened. "No, I didn't even know he was dead. My employer must have found someone else."

Jerri fiddled with her notes for a moment, then changed the subject. "Very well. Who preceded Larry Johnson?"

"Jenny Sykes." 

Jenny Sykes wasn't just some victim in a case file. Memories of a charred corpse and scattered body parts still haunted Gene's dreams, as did the text-messaged taunt that erased Jenny Sykes from the earth. Paul Renner had just admitted to first-degree murder. On tape.

"What date were you contacted for this contract?" It was a credit to Jerri's professionalism that she sounded exactly the same as when she had asked about Kevin Parsons.

The debrief took less than forty minutes. At its completion, Sam had starts on dossiers for nine victims; seven, if you didn't count Larry Johnson and Kevin Parsons.

"What about…?" Jerri paused and leafed through her notebook. "Daniel Burnhardt. He matches the age pattern."

Paul's brow crinkled with distaste. "That was a CIA job." His voice went flat. "That contract isn't relevant to this investigation."

Behind the glass, Gene shared a look with Carl. "Why is she bringing up Burnhardt?" His throbbing foot and nose made it difficult to concentrate, and he was afraid he'd missed something.

Carl shrugged.

Through the glass, Paul looked angry. "What's your game, Agent Bates?" Doug shifted his weight against the wall to draw Paul's attention.

"I'm just validating some assumptions, Mr. Renner," she said.

"Well, I'm not here to validate your assumptions." Doug stepped forward as Paul stood. "You have the information you need. So," he said in a raised voice as he faced the one-way mirror, "Agent Palomini. Time to prove you're a man of your word." Paul walked toward the door and stopped, eye level with Doug's chest. Without lifting his head, he looked up into Doug's eyes and waited.

"Don't do it, Gene," said Marty.

"Let him out, Doug," Gene said through the COM. Paul's lack of reaction showed that Sam had turned off his ear-bead. After a blatantly antagonistic size-up, Doug stepped aside.

A guard opened the door to let Paul out. "Okay, we're done for the day. Everyone check out. We'll see you in the morning. Renner, you're with me. Your security detail will follow us to the hotel."

January 7th, 8:00 AM PST; Conference Room 4, Front Street FBI Building; San Diego, California.

Carl spent the next day directing the team as they compiled massive amounts of information:  birth and death certificates, driver's licenses, passports, and medical and dental records. The organizations that required subpoenas to release information were hacked by Sam. They could get warrants later if they needed them. With Renner's confession to murder one on tape, no one cared if they invalidated some of this evidence.

Newspaper articles, alumni lists, high school and college transcripts. Fingerprints, military service records, library cards, credit records, and business records. Resumes, online forum posts, blogs. All of these things were found, copied, scanned, collated, annotated, and packed into tidy electronic files for each victim.

By midday, Paul was pitching in, feeding file after file into the insatiable scanner. He looked bored out of his mind. Carl walked by him and chuckled. "Lucky you, Renner. Now you get to see how glamorous and exciting real police work is."

Paul returned Carl's grin. "I hope this isn't the fun part."

"Not even close," Carl said. "Next we set up bulk classifications to assign each piece of data to, then spend hour after hour doing the assignments. The computers can do some of it for us, and they'll be instrumental once it's all scanned in, but this sort of thing comes down to a person seeing something that makes a connection. That's the only reason you're here. Something might jog in your memory when you see the data classified and organized properly."

"Great," Paul said without enthusiasm.

By six-thirty that evening, every possible document for each victim had been scanned. Sophisticated optical-character-recognition software went to work converting pictures of documents and hand-written letters into computer-readable text.

"Everyone take your gear with you tonight," Gene announced. He stood and grabbed his brand-new pair of crutches. "Our plane leaves at oh-nine-forty. Get there early. We have to pass through normal airport security. This is a commercial flight, not Bureau."

A chorus of groans answered. Airport security in San Diego was bad enough for civilians. Gone were the good old days when an agent could flash his badge and walk around the detectors. Now there was paperwork, lots and lots of paperwork, and all of it had to be perfect to allow weapons through security.

Marty gave Paul a smug look, which Renner seemed not to notice
.

Despite Paul Renner's unwelcome presence, Carl felt pretty good. They had a massive amount of data, and it felt like they were glutted with clues and leads. It was a pleasant change of pace.

At dinnertime most of the team called it a day. While the others went out to eat or to their hotel rooms for some shuteye, Carl stayed behind. He worked with Sam to create bulk classifications for the data. After ninety minutes, Carl yawned and looked at the clock. He hadn't done anything productive in two minutes.

"Hey, Sam?"

"Yeah, babe?" 

"I think I'm going to cut out, grab a bite, call my wife, and get some sleep. It's been a long day."

"No worries. We're about past where I need you anyway. I'll wrap the rest of this up in the next couple of hours. Should give you a lot more to do on the plane tomorrow."

"Sounds good. Goodnight, Sam."

Sam giggled. "Goodnight, Ralph."

Ralph?
Carl thought.
Whatever.
He shut down his computer and headed out in search of food.

*   *   *

January 8th, 10:20 AM CST; Central Air Flight 1551; Somewhere over the continental United States.

For all the whining, Paul thought they'd made it through security in no time. The small jet was neither crowded nor cramped and had reasonable legroom even for people using laptop computers. Gene sat in the front, with the most legroom possible to accommodate his swollen feet, the seat next to him empty except for his crutches. Paul found it a little strange how none of the paper files followed the team to D.C. The entire kit and caboodle was now digital.
Soon everything everyone has ever known will fit in a wristwatch,
he thought
.

Not a fan of plane travel even without cracked ribs, Paul had dressed for comfort—elastic-banded jogging pants, an overlarge T-shirt in nondescript gray, and a comfortable pair of tattered Reeboks. He looked more like someone out for a morning run than traveling across the country on a plane stuffed with federal agents.

The team spent their time doing data classification, which to Paul seemed a lot like turning a needle in a haystack into thirty needles in thirty haystacks.
Only in this case haystacks are called
"
bulk classifications.
"
Apparently there were computers in D.C. that automated much of the process, but it still looked like a never-ending pile to Paul. The manual boredom of the previous day became digital boredom.

After an hour of click-drag-drop
ad nauseum,
Paul stood to stretch his legs and rest his eyes, if only for a moment. A mini-fridge sat at the front of First Class, right next to the cockpit door, so he grabbed himself a can of Coke, flashing his eyebrows at Gene as he slid past. Jerri looked up when he popped the tab, and, as Paul slurped his first taste, she signaled for him to bring her one.

He grabbed a second can, ignored the look of reproach from the stewardess, shut the fridge with his foot, and walked to the back of the cabin. "Thanks," Jerri said as she took the offered beverage. Paul noted that she didn't look at him with the disgust or disdain of the past few days. At least for this fleeting moment, he had evolved in her mind from pond scum to guy-who-grabbed-her-a-Coke.
Looks like I'm moving up in the world.

He sat next to her and looked at her screen. She was working on the same thing they all were, sorting data and shoving it into piles. Click-drag-drop
.
More as a reason to forestall a retreat back to his own private click-drag-drop hell than to start a conversation, he said, "How long is this step supposed to take?"

"Oh, I don't know," Jerri said. "As long as it does. I hope we're done before we land, but probably not. Not too long after, anyway."

"What was that?" 

Jerri looked from her screen to Paul's face. "What was what?"

"You just looked at my hands, shuddered, and looked away. Why?"

"I—" She paused. "I probably shouldn't get into it."

"Does it have something to do with why you asked me about the Burnhardt job?" Paul could tell he had hit a nerve.

"Mr. Renner—"

"Call me Paul."

"Mr. Renner, you strangled a man to death with your bare hands." Her shudder was more pronounced this time. "Frankly, I find your hands to be positively creepy."

"Why?" Paul asked, holding them up for examination. "They're just hands. Just like yours, or Gene's, or anyone else's."

"Look, even if I found myself in a position where I was going to kill someone, I could never choke the life out of them. It's too…personal."