Blood of Others (25 page)

“What’s this?”

“Ammunition, if you decide to go
into battle.” Gricks left several crumpled bills on the table then stood to
leave. “I’m not involved. Understand. You’re on your own, Ben.”

Walkie-talkie chatter
snapped back and forth
on the restaurant set near the financial district where an exhausted
stone-faced crew was shooting a TV commercial. Sydowski looked for Louise.

“Sir?”

The tanned muscle-bound security
guard placed his hand on Sydowski’s shoulder. “This part of the restaurant is a
closed set. You have to leave.”

Sydowski looked at the hand, then
at the guard. He opened his jacket, revealing his gun, then fished his SFPD
star from his jacket. No other words were required.

Sydowski made his way deeper into
the set. Louise was refusing his calls. He had a little time before his next
homicide meeting. Before letting him go, Turgeon checked his cell phone and increased
the ring volume.

Picking his way through the
conversations, young girls with clipboards, the technicians in torn jeans,
carrying electrical equipment, the suits drinking over-priced mineral water
from ornate bottles, Sydowski saw Louise sitting by herself at a table,
crunching on a celery stick, studying a script. She didn’t look up from the
pages.

“You here to apologize, or arrest
me, Walter?”

“Arrest you?”

“For the crime of trying to help
an obstinate jackass.”

“Those are my only choices?” He
pleaded into her lovely green eyes. She was still cross with him. “I’ve come to
apologize, Louise.”

She flipped her script over,
folded her arms. “Go on.”

“I was wrong.” He sat down.
“Look, I won’t go into Reggie getting shot because of Wyatt freezing on him.
That’s a raw wound with me. You have to understand that.”

“You’ve made it abundantly
clear.”

“Louise, I was wrong for the way
I treated you.”

“I was only trying to help.”

“I know.” Sydowski’s phone rang.
He slipped on his bifocals to study the keypad of his ringing new cell phone.
“I liked the old ones better. These new tiny things are a chore.”

“You don’t deserve me, you know?”
Louise pulled up her bag to rummage through it.

“I know.” He pressed the right
button. “Sydowski.”

“It’s Linda. I’ve just rolled up
out front where you are. Horace called. He’s waiting for us at Hunter’s Point.”

“Be there in two minutes.” He
hung up and stood. “I have to go.”

“Here.” Louise passed him a brown
envelope. Looked like it was from a legal firm. “This is for Reggie Pope. You
have to get it to him.”

“What is it?”

“Remember, I had asked my friend
to do some quick checking? Well it seems Reggie may have a civil case against
the building’s owner, or the city.”

“But Louise, he can’t afford --”

“No fees. He’s doing this as a
favor for me.”

Sydowski tucked the envelope in
his jacket, kissed Louise on her cheek, then left.

Turgeon drove to the crime lab.

“Everything all kissie face with
Louise, Walt?”

Sydowski made a point of not
answering her.

“Just remember the golden rule.
Women are always right. Men are always wrong. Got it? Repeat after me, Walt.
Women are always --”

He fired a dead serious stare at
her.

“Oh my. It didn’t go well, then?”

“We’re fine, Linda. Knock it off,
please.”

“All right, Inspector Serious.
Since you patched things up with Louise, are you going to patch it up with
Wyatt?”

Another stare.

“Walt, we could use him to help
us narrow things. Ever think of that?”

“He’s a liability. He’s the
reason Reggie Pope is picking through garbage. Anything
he
brings us,
his cyber-phantom crap, will not stand up in court. Not with his history. I
could just see a defense attorney feasting on his background.”

A block later Turgeon pressed
him. “I know we’re building up the physical, but what about the line we’ve
kicked around that she met him on-line? Walt, we know full well the country is
dotted with homicides by creeps using the Internet to troll for victims.”

“I agree. We haven’t discounted
it. We’ve given Wyatt free reign but so far he’s found nothing. Look, I do take
that investigative line seriously. I’ve backed us up.”

“How?”

“I’ve made a few calls. We’re
covered.”

“I’m your partner.”

“Leo agreed to let me pass Iris
Wood’s ISP account information to a friend with computer intrusion at Justice
in Sacramento. So far he’s found nothing.”

“Thanks for telling me. You going
to let me and Dee query VICAP locally now? We all agree he’s mobile. Maybe we
should just make a full submission. What do you think?”

“Too risky. Things could leak to
the press. It would be a dangerous gamble at this stage.”

“I don’t know.”

“What don’t you know? Horace has
given us some solid physical evidence and a potential suspect pool that he is
busting his hump to shrink. We’ve got a shoe impression and the BWI sticker. We
can build on this a brick at a time.”

Turgeon parked the car at
Building 606.

Horace was at his desk on the
phone, finishing a call. After hanging up, he picked up a file folder from his
desk. “Have a seat.” Horace wet his forefinger.

“Is this good?”

“It will reduce the pool, but I
want to explain.”

Turgeon pulled out her notebook,
cueing Sydowski to do the same.

“As you recall, the torn BWI
sticker had an array of trace carpet fibers. We concluded analysis for the
flock type that gave us Five Star American Skyways and the passenger lists.”

“We’re working hard on the pool
of names.” Sydowski lifted his bifocals to stare at Horace’s computer screen.

“Next we analyzed other carpet
fibers, and found the nylon type used in cars. I did some XRF work, which
basically detects elements found in carpet fibers. Helps me make a
distinction.”

“Those the fibers on your
screen?” Turgeon said.

“Yes. Now, judging from the
color-key, dyes, and other factors, I would suggest it is the type found in
rental fleet cars manufactured by Ford.”

Sydowski and Turgeon exchanged
glances.

“Could narrow things.” Sydowski
made a note.

“I want to caution you, Walt,
there are many variables. I’m giving you probabilities that the carpet is
consistent with that found in late-model Fords. We’re going out on a limb.”

“Horace, we know. Just tell us
the best place to start looking.”

“San Francisco International is
served by nine major car rental agencies, including the new one.” Horace handed
Sydowski a list. As you can see where I’ve indicated, four of them offered the
full-sized Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable models with the type of carpet
consistent with the fibers we found from the suspect’s shoe trace.”

“This is outstanding work,
Horace.”

“I’m going to do some more
involved analysis on the auto fibers to see if I can kick down that list even
more.”

During the drive to the Hall of
Justice, Sydowski called ahead to alert Lieutenant Gonzales.

“Leo, we’ve got another break.”

Sydowski told him what Horace had
found and how they were going to need the cooperation of car rental agencies to
show the contracts for Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable models rented at the
airport for the same period as the airline passenger list.

Gonzales got things moving fast.

Turgeon was pleased. “I think
this is a good day, Walt. How ’bout you?”

“It’s a good day.”

While Belinda Holcomb’s
casket was lowered
into the ground at a tiny cemetery near the Minnesota-Manitoba border, homicide
detectives in Toronto intensified their hunt for her killer.

Reesor and Winslow assembled
every detail they had on her murder to feed into a powerful computer program
designed to track serial criminals who crossed jurisdictions.

Canada’s version of the FBI’s
VICAP is the Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System, known as ViCLAS. It is
administered locally at regional centers and nationally by the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police. As it is in some states, it is law in the Canadian province of
Ontario that police investigating major violent crimes submit their case to the
system.

Reesor liked using databases but,
like most investigators, he hated using it whenever he had a fresh murder where
he had a suspect in custody, a virtual grounder that he was certain was a
one-time,
I didn’t mean to kill him
deal, with no links to anything or
anybody other than the sorry humps involved.

The RCMP has adapted the FBI’s
VICAP concept, enhancing it by requiring detectives to complete 262 questions
on homicides and sexual assaults; every iota on the crime scene, even
hold-back.

That’s where Reesor, like most
cops, had a problem. He never was comfortable with the law requiring him to
give up his hold-back. Often, he felt hold-back was more than critical to a
case, it
was
the case.

Then there was the security
issue. There were only several dozen specialists across the country with access
to the system. Under special laws, the information they analyzed was classified
restricted. It could not be released. Hold-back evidence in case reports was
X’d in the system and could only be accessed by a security-rated specialist
working with the people who owned the case. The system was a stand-alone
network with built in security measures which tracked and recorded everyone who
viewed a file.

Still, detectives feared leaks
and were wary about submitting cases.

To Reesor, the system was more
red tape to add to his burden of paperwork when he should be on the street
chasing down leads, bringing in suspects. Often he and Winslow sweated blood
for key evidence on a case. The notion of sharing what they had with lazy,
sloppy investigators in other jurisdictions sickened him. Sometimes the ViCLAS
book was occasionally forgotten until a supervisor reminded detectives of the
legal deadline requiring it to be completed.

“Jackie, I swear, sometimes this
thing is like writing an exam,” Reesor said two hours after they had started
answering the questions.

“Sure, babe, but we know it
works. Here’s the autopsy.”

That was the thing about ViCLAS,
VICAP, and similar systems. As years went by and more police forces submitted
cases and used them effectively, more dramatic success stories surfaced. In
one, a twenty-year-old murder was solved when a cold-case squad submitted it to
the FBI in Quantico. Within an hour, it was linked to a new homicide in
Orlando, Florida, through the killer’s handwriting found at both scenes. In
another file, ViCLAS linked the murders of seven hookers, five in Detroit and
two across the river in Windsor, to a trucker. Diehards like Reesor were slowly
beginning to see the light.

Reesor studied Fydor’s report on
the tattered airport code fragment, and the list of airports it could be linked
to: Buffalo, Burbank, Baltimore, Abileen, West Palm Beach, Billings, or any of
the other cities on his list.

Which one is a link to our
murder?

Reesor then submitted all the
details he had on the shoe impression, believing that the answers to the case
were outside of Toronto.

“Let’s go, Jackie.” Reesor closed
his ViCLAS book. His entire case was going out there. Everything.

Reesor’s supervisor signed his
submission. It went to the sexual assault squad, which coordinated all of
Toronto’s submissions to the ViCLAS provincial center.

The center was located at Ontario
Provincial Police headquarters in Orillia, an hour’s drive north of Toronto.
Inside the new postmodern building, within the behavioural science section, a
ViCLAS specialist entered the file into the computer system. She began
searching for potential linkages similar to crimes committed across the
province and the country. No immediate links. It was going to take time for
further analysis, like checking parolee data banks, other police computer
files, and talking to the investigators.

The bright faces of her son and
daughter on a mall Santa’s knee smiled back at her from a framed picture as she
studied crime scene photos of Belinda Holcomb, stabbed repeatedly in the heart
while watching
Romeo and Juliet
in a Toronto theater. The specialist
entered her codes for access to Reesor’s hold-back evidence. Sipping tea from
her
World’s Greatest Mom
mug, she examined every detail three times.

Oh boy. This is data we should
move on.

She reached for her telephone,
punching a special speed-dial number.

The line was answered on the
first ring.

“Lardner.”

“Art, it’s Sadie. How’s your
caseload?”

“Up to my armpits in work before
vacation, why?”

“I’ve got one for you that you
should submit to VICAP in Quantico. He looks mobile. You should see this one
now.”

“All right, kid.”

The RCMP’s Technical and
Protective Operational Facilities base is some sixty miles north of New York’s
border with Canada. It sits on Ottawa’s east side between expressways and
sprawling suburbs nearly hidden on a forested hilltop overlooking strawberry
patches, apple orchards, and disappearing dairy country. Razor wire tops the
chain-link fence lining the grounds. A black steel gate with a guard booth,
security cameras and restricted-access warnings, protects the building. A bison
head, the seal of the RCMP, rises specter-like out of the building’s soft gray
stone over the entrance. The sounds of birdsong, flapping flags, and the hum of
the traffic do not betray the deadly serious work going on behind the dark
green windows.

Inside the building, among its
secret sections, RCMP Sergeant Arthur Lardner, a seasoned ViCLAS specialist
with the highest-level security clearance within the program, was analyzing the
fresh Toronto case. Lardner had talked directly with Reesor and Fydor several
times over the phone about the critical details.

“Be careful with our file,
Lardner,” Reesor said.

When he was satisfied he knew
enough, the next call Lardner made on the file was to the FBI’s VICAP
coordinator in Quantico who handled RCMP submissions. The Mountie told his FBI
colleague about the new case.

“We better get that into our
program right away,” the FBI specialist said. “Shoot it down on the encrypted
fax. You’ve got the number.”