Sure enough, the mother of the suspect was the killer.She had lured her son’s friends and slain them, then threatened her son to keep him from talking.She had been caught because of a slight upward jot at the end of the curve of her lowercase h.
In real life, that wouldn't fly.The best that would do was cause them to look at her, but if they didn't uncover more substantial evidence, the case wouldn't make it to trial.But television was fun that way.You could pull a single thread, and it would lead you to the answer, and once you reached that answer, you were guaranteed success.If only life were that easy.
“Damn,” Rogers said when the episode ended.“Detective Dr.Frieman.Nice job, man.”
David thanked his new friend, but his mind was back on Maldonado and her provocative hypothesis.That paper wasn’t enough to explain the 93rd’s testing program, so what was?
The email had saidto start with Madonado, but there were other names.Maybe he should try looking into some of those.
He headed back to the computer, and Hammerton said, “Nah.You ain’t researchin’ shit.You’re still working that case.Sit back down.”
David hesitated, but it was pointless to try to lie to them."Yes.I'm conducting research.I will pass that research along to associates of ours.They'll keep going with this investigation while I behave here at home."
“Nah, I don’t think so,” Hammerton said.“Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil, do no stupid.Sit down and watch the show.If you want, we can put something else on, but I think we’re good with the laptop for tonight.”
David frowned.“I’m not going to do anything.I really am just looking.We have other people doing the legwork.I learned my lesson.”
Rogers turned to David and fixed him with small, dark, brilliant eyes."You know how we got that tip on the check-cashing place?The tip we followed that gave you a chance to get yourself almost killed?"
“Yes?”
“We got that tip because we had a junior agent monitoring the IP address of the woman we believed was laundering money for the group.We were able to track visits to certain banking and travel websites that confirmed she had been moving money between different foreign accounts and traveling to certain locales at times that aligned with major transactions from the group we were following.I can’t share any specific details, but the simple answer is that we figured out what she was doing from what she looked up online.These people who tried to kill you can find out what you’ve been looking up and realize that you’re still coming after them.So please listen to us and stop digging into holes you have no business digging through.Okay?”
“The FBI’s Cybercrimes division has encrypted my laptop to render it impervious to cracking,” David said.“Faith insisted on it.The computers in this house all use five-hundred-twelve-bit encryption now.”
Hammerton and Rogers shared a look.David lifted his hands."Look, guys, let's say I wanted to go off on my own and do some fieldwork.Is there any chance in hell that I could succeed in doing that?"
“No,” Hammerton said immediately.
“Exactly.Last time, I got away because you guys trusted me, and I took advantage of that trust.I’m sorry for that.It was wrong of me, and it put you guys in a terrible position.And I completely understand why you don’t trust me anymore.But think about it: are you guys going to fall for anything like that again?”
"Yeah, I'll stop you right there," Rogers said."Fine.Go ahead and look at whatever you're looking at.But as you said, we're not letting you get away with anything stupid."
David smiled.“Deal.You know I’m terrified of her, so you know I’m not going to do anything that would put me on her bad side.”
“Okay,” Rogers said.“If you’re that confident, then do whatever you have to do.”
David nodded and got to his feet.The two big men watched him as he returned to his laptop and opened the list of names emailed to him by the informant within the 93rdTesting Brigade.
The informant told him to start with Maldonado.Until Michael was ready to do some of the legwork associated with that, they had done all they could with her.It was time to move on to the next name.
David was about to search for the second name on the list when a new email arrived from the same sender.He opened it, heart pounding.
The short message confirmed that he wasn’t finished with Maldonado’s piece of the puzzle after all.It contained no subject and no salutation, only a simple, three-word command.
Follow the drugs.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Marcus Welling lived in Lincolnia, a medium-sized residential community just southwest of Arlington.During the short drive over, Faith had done some background research on Welling that made him look a lot better as the possible killer.
“Check this out,” Faith said.
“What is it?”Jessica asked.
“Looks like Welling served with the Corps in Afghanistan and spent two years in the brigade for which Hayes was chaplain after leaving my unit.He led his squad into battle on a Sunday morning and came back with only three of his thirteen men.”
“Ouch.”
