She stowed her phone. “Prints lifted at the apartment in Tacoma matched the container prints.”
Mack looked up from the backpack he was pawing through.“Then we were right. The container guys were both there. Hopefully we’ll get some good prints from this place proving they were here too.”
Kiley nodded. “And get the information we need from Interpol to match it up to Nabi’s and Shah’s prints.”
Sean closed his laptop. “Finished the last plate from the lot. All but two check out. They’re for rentals, so I have Cam tracking them down.”
Evan lifted Amari’s shoulder, but the lamp cast a shadow on the arm. “I can’t see the tat clearly. Too dark. Can someone help me lift his shoulder so I can take a picture of it?”
Kiley moved around the body and squatted next to him to pull up the dead man’s shoulder.
Evan snapped a few pictures and looked at the screen. “Wow. Oh, wow.” He held out his phone to Kiley.
“A Soundwave tattoo.” Excitement burned in her expression.
Mack stepped over to them. “Never heard of it.”
“Sounds and messages are embedded in the tattoo, and you can listen to them with a special app,” she said, grabbing her phone from her pocket and tapping the screen.
“Sounds. Like what kind?” Sean got up to join them.
“It’s usually used for personal things,” Evan said. “Like a spouse’s voice saying I love you, or a child’s voice or laughter.”
“Where do we get the app?” Mack asked.
Kiley held up her phone. “I’ve got it downloading now. I’ll have to hold my phone over the tattoo, so we’ll need to turn the body.”
“Could mess with forensics trajectory calculations,” Mack said.
Kiley looked at her team. “Are we in agreement that moving him is the right thing to do?”
“It’s not like we don’t know the cause of death,” Mack said. “And we shouldn’t have to lift him much more than you did for the picture and won’t alter his position.”
“Agreed,” Sean said. “This isn’t a homicide investigation, and we have millions of people counting on us figuring this out.”
Her phone dinged. “App’s ready.” She eyed the team in a dramatic pause.
Evan felt the tension in the room skyrocket.
“I’ll help stabilize him so he doesn’t move.” Mack bent over the body.
Evan lifted the shoulder, concentrating on revealing the ink while keeping the body stable.
Kiley placed her phone over the tattoo. A deep male voice came from the speaker, the words in a foreign language.
“Anyone catch that?” Kiley asked. “Sounded like Arabic to me.”
“Play it again,” Sean said. “I’ll record it on my phone so we can get a translator working on it.”
Evan positioned his phone over the tattoo again while Sean held his phone close. He played back the recording. “Got it.”
Mack looked at Evan. “Great job, man. This could be the thing to bust this case wide open.”
Evan nodded as he thought the same thing. Selfishly he also hoped it was enough to get Kiley to forgive him for his hasty tackle and keep her from sending him out of her life and away from the most important investigation of his career.
CHAPTER 24
KILEY JOINED THE TEAMin the large conference room at the FBI’s busy Los Angeles field office. A perfect place to work on the threat, as the staff in one of the biggest offices in the bureau offered unlimited resources. She’d already taken advantage of that, requesting an interpreter for the tattoo message on the way in.
