“We know these guys are potential bombers, right?”
Kiley nodded.
“I’d like to evaluate the door for any possible charges before we go barreling in.”
Kiley might have passed his ongoing concern off as lingering guilt over failing on Olin’s op, but Evan was right. She should’ve thought of making sure the apartment wasn’t rigged to blow. “Sounds like a good plan.”
“I agree,” Mack said. “We’ve got all the tools you need in the SUV. I’ll get them organized for you.”
“Thanks.” She looked back at Evan. “Will you start calling the people Waleed provided for his alibi for Firuzeh’s murder?”
“Glad to.” He reached for his phone.
She looked at Cam. “What about your algorithm linking Malouf, Barzani, Waleed, or Amari?”
“Still running, but no data. If it was going to return anything, I think it would’ve by now.”
Kiley was getting more and more disappointed in their lack of progress, yet she made sure not to convey this to the others. “Let it run. You never know.”
Mack looked up. “Just got an email from the analyst in charge of monitoring the video games. They’ve had chatter that makes no sense. Transcript’s printing.”
Cam shook his head. “I’ll never live it down if Kiley’s right and they communicated that way.”
She mocked twisting the ends of an imaginary mustache as she moved to the printer. She reviewed the conversation. “It’s every bit as senseless as the analyst said. Like the letter recovered at the Abeds’ mailbox store. We need to have this evaluated for code.”
She texted Eisenhower asking him to secure another code analyst. His affirmative reply came immediately.
“Eisenhower’s looking for an analyst,” she told Mack. “See what they know about where the game transmissions originated.”
“I’ll follow up on the information we need to obtain a warrant for Sony.”
“You know that’s gonna take some time to serve and get the information back,” Cam said. “The suspects will likely have relocated by then.”
Kiley nodded. “We still need to run it down.”
“Yeah.” Cam scowled. “No stone unturned. Because these slimy terrorists live under rocks.”
“Got ATM and nearby businesses’ video from Thursday night,” Cam said.
“Put the first one up on the screen.” Kiley closed her computer to put away the bulletin board pictures from The Righteous’s office, the police reports detailing the convenience store manager’s 911 calls, and the store security videos she’d been working on for the last three hours. Nothing stood out to her, but she forwarded the files to Counterterrorism to compare to known ISIS connections just in case.
“Okay,” Cam said. “Here you go.”
The ATM video played on the TV, and the camera caught Rostami’s hand as he scratched his chin.
Kiley spotted a black blob near his wrist. “Zoom in on his hand.”
The close-up revealed a black circle with white Arabic writing.
Evan moved closer to the screen. “It’s the seal of Muhammad. The writing says ‘of Allah is the prophet Muhammad,’ and it’s part of the jihadist black flag.”
“No surprise there,” Kiley said. “Start it running again.”
Cam played the video that ended when Rostami stepped out of the frame. Cam opened a second file, this one of Pilcher stopping to talk to the suspects. At the end, the pair walked away from the officer, calmly strolling down the street. When they moved out of camera range, Cam changed to a video catching the corner of Pacific Avenue. A black Honda Accord pulled to the curb, and the men got into the back seat. Kiley held her breath, hoping the camera captured license plates, but the angle left a fuzzy image.
Evan slammed a fist on the table. “No way we can put out an alert without plates. Especially not with Accords being one of the most popular cars.”
The car turned north and got onto I-705 heading south.
