Part 24 (1/2)
Giving a laugh, Cait started for the door. ”If bones made me squeamish, I'd be in the wrong line of work.”
”Oh, I almost forgot.”
Kathy's voice stopped her as she was about to leave the back area. ”Al's wife called last night. They're on their way to Louisiana. Or was it Mississippi? Anyway, she just called to nag me about the check-I'm buying this place on contract-and I asked her where Al had gotten rid of the beetles. She said he gave them to someone at the university in Eugene.”
”Okay.” Of course it wasn't going to be that easy. It never was. ”Thanks for checking.”
”No problem.”
Once outside her cell rang again. This time prior to answering she remembered to check the caller ID. And when she saw the Boise prefix on the number, her heart began to thud. ”Fleming.” As she answered she dodged a girl walking a Saint Bernard easily double her weight.
”Sergeant Hal Cross, Boise PD.” The gravelly voice on the other end sounded like it suffered from too many late nights, bottles of Scotch, and cigarettes. ”I'm answering your d.a.m.n call, but it won't do either of us any good. I closed that Bentley case a couple years ago.”
”What?” Disappointment pooled in her gut. ”How is that possible? He's still in the system.”
A shrug sounded in the man's voice. ”Maybe I didn't get back into the database and clear it out. G.o.d knows his family isn't satisfied. The man still might be missing, but it's a pretty good probability that he's sipping mai tais on a Belize beach somewhere while the rest of us chase our a.s.ses.”
It wasn't possible, she decided, to take a dislike to someone based solely on his voice. So her reaction to Cross was likely due to the disappointment blooming inside her and not his insolent tone. ”What makes you think he's in Belize?”
”Not me, the feds. They waltzed in here about three months after Bentley disappeared asking questions. They didn't care so much about where he went, but they were all kinds of concerned with what happened to the quarter million he moved overseas to various accounts.”
Adrenaline spiked through her, sharp and edgy. And with it brought certainty. ”So there was money missing from his account. He didn't appear in the banks to transfer it himself. And there's no trace of the transfers on his computer.”
”Sounds like you wrote the story. Feds took their sweet time, but eventually they concluded he'd been laundering money. Couldn't figure out for who and how exactly he was doing it. Or if they did, they never shared those details with me. He must have thought things were getting too hot and disappeared. Happens all the time.”
”If they never proved or disproved their theory, how can you be sure the feds were right?” She raised her hand to return Jodie Paulsen's greeting as he slowly drove by with his pickup loaded with what looked like sc.r.a.p metal.
”It made a h.e.l.luva lot more sense than someone vanis.h.i.+ng into thin air, that's why,” he retorted. Something told Cait the two of them weren't going to hang up as buddies. ”h.e.l.l, people lie all the time. Families lie. Where'd the guy go? They don't know. He had no enemies, everyone loved him. Yeah, okay. Except he's gone, right? Maybe he had a mistress he ran off with to Bora Bora. The fact that he didn't want to tell his brother about his plans doesn't mean he's dead; it just means he left.”
Or else, she thought cynically, it meant that accepting that story made it easy for Cross to wash his hands of the whole thing and improve his closed-case ratio.
”You might want to take another look at Bentley's case.” She watched an old man who looked on the wrong side of ninety step cautiously off the curb as if fearful of breaking a hip on contact with the street.
”And why should I do that?”
”Because I've got skeletal remains here in Oregon that are a tentative match for his age and stature.” Ignoring the rude sound he made, she continued, ”We've got seven sets of remains all hauled out of the same cave. So far the two sets we've positively identified spent time in this area within a year of their disappearance.”
”What does that-”
”I just discovered records today showing Bentley was here six and a half years ago.”
That stopped Cross for a moment. ”He disappeared about six years ago.”
She mentally sighed. ”Yes. And a large sum of money went missing at the same time as the other two victims' disappearance. Is this starting to sound familiar to you at all?”
”h.e.l.luva coincidence.”
”If you believe in coincidence, Cross, you haven't been in police work nearly long enough.” The elderly man had made it safely down the curb and was now proceeding at a snail's pace across the street. ”Bentley didn't happen to be a fan of the New York Giants, did he? And an avid whitewater rafter?” Both an image of the New York team and churning whitewater had been depicted on his scapulas.
”I'd have to check the file.”
She'd had more than enough. ”You do that. And while you're doing it, look for his credit card statements and see where he stayed during his time here. Then contact his brother about getting to a lab for a DNA profile. Got a pencil handy?” She gave him her fax number. ”Get those results and his statement to me as quickly as possible, and I can give you a definitive answer about whether I've got William Bentley's remains on a gurney in my lab.”
”Feds aren't going to like hearing they're wrong,” the man muttered.
”We all have our little disappointments.” She disconnected and called Gavin Pounds, Raiker's cyber wizard back at headquarters in Mana.s.sas. As she waited for the call to go through, she spared the old man one more glance. He'd progressed about four feet. In the course of his short journey, he'd received, and shaken off, no fewer than three offers of help. McKenzie Bridge was a friendly little town.
Except it hadn't proven so friendly for William Bentley. Or Marissa Recinos. Or Paul Livingston.
”So we should check with all the resorts in the area for a guest named William Bentley.” Andrews was seated at the desk in Cait's McKenzie Motel room, scribbling on a notepad as she spoke. ”What was the date again?”
Cait repeated it, and added, ”Don't forget the campgrounds. We can't be sure where he stayed. I don't have access to his credit card statement yet, and I don't know how long I'll have to wait for it.” Cross didn't strike her as the sort of guy who would move at the speed of light. ”We also need to find out who the Internet provider is for the resorts in the area. At least who it was at the time Recinos, Livingston, and Bentley went missing.”
Andrews looked up from her jottings, her expression shrewd. ”You think the transfers were generated up here?”
”It's possible. People of wealth caught our UNSUB's attention. But he had to have some way of knowing they had money. Which means he had to gain access to their accounts initially to select his victims. What better way to do that than through their computer use?”
The sheriff frowned. ”I'm pretty sure the provider is Lantis. They provide access to a lot of the outlying areas in Lane County. But you're not thinking the company is involved.”
”Just an individual. One of their techs. Maybe even a former employee. We'll need them to open their employment records to us, as well as which tech serviced the resorts.”
”I've got a couple men in cyber crimes, but I'm guessing if we need to search computers for this kind of evidence, it might be outside the expertise of my department. I may have to contact someone at State Police.”
”Eventually, maybe.” Cait sat on the edge of the bed. ”I talked to Gavin Pounds earlier, Raiker's cyber genius. He said it could be as simple as the IP host capturing cookies or keystroke information. To access their online bank records, the offender just needs the account names and pa.s.swords. If they check their email from a computer the offender is monitoring, he can even install spyware on their home computer remotely and continue to get information long after they leave here.”
Andrews was staring hard at her. ”That easy?”
”I know.” She'd been shocked herself when talking to Gavin. ”Although years ago it would have been a bit more of a process, recent 'innovations' in the industry have made cyber spying easier. And a state-of-the-art powerful spy system can circ.u.mvent many of the more popular anti-spyware software.”
”Del Barton has that wireless cafe,” Andrews mused, tapping her pencil rapidly against the tablet.
”He told me it had only been open for a year and a half.”
”I think I remember Gibbs mentioning it being fairly recent.”
”These victims disappeared three, five, and six years ago. Did he begin the business from scratch or take over an existing one?” In her one conversation with the man, it had sounded like the place had been a fresh start, but they needed to verify that. As the sheriff jotted that down in her notebook, she continued, almost to herself, ”Of course, we've got more than one resort in two different towns. Do they both use the same provider? They'd almost have to for this theory to work.”
”Easy enough to find out.” Finished writing, Andrews looked up again, her mouth a thin flat line. ”We got nothing on the photos. No one seems to recall either victim at the resorts. Not much surprise there, given how long it's been since they were here.”
”I struck out, too,” Cait admitted. She stretched her legs out in front of her and suppressed a yawn. The lack of sleep was catching up with her. ”I didn't get to the restaurant that showed up on Livingston's bill here in town. t.i.to's. You might have better luck sending a few men there to interview everyone on staff. It'll take some time to round up former employees. Any word on the garbage bags or paint?” A brief phone call with Kristy early this afternoon had resulted in the news that the tech had, indeed, found a match.
”Nothing on the paint yet. The garbage bags are sold in several spots within ten miles of here, including the General Store here in town. But other than nailing down accessibility, that lead is pretty much a dead end. We haven't gotten anywhere on the paint yet.”
”And that would be easy to buy online, too,” Cait admitted. ”I think our best lead at this point is the Internet provider.”
”Proving anything is going to be a b.i.t.c.h.” The sheriff's familiar antsiness was present as she bounced out of the chair and began to pace, slapping the notebook against her stocky thigh as she walked. ”Definitely won't be immediate. We'll need cyber experts on it, and with the state lab, no telling how soon I can get results.”
”Detective Cross in Idaho mentioned a federal investigation into Bentley's money transfers. Every monetary transfer in the United States of ten thousand dollars or more has to be reported, so the offender stuck with nine-thousand-dollar transfers to multiple banks. Pounds told me red flags would have been raised if those multiple transfers went out on the same day or if they went to countries known for private banking havens, as many of them are on the terrorism watch list. If we get anything at all on this lead with the IP, you should be able to get some cooperation from the feds who looked into it.”
Andrews threw her a sharklike grin. ”Cooperation from the feds? Isn't that an oxymoron?”