Last Chance to Die

11



“Luke, do yourself a favor and ignore the stuff on the wall,” Vail said.

Bursaw let his eyes briefly scan the documents and said, “You always did thrive on chaos.” He took out a sheaf of papers. “These are homicide reports on three women who were killed in the last six months.”

“Give me a few minutes to read them.” The ability to ignore agency boilerplate was a necessary skill for anyone in law enforcement, and Vail had regained his in the few days of being back to reading Bureau reports. “I think there’s some coffee.”

“I could use a couple of cups.” Bursaw got up and started toward the kitchen. “What is this place?”

“Across the street is the old Russian embassy. You know, before they built the new one up on Tunlaw Road.”

“Then this was an observation post?”

“Tough duty, huh?”

“You want some coffee?” Bursaw called over his shoulder as he entered the kitchen.

“No!” Vail yelled after him. “All three of these women were prostitutes.”

Bursaw came back in with a cup in his hand. “I know that Sundra doesn’t exactly fit into the victimology pattern of these women, but she disappeared during the same six-month period as they did,” Bursaw said. “Does that mean you don’t think they’re related to her disappearance?”

“Not necessarily. If it is the same guy, she could have known him or unwittingly presented him with an opportunity. His MO is to take women in very low-risk situations. Prostitutes have to go with him. It’s unlikely that he would try something risky like grabbing Sundra anywhere she would have a chance to resist.”

“If you’re suggesting it might be someone who knew her, I’ve already interviewed everyone I could find, from names in her address book to people my cousin knew, including casual acquaintances like the UPS guy or anyone else she might know without really knowing. So far nothing.”

“Then I’d say this is your best bet right now.”

Bursaw took a sip of his coffee. “Come on, Steve.” He waved at the wall. “I can see you’ve got a lot going on, but I need you to fire up that twisted brain of yours in Sundra’s direction.”

“Give me a few minutes to think about it.” Vail walked into the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee. When he came back, he said, “You told me that Sundra had a new computer. Was it taken into evidence?”

“Yes. I’ve already gone through it. There really wasn’t much on it.”

“Take it to the lab and have them go through it. I read about a new forensics technique called Volume Shadow Copy. It allows them to reconstruct a computer’s hard drive on any given day. Start with the day she disappeared and then each day before that to see if anything was purged. If it was, get a copy of it, and we’ll take a look at it.”

Bursaw made a note. “Volume Shadow Copy. Okay.”

“What about her work computer?” Vail asked.

“I know they’ve downloaded everything off it from the server and then dry-cleaned it so no one else could get access to it. As far as I know, nothing was found.”

“Again, get a printout, and we can take a look at it. Maybe the two of them together will tell us something that each alone wouldn’t.”

“Actually, that’s not a bad lead. Although it was strictly against Bureau policy, she was known to copy files onto her personal computer and work on cases at home. I’ll get on it.”

“In the meantime we should look into the three dead prostitutes. I assume you’re checking to see if there are any women out there who’ve gotten away from this guy.”

“As we learned in Detroit, a surviving victim is still the best way to find out who’s killing hookers. I’m having them put together a list of serious assaults on ladies of the evening in that general area right now.”

“All you need is one.”

Bursaw drained his cup. “Thanks, Steve. So, you staying here? I saw the cots in the room off the kitchen.”

“Free room and board. Life is good.”

“I thought maybe you were staying at Kate’s.”

“At the moment it’s all business.”

“Moments pass.”

“Evidently you don’t know Kate as well as you think you do.”

Vail was just dozing off on the couch when Kate called. “I’ve got the pages fumed. Are we going to need someone to figure out which finger is which?”

“How clear are they?”

“As clean as if they’d been inked,” Kate said.

“Then I can do it.”

“I’m on my way.”

“Hi,” Kate said as soon as she came through the door. “How’d it go with Luke?”

“More tilting at windmills than finding lost women, I’m afraid.”

“So you’re done with it now?”

He looked at her, and she knew his answer before he said anything. “Probably not. Sorry.” He pulled on a fresh pair of gloves. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

Amused, Kate said, “So you came here to go to a cocktail party, and now you’re working a third case. Sounds like somebody needs to learn how to say no.”

He gave her a sarcastic grin. “Should I decide to get some instruction, I know an expert who delivers the word with extreme malice.”

“I’m willing to bet you know several.” Carefully, she pulled out the sheets of paper, which now had a purple cast to them.

He took the fingerprint loupe and said, “On the code page, there are three prints on each line and three lines, nine impressions. So we’re going to get nine numbers out of this. With any luck they won’t represent something else. Start thinking about what has nine numbers and can identify a person.”

“Actually, I was thinking about it on the way here. There’s only one that comes to mind—a Social Security number.”

“Sounds reasonable.” Vail examined the top row of prints. He compared it to the prints from the “fingerprint card.” “The first one is the left ring finger, so number nine.” Kate wrote it down. He examined the second latent. “The left index finger—seven.” He continued, line by line, until all nine latents had been decoded. “Okay, what have we got?”

She handed Vail the pad of paper with the nine numbers written on it. She had placed dashes after the third and fifth, making it read like a Social Security number. He handed it back. “How can we find out who it belongs to?”

She went over and sat down at the computer. “Let me see if they have an Accurint program on here.” After logging on to the Internet and clicking the mouse a couple of times, she said, “Yes.” She signed in to the program with her password and then typed in the nine digits. After a few seconds, a secondary screen popped up. “James Dellasanti. Currently residing just outside Wheaton, Maryland.”

“Can it tell us where he works?”

“Sometimes, but it’s a different query.” She punched a few more keys, and the screen changed. “No, not this time. Let me check and see if we did a background investigation for his clearance.” She switched into a Bureau program and queried the name. “Well, the good news is, he doesn’t work for the FBI or any agency we do the backgrounds for.” When Vail didn’t say anything, she said, “We could give this to Langston, too. Let him do the cut-and-paste stuff.”

“We can’t. We don’t have any evidence against this Dellasanti. With the others we have a DVD and then stolen documents with money in a bank box. Here we have nothing but a set of numbers that we’re not even sure is a Social Security number. And where’s the link to the next mole, if there is one? There’s got to be more to this.”

“Then it has to be the dates.” She looked at the page. “December twenty-seventh and January sixth.”

“Maybe, but what do they mean?”

“One date has passed, and the other’s coming up in two days.”

Thinking about what she’d said, Vail walked over to the wall covered with the maps and reports documenting Calculus’s travels. “Can you get into the spy satellite again?”

Kate started tapping the keys and after a minute said, “We’re up.”

“Okay, let me read you his coordinates from December twenty-seven. Just the places he stopped for more than five minutes.”

After she wrote the numbers down, he moved behind her and watched as she manipulated the mouse until the coordinates were in the small windows on the screen. She zoomed in. “The first one is the Russian embassy compound.”

“That’s to be expected. Try the next one.”

She entered it and then zoomed down to ground level. “That’s a fairly busy intersection with a McDonald’s right there.”

Vail went back to the wall. “He was there about twenty minutes and it was approximately eleven thirty. So it was probably a Big Mac lunch. Next one.”

After locating the third coordinate and zooming down to it, she said, “It’s a public park in Maryland.”

“That’s it!”

“That’s what?”

“That’s what January six is. A dead-drop date.”

“How do you know that?”

“It’s well documented that the Russians love parks for exchanging money and information. And it’s also well known that they hate changing a procedure when they find one that works.” Vail went back up to the wall and rechecked the entry. “He was there eighteen minutes. Calculus was picking up the information from Dellasanti, who evidently is supposed to go back there on the sixth and retrieve his payment.”

“Don’t you think that’s a lot of supposition based on a couple of written dates?”

“You’re right.” He turned back to the wall and searched Calculus’s movements again. “Here,” he said, pointing at a document, “the following day he was at the same coordinates for twelve minutes.”

“He was putting the documents back.”

“Probably copies. He would have to turn in the originals because his bosses would have to see them to okay the payment.”

Kate said, “So the day after, he put the copies there with the payment? For us to catch Dellasanti with?”

Vail was tracking Calculus’s movements again. “He never went back there after that, so it has to be. And by writing down the second date, he’s telling us exactly when he’ll pick up the package.”

“And then Calculus told him the money wouldn’t be there until January sixth. This time the evidence is actually catching him in the act,” she said. “What better proof?”

“Exactly,” Vail said. “Can you walk the camera around a little?”

“Sure. What are you looking for?”

“Someplace for the drop. Someplace you could hide a package of documents or money and not have it bothered by people or weather. That’s why parks are so popular for this kind of thing. Especially in the winter.”

Kate’s eyes were locked on the screen as she virtually strolled through the park. “Here’s something close by, maybe twenty yards away—a footbridge.”

Vail came around the computer and stared at the monitor. “Perfect,” he said, then pointed. “See underneath the end there? You could easily hide a good-size package.” Vail went back to the wall to check the coordinates of the bridge. “Okay, he was there for about three minutes, and then he walked around a little, stopping here and there for a minute or two. Probably to look less conspicuous.”

“But the bridge, that’s where you figure he left the package.”

“That’d be my guess.”

“Can I call Langston now?”

“Okay, but tell him not to send anyone to the dead drop. We have to assume if Calculus told the Russians everything, they could be watching it. If they spot our people, there’s probably a good chance that Dellasanti will be killed.”

Kate asked, “If the Russians do have the Calculus list, why aren’t they just taking all of them out instead of waiting to see if we’re going to arrest them?”

“They’re probably still productive sources, and good ones are not easy to come by. Also, should it ever surface in the future that the Russians are killing their moles, recruiting new ones would be impossible.”

“I’d better quit putting off calling Langston. Even though this should be good news, that we’ve found another one, I’ve got a feeling he isn’t going to like it. We’re figuring out who these people are faster than we can arrest them.”

“Actually, it only seems a little complicated at this point. Spy Number One, Charles Pollock, is dead. Spy Number Two, Yanko Petriv, with a little luck is in the process of being fully identified for arrest, and Number Three, James Dellasanti, will be caught in the act in two days in Maryland. As you reminded me earlier today, speed is what’s important here. It doesn’t matter if everyone’s happy about it, or if it’s legal enough to put in their memoirs. The Russians already have the list and apparently are willing to kill these people to keep them out of our hands. And don’t forget the ‘big fish.’ That’s the real prize we’re trying to beat them to.”

“That all sounds nice, but in case you haven’t noticed, very little of this has gone as planned. What if something happens, like Dellasanti deciding to pick up whatever’s at the drop before the sixth?”

“He’s probably been told that the money won’t be there until January sixth. And spies hate going to the dead drop—it’s when they’re most exposed. If Calculus put the documents back like he did in the bank box—and according to that tracking phone, it looks as if he did—we’ll have him along with the evidence and money all in one nice neat little package. We just have to make sure that you and I get our hands on whatever documents might be there before anyone else does. Especially if Dellasanti isn’t the ‘big fish.’ I don’t want to lose control until we figure out who that is. If Langston gets the idea in his head that he can take over, he’ll have to play by the rules, and I think if this case has proved anything, it’s that this isn’t going to get solved that way.”

“As uncomfortable as I am with deceiving him, I guess you’re right.” Kate looked at her watch. “I desperately need to catch up on my other job’s paperwork. And I’d better let Langston know about this upcoming drop by no later than tomorrow morning. We’ll need to get surveillance on it ahead of time.”

“Just make sure he’s going to let us handle that package.”

“I’ll do my best. In the meantime, if Langston has Petriv identified, we should be able to round him up tomorrow. And then, with a little luck, Dellasanti the next day,” Kate said. “This whole thing wouldn’t seem nearly as daunting if we knew how many names were left.”

“I told you before, spies love mind games. Answers are better protected if they’re surrounded by confusion.”

Kate slipped her coat on. “What are you going to do with the night off?”

“I hadn’t thought about it. Maybe have dinner with Luke.”

“By ‘dinner’ you mean work on his missing analyst.”

Vail smiled. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it came up.”