The next one was Kevin Barnes. Ben talked out loud to himself as well as to Ro. “It would help if these guys had more unusual names. There are a zillion Kevin Barneses.”
“Who’s the first one that comes up?”
“A singer . . . then a cornerback for the Lions and the Redskins. None of them seem to be scientists but there are a couple of engineers.” He pulled up images and put them in the file. As he sorted through the pile, he considered a Kevin Barnes who was a lawyer. He’d gone to Brown University and Columbia Law School. He was forty-four. For some odd reason—they were looking for scientists, not lawyers—he downloaded Barnes’s information and pulled up a grainy picture on image search. The guy’s eyes were downcast, which gave him a slightly shifty look. Ben kept staring at his face. “I might be crazy but I think I’ve seen this guy before.”
Ro stopped. “Who?”
“This guy, Kevin Barnes. He’s a lawyer.”
“Why are you looking at lawyers?”
“I don’t really know, but he looks familiar.” Ben showed her the picture.
She studied it long enough not to dismiss it out of hand. “Maybe.” A pause. “If he’s a lawyer, why is he getting a Los Alamos discount?”
“You tell me.”
Ro bit her bottom lip. “Maybe the coding got messed up. What else do you have on him?”
Ben delved further. There wasn’t much on Barnes the lawyer besides his schooling. Not even his specialty. “He’s kind of a cipher and that makes him interesting. I’ll start a file.” A pause. “Where have I seen him, dammit?”
“If you relax, it’ll come to you.”
She was right. He picked out another candidate. Jason Fillmore. “This guy’s a security analyst.”
“A stockbroker?”
“No, security as in ‘security guards.’”
Ro stopped typing. “Like, as in safeguarding national labs?”
“I don’t know where he works, but if he did work for the national labs, he’d be doing a lot of traveling between them.” He checked deeper into his personal information. “He’s forty-nine and he’s worked for the Chicago and Detroit police departments. Which means he knows how to handle a gun.”
“The victims were strangled.”
“But he could have used a gun to abduct them.” Ben read further. “He started his own company—Universal Analysis and Security—eight years ago, providing consulting and systems integration for big corporations. At least, that’s what it says in his bio. I looked him up on Facebook. Nothing personal but there’s a Facebook page for the company. It was professionally done. It says that his company has provided systems and has consulted for numerous government agencies.”
“Anything about national labs?” Ro asked.
“It doesn’t specify.” Ben thought for a moment. “Would a national lab farm out its security to somebody private? I’d think that the government would want to keep that kind of stuff in-house.”
“He has a Los Alamos discount.”
“That he does.” Ben pulled up an image. “He’s African American.”
Ro looked up. “And that’s relevant because . . . ?”
“The conventional wisdom is that serial killers murder within their own race, though that’s because it’s easier to find and stalk victims in their own neighborhoods. But I suppose if the guy traveled, he’d abduct whoever was convenient.”
“Does he look familiar to you?”
“No, I’ve never seen him. You?”
“He does not look familiar,” Ro said.
“He’d be pretty noticeable in this area. Not a lot of blacks.” Ben hit the print button. “I’ll start a file on him.”
“You’ve started about twenty files. I thought we’re narrowing this down.”
“One step forward and two steps back.”
“You know you’re picking out every profession except scientists.”
“I’m not being biased. I’m just selecting guys whose job assignments might include traveling.”
“A lawyer?”
“Santa Fe is the capital of New Mexico. Maybe Kevin Barnes does government business here. We know he isn’t local. Otherwise he wouldn’t be staying at the Jackson.”
“But he could have an office here.”
“Good point. I’ll see if he has a local address.” Ben pulled up an e–phone book with addresses. “Blank.” He continued searching the enigmatic Kevin Barnes with Yahoo! and Bing and DuckDuckGo. He tried deep search engines but still came away empty. Kevin Barnes, the lawyer, had assiduously avoided attention. Ben took his picture and clipped it to his information file. Maybe George Tafoya could help him out.
Ben went down to the next name: Martin Feldman. “This guy has been to the area four times in the last three years.” He did a Google search. “And he’s a scientist: a radiation physicist from Boston with Mass General . . . oops. He’s seventy-two.” A beat. “Although I suppose that retirement could mean more free time to do damage.”
“If he started with your sister, he would have been around sixty-nine. We’re going to have to do some probability assessment. I’d put him low down on the list.”
“He could have started murdering before my sister—”
“Vicks, the guy digs graves . . . deep graves. It’s hard physical labor.”
“You’re right. I’m just thinking . . . about six years back, before my sister was murdered, prairie dogs were being shot and killed. It turned out it was a retired scientist who had worked at Los Alamos.”
“That is creepy. Why was he shooting prairie dogs?”
“God only knows.” Ben shrugged. “I know I’m going to have to narrow down the field, but I’m terrified of missing someone.”
“Now you know how Shanks must feel.”
“You’re right about that. I used to think if only the police would be more thorough, pay more attention to detail, more crimes would get solved. And now I have all this information and I can’t even place a familiar face. If Shanks had this information, he could do more than we ever could. But since you acquired it illegally, we’re stuck.”
“There has to be a way where we can turn it over to him and not get me into trouble.”
“When you think of one, let me know.” Ben started an image search on the next name: Lewis Grady. “I don’t think prison blues are your style.”
“On the contrary, they’d match my gorgeous eyes.” She flung her hair off her face. “How about we give him the list anonymously?”
“He can’t use the information, Ro. It’s fruit from a poisoned tree. And you would be in serious trouble. So I’d have to take the fall for you.”
She smiled. “You’d take the fall for me?”
“Absolutely. Everyone would think it was me anyway. Hacking isn’t something that fits your carefully crafted image.”
“Aw, you care, Vicks.”
He sure as hell cared about her. He was sneaking glances at her when she wasn’t looking: her lithe body, her soft tawny hair that fell below her shoulders, her luminescent blue eyes. Just thinking about her naked sent an electric jolt through him. God help him if she noticed.
They had been working for more than two hours—all business—when Ben heard the distinct rumble of an SUV pulling into the driveway. It idled for a few minutes, and then the motor shut off. Ro looked at her watch.