Sinclair crossed his arms, shooting her a glance from the spot where he stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling window in front of his office. “I’m sure it’s too much to ask that there’s a paper trail connecting DuPree to either property?”
Oh, if only. “Sadly, it is,” Isabella confirmed. “There’s no connection between DuPree and any of the previous owners or tenants, and he never owned or rented either house. He makes most of his on-the-books money in real estate, though, so it follows that he’d have a line on vacant properties.” She’d looked into his business dealings at length last week. They were clean enough to squeak from every angle. Unfortunately. “It’s possible he scouted empty houses and had Franco and the big guy, Rampage, keep the girls in these places.”
“It would explain the extra locks on the doors in both locations,” Maxwell said, and the idea gained momentum in Isabella’s brain.
“It would also keep DuPree’s name off any leases. If he paid other people to squat in these houses and do his dirty work for him, there wouldn’t be any way to put him or any of his associates there without witnesses.”
“In North Point?” Hollister let out an exhale tinged heavily with doubt. “Good luck. Nobody talks to the cops down there.”
Which DuPree had almost certainly counted on. Christ, he was as slippery as he was smart.
“Okay.” Isabella dipped her chin in thought, ordering and re-ordering the facts like the pieces to a puzzle as she tried to line up the edges and curves. “So we’ve got Franco and Rampage who are clearly on DuPree’s payroll. Any ID on the guy who called my cell phone? His voice wasn’t familiar.”
Capelli shook his head, his brows bent in concentration. “I pulled the records from the phone company, but the call was made from a payphone in the middle of downtown Remington.”
“They still have those?” Hale asked, and Isabella got the impression she was only half-joking.
Unfortunately, Capelli was all serious. “Only in the busiest parts of the city, and this one is about a block from Remington Hospital but just outside the reach of any city cams, so yeah, we don’t even have a snowball’s chance of figuring out who placed the call.”
“Great.” Isabella tugged a hand through her hair in frustration. DuPree was clearly meticulous. But there was no such thing as the perfect crime. There had to be something they could go by, some small slip-up that would turn into a big lead.
“There is something a little weird about this call, though.” Capelli sifted through the paperwork on his desk, coming up with the paper placemat where she’d recorded the grim details of her conversation in the diner. “Moreno, you’re sure you wrote down everything the guy said, word for word?”
“As much as I could remember, yeah.” Details grew hazy over time, even for the best of cops, and she’d broken too many cases wide open over verbal missteps criminals thought would be overlooked.
Capelli shook his head, his eyes narrowing behind the dark frames of his glasses while he read once, twice, then again for good measure. “This one line, right here where he said, ‘beyond the shadow of a doubt’. It’s so familiar. Almost like…” In one swift motion, he jerked back against his desk chair hard enough to make the thing squeal in protest. “Oh, shit. I know who DuPree’s security guy is.”
“Are you sure?” she asked, then backtracked with a shake of her head, because, hello. Capelli. “Who is it?”
“He’s a hacker, goes by the alias of the Shadow. His real name is Conrad Vaughn, although not a lot of people know that. Last I heard, he was in Tokyo, but honestly, the guy could be in this room and we probably wouldn’t know it. He’s crazy-smart and even more dangerous. Although no one’s proved it, he’s credited with crashing Twitter last month.”
“Are you kidding me?” Hollister asked, sitting up straight in shock. “The site was down for like eight hours.”
“Nine hours and twenty-two minutes, to be exact,” Capelli said. “He loves to talk in riddles, always about shadows and light. And if he’s behind DuPree’s security, you can bet the guy’s tracks aren’t just covered. They’re gone. The Shadow never leaves a trace.”
“There’s always a trace,” Sinclair said, cutting into Isabella’s dread with absolute certainty. “We just need to find it. Maxwell, I want you and Hale to dig deeper on Danny Marcus’s end—connections between him and DuPree, these parties, the wrestler, anything. Moreno and Hollister, go to North Point and see if someone on Oakmont can’t ID any of these guys at that house, Saturday morning or otherwise. Make it worth their while to have accurate memories. Capelli, figure out how this Shadow guy is getting his intel. I want to know what he knows, how he knows it—and let’s jam him up so he can’t get anything else while we’re at it. I want concrete evidence that DuPree’s behind these murders and I want it past tense. Let’s connect the dots, people.”