Alex Kava Bundle - Alex Kava [306]
“So what exactly are you saying, Keith?”
“Just telling you what I found. That’s what I meant about Maggie determining whether or not it was important.”
“You said there were a couple of things?”
“Oh yeah…” Ganza hesitated again. “Maggie asked me to do a search of prints for a Walker Harding, but it’s been taking me a while. The guy has no criminal record, never registered a handgun.”
Tully was surprised Maggie hadn’t stopped Ganza after they had read the article and discovered that Harding was going blind. He couldn’t possibly be a suspect. “Save yourself the time,” he told Ganza. “Looks like we don’t need to check.”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t able to find anything. The cold search just took a bit longer. The guy had a civil servant job about ten years ago, so his prints are on file after all.”
“Keith, I’m sorry you went through all that trouble.” Tully only half listened to Ganza as he watched the computer screen. The search engine must be accessing something on WH Enterprises if it was taking this long. He started tapping his fingers.
“Hopefully, it was worth the trouble,” Ganza went on. “The prints I lifted from the whirlpool bath were an exact match.”
Tully’s fingers stopped. His other hand gripped the phone’s receiver. “What the hell did you just say?”
The fingerprints I lifted off the bathtub at the house on Archer Drive…they matched this Walker Harding guy. It’s an exact match. No doubt about it.”
The pieces of the puzzle were falling into place, but Tully didn’t like the picture they were forming. On an obscure Web site designed to look like some clearinghouse run by the Confederacy, he found computer video games for sale. All were wholesale priced, and the search could be completed by clicking on the tiny Confederate-flag icons. The games were available though a company called WH Enterprises. Most of them guaranteed graphic violence and others promised to be of pornographic nature. These were not the types of games kids could pick up at Best Buys or Kids “R” Us.
The sample that could be viewed with a simple click of the mouse included a naked woman being gang-raped, with the player being able to gun down all the assailants, only to be rewarded by raping the woman himself. Despite the animation, the video clip was all too real. Tully found himself sick to his stomach. He wondered if any of Emma’s friends were into this sort of garbage.
One of the Web site’s features was the “Lil’ General’s Top Ten List,” including a note from the CEO of WH Enterprises. Tully knew what he’d find before he scrolled down to see the message ending with, “Happy hunting, General Walker Harding.”
Tully paced the conference room, walking from window to window. Walker Harding may have been going blind, but he sure as hell could see now. How else could he run a computer business like this one? How else could he be at each crime scene, helping his old pal, Albert Stucky?
“Son of a bitch,” Tully said out loud. O’Dell had been right. The two men were working together. Maybe they were still competing in some new game of horror. Whatever it was, there was no denying the evidence. Walker Harding’s fingerprints matched those found on the Dumpster with Jessica Beckwith’s body. They matched the umbrella in Kansas City, and they matched the prints left on the whirlpool bath at the house on Archer Drive.
Earlier, the Maryland authorities had finally confirmed that there was a large two-story house and several wooden shacks on the property. All government buildings had been bulldozed before the sale. The rest of the property, Tully was informed, was surrounded on three sides by water and covered with trees and rock. There were no roads except a dirt path that led to the house. No electrical lines or telephone cables had been brought in from the outside. The new owner used a large generator system left behind by the government. The place sounded like a recluse’s dream come true and a madman