Crush - Alan Jacobson [134]
“Have them set up in the second floor lobby,” Dixon said. “Tell them there might be a wait because we’re engaged in sensitive negotiations. But we think it’ll be worth their while.”
After Lugo relayed the message and hung up, the tone from Outlook indicated a new email had arrived. He slid his chair forward and checked out the message. “Aaron sent us the document. It’s a PowerPoint file.”
“Can you put it up on the screen?” Vail asked.
“Yeah,” Lugo said. He thumbed the white remote control to his left and the screen unfurled from the ceiling. He pressed a couple of buttons on the laptop, the projector flickered to life, and the Windows desktop appeared on-screen. Lugo double-clicked the PowerPoint attachment and it opened.
“Napa Crush Killer” appeared in bold letters on the first slide.
“May I?” Vail asked.
Lugo handed over the remote and Vail advanced to the next slide: a list of nine names.
Vail felt a pounding in her head. “Holy shit. If this is real, he held up his end of the bargain. Which means we need to, also.”
Dixon pointed at the screen. “Ray, print this page.”
Lugo was staring at the screen, but didn’t move.
Dixon looked over at Lugo. “Ray. Print the list.”
“Yeah, yeah. Okay.” His mouse movements appeared on-screen as he sent the page to the printer.
Vail scanned the list: there were names missing. It was incomplete—but she would worry about that in a minute. Next slide. A video file was embedded. “Double-click that,” she told Lugo.
Lugo’s mouse pointer skidded across the screen and found the image. The video jumped to life. Onscreen: a shaky, dark, grainy, moving image of a lifeless woman.
“Oh, shit,” Agbayani said. “Don’t tell me this is what I think it is.”
Vail rubbed her forehead. It was exactly what Agbayani thought it was. She wanted to divert her eyes, but she couldn’t. This was her job, what she signed up for. And unfortunately, watching videos of an offender’s handiwork was becoming a more frequent occurrence.
“Audio,” she said, her voice coarse, strained. “Is there audio?” Lugo pulled his eyes from the screen and pressed a button.
Sound filled the room’s speakers. But the offender wasn’t speaking. His breathing could be heard, rapid. The bastard’s excited. He’s loving this. “Son of a bitch.” Vail realized she was balling her right fist so hard her knuckles hurt.
The camera panned down and showed what looked like a hand—no, a wrist. Blood oozing. It ran a few more seconds, then ended.
Without a word, Vail pushed the remote to the next slide. Still photos of other victims she did not recognize. She paged through them, stopping long enough at each photo for everyone to get a look at the victim’s face. “We’ve got a problem.”
“Not all the vics are accounted for,” Dixon said. “But there are plenty we didn’t know about.”
“No names on the pictures,” Brix said. “There’s no way for us to match up those photos with missing persons, unsolved cases. Shit, we don’t even know if these vics are from California.”
“I only recognize Dawn Zackery and Betsy Ivers,” Vail said. She was reluctant to broach the subject, but sooner or later, someone would. “No photo of Fuller.”
No one commented.
Finally, Vail said, “Okay, so we’ve got some questions that need answers. Let’s keep the line of communication open with him. We should send him an email so he knows we’re going to keep up our part of the deal and ask him who the hell these other vics are.” She looked at Dixon for approval.
Dixon appeared distracted, staring at the screen and not responding. Finally, she said, “Do we want to do that? I mean, he didn’t keep up his part of the bargain. We said all vics. We wanted a list of all his vics. He didn’t give us that.”
“You want to argue with him?” Vail asked. “At this point, I think that’s the wrong move.”
Dixon sat back hard. “Yeah, okay. Fine.”
Vail looked around at everyone’s body language. They were slumped in their seats. All were looking off, lost in thought. “Hey,” Vail said. “This is good. We’ve got a lot more than we had an hour ago.”
Failing to get a response, she