Blood List(38)

Jerri fiddled with her notes for a moment, then changed the subject. "Very well. Who preceded Larry Johnson?"

"Jenny Sykes."

Jenny Sykes wasn't just some victim in a case file. Memories of a charred corpse and scattered body parts still haunted Gene's dreams, as did the text-messaged taunt that erased Jenny Sykes from the earth. Paul Renner had just admitted to first-degree murder. On tape.

"What date were you contacted for this contract?" It was a credit to Jerri's professionalism that she sounded exactly the same as when she had asked about Kevin Parsons.

The debrief took less than forty minutes. At its completion, Sam had starts on dossiers for nine victims; seven, if you didn't count Larry Johnson and Kevin Parsons.

"What about…?" Jerri paused and leafed through her notebook. "Daniel Burnhardt. He matches the age pattern."

Paul's brow crinkled with distaste. "That was a CIA job." His voice went flat. "That contract isn't relevant to this investigation."

Behind the glass, Gene shared a look with Carl. "Why is she bringing up Burnhardt?" His throbbing foot and nose made it difficult to concentrate, and he was afraid he'd missed something.

Carl shrugged.

Through the glass, Paul looked angry. "What's your game, Agent Bates?" Doug shifted his weight against the wall to draw Paul's attention.

"I'm just validating some assumptions, Mr. Renner," she said.

"Well, I'm not here to validate your assumptions." Doug stepped forward as Paul stood. "You have the information you need. So," he said in a raised voice as he faced the one-way mirror, "Agent Palomini. Time to prove you're a man of your word." Paul walked toward the door and stopped, eye level with Doug's chest. Without lifting his head, he looked up into Doug's eyes and waited.

"Don't do it, Gene," said Marty.

"Let him out, Doug," Gene said through the COM. Paul's lack of reaction showed that Sam had turned off his ear-bead. After a blatantly antagonistic size-up, Doug stepped aside.

A guard opened the door to let Paul out. "Okay, we're done for the day. Everyone check out. We'll see you in the morning. Renner, you're with me. Your security detail will follow us to the hotel."





Chapter 14





January 7th, 8:00 AM PST; Conference Room 4, Front Street FBI Building; San Diego, California.



Carl spent the next day directing the team as they compiled massive amounts of information: birth and death certificates, driver's licenses, passports, and medical and dental records. The organizations that required subpoenas to release information were hacked by Sam. They could get warrants later if they needed them. With Renner's confession to murder one on tape, no one cared if they invalidated some of this evidence.

Newspaper articles, alumni lists, high school and college transcripts. Fingerprints, military service records, library cards, credit records, and business records. Resumes, online forum posts, blogs. All of these things were found, copied, scanned, collated, annotated, and packed into tidy electronic files for each victim.

By midday, Paul was pitching in, feeding file after file into the insatiable scanner. He looked bored out of his mind. Carl walked by him and chuckled. "Lucky you, Renner. Now you get to see how glamorous and exciting real police work is."

Paul returned Carl's grin. "I hope this isn't the fun part."

"Not even close," Carl said. "Next we set up bulk classifications to assign each piece of data to, then spend hour after hour doing the assignments. The computers can do some of it for us, and they'll be instrumental once it's all scanned in, but this sort of thing comes down to a person seeing something that makes a connection. That's the only reason you're here. Something might jog in your memory when you see the data classified and organized properly."

"Great," Paul said without enthusiasm.

By six-thirty that evening, every possible document for each victim had been scanned. Sophisticated optical-character-recognition software went to work converting pictures of documents and hand-written letters into computer-readable text.

"Everyone take your gear with you tonight," Gene announced. He stood and grabbed his brand-new pair of crutches. "Our plane leaves at oh-nine-forty. Get there early. We have to pass through normal airport security. This is a commercial flight, not Bureau."

A chorus of groans answered. Airport security in San Diego was bad enough for civilians. Gone were the good old days when an agent could flash his badge and walk around the detectors. Now there was paperwork, lots and lots of paperwork, and all of it had to be perfect to allow weapons through security.

Marty gave Paul a smug look, which Renner seemed not to notice.