Blood List(5)
"Hello, this is Gene."
"Hello, Special Agent." The voice on the other end was filtered through a computer scrambler, with no discernible accent. He hoped it wasn't Marty. His childish older brother hadn't met a practical joke he didn't like.
"What can I do for you, Mr. Scrambled-Voice Guy?" He cradled the phone on his right shoulder, grabbed the shrimp, and tossed it into his cart.
"Missouri," the voice said.
"Missouri?" Gene asked. The only reply was a dial tone.
He hung up and moved to dial just as it rang again. It was Samantha Greene's desk.
"Sam, I just got a call…." He didn't know why he bothered. All of their work phones were tapped. Their home phones probably were, too, even though that wouldn't be legal. And Sam was always listening. Even at two-thirty on a Saturday.
"Yeah, got it," she interrupted. "NetPhone. New account. This is the first time it's been used. Um, hold on."
Gene pushed his cart toward the front of the store, his mood obliterated along with his free weekend. So soon after the Sykes murder, and that case dead in the water. The explosives hadn't panned out to anything. The ammonium nitrate came from a Home Depot in Fresno that sold thousands of pounds of fertilizer a week. The case was idle, Officers Rodriguez and Anderson had been tasked to other investigations, and Chief Stukly was making "the incompetent feds" a campaign point in his bid for mayor. Sam spoke up as he reached the checkout.
"The account is tied to a new phone purchase with prepaid minutes, activated 2:18 PM July 3rd. Bought at, let's see…."
He loaded the heavy stuff onto the belt as Sam pulled up the information. The cashier started scanning his items.
"Yeah, okay. Maybe an hour out of town. The Wegmans Supermarket in Fairfax, Virginia."
Gene went cold. He looked around. No one seemed to be paying him any particular attention. He stepped out of the line and scanned the crowd. There were hundreds of people in the store. At least twenty blabbed away into handheld and Bluetooth phones.
The cashier gave him a concerned look. "You lose something, sir?" Gene looked through the cashier, not seeing her.
"Um, no, I—" He held up a finger. "Hold on a minute." She rolled her eyes.
"Crap, Sam, that's where I am now. I mean, crap. I was here on the third, in the afternoon! CRAP!" He slammed his hand down on the conveyor. The woman in line behind him glared and pointed at the toddler in her cart.
* * *
July 17th, 8:48 PM EST; Wheelan Air Services Flight 827; somewhere over the Eastern United States.
Gene grinned and looked out the window. Everyone laughed over the droning roar of the twin-engine airplane. Marty clapped him on the shoulder while talking both into the COM and to the rest of the team.
"Yelling 'crap' in public…. Would it kill you to just say 'shit' like a normal person?"
Gene's glare focused on nothing. Thanks, Sam. How do you glare at someone who isn't there? "I was freaked out. You would have been, too. I thought the guy was right there. I mean, like right next to me or something." The team sobered and got down to business.
Gene briefed them on what little they knew. Missouri. A phone call instead of a text message. The D Street Killer hadn't done that in years. Sam had accessed the security tape of register three, from which the I-590 NetPhone was purchased on July 3rd. Some guy had paid an eighty-nine-year-old World War Two veteran twenty dollars to buy it for him. A store regular, he couldn't describe the guy. Of the hundreds of people who entered and exited the building about the same time, none triggered as suspicious on the video feeds. Many were store regulars or townies, identified by employees and the local police, but many were strangers. Parking lot cameras didn't catch the exchange. Interviews had gone nowhere. They had nothing, again.
And yet, here they were at fifteen thousand feet and heading to Missouri at over three hundred miles an hour to try to catch the D Street Killer before he killed again. The problem was, as usual, that states are awfully big.
* * *
July 17th, 9:12 PM CST; Terminal G, Lambert-St. Louis International Airport; St. Louis, Missouri.
Gene grabbed his bag and looked out the window. A hodgepodge of suits, uniforms, and five-o'clock shadows waited for them on the tarmac. The men stood in a half-circle at the bottom of the retractable stairs, sheltered under umbrellas from the thunderstorm.
First were two Missouri state troopers, two St. Louis County deputies, and a member of airport security, all of whom looked nervous. Lurking behind the uniformed men stood a sandy-haired man in his early thirties wearing a tailored business suit. Next to him stood a short, black-haired man in a fed-issue suit whom Gene recognized as Special Agent Robert Barnhoorn. Barnhoorn was the local FBI liaison, one of Doug's former classmates from the academy, and the brother of Doug's long-time girlfriend.