“Oh, I will.” His eyes were twinkling. “It keeps me young. You ought to come with me to the next Comic-Con.” He paused, then added slyly, “Ma’am.”
“Low blow. I might just—” She stopped as Metcalf’s mobile phone rang.
“This is probably Griffin,” he said as he pulled the phone from his pocket.
“You don’t have John Williams’s Superman theme as your ringtone?” she asked solemnly.
“Not during work hours.” He strolled a few steps away and answered his phone. After less than a minute, he returned to her. “Are you up to a meeting at the FBI field office?”
“Now?”
“Yes. That was Griffin as I thought. They have an idea how the killer knew where you were going last night.” He moved toward the car. “You’ll probably want to be part of this.”
* * *
HALF AN HOUR LATER, Kendra and Metcalf were standing in the FBI field-office conference room with Griffin, Saffron Reade, and a bearded technology specialist who had been introduced to her as Robert Windrey.
The technician was leaning over a laptop set up on the conference-room table. Griffin waved everyone over to gather around.
“Kendra, our team did an electronic sweep of your apartment, but there was no evidence of any listening devices,” Griffin said.
“So you think the leak might be on your end?”
“Doubtful, but Windrey here has some thoughts on the matter.”
Windrey glanced up at Kendra. “I’m going to play something for you, Dr. Michaels. Listen to this.”
He pressed the space bar on his laptop keyboard, and a male voice rang from the speakers. It was Windrey’s own voice, Kendra realized. He sounded stilted, overenunciating each of his words: “Testing, testing … Broadcasting to any and all within the sound of my voice. Testing, testing…”
Windrey smiled proudly, as if expecting her to be as impressed with him as he obviously was with himself.
“Okay,” Kendra said. “What does that mean?”
Windrey was still smiling. “I was using your cordless phone. I was able to wirelessly intercept and record any call made to or from it. I think our killer is able to do the same thing. He intercepted your call to Agent Griffin yesterday. He knew you were headed to Corrine Harvey’s house even before the police did.”
Kendra slowly sat down at the conference table. “Incredible. I thought these digital handsets were supposed to be almost impossible to hack.”
“That was true once. The Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications, or DECT, standards were pretty safe for years. But certain software tools used by manufacturers and security professionals to evaluate the devices have leaked onto the Web. They can be used to hack into wireless phones and other DECT devices like traffic lights in Germany and traffic-control systems in England.”
“Great. Very reassuring.”
“The good news is, you should be fine if you just plug in a corded handset.” He qualified, “At least for the duration of this investigation.”
“Absolutely. Believe me, I’ll be unplugging my cordless phone the second I get home.”
“No,” Griffin said quickly. “We don’t think you should do that quite yet.”
“But he just got through telling me that—”
“We may be able to use this, Kendra,” Agent Reade interrupted. “Think about it. We were discussing this earlier. We now have an advantage we didn’t have last night.”
Kendra’s glance moved slowly from agent to agent. “I believe I know where you’re heading.”
“Do you?” Reade asked. “I thought you might. And is it something you would be comfortable going along with?”
“Depends. What exactly do you want me to do?”
Reade opened a leather folio, pulled out a thin sheaf of papers, and placed them in front of Kendra. “This is your script.”
Kendra laughed. “My script? You aren’t fooling around.”
“It’s only meant to be a guide,” Reade said gravely. “What we have in mind is this: You’ll go home with your FBI guard in tow. A few minutes later, you’ll call Griffin with your cordless phone. We’ve crafted a scenario in which you’ve decided to visit the home of Kristy Ludwig, who was the victim in the minivan. We’ll have agents staked out all over your area. Windrey here tells us he probably has a listening station within a block of your condo. Anyone in the area who goes on the move after your phone call will be noticed by someone on our team.”
Kendra scanned the telephone script they had written for her. “You really think he’s still listening to my calls, even after last night?”