Chapter Six
Tanner walked away from Bree as soon as she sat down in front of the computer system. She wouldn’t be aware of him—wouldn’t be aware of almost anything—while she worked.
Whitaker caught his eye and motioned him over.
“Bree wasn’t offended by Jeremy, was she?
He’s IT, not a cop, and he’s pretty damn knowledgeable about computers.
Dude can be a jerk, but in this case it’s mostly frustration.
Like Penelope said, for twelve hours we’ve been watching this poor girl lying in that damned box, terrified. The water’s getting higher.”
“How long do we have before it’s critical?”
“In every single piece of footage that’s been sent to us the water has been dripping at the exact same rate. Slightly faster than one drop per second. That means it’s filling up at a rate of about one gallon every three hours.”
Tanner did some quick math in his head. “So, around two and a half days before she drowns?”
“Could be closer to only two.”
Tanner ran a hand over his eyes. “And your friend Shelby? Are you sure this was the same guy? There was no video of her, right?”
“No, thank God. I’m not sure I could’ve handled it. But the box was the same for her, as well as for the other dead woman. The general consensus right now is that they were some sort of warm-up.”
“Or escalation,” Tanner said. “Maybe he got bored killing them just for himself, decided to make it into a broadcast sport.”
Whitaker grimaced. “Yeah, that’s possible too.”
Over his shoulder he could hear Bree demanding people move so she could work on two different computers at once. A few seconds later he turned around and she had all the different video segments up on the multiple monitors, playing in repeat, some two or more to a screen.
Even with no sound, it was jarring to watch the woman in the box. Bree stood for a long time, just staring at the monitors, taking it all in.
Penelope walked over to them and turned to the screens herself. “You guys have any idea what she’s doing? We don’t need her watching the footage—we need her figuring out where it’s coming from.”
Tanner gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Bree rarely does anything without a purpose. If she’s studying the footage, it’s because she thinks it will help her.”
Penelope crossed her arms over her chest. “Fine. But we’ve got less than forty-five minutes until the next live stream. She needs to be ready.”
Tanner turned away from the monitor. “Believe me. Bree will be ready. That clock you have running the countdown? She won’t need it. Her brain is already keeping completely accurate track of the time without her even trying.”
Because that’s how Bree’s brain worked. The things most people had to put conscious effort into, it did automatically.
Like a computer.
Penelope nodded. “Good, because like Jeremy said, our team thinks this guy can’t be traced.”
“If it’s possible, Bree will do it,” Whitaker said.
“And she’ll do it faster than anyone,” Tanner finished for him.
Penelope didn’t look convinced, and Tanner couldn’t blame her. Bree was young, not very polished, and most people were going to underestimate her for that.
“I can’t help with computer stuff, but I’d be happy to be an extra set of eyes and ears for anything else, if you don’t mind my involvement.” Tanner didn’t want to step on any toes. Some departments liked to keep investigations as close to the vest as possible.
Evidently Penelope wasn’t one of those types of leaders. She nodded. “I’ll take every eye on this we can get. Maybe you’ll see something we’re missing. Because I’m damn tired of sitting here waiting for the top of each hour to come by just for us to be toyed with again.”
They sat down at the conference table and Whitaker pulled up a link.
“These are the twelve live streams in the order in which we received them. All in all, it’s a little bit less than fifteen minutes of footage.”
Tanner played each one so he could get an understanding of the full scope, then immediately started watching again, this time pausing whenever he needed to in order to study details.
The killer never showed up in a single shot. The camera never panned or zoomed—never moved at all.
“The room isn’t very big,” Tanner said. “I would think the camera is mounted over the door.”
Whitaker leaned over his shoulder to look at the footage.
“I agree.” Penelope sat down next to him. “We can’t see the woman’s face, but we think that there’s some sort of light on the camera that switches on when it’s transmitting.”
Tanner nodded, skipping to footage number four and pointing to the screen. “Yes. Because she’s inactive for a few moments and then sees whatever she sees, and that’s when she starts begging for help. So she’s probably not blindfolded.”
He skipped ahead to the other footage, pointing out where she did the same thing.
“Right,” Penelope said. “And sometimes she doesn’t seem to see anything at all. Maybe she’s sleeping?”
Tanner and Whitaker both nodded. “There are no windows in the room,” Whitaker said. “The light is always constant. She probably has no idea if it’s day or night.”
Tanner nodded. “And who knows how long this bastard held her before he even started sending the footage.”
“She’s definitely more hysterical in some of the recordings than others.” Penelope put her hand over Tanner’s on the mouse, then glanced at him. “Do you mind if I...”
He moved his hand. “Be my guest.”
She clicked so that five different images took up the screen. “These were when she was most hysterical. Already sobbing before the live stream even came through.”
Tanner watched each separate clip. Penelope was definitely right. The woman was already crying when the footage started, not because she realized the camera was on.
Listening to her—fear and desperation so close to the surface—was agonizing.
Tanner muttered a curse. “Is there any pattern that we see? Are there clips where she’s upset longer? Is he hurting her and wanting us to see it? I don’t see any markings on her body to indicate he’s hurt her.”
“No,” Whitaker said. “When it first happened we thought maybe he was escalating. That the clips would get longer as he got more violent, or show her harmed, but that hasn’t happened. And there doesn’t seem to be any pattern to how long the clips run.”
“She’ll be hysterical one hour then much better the next, thank God.” Penelope rubbed her eyes with her fingers. “I’ve watched these clips over a hundred times. Whit has also. But we haven’t found anything that helps at all.”
“Just makes me pretty damn furious,” Whitaker said.
Jeremy walked over to them. “We’re up in less than three minutes, boss.”
Penelope nodded. “Any progress over there?”
“Bree isn’t saying very much, but she seems to know her stuff, which isn’t surprising, given who she is.
This will be the first time she’s seeing what’s happening behind the scenes as the footage comes in.
No offense, but I don’t think she’ll be quite so quick to say no such thing as impossible after she really understands what’s going on. ”
“Give her a chance,” Penelope said.
Jeremy shrugged. “At this point I’m willing to give anybody a chance. I just don’t want us putting all our eggs in one basket. Plus, she’s not making any friends over there.”
“Why? What happened?” Penelope asked, as they all stood.
“One of the first things she did was set up a program so it records what’s happening on everyone’s computer screen. Bree said she wanted to be able to look over what everyone was doing in case they missed anything.”
Whitaker looked over at Tanner and they both winced. People who didn’t know Bree wouldn’t understand the kindness and gentleness that resided under her sometimes-abrupt exterior. Her actions would seem like she thought herself superior to everyone else.
They walked over to the monitor screens to prepare for the next transmission. Bree had made herself a little command center and was typing on one keyboard as her eyes darted back and forth between three screens.
Tanner walked over to stand right behind her.
“I don’t have anything yet,” she said without looking at him. “There’s something weird going on that I haven’t been able to put my finger on.”
He rubbed the back of her shoulders. “Nobody expected you to come in and solve this in an hour. Let’s give it a little more time.”
Her disgusted grunt told him she had in fact expected to be able to solve this in an hour.
Just a few seconds later, the countdown clock began to beep. Bree didn’t even look up from her monitor.
The crying, sounding even more eerie because of the voice modulator, came through just a split second before the video did.
The video was exactly the same as all the others.
Nothing could be seen but the coffin-sized box containing the woman from the neck down.
She was struggling against the metal cuffs that attached her wrists and ankles to the sides.
Everyone’s attention was riveted to the screens in front of them, except Bree.
Even when the woman was sobbing and begging to be freed—this was obviously not one of her good moments—Bree didn’t look up from what she was doing. Besides the crying, Bree’s fingers on the keyboard were the only thing that could be heard.
Tanner understood Bree well enough to know what was going on. She knew the victim was not the key to finding the location to where she was being kept. The key was in figuring out the details of the transmission.
But to everybody else it looked like Bree didn’t care at all about the suffering of this poor woman. Like Bree couldn’t be bothered to stop typing for the seconds the transmission would last and at least acknowledge the woman’s misery.
The transmission ended as suddenly as it began.
Bree’s hands never stopped moving on the keyboard.
Nearly everyone in the room was staring at her, the noise from her fingers sounding throughout the room.
Tanner was glad Bree was caught in her own world and had no comprehension of what was going on around her.
“Do you mind if we play it again, Bree?” Penelope finally asked.