Chapter 27 #2
“The one constant with these guys is that they don’t pay with credit cards and leave a full electronic trail,” Constance interjected. “It’ll depend on how much cash he brought with him and how much he had to pay Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum.”
O’Connor raised a hand. “Who?”
“Two locals he paid to try to abduct Leighton,” Lucas filled in.
“I see.” He pulled out a notepad and wrote.
“What about adding doorbell cameras?” Grace asked. “There a lot of those around.”
“That’s a lot more difficult. I can get into a specific camera, but the whole network?” Jordy shook his head. “Only the government has the computer power for that.”
“I wouldn’t be so certain of that,” Yates said.
Jordy’s head jerked up from his screen. “Huh?”
“We have a bit more processing power than you might think.”
“You’re kidding?”
“Jordan, I never kid.”
The room was quiet for a second.
“How do we get access to that?” Jordy looked ready to drool at the prospect of more computing power.
Lucas grinned. “Yates?”
“Jordy, I’ll put you in touch with the person in charge of the corporate cybersecurity unit I mentioned. They have access to more than you should need.”
Jordy grinned like the Cheshire Cat. “There’s no such thing as too much computing power.”
“Geek,” Terry scoffed.
“I’ll make sure Roberta is expecting your call,” Yates said. “She’ll fix you up with whatever you need.”
“Roberta?” The name rolled off Jordy’s tongue with a flavor of disdain.
Duke chuckled. “You going to let a girl show you up?” Air whooshed out of the big man as Constance gave him a swift elbow to the gut. “Hey.”
Serena gave Constance a thumbs-up—girls sticking together.
I held back my laugh, careful to avoid an elbow from my own firecracker.
“So those weren’t real pictures you just showed us?” Peyton asked.
“Not recent ones,” Jordy responded. “They’re samples from the last two years I’m using to train the machine. I need a few hours to train the algorithm before it goes live.”
“How many cameras can you watch at one time with this setup?” the detective asked.
“All of them in the western section of the city.”
O’Connor couldn’t keep the disbelief off his face. “Not possible.”
“Yes, possible,” Jordy shot back. “All it takes is the right kind of genius.”
Duke laughed at his brother.
“And a complete lack of modesty,” Lucas added.
“Hey,” Jordy complained. “This is wicked-hard shit.”
“Which is why we keep you around,” Lucas agreed.
O’Connor was still shaking his head. “What I wouldn’t give for my IT department to have a capability like this.”
“Anybody who calls their specialists the IT department—” Jordy slathered the word IT with disdain. “—doesn’t deserve a capability like Adeline.”
“You call it Adeline?” Duke scolded his brother. “You seriously need to get out of your dungeon and meet a real woman.”
“Adeline’s a work of art,” Jordy mumbled.
“So is my woman,” Duke shot back, pulling Serena close.
Serena smiled and kissed him. “You say the nicest things.”
“Back on task,” Lucas said, rescuing Jordy. “When our boy genius is ready, we’ll spread out so somebody will be in place to respond quickly and trail this guy. Since he’s already spotted Peyton, he won’t be far away. We bracket West LA and Santa Monica until we get better data.”
My girl shivered against me.
“Any questions?” Lucas asked.
People glanced around, but nobody spoke up.
Lucas pointed at the detective. “How big is that file of yours?”
“It filled up two suitcases.”
“Constance and Winston,” Lucas said, “you guys should join him in looking over what they have.”
They both stood.
O’Connor waved a finger. “Before we do that, I’d like to do the proper witness interview of Ms. Clarke, which we buggered up before.” He pivoted to Peyton. “If that’s okay with you, of course.”
“Leighton?” Lucas prompted.
She nodded.
“Great,” O’Connor said, waving in Peyton’s direction. “After we talk, I’m going to get a motel room and get some shuteye while you guys get set up.”
Peyton
Zane led us to his office.
Detective O’Connor took Zane’s seat behind the desk. I sat across from him while he set up a voice recorder on the desk, and Zane took the chair next to me.
O’Connor shook his head. “You can wait outside.”
Zane didn’t move. “I’m staying.” He slid his hand over to hold mine.
“That’s not how we conduct these,” O’Connor said firmly. “Ms. Clarke, I assume you’d like this all to be over so you can get back to your life.”
I nodded. “Of course.” Being free of the Strangler would be such a relief. I placed a reassuring hand over Zane’s. “I’ll be fine.”
After a deep breath, Zane stood, still holding my hand. “I’ll be outside.”
“I know.” I squeezed his hand and let go.
After the door closed behind Zane, the detective started by dictating the date and time and his badge number. Then he asked me my name, birthdate, and address in Boston.
“Okay, Leighton,” he said when we were ready to begin.
I had to get used to responding to my name again. I’d spent so much time unlearning that and training myself to react to my new names.
“Tell me what you saw the night Cassandra Moulton disappeared.”
I nodded. “I walked into the Heavenly Garden about six-thirty.”
“You’re referring to the Chinese restaurant in Brookline?”
“Yes. I was picking up takeout for myself.”
“Why there? Isn’t that quite a distance from where you lived?”
“A guy once took me there, and I was in the mood for beggar’s chicken. It’s the only place I know that has it on the menu.”
O’Connor hunched forward. “Were you alone?”
“Yes.”
“Go on.”
“While I was waiting, I glanced around and noticed Cassie—Cassandra—waving at me from a table. She was sitting with a man. I knew she was meeting a date for dinner, but I didn’t know where.”
“The Cassandra you’re referring to is Cassandra Moulton?” he asked.
“Yes.”
The detective motioned with his hand. “Go on.”
“The man looked up, and I saw his face.”
“He was facing you?”
“Yes. He had eyes of two different colors, one blue and one brown. I’ll never forget him.”
He wrote on his notepad. “The two colors we were talking about searching for with the computer geek,” O’Connor confirmed.
“With Jordy. Yes.”
“What happened next?”
“Nothing. I waved back to Cassie, but I didn’t want to intrude on her dinner. The man looked down at his food, and then away. They brought my order to the register, and I left. That was it.”
He relaxed back in his chair. “That was Wednesday the eleventh?”
I would never forget the date. “Yes.”
From there, he took notes as I went through my visit to Cassie’s apartment after she didn’t show up for work, the flowers and note I found there, and then the note and flowers I received.
“I was sure he’d gotten my name from Cassie before he killed her, and I was clearly his next target.
So I left town.” I took a breath. This next part I hadn’t spoken about to anyone.
“He caught me in Atlanta, but I got away,” I began.
“He’d learned my name and followed me, even knew where I lived.
I had to leave everything again and hop on a bus. ”
O’Connor waved a hand. “Never mind.” He shut off the recorder. “My jurisdiction doesn’t extend to there.”
For a moment, it hurt to have him not interested in the danger I’d been subjected to by this monster, or what had happened to poor Olivia. But the feeling subsided once I processed his words.
The detective wanted to catch her killer, but he had boundaries the Strangler didn’t have to obey. It wasn’t O’Connor’s fault that the system was unfair that way.
“Wait a moment,” he added, pausing as he checked over his notes. “You said you had to leave everything. Did you carry enough money on you to just leave like that?”
“I had a stash that wasn’t at my apartment.” I pulled out my mailbox key. “I rent a box at a mailbox store that offers twenty-four-hour access.”
“Very clever.”
I smiled. I thought so.
The detective asked a few more follow-up questions, and that was that. I had finally given the Boston Police everything I knew about Cassie’s murder.