Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
FBI Field Office
Tacoma, Washington
Jim MacKenzie had been thorough, collecting five years of Sterling's prosecutions and organizing them in neat chronological order, complete with defendant names, witness lists, and outcomes.
Allie spread the printouts across the conference table.
Each case summary represented a potential lead or dead end in the investigation.
She picked up a cover sheet, scanned it, set it down, then picked up another.
The rhythm was already becoming automatic.
Across the table, Jason worked through his own stack while Marze did the same.
The silence in the room was broken only by the occasional rustle of paper or quiet clearing of a throat.
Scanning through five years of federal prosecutions was going to take a while, but it beat the alternative of missing something.
What they knew about Judge Vance painted a picture of a man relaxing after a successful career.
His daughter lived abroad with her own family but came back to visit roughly twice a year.
The judge filled his days with golf and the occasional lunch at his club.
Four times a week, he could be found on the greens at Chambers Bay.
The rest of the time, he generally kept to himself.
Allie studied the neat columns of information, recalling what Park had said about her boss. Sterling’s cases—primarily drug trafficking and white-collar fraud—were the standard workload for an Assistant Attorney General in a federal prosecutor's office.
“Anything jump out yet?” Jason asked.
“Not yet.” Allie scanned the next page. “But there has to be something. We won’t be able to connect any dots until we’ve gone through all this and detect any potential patterns.”
The glass door to the conference room swung open, pulling her attention from the documents.
A man in his fifties entered. He wore a perfectly tailored suit, and his presence commanded without effort.
Allie recognized Elias Thorne immediately.
The U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington carried himself with the authority of someone appointed by the president himself and who had earned his position through decades of work in the trenches before ascending to one of the highest leadership positions in his field.
Marze stood and extended a hand. “Elias. Thanks for making the drive over.”
“I would have been here sooner, but I just returned from Spain last night. Spent a blissful two weeks hiking without a cell phone. When I finally got back to civilization and turned it back on, I learned about Sterling. Then I landed to news about Judge Vance.” He shook his head in disdain. “What do we know so far?”
Marze gestured to the papers spread across the table. “We're moving as quickly as we can, but we're still in the information-gathering stage.”
Thorne pulled out a chair and sat down, his gaze moving over the documents with skilled efficiency.
Allie watched him take in the scope of their work, the methodical approach they were using to sift through years of legal proceedings.
The work she did here every day, the arrests and interviews and evidence collection, all of it existed so they could send their cases to people like Thorne for prosecution.
They were two sides of the same coin, different roles with the same mission.
“Any leads?” Thorne asked.
“None,” Jason said, his frustration obvious. “A union head didn’t pan out, and we spent time on another one—Aris Bennett.”
“I remember him. Nasty piece of work.” Thorne’s voice filled with disgust. “Doctors are supposed to help people. What happened with him?”
“He was at a casino during Sterling’s murder and was already dead himself when someone got to Judge Vance.”
Thorne absorbed this with a slight nod. “Since we don’t know what their connection is beyond the work they did putting criminals away, I’m concerned about my other staff members.
I've contacted the U.S. Marshals Service, and they're arranging personal security for several people in my office, anyone who worked closely with Sterling or who might be at risk.
The courthouse is doing the same. We're doubling down on building security across the board.”
Allie glanced at Jason, who met her eyes briefly before returning his attention to Thorne. The fact that the U.S. Attorney had personally driven from Seattle to Tacoma spoke to how seriously he was taking the threat to his own people.
Marze nodded in agreement. “Until we identify the suspect, it's smart to assume anyone connected to federal prosecution could be a target.”
“Agreed.” Thorne stood, buttoning his suit jacket. “Keep me updated on any developments. If you need resources, personnel, anything at all, you let me know. Let’s see how quickly we can get some answers."
“So what do we know for certain?” Jason asked after Thorne left. He leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers.
Allie pulled a blank sheet of paper toward her and began writing as she spoke. “The killer is targeting his victims late at night when no one else is around. Both crime scenes show he's capable of breaking in without leaving obvious traces of forced entry.”
“He's angry,” Marze added. “The way he tossed Sterling's cabin and Vance's study suggests rage. This isn't just about eliminating threats. It's personal, though he isn’t directing that anger into the actual murder.”
Jason’s brows lowered. “I don’t know, the branding could easily be a form of rage. Especially if the victims were still alive. The knife would incapacitate them so they couldn't fight the brand.”
“Fair point,” Marze agreed.
Allie stared at the numbers she had written on the paper: 14, 35.
They looked random, but she knew better than to assume randomness in a case like this.
They were symbolic and meant something. Serial offenders, particularly those who ritualized their murders, assigned meaning to their actions.
The question was what meaning these numbers held for the killer.
“Could they be dates?” Marze suggested.
“I’m guessing they’ve got something to do with a case they both oversaw,” Jason offered. “Assuming that’s the connection.”
Allie circled the numbers on her paper, studying them from different angles.
Jason’s suggestion felt logical. Both victims had spent their careers immersed in the federal justice system.
If the killer's motivation stemmed from a case they had worked on together, marking them with related numbers would fit the profile of someone seeking to make a statement.
“In the meantime,” Marze said, “we keep building the profile. We know he's intelligent and organized. And it seems like he’s got a score to settle.”
Allie looked down at the stack of case summaries still waiting to be reviewed.
There were hundreds of cases, thousands of defendants, a web of legal proceedings that stretched back five years.
Calling it the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack felt like an understatement.
But buried somewhere in these documents was the connection they needed, the case that linked Sterling and Vance to their executioner.
Her back ached from hunching over the table, and the coffee in her cup had gone cold hours ago, but right now, none of that mattered.