Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
FBI Field Office
Tacoma, Washington
Allie dropped her files onto the conference room table harder than intended.
The morning hadn’t turned up anything new.
She and Jason had spoken with Judge Vance's friends and former colleagues who'd offered nothing but shock and condolences, their faces mirror images of bewilderment and grief.
Everyone said the same thing: Vance had been perfectly normal in his final days.
Jason pulled out a chair across from her. “So many dead ends this morning.”
“All of them.” She rubbed her eyes, trying to reset her focus. They'd spent hours chasing information that led them nowhere.
Now they faced a challenge that refused to go away: Data. Mountains of it.
Brandy stood at the head of the table with her signature Ferrari red moto jacket draped over the back of a chair.
She pulled her bright red hair into a messy bun, strands escaping around her face.
Next to her, in tortoiseshell glasses, sat Mia Quinn, a data analyst who was helping sort through the courthouse records.
She was the perfect foil for the effusive cyber expert.
Mia was quiet where Brandy was loud, methodical where Brandy was intuitive, but together they made a formidable team.
Allie was happy to have them along for the ride.
The two women had laptops open, a wall-mounted screen glowing behind them with what looked like spreadsheets and case files organized into color-coded clusters.
“Okay, so here's what we've got.” Brandy gestured to the screen. “We pulled everything from the courthouse on Vance's case files and cross-referenced them with Sterling's prosecutions. Mia's been helping me work through it all.”
Mia nodded as she tapped on her keyboard.
The screen shifted to show a web of connections between cases, dates, and names—lines connecting prosecutors to judges, defendants to verdicts, creating a visual representation of years of federal prosecutions.
“There's a lot to work through. We've been trying to pare it down to something more manageable.”
Allie studied the screen with a low sense of dread building in the back of her mind.
The sheer volume of information was overwhelming, each case representing hours of investigation, days of trial, and an untold number of lives permanently altered.
Sterling had tried cases in Vance’s courtroom for years.
How many defendants had they put away? How many enemies had they made?
“So, what's our approach?” she asked.
“We're moving forward on the assumption that the killer targeted the victims based on joint cases they worked,” Brandy said. She clicked to a different view, highlighting overlapping prosecutions. “And that the numbers branded onto them are likewise connected.”
“We decided to begin with the highest profile cases and work our way from there,” Mia said.
“Define highest profile,” Allie said.
Brandy clicked through several screens. “We focused on cases that made news, had significant financial impact, or involved defendants with resources and motive to hold a grudge several years later. Eventually, we had five cases that stood out.”
The screen changed to display those five in bold letters.
Allie leaned forward, reading each one carefully.
Five cases out of how many? The narrowing felt both necessary and risky.
What if they were wrong? What if the killer's motive lay in something smaller, something they were dismissing as insignificant?
“Now this wasn’t intentional, but each one of these features a different type of crime. The first is public corruption. Pierce County officials were caught red-handed taking bribes from developers,” Brandy pulled up the first case summary. “Sterling prosecuted, successfully, and Vance presided.”
“I remember that one,” Jason said. “Eastman did a great job pulling it all together.”
“Which proves that he excels at more than just golf,” Allie joked. “Which, by the way, is getting out of hand. Do we really need a putting green in the office?”
Jason shrugged. “It’s fine by me.”
“Right. Of course it is.”
“Ahem.” Brandy cleared her throat. “If I may continue?”
Allie sheepishly waved her on. “Sorry.”
“No biggy. I’ve tripped over that stupid green a dozen times already, so I get it. Anyway, Sterling bagged multiple convictions, and all of them served time.”
“Some of whom are out now,” Mia said. “That’s one of our data points—only including cases where defendants have been released, if they did time.”
“Right. So the next one is healthcare fraud,” Brandy continued. “A network of doctors decided to bill Medicare for unnecessary procedures.”
Jason glanced at Allie. “That sounds like Dr. Bennett's case.”
“Similar, yes,” Brandy confirmed. The screen shifted to the third case.
“Environmental crime,” she said, seething.
“These rotten SOBs dumped industrial waste in the Puyallup River. Company executives ordered the disposal to avoid proper treatment costs. Because pollution means nothing compared to profit.”
“None of them went to prison though,” Marze said from the corner. He’d been so quiet Allie had forgotten he was in there.
“Then we've got a RICO case,” Mia said. “The Torrino organized crime family was accused of the normal stuff, like racketeering, money laundering, extortion, and loan sharking.”
Allie had been keeping notes, but she put a star by this one.
Organized crime families had long memories and resources that extended far beyond prison walls.
If the Torrinos were behind this, the investigation just became exponentially more dangerous.
Organizations didn’t just kill for revenge, they also killed to send messages.
“And this last one is your good ol’ run of the mill Ponzi scheme,” Brandy said. “This particular one defrauded investors of over three hundred million dollars.”
Silence settled over the conference room.
Brandy leaned back against the table with her arms crossed, letting the scope of it sink in.
Allie stared at the five case summaries on the screen, each one representing lives destroyed and powerful people who'd been brought to justice.
County officials who sold their integrity.
Doctors who performed unnecessary surgeries for profit.
Executives who poisoned a river, mobsters who built empires on fear, and con artists who stole people's life savings.
Any one of them could have generated enough rage to fuel revenge five years later. But they had to start somewhere, and these five seemed like the best place to start.
“What's the problem with accessing the case files?” Marze asked.
“They're archived off-site,” Mia said. “Standard procedure for closed cases. It will take days to retrieve them in full.”
Marze nodded. “What can we work with in the meantime?”
“We’ve got the case summaries and exhibit lists,” Brandy said. “It's not much, but it's enough to start building interview lists.”
Mia brought up another screen. “We’ve pulled out anyone connected to a case who might hold a grudge five years later, like defendants who are out of prison or close to release, defense attorneys who might have maintained contact with their clients, and victims who felt the sentencing was too lenient.
There are also witnesses who were pressured to testify, and family members who lost everything. ”
Allie rubbed her temples. “That’s a lot of people.”
“Which is why I'm bringing in several other agents to help with the initial legwork,” Marze said.
He moved to the table and sat, his posture suggesting he was settling in for the long haul.
“We've got a lot of information to sift through until we know we're looking in the right direction. I can’t have us wasting time on wrong angles. The sooner we parse out the data, the sooner we can get on the right path.”
Jason set down his pen. “How do you want to divide it up?”
Marze glanced at the screen, his eyes moving across the five case titles. “Allie, you focus on the healthcare fraud case. Jason, you take the Ponzi scheme. I'll get other agents on the rest.”
Brandy closed her computer. “We'll keep working on the data from our end. See if we can find any additional connections between the cases.”
Marze gave a nod of satisfaction and walked to the door, signaling the meeting was moving toward conclusion. “Keep me updated and cross-reference everything. If you find a connection between your case and someone else’s, flag it immediately.”
Brandy and Mia gathered their files and laptops. “You’ve all got links to this in your inbox. Ping me if you don’t get it or something isn’t clear.”
After the analysts left, Marze lingered for a moment. “This is going to be a grind, you two. It’s a lot of data, and until we know we're looking in the right direction, every angle matters.”
“We'll get there,” Jason told him.
Allie stared at her notes, at the five cases that might hold the answer.
Or might not. That was the problem with investigations like this—too many variables, too many possibilities.
They could spend weeks running down leads in the healthcare fraud case only to discover the killer's motive lay somewhere else entirely.
Suddenly, the thought of a game of golf wasn’t looking all that bad. She pushed back from the table and stood with some reluctance. “Better get to it.”