Chapter Thirteen #5
“I need their electronics. Mainly a phone. A laptop. Someone might have been in contact with Devon. If I can get a place to start, we’ve got him.
He then can’t pretend that he wasn’t involved in this, or that I’m trying to frame an innocent man.
That’s another reason he’s having his electronic footprint scrambled after the fact.
I won’t be able to use it in court against him. ”
He was disgusted.
“You think that’s his plan?”
Oh, she did.
“Yeah, if he’s caught, and I somehow manage to bring him in, he’ll have a contingency plan with about ten expensive lawyers to make my life hell. He’ll make sure there’s so much doubt in my case that a jury of his peers will acquit in a heartbeat, humiliating me.”
That sounded like this guy was a colossal douchebag.
“Well, after this, I hope he doesn’t see court,” Dex admitted.
She laughed.
“Are you talking about committing a crime and in front of your Attorney General husband-to-be for the DOJ? Ballsy,” she joked.
That made him snort.
“Good point. I’ll keep my yap closed.”
Well, it wasn’t like he was wrong. Devon wasn’t seeing a jury of his peers. He’d fucked around, and now, he was going to find out.
The chase just got more interesting.
“We might get lucky and they can be interviewed,” she stated. “If that’s the case, bring them in, and I’ll give you everything I need to know so that you or Quinn can break them in interrogation.”
Dex could do that.
“Give me some time. We’ll head there now with a bunch of cops. If they are alive, I can scare the shit out of them—and that should be the outcome if they are helping a killer.”
She was grateful.
“Thanks, Dex.”
She hung up.
Now, they needed to work on the last part. If she was right, they needed to figure out who was helping him again tie up loose ends.
“He personally delivered those flowers to cover his ass on camera. He only needs one juror to hang a jury. BUT we also know they were laced with poison. He’d play dumb to that, so that means he needed help with that, too.”
Gene knew what she was saying.
“A chemist?”
She nodded.
“Exactly. If he’s tying up loose ends on the apprentice front, who do you hire to take out apprentices?” she asked.
Gene knew.
“Mercenaries.”
She nodded.
“He bought his help, like we buy our help when we need it. I never thought he’d do the same thing,” Elizabeth admitted. “We hire the Spiders, the Snakes or The Hunters. Well, he does the same thing.”
Elizabeth glanced over.
Speaking of the mercenaries. Now, she needed to know if Gene had done what she asked.
“Are they in the air?”
He nodded.
“By now, yes,” he stated. “It’s Callen’s jet, so we can track that.”
And Ivan, who wasn’t far away, and who had been listening the whole time, did just that. He had the tracker going, and shared what he found.
“Yep. They are in the air.”
Good.
Ethan was curious.
“You called them in?” he asked.
Elizabeth had been breaking down, and had no hope, so she had no choice. If she went down, he won. Now knowing what she knew, they needed their help.
You didn’t fight mercenaries with federal agents. You fought them with other mercenaries. If Devon was buying help, so was she.
Oh, and wouldn’t he be shocked when he came face-to-face with them?
It was officially tit for tat here. She’d turn the tables so he never saw it coming.
Her job was harder because the bottom line was that no matter what he threw at her, she had to hold up. The whole family was counting on her. The weight of that was heavy, but she had to carry it.
Period.
“Yes, because I need help,” she said, not mincing words.
Then, she focused. “Gene, start focusing on buyable people who could possibly be helping them. We all need to do that. We need a chemist who figured out the correct amount of poison. In fact, the car that was blown that nearly killed us outside his building wasn’t done by him either.
We need someone good at explosives, too.
He will use them again since they were successful.
If we want to be safe, we have to cut off all of his paths until the only one is directly at me, where I’ll be ready for him. ”
Oh, this was going to take time.
She wasn’t done.
“Hiring mercenaries is MUCH harder to track, and he knows it. An ME and the minister are throwaway helpers. Mercenaries keep their mouths shut when they are hired. He knows if I figure that out, I’ll never be able to find them or get them to spill their guts.
So, he’ll let the mercenaries live—in case he needs to use them again.
We cut off his ability to hire new people with that press conference. ”
It appeared Elizabeth had this asshole dead to rights.
Not wanting to be the downer, Callen still had to point one thing out.
“We can’t just Google ‘Mercenaries for hire’,” Callen stated.
Oh, she was aware.
“No, but we can go through arrest records for similar crimes, and see if anyone is in this area, and also out of jail. He’d hire the best. We can also dig in and see what our friends know.
We have access to The Underground and The Dark Web thanks to our friends.
It’s time to think outside the box on this one. ”
And there was Elizabeth.
It appeared she got her feet back under her, and they were going to stay focused.
Together, they all dug in.
From Ethan to Chris, and Callen to Gene, they all did what they did best as a team, and family.
They got to work.
As an hour went by, and they were pulling police records, news stories, and anything else that contained Aconite or an explosion, her phone rang.
Hitting the button, she recognized the number.
It was the sheriff.
“Yes, Sheriff Deen?”
He sighed.
“Ma’am, you were right. Something bad happened here. Doctor Monroe is dead. Someone killed him. His throat is slit, and the place is a bloodbath.”
They all stared at her.
It looked like the bitch was back. She’d been right, and they were onto this asshole.
Now, Devon Slater had a problem. He’d given her too much with that one-hundred-dollar bill, and experience gave her the rest.
She was locked into him.
Now, he was fucked.
“Well, shit,” she stated. “I’m sorry, Sheriff. Since this is likely tied to our case, I’m going to have to pull jurisdiction,” she stated.
He handed it over.
“Honestly, Director, I don’t want this one. He was a friend,” he stated. “Do you want me to call your office?” he asked.
She did.
“Yeah, contact the Corpus Christi FBI office, and tell them I authorized it. Before I hang up with you, do you see a phone? A tablet? Something electronic?” she asked.
Mostly, she wanted to keep checking her theory on this one, and if she was right, all evidence would be swept.
They heard him walking around.
“No, Ma’am. His computer is gone too, and I don’t see a phone either.”
Yep.
This was going to be a clean-up, and she’d bet a professional hit. Since she worked with Mercenaries, she knew a hit when she heard it.
“I’m sorry for the loss of your friend, Sheriff. Please know that my people will handle it and get the doctor the justice he deserves.”
Yeah, like ruining his reputation posthumously.
Someone helped a killer and murdered those three women. Corpus Christi agents would get to the bottom of it, and he would never be known as a ‘good’ doctor.
Trust.
And.
Believe.
“Thank you, Director.”
With that confirmed, she hung up.
“Gene, call our satellite office and warn them what’s coming in. If the call never comes in from that man, I want to know. Do I trust the sheriff? No. I don’t trust anyone at this point if I don’t know them personally.”
He handled it.
Before she could say anything else, her phone rang again, and once more, she recognized the number.
It was Dex, and it was an incoming video call.
So, she hit the button and crossed her fingers, toes, and heart, praying she was right.
Normally, she wouldn’t want to wish death on anyone, but in this case, if they were dead, they were guilty of helping the man.
“Tell me I’m right, Dex,” she said.
His face appeared.
“What the fuck?” he asked.
That told her all she needed to know.
She was right.
“Elizabeth, the whole place is bloody. We found the wife with her throat slit. It’s a clean kill, but she sprayed out everywhere.”
That matched the ME on the other side of the country. A hit would be the opposite of the kills they’d participated in, so as not to match Devon’s MO.
He’d want this to point away from him.
Someone was clever, but she’d seen it all before. This was NOT her first rodeo.
Now, she was curious.
“And the husband?”
He told her.
“Same.”
The men at the table were smiling, and not to revel in someone’s death. Instead, it was because they were proud of her. Elizabeth had worked through the chaos and found that one string to tug.
She was to the point.
“He either wants me to think he’s there, or he’s covering his tracks. I still believe that he is covering his ass for court at a later time.”
Dex was disgusted.
“I hate assholes.”
Welcome to her world.
It was filled with them.
Now, Elizabeth took a stab at it.
“Is it cold in their house? Like the AC is pumping?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Yes, how did you know?”
Because he was setting the stage to muddy the evidence water.
He’d had his DNA planted, and now he was messing with TOD. He knew exactly how she worked, and what she needed to do her job. There was no doubt that he’d be able to prove that he never left this area during the time of the murders.
Yeah, he’d had a sneak peek into her old case files. It was a fuck you to her, so she’d know he’d used her old work to derail her.
But it hadn’t worked.
Not.
Even.
Close.
She was onto him.
“Devon paid someone to kill them, but he’s testing me.
He made it cold in case I was almost there, but not quite.
If I didn’t figure this clue out as quickly as I did, he’d want me to think he went back to Corpus Christi and killed the ME, and then went there to kill the minister and his wife.
He’d want me chasing my own tail on this by chasing his. ”
Dex hated games.