The Dark Halo, page 18
“Great. Any security footage?”
“I checked houses on the street before you got here and none have cameras angled outward. There is helicopter footage of the fire. That’s why I came actually, it was on the news while I was eating breakfast.”
“Probably didn’t capture the arsonist though.”
“That would be my guess.”
Silence fell between them and he turned to look back to where Nicolas Sutton had been standing. There was no sign of him, yet Coombes still felt the energy of the other man’s anger directed at him. As a cop, he was used to being the recipient of hostile emotions by people who thought they knew who he was. Who assumed he was an oppressor, some kind of fascist puppet of the government. It all rolled off his back unnoticed.
Nicky was different.
He did know who he was, better than almost everyone.
Despite this, it seemed Sutton now personally blamed him for both the fire and the death of his father. His mind turned back to the investigation. The two events had to be linked, it didn’t seem likely that the home would be randomly targeted, it had to be part of the Ferryman case. Fires were typically set in order to file an insurance claim, erase evidence, or with the intent to kill someone trapped inside.
“Okay,” Coombes said. “Say the Ferryman took out Teddy Sutton. Let’s also say this was his first murder and because of that it’s special in a way the others aren’t. He thinks about it a lot, around and around, like a happy memory. First kiss, first touchdown, first kill. Like that. Suddenly he realizes he made a mistake. A moment he wasn’t wearing a glove; or that he’d been in the house before, socially. That his DNA is everywhere. He decides on a permanent solution.”
Sato nodded. “Nobody burns down a house to cover up a suicide.”
“Exactly.”
“It’s like he wants us to know we screwed up, Johnny. That we missed some piece of evidence. He’s rubbing it in our faces and laughing.”
“A tableau of a different kind.”
“I see that, but I mean it feels forced, doesn’t it?”
Coombes said nothing and turned to stare at the destroyed building. He’d spent much of his teenage years here with the Suttons, like he was an orphan they’d adopted. The building was barely recognizable. He wondered if it might be a relief to Nicky that the place where his father died had been cleansed, that it would likely now have to be fully destroyed. After a couple of minutes, the fire investigator emerged from inside the blackened building and walked up the driveway toward them, his eyes moving over their suits.
“Slow day at RHD, detectives?”
“Not quite. This location was previously the scene of a possible homicide. What can you tell us about the fire?”
“All right. I can confirm it was deliberate. Starting in the front doorway, it swept quickly through the rest of the building. An accelerant was involved and I’m going to go with gasoline based on residues left behind and the burn pattern on the wall next to the staircase.”
“Anyone inside when it went up?”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
“You can’t be sure?”
“There’s usually something left behind and I didn’t see anything.”
“What about coins?”
“Coins?”
“Specifically, two silver dollars.”
“That’s who you are! The Ferryman detective, I thought you were familiar. I didn’t see any silver dollars, but gasoline burns at 1,878 degrees. That’s hot enough to melt silver and copper, so it’s possible they didn’t survive. Strange to think a human body could outlast a metal coin, isn’t it? You want my two cents?” The investigator paused to smile. “This was just a bored teenager with a can of gas and a bunch of matches.”
Coombes put on his sunglasses.
“Two cents doesn’t buy as much as it used to.”
26
Coombes found a stack of emails waiting for him from Officer Fleet when he started his computer. It impressed him the way the young cop had broken down the information by content type and split it across multiple emails rather than mashing everything together on a single long email, as a lot of cops did.
He opened the email containing the dash cam footage first.
There were links to around fifty files on the server. The filenames showed three different call signs representing the different patrol vehicles that attended the crash. All the clips were five minutes long and each was time stamped to show they were unedited.
He played the first clip, which showed Fleet’s vehicle pulling away from their station house and cruising along near-empty streets. A light rain was falling and the asphalt was wet, a fact that doubtless played into what happened next. The clip ended before the incident and he supposed Fleet had included it to support the timeline in his report. He moved on to the next. Almost immediately, the big patrol SUV turned toward the I-5. In front he saw the RV Fleet had mentioned during their call.
This was it, the clip that would have it all. The others were just noise. Coombes glanced to the left side of the screen toward where Adrian Blackstone’s Tesla would appear. Above, in the distance, a stop light changed to green and they moved forward, quickly building speed. The patrol vehicle, the RV, and a car in front of that he couldn’t make out.
It seemed like nothing was going to happen right up until the last second, when the Tesla appeared almost out of nowhere and hit the RV. The closing speed made it look like a missile strike, and even though he was expecting it, he was still shocked.
The RV was sheared in half by the collision.
Adrian Blackstone’s Tesla spun around after the first impact, hit Fleet’s SUV, then spun the opposite way, popped up over a curb until it came to rest against a fence. The car appeared to be relatively intact, except that the front section had crumpled up and the side windows were now gone.
Almost four seconds passed before Fleet and his partner exited their vehicle and ran to provide assistance. Coombes could clearly see their hands shaking from the shock and adrenaline spike. The partner called it in while Fleet bent to look inside the Tesla. He then moved sharply to the right and vomited at the side of the road.
It was the smart move on his part, his face was burger.
Coombes shook his head and sighed. You don’t throw up at the crime scene, you just don’t. It was like the first rule in police work. The man couldn’t stop contaminating his crime scenes. It was a hard job, and they can’t prepare you for what you will see, but still.
The clip came to the end and rather than go on to the next one, he played the beginning again, slowing down the impact sequence and advancing frame by frame. As the Tesla entered the shot, Adrian Blackstone’s face was illuminated by the headlights of the SUV. His mouth was frozen open in what Coombes could only assume was a scream, his eyes wide with horror.
Blackstone saw his death coming and it was no suicide.
He moved to the next email, which contained photographs of the scene taken from every angle. The intersection, facing up each cross street; the three vehicles involved, including Fleet’s SUV; shots of the fire crew cutting the Tesla open; and lastly, shots of Blackstone himself. Coombes picked up his lunch and dropped it unopened in his trash can. A minute later, he was in the washroom splashing water in his face.
He’d looked down on the young cop for being sick, but he owed the man an apology. The Blackstone crime scene was right up there with Steve Ellis’ at the Capitol Records Building. It was as bad as anything he’d seen in his entire career and it was seared into his brain merely from a photograph of it. He leaned over the sink and looked at his face in the mirror.
It was white as a ghost.
The door popped open and his least favorite person in the department came through it. Detective Wallfisch. Ruddy face, bad hair, and a body that was almost completely spherical. He was mid-laugh as he came in but the laugh died on his lips when he saw him.
“Damn, Coombes. What happened to you?”
“I just saw a man smashed to pulp in an auto wreck.”
Wallfisch nodded, like that would do it, then walked toward one of the stalls.
“There’s a pint of Wild Turkey in my drawer if you need it.”
Coombes looked at the other man’s broad retreating back with surprise. It was the first decent thing the detective had ever said to him. His desk temporarily infected by what he’d seen on his computer, he decided to go to the task force room and make some notes about the fire. He found Sato in there, her face inches from her laptop screen.
Coombes moved around the side to see what she was watching and saw it was the Haylee Jordan parking garage footage. The killer walking toward the camera, his head dipping as the strip light approached, then coming back up after it was behind him. The whole sequence was over in seconds.
She rewound to before the head dip and paused it.
The Ferryman was looking directly toward the camera but all they could see was shadow and pixel grain. She turned up the brightness on her screen, trying to make a face appear out of the darkness, but all that happened was that the shadows washed out and the white unshaded tip of the killer’s nose became a blown-out sun.
Sato sat back in her seat.
“He’s like a ghost, Johnny. The more you look at him, the less he exists.”
“The camera is junk. The brand went out of business 30 years ago. Rollins said it’s equivalent to 1/6th of a megapixel, we’ll get no ID from it.”
Sato tapped her screen.
“He hides his face. He knew the cameras were there and that we’d look at this footage.”
“Of course.”
“But he’s still framing Haylee’s death as a suicide, like she did this to herself.”
Coombes nodded, getting her meaning.
“He likes the press attention the kills give him. The coins, the suicide, it’s all part of his signature. He’s captured the public imagination.”
“It only became a signature later. At the beginning, the suicide had a function, to hide the fact that these people were being murdered.”
“Was he hiding the murders from us, or the other victims?”
Sato’s mouth dropped open in surprise.
“Wow, I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Families don’t like suicide. Funerals become private with no publicity. From a social point of view, it’s like the victims have disappeared. Robbed not only of their life, but a celebration of that life and what they achieved. A guilty secret that no one talks about. People outside the inner circle might not find out for weeks or months.”
“And if he’s killing one a week-”
“They could all be dead before any of them realizes what’s happening.”
The door opened and Gonzalez came in with a big smile and a lot of positive energy. She put an evidence bag down on the desk in front of them. Inside was a circuit board with wires coming out of it. He glanced back up.
“What’s this?”
“That is an Arduino microcontroller board. We pulled it out of the Metro Grand elevator. It was hooked into the power, emergency door release, and security cameras. I’m sure you know what it does.”
“It cuts the cameras.”
“That’s right. Now tell me the clever part.”
Coombes looked at the circuit board. Even without removing it from the bag he could see it was covered in dust and that one of the chips had a darker corner from heat build-up.
“It’s been there for ages.”
Gonzalez smiled.
“32 days before Vandenberg was killed, the elevator was out of service for approximately five minutes. It worked perfectly afterward so it was never investigated.”
“Let me guess. The hotel only keeps recordings for 31 days.”
“In fact, it’s only 14, but the default set-up is 31.”
“Our guy installs this in advance. He knows he’ll be recorded while he hooks it up, but he also knows it won’t matter. By the time its purpose has been discovered, the old footage has been automatically erased and he’s back to being the invisible man.”
“That’s it.”
Coombes studied the circuit board.
“How difficult is it to make one of these?”
“Not difficult at all. It’s off-the-shelf, you program it to do what you want and you’re all set. The hard stuff is done by the elevator, this is essentially a switch and a timer for how long to cut the cameras. It’s probably only around 20 lines of code.”
Gonzalez seemed pretty pleased with herself. He’d given her a puzzle and she’d solved it. That’s how she looked at the situation, not about what it meant for the investigation.
“What you’re saying, is this gives us nothing.”
“Well, not nothing. We know whoever did this doesn’t work at the hotel. Everyone I spoke with knew precisely how long recordings were kept.”
Coombes tapped the evidence bag.
“You think a member of staff, smart enough to do this, wouldn’t realize the 14-day period was inside knowledge? That they’d be implicating themselves? Maybe the killer allowed the extra days to get us to look the other way. That’s what I’d do.”
Gonzalez’ face fell. “I never thought of that.”
Sato glared at him. A warning. He could speak to her like that, but not Gonzalez. He made his voice softer.
“Sorry, Carla. That didn’t come out right. This is good stuff, maybe the geek squad will be able to get something off it. Fingerprints, DNA, some kind of digital marker. A serial number that we can trace to a purchase would be nice. For the record, I don’t think we’re dealing with a hotel employee. You don’t shit where you eat, even wild animals know that.”
Sato was still giving him the look after Gonzalez left.
27
Coombes arrived early for his meeting with the Tesla technician at the impounded vehicles lot that was operated by the Sheriff’s Department. Although he had seen both videos and still pictures of the vehicle, he had yet to personally inspect Adrian Blackstone’s car and he wanted to be as familiar with it as possible. Walking around the outside, the damage fell into two groups; catastrophic, and none at all. The rear half was ready to be rolled back into a showroom, while the normally streamlined front was scrunched up to what Coombes took to be about a third its normal size.
He walked around to the front and crouched down so his eyes were just above wheel height. The car had struck the RV off-center and the result was that the right side was significantly more damaged than the left. He assumed this was the result of Blackstone attempting to steer away from the other vehicle.
He stood again and walked to the driver side.
The door was missing, cut off by first responders in an attempt to free Blackstone from the wreckage. The door was propped against the intact back section of the car. A clear plastic seat cover had been left on the driver’s seat by the evidence collection team and he turned and sat down on it.
Inside, blood was everywhere.
Misting, pooling, and cast-off arcs from the fast, jerking movement of Blackstone’s head. It was as if he’d been repeatedly beaten with a hammer, except the hammer was the car. It was a grim scene, almost as bad as Harry Ryan’s supposed self-administered gunshot wound, but the time delay had robbed it of its visceral impact. The blood had dried black, and like Blackstone’s corpse, the smell of death had gone.
Coombes saw movement through the starred windshield and when he stood, he saw another Tesla drive past and park next to his Dodge. A man with large glasses and a smile walked toward him, shoulders swinging. It reminded him of Jake Curtis’ swagger after the farcical meeting with the Deputy District Attorney. The tech was taller than Curtis, but shorter than himself.
It was important to keep score.
“Sean Bostic.”
“Coombes.”
Bostic smiled, like he’d remembered the punchline to a joke.
“I hate seeing them busted up like this, it’s upsetting.”
They walked side by side toward Blackstone’s wrecked car.
“You think this is bad, you should see what happened to the driver.”
“Can I?”
Coombes glanced at Bostic with a frown. “No.”
“I recognize you from the news. Is this part of the Ferryman case?”
“I can’t comment on active investigations.”
“That’s too bad, I love all that true crime stuff.”
He watched Bostic setup his laptop and begin typing on the keyboard. Multiple screens opened up on the limited screen real estate. Bostic hummed quietly to himself, looking at the screen, typing on the keyboard. The keys were made of rubber and made a muted tapping sound rather than a clicking.
“You said you didn’t want the insurance agent present, how come?”
“Well, Coombes, no first name. My company wants to help you catch whoever is responsible for killing our customer. That’s our priority here, not worrying about some lawsuit or bullshit federal investigation.”
The facts, with no sales pitch or careful phrasing. How refreshing.
“John.”
The side of Bostic’s face pulled up in a smile, and there was a small nod, but he didn’t turn from the screen. He was like Sato when she was in the zone on her computer, her headphones on. A minute passed, then another. Coombes looked around the lot. There were close to a hundred cars, mostly mid to low-end. Blackstone’s Tesla was the only wreck he could see. Vehicles that had been totaled would be held for insurance or criminal investigation, then destroyed elsewhere.
“Holy shit. That’s cold, man.”
“What you got?”
“Looks like someone connected remotely and took control. Changing lanes, accelerating to 122 MPH, then returning control for the last two seconds before impact.”
“That explains the brakes at the end.”
“That’s kind of the problem, Detective. It shouldn’t be possible. Safety systems overrule everything else, and the brakes are like a vice. If you’ve never driven an EV before, you won’t appreciate how quickly they can stop.”
Sounded like he was getting the sales pitch after all.
