Guilty Minds

“Right. Well, it freaks me out. Facebook is using facial recognition software for that, and for most people, those photos are visible to any of the billion people on Facebook. So I’m thinking there’s got to be a way to run a search of all DC-area Facebook accounts using a picture of Kayla and facial recognition.”

“Huh. Worth a try, I suppose. But you’re giving me another idea. Surveillance cameras.”

“Sure.”

“Traffic cameras, toll cameras, pharmacies, parking garages, supermarkets, gas stations, gyms, banks… that’s a lot of cameras. All we need is a time-stamped video of her on one of those nights.”

“You’re talking about searching all the surveillance cameras in her neighborhood? That’s impossible. In nine hours? We’d be lucky to get a gas station and a CVS and a Safeway.”

“No, we’d have to focus on places we know she frequents.”

“How?”

“Her credit card statements. See if she made any charges those nights.”

“And how do we get her credit card statements?”

There was a knock on the door. Gideon Parnell was now wearing a suit. “I think my e-mail in-box is going to crash our servers,” he said. “I’m getting e-mails from colleagues and friends and journalists from around the globe. This thing is really blowing up.”

“Hang tough,” I said. “This is going to go all over the web before the day is through. But as long as it’s slugged to Slander Sheet and doesn’t make the legit news websites, we’ll be okay.”

“I don’t understand, what makes you so confident you can still kill this snake?”

“Because the media establishment doesn’t yet own the story. Gideon, with all respect, let us do our work without interruption. Really, it’ll be better for all of us.”

After a beat he nodded at me. “Excuse me,” he said, giving me a long steady look. “You’re absolutely right.” He slipped back out and closed the conference room door behind him.

“Heller,” Dorothy said. “You don’t talk to Gideon Parnell that way.”

“He’ll get over it.”

“I won’t.”

“I was hoping you’d have a way to get into her credit card statements.”

“Well, she’s got an American Express card and a Citibank MasterCard, and I’ve tried to get in the usual ways. I tried guessing her passwords, tried all the obvious ones, but no luck. You think Montello might have a way in?”

I shook my head. My information broker, Frank Montello, had e-mailed me back last night. All he’d come up with on the number programmed into Curtis Schmidt’s flip phone was that it was another throw-away phone, a burner. That was no more than what I already knew. “I don’t think he can get it to us in time.”

“It’s worth a try.”

I nodded, reluctant.

Montello picked up his phone after six long rings. His voice was faint and muffled, as it always seemed to be, as if you’d just interrupted him doing something far more important than talking to you. He operated in the gray zone between law enforcement and private investigation, a place I tried not to go except in extremis. That was the place where money changed hands, where laws were broken: the sort of thing that could lose you your license. You had to be really careful.

Montello knew people at phone companies and credit card companies and banks, people who were willing to sell you inside information. I had no moral objection to paying someone off to get me information I needed. I just preferred to put some distance between the source and me. Montello’s neck was on the block, and he knew it, and that was why he charged so much and acted so squirrelly.

I asked him if he had any sources at Citibank’s credit card division or at American Express.

“No one I trust,” he said, and he disconnected the call without further comment.

I looked at Dorothy and shook my head.

She said, “Then we’re out of luck.”

“No, we’re not,” I said, and I explained my plan.

23

There was a uniform shop in Silver Spring I used to frequent when I worked for Stoddard Associates. This place sold everything from chefs’ toques to lab coats to security officers’ blazers to hospital scrubs. I had a good contact there named Marge something, who used to get me whatever I needed, without asking too many questions. When you’re working undercover it helps to have access to a variety of uniforms.

Luckily, they had what I needed, and Marge still worked there.

– 

Forty-five minutes later I rang Kayla Pitts’s apartment door buzzer. She didn’t answer. But that didn’t necessarily mean anything. She could still be at home. It was ten in the morning; she was likely still asleep. Last time I tried her buzzer she didn’t answer either, even though she was probably at home.