Unsolved (Invisible #2) - James Patterson Page 0,75

day. I’d lose all of my resources. Darwin would get away scot-free.

But if she believes me…we could devote the full resources of the Bureau to catching Darwin.

As always, Elizabeth remains blank-faced and noncommittal as I go through everything. She doesn’t take notes. She sits with her chin perched on her fists, still as a statue.

When I’m done, she pinches the bridge of her nose. “So, this guy you’re calling Darwin,” she says. “Every one of his victims were homeless or sick or poor or some kind of advocate for the homeless or sick or poor. All died seemingly of accidental or natural causes, but you couldn’t convince the local authorities to do autopsies.”

“Right.”

“And all of them had puncture wounds on their torsos.”

“Two wounds. Spread the approximate distance of Taser darts.”

“But nobody thought they were from a Taser.”

“They didn’t look like Taser wounds, Elizab—um, Assistant Dir—”

“Elizabeth is fine,” she says. “They didn’t look like Taser wounds because they were too narrow and clean.”

“Right. There was no barb, no hook. And no electrical burn surrounding the wound.”

“Mmm-hmm.” Her eyes drift upward. “So then he switches up. He decides to piggyback on Citizen David’s work. No more one-off killings. Now he can kill the same kind of people but get a few hundred of them at a time. And blame it on David.”

“Yes.”

“To do that, he had to know the details of David’s work. Stuff that hasn’t been made public. Like the Garfield the Cat watch.”

“Yes.”

“And to do that, he hacked into your home computers.”

“Yes. So my first thought was to trace it back and find him.”

She shakes her head. “No. If he’s any good—and he seems to be—it wouldn’t be directly traceable. He’d run it over a series of anonymous servers. We’d end up kicking in a door in Buenos Aires or Melbourne, Australia. But here’s the bigger problem: He’d know. If he’s proficient, he booby-trapped it with alarms. Once he knows we’re looking for him, he’ll disappear and start over with a new identity.”

That, more or less, is exactly what Pully told me. I didn’t expect Elizabeth Ashland to have the same level of cybersecurity knowledge as my computer-geek friend.

The look on my face must betray my thoughts. She puts her hand on her chest. “I came from Financial Crimes. We deal with this stuff all the time.”

“Sure.”

She drums her perfectly manicured nails on her desk, working this over in her mind. “And you think he’s in a wheelchair, and he’s local, and he has some kind of moon tattoo or scar on his face.”

“I do. We’re trying to narrow it down right now.”

“Mmm-hmm.” Still drumming her nails. “Okay, Emmy,” she says. “Follow the lead and let me know what I can do to help.”

I release the breath I’ve been holding. Just like that? I’m good? “And Assistant Director Ross…”

“Don’t worry about Dwight. I’m giving you the green light. I want constant updates.”

“Absolutely. Of course.”

She gets out of her chair. “I don’t know if this is a real lead,” she says. “If it is, you’ve done great work. If it isn’t—well, I can hear Dwight now: ‘Emmy’s wasted our time with some inane theory that a guy in a wheelchair is a serial killer.’”

“Understood.” But it’s the break we’ve needed. It narrows down our field immensely.

“You’re out on a limb,” Elizabeth says. “But I guess now I am too. Go find your wheelchair killer.”

74

RABBIT, PULLY, and I spend the day poring over the data that Rabbit spent most of the night compiling and converting into a usable format. There are over twenty thousand drivers with disability licenses in the multistate region we’ve targeted. The process of reviewing and cross-referencing isn’t as easy as it looks on TV, when some geek-chic computer diva types in a couple of words, hits a few buttons, and announces the name of the villain. This could take some time.

We call out progress reports, crack jokes in the heat of the adrenaline. But by five o’clock, the jokes have disappeared, and the comments have become weak, almost robotic updates.

By seven o’clock, the air seems to have completely gone out of my overworked, sleep-deprived team.

“Emmy.”

I spin around in my chair to see Elizabeth Ashland standing there with that same implacable professional expression she always displays, the one that seems to put a barrier between her and everyone else. But maybe Elizabeth and I have reached a détente. We may even be developing a friendship, or at least a kinship as women in this male-dominated place. Yes, she initially