On Dangerous Ground Read online

“now,” he meant “right now.” They exchanged a concerned glance and wondered what the hell might be up. Knowing that the answers would be revealed soon enough, they followed McNally into his office.

  “Close the door, please, and have a seat.”

  Bobby ushered Terri fully into the office before reaching behind to close the door. They sat in matching gray central supply chairs and remained silent as McNally pressed forward.

  “We may have a serial crime. I’ve got three seemingly unrelated murders in completely different parts of the country. Not unusual, except for the fact that the perp has some kind of number fetish and all of the victims work as consultants for one of those giant tech companies up the road in Herndon.”

  He shoved a manila folder across his desk toward Bobby and Terri. “That’s faxed copies of the crime scene reports.”

  Terri took the folder while McNally slid a second one across his desk to Bobby. “This one,” he gestured toward the paperwork, “is the pertinent information you’ll need about NoVaGenEx. That’s the company that these folks used to work for. There’s contact information for the company and a list of all of the other people who do the same consulting work. I know there’s not a lot here to go on, but we’re not here to speculate. We’re here to investigate. So go do that. I’ll expect a preliminary report by close of business Friday. That’s tomorrow, by the way. Thank you.”

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  Bobby and Terri both knew that when McNally said

  “thank you” he really meant “get out.” They rose from their seats, Bobby opened the door, ushered Terri out, and closed the door behind him. Terri shook her head as she walked back to her desk. “He’s always so charming.”

  Bobby laughed a little and answered, “Yeah, a real Miss Congeniality.” He sat at his desk and opened his folder. “Wow, someone isn’t fooling around.” He pulled out a crime scene photo and tossed it across the desk.

  Terri picked up the picture. “No kidding.” The first thing she noticed was blood. Lots of it. “What happened here?”

  Bobby leafed through the forensics reports. “Here it is. Single gunshot wound from point-blank range to the back of the neck.”

  She thought about it for a moment. “That means he snuck up from behind. This guy never would have known what hit him.” Terri looked closer at the picture. “Here’s that number thing McNally mentioned.”

  Bobby leaned across the desk while Terri showed him the photo. “Right here. Thirty-six, written in blood on the forehead. Is there something on the other two?”

  He leafed through the photos on his desk and pulled out one of victim number two. “Yep, here it is.” He tossed the picture to Terri.

  “Eighty-nine? What on earth does that mean?”

  Bobby looked as confused as Terri felt. “And what the fuck does it have to do with thirty-six?” He shuffled through the remaining pictures for victim number three. He found it.

  “Or forty-three?”

  Terri picked up her pen to make a note. “I’ll call the guys in crypto and see if they can come up with something.”

  “Sounds like a plan. Ooh, here’s something else: the crime scenes were clean. No fibers, no usable footprints on

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  the carpet, no prints, and that usually means latex gloves and hospital shoe covers. That requires some planning, unless, of course, the perp works in a hospital or research facility.”

  “Right. So that gives us anyone who has ever been to a hospital or had access to a drug store.” She shook her head.

  “That really narrows it down. So, what about the weapon?”

  Bobby scanned the report. “No casings, no slugs, just powder burns on the back of the neck. Coroner is speculating nine millimeter auto, but he won’t swear to it. Too much bone and crap in the wound. And we’ve got to assume that he used a silencer. Vic number two lived in an apartment building, and no one heard a thing.”

  “Well, shit.” Terri was frustrated. She stared at both pictures, trying to make sense out of it. It wasn’t working.

  “So, initial thoughts, Agent McKinnon?”

  Terri leaned back in her chair. “Well, my first thought, considering that the victims work for the same company, would have been disgruntled employee, but this number thing kind of throws a monkey wrench into that theory.”

  “Always a classic, yes, but I agree. Not this time.” Bobby rocked back in his chair with his hands behind his head. “Hey, maybe this company is into something.” He motioned with his chin toward the folder in Terri’s hands. “Tell me more about what they do.”

  “Let’s see…” Terri nodded as she read. “Government contracts for software development, biotechnology, robotics, all kinds of stuff.”

  “That adds terrorism and blackmail to the list of motives, which flies a little better with the level of premeditation we see here, so maybe the numbers are a code of some kind. Something to do with some project they’re working on.” Bobby sat back in his chair again and shook his head. “Also, is this a solo act, or are we thinking multiple shooters?”

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  “Right…Georgia, Michigan, and Illinois aren’t exactly next door to each other. We need to look at this closer.”

  “Okey-dokey,” Bobby said. “How about I take the police reports and you call the tech-heads? Then we’ll see what we can piece together,” he paused to look at his watch, “in the next twenty-nine hours.”

  Terri nodded and opened her folder to get the phone number for the department manager of offsite operations at NoVaGenEx. Once she went through all the niceties and explained her need for information, she asked for a rundown of the consultant network.

  “You see, Agent McKinnon, the use of independent consultants reduces the expense of providing workspace and health insurance benefits for a number of employees. It also serves as a way for us to decentralize a portion of our government contract work as a deterrent to cyber terrorism. I’m sure you can understand, especially in this day of government terror alerts, why this is of great importance to us. That’s why the consultants are really not employees of NoVaGenEx, but they are well paid and fully compensated for any special hardware or software that might be required. Additionally, as independent contractors, no person knows anything about any other contractor, and we try to maintain a strategic geographical distribution of our consultant network as another firewall against cyber crime.”

  Terri nodded and scribbled a few notes. “Makes sense. So, we need to know if the three consultants that were targeted were working on the same project.”

  “No, I’m afraid that they weren’t. NoVaGenEx maintains a network of over eight hundred consultants, and we usually run twenty, up to thirty different projects at a time.”

  Terri scratched “disgruntled employee” from her list. Just a hunch. “Okay then, thank you for your time. I have

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  your contact information, so we’ll be in touch if we need any further information. Please feel free to give me a call if you think of anything else you might believe to be pertinent.” She concluded the call and looked toward Bobby, who was still on the phone.

  Terri still had little information with which to start building a profile, so she moved on to the next step. It was essential to determine who had access to the employee list. A consultant leak at the company or outside hackers at work would make things immensely more complicated, so she broke down the list of consultants to try to uncover any connection between those people and the cities where the crimes had been committed. She started scanning the list but stopped when Bobby hung up the phone.

  “That was Atlanta. They were crime scene number two. They’ve got nothing new, but I have a contact name and e-mail.”

  He held up his legal pad to show Terri. “Victim number one is from Ann Arbor, Michigan. I talked to them and they’ve got nothing, either. I still need to call Jol
iet, Illinois, but I bet it’s the same.” He smiled and peeked over at Terri’s notes. “Did you get anything?”

  She tossed her pad to him. “I know that NoVaGenEx is a huge company, and how the consultant network is organized, but it really doesn’t give us anything new to work with. Certainly nothing to establish a pattern.”

  “Well, shit.” Bobby ruffled his hair in frustration while he looked at Terri’s notes. “Are you looking for connections on that list there?”

  “Yeah, and I only have two really loose ones to start with. I’ll keep digging, but at least it’s a place to start.”

  “Agreed.” Bobby kept looking at Terri’s notes, but stopped. “What’s this mean?” He pointed to the notepad.

  “Homeland?”

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  “Oh, that.” Terri reclaimed her notes. “That guy from the company made some noise about cyber terrorism, so I thought I’d have the computer geeks check our killer’s artwork against the Homeland Security database. Maybe it’s some kind of terror organization trying to shake things up.”

  “Hell, it could be the Knights of Columbus for all we know.” Bobby looked frustrated.

  Terri nodded. Sarcastic or not, he was right. “No shit, Bobby.” She sighed. “Once you’re finished with the locals in Illinois, will you call Denver?” She wrote down a name and tore off the paper. “Get someone out to talk to this consultant person.” She tossed the paper on Bobby’s desk. “She’s on the NoVaGenEx list, she went to grad school at Emory University in Atlanta, and she lives just outside of Denver in Aurora now. Maybe she knows the vics from college or something like that.”Bobby picked up the paper. “Sure thing, Terri. Who are you calling?”

  Phone in hand, Terri looked at her notes. “I’ve got a graduate of the University of Michigan who is now located in Mount Crawford, Virginia.”

  Bobby piped in, “Hey, I know where that is. I used to live right down the road from there.”

  “That’s right. You went to school at James Madison, right? That’s what this gal does, well, besides the consulting thing. She’s an associate professor in the information systems department.” She thought for a moment. “Bobby, this is only two hours from here, right?” Bobby nodded. “I’d feel better if we took care of this one ourselves.”

  Bobby leaned forward and rested his forearms on the desk. “When?”

  “Sooner the better, don’t you think?” She worked the timetable in her head. “How about tomorrow morning?”

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  Bobby grinned. “That would work. We can talk to your consultant, check in with the guys in Denver, and e-mail our plan to McNally by tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Great,” Terri replied, “I’ll go drop the idea on McNally’s head, see if he’ll go for it. I’m pretty sure he’d prefer to keep it in house rather than calling Richmond. He’s closer to it that way too.”

  “Yeah, and speaking of McNally, he’s going to need some press release stuff from this. I think we should keep the number thing out of it.”

  “Yes, definitely.” Terri nodded adamantly. “It has to mean something. One copycat with a random number, and the whole thing is blown.”

  “Agreed, Agent McKinnon. Call your consultant and see if tomorrow morning works.”

  Terri looked back to her list for the name that she needed. She always felt better about a case when she could jump right in and do all of the initial leg work herself.

  Jennifer Rosenberg. Nice name. Terri made the call.

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  Chapter six

  Jen pulled her green SUV into the gravel drive of her house. She was still a little miffed from yet another confrontation with a student who seemed to believe that six hours every day playing World of Warcraft made him a computer expert. Well, she assured herself, he would never make that mistake in her classroom again. She chuckled inwardly recalling the look on the geek’s face—as well as the resultant laughter from the entire class—when she casually showed him that advanced Linux code had very little in the way of mystical qualities, but that he’d be her first call if she needed an enchanted sword for anything. She laughed again.

  “Rosenberg, you’re kind of a bitch.” That certainly wouldn’t stop her from doing it again.

  She entered the mudroom through the door on the side of the house. Snickers was waiting patiently for her until the door opened and he could launch himself at her legs. “Hey, little dude, glad to see me?”

  Jen dropped the mail on the kitchen counter and scooped Snickers’s leash and his favorite neon pink tennis ball out of the bowl by the door. “Let’s head for the pond, Snick. It’s been a long day.”

  She grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and headed

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  out the back door. She gave the ball a mighty heave into the tall weeds of the field to get Snickers started in the right direction. The air was brisk but the sun warmed her as she followed the trail Snickers had left through the weeds. Jen found herself thinking about Joe. His last words to her before he boarded the plane home had been a reminder to call him when Ms. Right walked into her life. She looked around her property—ten acres of fallow fields and a small stand of trees, surrounded by her neighbors’ working farms—and tried to imagine what kind of act of God was going to drop a gorgeous single lesbian on her front porch. Jen shook her head, laughed at Joe’s eternal optimism, and headed toward the pond and Snickers. The pond was of the spring-fed variety, bounded on three sides by dense overgrowth. A large birch tree grew on the open side of the small body of water. The spot was secluded and peaceful by day, but creepy at night. These days Jen had a difficult time believing in forces that could not be coded into software, but that was really nothing new. She had always been like that. Jen was all about the numbers. From her misspent youth at the University of Michigan to her current life of teaching and private work, Jen loved the numbers. Any numbers.

  “That’s probably why you’re still single, you huge geek.”

  Jen shook her head.

  A rustling nearby startled her, but she smiled when she saw Snickers bounding happily through the underbrush, hoping to flush out a rabbit or two. Jen spotted the bright pink ball that he’d opted to ignore, picked it up, and put it in her pocket. Jen whistled to get Snickers’s attention and tossed the ball the full length of the field that led away from the pond. He bolted after the ball until the rustling of squirrels in the underbrush drew him away from his toy. As much as she loved the little

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  dog, she was becoming annoyed with him because she was starting to feel pretty stupid playing fetch by herself. She had a sudden flash of memory of her college girlfriend Beth saying much the same thing to her about their relationship. “Jenny, I can’t do it all by myself. You’re spending so much time with Brad and your computers it’s like I don’t exist. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather just be with him?” Jen shuddered at the thought of Brad, computer genius and all-around creepy guy. She supposed Beth had been right. Their relationship did end soon after that particular argument, but it certainly wasn’t because she wanted to be with Brad. Hell, she almost went to jail because of him.

  “Dammit, Snickers, the point of playing fetch is for me to throw the ball and for you to go get it. It’s just stupid if you aren’t going to keep up your end.” He stopped in the brush and turned to look at her. She picked up the ball and waggled it at him to make sure she had his attention and threw it again. He sped out of the tangled weeds and actually went to get the toy. He brought it back to her, and she was able to keep him interested in the game until they arrived at the back door. Snickers blasted into the house through the flexible dog door, Jen a few steps behind him. She was clumsily trying to remove one muddy shoe by the heel with the toe of the other one when her cell phone rang. She removed it from her pocket to check the caller ID. />
  US Govt. “What the hell?” For a second Jen debated letting it ring through to voicemail, but her curiosity was piqued. She flipped it open and answered. “Hello?” She began working on the removal of her second shoe, waiting for someone to respond.

  “Jennifer Rosenberg, please.” The voice was pleasant, decidedly female, and to the point.

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  “Yes, this is Jennifer Rosenberg. Can I help you?” She juggled the phone as she bent over to pick up her shoes and set them out on the step to dry.

  “Dr. Rosenberg, this is Special Agent Terri McKinnon from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Do you have a moment?”

  “Um, sure. What’s this about?” Jen was decidedly nervous, even though she was pretty confident she hadn’t done anything to attract the attention of the feds.

  The pleasant female voice continued, “Ma’am, your name came up in the course of an investigation through your work with NoVaGenEx. We’d like to come out to Mount Crawford and ask you a couple of questions.”

  “Okay,” she answered, but she wasn’t really sure that it was.“Ma’am, I can assure you that you aren’t in any trouble as far as the Bureau is concerned. May we come out to your house tomorrow, say about one o’clock?”

  “Sure, that’d be fine. Do you need directions?”

  “No, ma’am. We can get there on our own. See you at one o’clock, then. Thank you.”

  Before Jen could say anything else, the call was terminated from the other end. “Well, thank you too,” she said with a hint of sarcasm to her voice. She closed the phone, returned it to her pocket, and called out, “Hey, Snickers! Have you been hacking into Pentagon stuff on the laptop again while I was gone?” He looked at her and cocked his head. “No, I guess you haven’t. Well, let’s call work and see if we can find anything out.”She went into the office to retrieve the phone number for her contact at NoVaGenEx. The phone call was much the same as the one from the FBI, full of assurances that she was not in trouble and that she should cooperate as much as possible.

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