They stopped at the Coffee Bean on the way out of town, deciding to put pictures of both Klein and Tracey in front of the baristas. Neither one of them remembered those faces, but one of the baristas had only been working there for a couple of months, and the other one didn’t work weekday mornings during the school year. Fenway and Dez looked at each other and shrugged, then ordered coffee and got on the road to San Miguelito.
Fenway called Kav ahead of time; Kav had come into work a little on the late side, having worked into the night all weekend, and Melissa, who had worked even more hours than Kav over the weekend, wasn’t coming in till noon.
“Kav, I need a big favor,” Fenway said. “And it’s got to be kind of hush-hush.”
“Hush-hush how?” Kav said. “Like, I can’t tell Dr. Yasuda about it?”
“Exactly.”
“What do you need?”
“I have a piece of evidence from a possible crime scene. But it’s sensitive. I need to know what I have before I involve the police in any kind of official capacity.”
“Does this have to do with the mayor’s death?”
“Maybe. And maybe the attempts on Rachel’s life. And maybe with some other stuff. But I won’t know until I see for sure what this evidence says. If it even says anything at all.”
There was silence on the other end of the line.
“Kav? You still there?”
“I’m still here, Fenway. I’m thinking.”
“The attempts on Rachel’s life, Kav. It’s important.”
He sighed. “Come see me when you get here. Don’t let Yasuda see you come down. If she catches me doing anything off-book, I’m taking you down with me.”
“Deal.”
“Where are you now?”
“We just passed the turnoff for the highway to Fresno.”
“Okay, you’re about twenty minutes out. I should be in the lab by the time you get there.”
Fenway hung up. Dez had a determined look on her face and Fenway didn’t want to disturb her train of thought. She looked out the window at the trees going by.
Finally, Fenway said, “Kav is okay with this, but he said not to have Dr. Yasuda involved.”
“Yeah,” Dez said, “Michi is kind of a by-the-book kind of M.E. Even with her morbid sense of humor and everything.”
“So I guess you might need to distract her.”
“We’ve gotta get the results of all the tests from the hospital shooting,” Dez said. “I’m hopeful that they were able to finish yesterday.”
“Kav and Melissa were both there pretty late,” Fenway said. “They put the gun into the acid bath so they can raise the letters on the serial number. But that usually takes longer than twelve hours, give or take.”
“But they’ve run fingerprints on our mystery shooter?”
“I didn’t ask. Sorry. I got into asking Kav about doing a fingerprint analysis of the note.”
“Okay,” Dez said, steeling herself. “I think I can give you about fifteen minutes when you and Kav can do whatever you need to. After that, I think Michi will insist on coming to the lab to go over the details with you. And if I have to delay her any longer, I’m going to have to use some tool in my emotional arsenal that I’d rather keep to myself for now.”
Fenway nodded. “I’m sorry. And thank you. I know this is a lot.”
“I’m not doing it for you, rookie. I’m doing it for Mayor Jenkins,” Dez sighed. “And because it’s time.”
Fenway looked at the trees outside the window. Fenway wondered if this was the right thing to do. Though not technically a police officer, she knew analyzing it outside of the rules of police procedure was tricky, if not outright dangerous. The longer it stayed out of the official evidence from the case, the less value it might have at trial.
Of course, turning it in would raise a lot of the same questions. She had found the note in the trash, without a search warrant. And involving the police might endanger the little girl’s life.
She hadn’t been confident in the right thing to do when she picked up that paper from out of the trash. Now she felt even less sure of herself.
And Rachel was still missing.
“Dez,” she said, “I’m worried about Rachel. I thought she might come to my house. I know the police are looking for her, but it just doesn’t seem like they’re doing enough. I heard she hasn’t contacted her sister. You haven’t heard from her, have you?”
“No,” Dez said. “I’m worried about her too.”
“You don’t think she’s in danger, do you?”
Dez frowned. “I don’t know; aren’t you a nurse? I mean, she was out of the woods—they were transferring her out of the ICU—but she needs to be in the hospital, doesn’t she?”
“She needs to rest,” Fenway said. “I think she’s past the worst of it, medically speaking. I mean, from everything I know about buprenodone, it just has to work itself out of your system. But I didn’t mean if she was medically in danger. I meant if the people who want her killed will still look for her.”
“Your guess is as good as mine. You’ve seen all the evidence that I’ve seen, too.”
“I really wish she’d just contact us,” Fenway said. “If we find out what she talked about with Alice and Fletcher, it might blow the whole thing open. It might mean we catch the people who are trying to kill her.”
“You’re absolutely right,” Dez said.
They were silent the rest of the way to the M.E.’s office in San Miguelito.
• • •
They arrived at the M.E.’s office just after nine-thirty. Fenway took the hallway to the left and went into the lab as Dez took the staircase down into the basement to the morgue. Fenway looked back at Dez; Dez took a deep breath just as she opened the door to the stairs.
When she entered the lab, she saw Melissa at her desk, working on some paperwork. Fenway nodded to her and Melissa smiled back. Fenway saw Kav across the room, rooting through a drawer.
“Hey,” she said. “Thanks for doing this for me. I really appreciate it.”
“Let’s just hope I can get the fingerprint analysis done on this without raising too many flags,” Kav said quietly. “I’m not too keen on being the new guy here and flouting the rules.”
“You said you’d blame it on me.”
“You know pointing fingers doesn’t fly with Dr. Yasuda,” Kav said. “Okay—what else do you have for me?”
Fenway gave Kav the evidence bag with the note inside it.
“A ransom note?” Kav said, incredulous.
“I told you it was important.”
“And it says ‘No cops.’ That’s why you want this all hush-hush.”
Fenway nodded.
Kav took a closer look at the note. “Block lettering. Not a lot of help in a handwriting analysis.”
“No,” Fenway said. “I took a course in my forensics program last year, but I don’t see anything I can go on here.”
Kav nodded. “A fairly thick nib, I see,” he said. “It looks like high-quality ink, too. We might be able to get something off the chemicals—maybe if it’s an unusual ink, we can get a clue where the pen might have been purchased.”
He picked up a pair of tweezers and pulled it out of the bag, then placed it on the fingerprint tray and dusted it with powder.
“Okay,” he said. “There are a bunch of fingerprints on this. Partials and full prints. If these prints are in the system, we’ll know soon enough.”
“You can enter these into the system without Dr. Yasuda finding out?” Fenway asked.
“I can try,” Kav said. “There won’t be a ping on her desktop saying that I’ve ordered a fingerprint analysis. And I’ll process this with the stuff from the house that we got after Fletcher’s arrest. If she looks closely, she’ll see it, but I might be able to get away with it.”
“If it comes back as a hit,” Fenway said, “there might not be any need to hide it from her.”
“And we all live happily ever after,” Kav chuckled. “Oh—listen, the sign-in book from Rachel’s office?”
“Oh, right. The sheriff had that couriered over.”
“So—lots of fingerprints, as you’d expect. Rachel’s mostly, but also Alice Jenkins, Fletcher Jenkins, a couple of hits from reporters, the rep from the newswire company, yours, and then a few unknowns.”
“Mostly what you’d expect.”
“Right. But there are two sets of prints here that are quite unusual.”
“Two sets?”
“Right. One belongs to a captain in the Marines, name of Elena Valenzuela.”
Fenway thought for a minute. “Rachel’s admin was a former Marine. Maybe Ms. Valenzuela is a friend from the old days, and she came in to visit Natalie. Maybe they went to lunch.”
“I’d agree to that as a reasonable explanation, but Ms. Valenzuela’s name isn’t in the guest book. But her fingerprints are all over the book—on a lot of the pages, on the pen, and all over the cover.”
“Maybe Rachel had already gone to lunch and Natalie showed her friend around, and she picked up the book. Maybe she hoped to find a celebrity signature.”
“I suppose,” Kav said skeptically. “Okay, what did you say the admin’s name is?”
“Natalie Andrada.”
“And you said a former Marine?”
“Rank of Corporal, if I remember right. She’s missing her legs—I assume from a war injury.”
Kav looked through the list of names. “She doesn’t show up.”
“Maybe she’s one of the unknowns.”
“Marines all get fingerprinted. She should be in the system.”
“Maybe she didn’t ever touch the book. Maybe Rachel managed it.”
“I don’t know,” Kav said. “Without seeing the rest of what’s in that office, I can’t tell for sure.”
“Was that the second red flag?”
“No,” Kav said. “One of the sets of fingerprints came back classified.”
“Classified?”
“Yes—the system recognized it, but we don’t have the security clearance to see who it is.”
Fenway paused. “That’s pretty strange. Maybe that’s Natalie.”
“I suppose. Maybe she got assigned to some secret military mission and they classified her fingerprints.”
“So nothing definitive—two unusual sets that are there, one set that’s unusual because it isn’t there.”
“Unless Natalie Andrada is the second unusual set.”
Fenway exhaled and stretched her hands over her head. “All right, Kav,” she said. “Can you send those results over to Piper Patten in the sheriff’s office? Maybe she can dig something up on those.”
“Is she the hotshot cybercrime whiz kid I’ve been hearing about?”
“Yeah. Piper Patten. She is crazy good with cybersecurity,”
“Sure.”
Fenway leaned forward. “I heard that there are a bunch of results from the hospital that we need to go over. Especially regarding the dead gunman, and his weapon. And I’m wondering if you found any evidence in the car besides the ID and the wallet, stuff like that.”
Kav nodded and went to his desk to get a folder. Fenway followed him. “We got a hit on the fingerprints of our deceased,” he said, opening the folder. “And a pretty good-sized criminal record, but mostly small-time stuff. First of all—his real name is Alan Patrick Scorrelli. He’s got a list of about ten known aliases, and the two IDs you found are apparently his real ID and one of his aliases.” Kav flipped the page. “He’s mostly into embezzlement and fraud. He’s gotten involved in some insurance schemes. Arrested about eight times, from what I see here. Only convicted twice, both misdemeanors. The first time he pled down from insurance fraud to a lesser charge of filing a false report.”
“What about the second time?”
“Originally charged with fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud, and making false identification papers,” Kav said. “Only the false papers stuck, also charged as a misdemeanor. The judge in the case sentenced him to 60 days and served 30 of them before his release.”
“What about a history of violence? Anything with weapons, or assault, or maybe domestic disputes?”
Kav shook his head. “Nothing like that. His name doesn’t even turn up on any of the gun registries. Mr. Scorrelli may be a thief and a con artist, but nothing in the file suggests that he’d shoot up an ICU ward.”
Fenway nodded.
“Sorry,” Kav said, “that’s my personal opinion. I’m not a detective or anything. But I sure don’t see it.”
“So what’s the story with the gun?” Fenway said.
“The serial number had been filed off, surprise, surprise,” Kav replied. “I heard you guys had a gun for another case before I started here. An old CHP gun where the numbers had been filed off, right?”
“Right. My first week here,” Fenway said.
“If I remember the story right, those numbers got raised pretty quickly because the number wasn’t filed off very well. Anyway, these numbers look like they were filed off by someone who really knew what they were doing—not the amateur job from that other case. It’s pretty professional.”
“Hmm.” Fenway scratched her temple. “That doesn’t follow, since this guy doesn’t have a history of violence. Whatever he was doing there, it looks like he might have been in over his head. But getting the serial number professionally obfuscated?”
“Yeah, the guy is pretty far from being a professional hitman, but Mr. Scorrelli might have gone to a true professional to get his hands on that gun.”
“All right, Kav, what do you have from the rental car?”
“First of all, Mr. Scorrelli didn’t pay for the car. It was paid for by a company called SRB Investment Holdings. They have a mailbox in one of those shopping centers in suburban New Jersey. I did a little digging last night, and it looks like it belongs to a shell corporation in the Cayman Islands. Not sure how far down the rabbit hole you want to go, but when I think of Cayman Islands shell companies, I think of dead ends when it comes to forensic accounting.”
“Did you say SRB?”
Kav looked at his notes. “Yes, SRB Investment Holdings.”
“I saw that somewhere,” Fenway said, closing her eyes. “That’s right—Rachel had a Post-It on her monitor that said Jenkins—SRB.” She tapped her chin. “I don’t suppose they list any contact information.”
“Not in their public filings. Maybe that Piper girl could find something?”
“Yeah. I can call her and see what she can dig up.”
“Okay. All the fingerprints from the car came back as Allen’s.” Kav paused. “We won’t mention some fingerprints under the driver’s door handle.”
Fenway looked down and blushed.
“Now when it comes to the tox screen—well, see for yourself,” Kav continued. “We tested for a couple of different opioids and they came back negative. But taking a look at his lungs and heart, he’s got all the symptoms of an opioid addict.”
“Could those symptoms be from buprenodone?” said Fenway.
“No, this is definitely different than buprenodone effects.”
“Maybe it’s another type of drug? Maybe it’s something that’s being dealt at the Cactus Lake Motel and Alice Jenkins got in the middle of it.”
“Melissa suggested there might be a new designer drug on the market,” Kav said. “I’ve put a call into my contacts in L.A. If there’s a new designer drug on the streets, they’ll know about it.” He raised his head. “Hey, Melissa, can you come over here for a second?”
Melissa walked over.
“You had a couple of ideas on the tox screen that didn’t show any known opiates.”
“Yeah,” Melissa said. “I thought it might be something new. Some sort of designer drug that just came out, maybe. I’ve heard there’s a new pill. Some new opioid is my guess.”
Fenway nodded. “I’ve heard something new is coming out too. I just talked with one of Parker’s friends.”
“One of whose friends?” Melissa asked.
“Dylan Richards’ brother, Parker.”
“Oh,” Melissa said quietly, a shadow falling over her face.
“This friend of his is a dealer—pills, I think, mostly Oxy and Norco from what I hear. And he said that there are rumors that there’s a new drug coming up that’s going to put the Oxy and Norco dealers out of business. Or make them work with a new distributor.”
“Hmm,” Melissa said. “That kind of reminds me when El Magnate used to run the pill trade on the West Coast.”
“El Magnate?”
“Yeah,” Melissa said. “You probably remember a few years back—that big Silicon Valley CEO was arrested for something like a hundred counts of drug dealing and murder for hire.”
Fenway nodded. “Yeah, I remember that—some white guy from Harvard, not a Colombian drug lord or anything, though, right?”
Melissa laughed. “I think he had his people call him El Magnate for street cred.”
“The Magnet?” Kav asked.
“Literally translates to ‘The Mogul,’” Melissa replied. “Anyway, El Magnate had control of most of the Oxy and Norco distribution in California. I wonder if whoever controls the supply of this new drug is trying to become El Magnate Nuevo.”
Fenway tapped her temple. “I wish I could remember the name of the drug.”
“You know the name of the drug?”
“I heard the street name. It’s something with a color, like Blue Water or Black Friday.”
“Yellow Submarine?” Kav suggested.
“Red Skies!” Fenway said. “That’s it. Red Skies.”
“Ah,” Melissa said, “not The Beatles, The Fixx.”
“When are you going to hear back from the lab in L.A.?”
“I hope they’ll be running the tests this week.”
“This week?”
“It’s the biggest city in North America, Fenway,” Kav said. “We have to get in line. They’re sometimes backed up for weeks. We actually got lucky. Donny knows a guy down there.”
Fenway sighed. Donny knows a guy. “Okay. We got the aliases from the gunman?”
“Yes, we sent them over to Mark and you a few minutes before you got here. Along with his mug shots and driver’s license photos. In situations like this, we usually take a picture of his face, but, well, there’s not much of it left. McVie shot him right under the eye and it pretty much destroyed his face.”
“Lovely.”
“Yeah. Anyway, Mark said he’d be running reports on all the aliases. He thought he might be able to piece together a work history.”
“Thanks, Kav. Anything else?”
“Dr. Yasuda has Mr. Scorrelli opened up in the suite downstairs,” Kav said. “We’ll let you know if she finds anything. Kidney or liver function that’s been compromised, maybe. That might narrow down the drug. That will take two or three days, though.”
“Good to know. Thanks.”
“And I’ll let you know about the fingerprints as soon as I can. Hopefully some time this afternoon.”
“Anything else on your side?”
Fenway paused. “Just want your reaction on this, Kav. So, let’s say, hypothetically speaking, you want Rachel dead. You’ve created some complex fake suicide thing, but Rachel doesn’t die. So you hire someone to shoot her in the hospital, but the guy you send is a drug addict who misses twice and doesn’t look like he’s ever held a gun before.”
“This is hypothetical?”
Fenway plowed ahead. “There’s no disputing that he couldn’t hit a stationary target from ten feet. Does that make any sense to you?”
“Maybe the criminal is resourceful and smart, but maybe the operation is stretched a little thin,” Kav said. “When he’s the one trying to push the plan, almost everything goes well. But when he needs to hire someone, he has to make do with the people he has working for him.”
Fenway nodded thoughtfully. “Or, if he’s trying to take over as El Magnate, maybe he knows a lot of stuff about how to make the pills but nothing about how to do the wet work.”
Kav grimaced at the term. “Hey, and you know something weird?”
“What?”
“In most of the shooting situations like this, the gunmen are wearing athletic shoes. Like running shoes. So they can get away quickly, I guess, or that they feel comfortable in. But not Scorrelli. He had on loafers. Loafers with tassels on them.”
“Like he went on a business trip and only brought one pair of shoes.”
“Yes, exactly,” Kav said. “Very impractical for a shootout.” He paused for a moment. “But didn’t Fletcher confess? Isn’t he the one who tried to kill Rachel?”
“He confessed,” Fenway said. “To which crime, I’m not exactly sure. So I guess we need to look into connections between Scorrelli and Fletcher.”
“Yep, that’s certainly where I would start.”
“All right, Kav. Have a good rest of your day.”
Fenway walked out of the lab and backtracked through the waiting room. She opened the doors into the parking lot and stepped out into the bright sunshine. San Miguelito, forty miles inland and on the other side of the coastal hills, was often much warmer than Estancia. In the summer, San Miguelito would get into the nineties even when Estancia struggled to break seventy.
She took her phone out of her purse and dialed.
“IT and Cyber, this is Piper.”
“Hey, Piper, it’s Fenway.”
“Oh, Fenway! Good. Celeste gave me a few names to work on earlier. Aliases of the gunman from yesterday, right?”
“Right.”
“Okay. I’m running them this morning.”
“I’ve got another couple of things for you to look into,” Fenway said.
“Okay, hang on, let me take some notes.” Fenway could hear a few clicks on Piper’s keyboard. “All right, I’m ready.”
“See if you can find any names or contacts—or anything at all, really—on a company called SRB Investment Holdings.”
“S as in Sam?”
“Yes. R as in Robert, B as in, uh, Bob.”
“Sounds like an overseas thing.”
“Cayman Islands, with a mailbox in New Jersey.”
“Okay,” Piper said. “This is related to Rachel or the mayor?”
“Maybe both,” Fenway said. “Rachel had it on a Post-It along with Jenkins’ name, stuck to her monitor. Now we find out that SRB paid for the dead gunman’s rental car too.”
“Gotcha. Which do you want first?”
Fenway paused. “I guess SRB. It might help us find whoever’s trying to kill Rachel.”
“The aliases of the dead guy won’t?”
“I don’t know, Piper. I have a feeling about SRB, but my gut’s been wrong before.”
“Not that often.”
“And mostly about the men I date,” Fenway said. “Speaking of which, how are you and Migs doing?”
“Good,” Piper said. “A lot better once he finally got up the nerve to ask me out.”
“How is it being taller than him?”
“Oh. I guess I don’t really notice. Honestly, Fenway, I’ve never dated a man taller than me. I guess I like short guys.” She paused. “You usually date guys taller than you?”
Fenway shrugged. “Mostly. Not always. I’ve dated shorter guys who say they’re okay with it, but secretly they’re pissed off that I’m taller than they are.” She thought of Akeel and the heat between them. “But not always. Sometimes it’s, uh, pretty good.”
“Was Seattle ‘pretty good’?” Piper said. Fenway could hear the smirk in her voice.
“It had the potential to be pretty good,” Fenway said, thinking that one day she’d laugh about it. “But I had to fly back down as soon as I got there. And I miss my car.”
“Sure.”
Piper waited, probably hoping to hear about Akeel. Fenway didn’t feel like talking about it.
“Okay, I’ll let you know what I find. I’ll do the SRB thing first. Anything else?”
Fenway paused. “Actually, yes. I have to figure out who else could have a motive. I mean, I know Fletcher Jenkins confessed, but with the other attempt on Rachel’s life, it just doesn’t feel right.” Fenway winced at how weak that sounded, but didn’t want to tell anyone else about the possible kidnapping.
“I guess.”
Fenway soldiered on. “So I thought about political enemies of Alice Jenkins, and I thought of Barry Klein.”
“Dr. Klein? I suppose so. He hates everyone.”
“Right. So I did a web search for him and Alice Jenkins, then Rachel, then Fletch, and I then did a search for Klein and Fletcher Jenkins’ wife, and I came across a whole conversation on HikeUpMeetUp.com.” She paused for dramatic effect. “They had an affair.”
“An affair?”
“Yeah, apparently they private-messaged each other. Got a little steamy.”
“How did you get access to that conversation?”
“It just came up in the web search,” said Fenway. “Maybe it was a security hiccup. Maybe they were updating their servers and forgot to close a firewall port or something.”
“All that stuff should be encrypted,” said Piper.
“Maybe we’ll tell their security team after you do a more thorough search for whatever you can on Barry Klein and Tracey Jenkins.”
“Jenkins, like Mayor Jenkins?”
“Yes.”
“Tracey with a Y or an I?”
“With an E-Y at the end,” Fenway said.
“Got it. Consider their love lives breached.”
“Thanks, Piper.”
“Oh—we’ve also got traces on all Rachel’s credit cards and ATM cards, and we’ve got officers at her apartment and her sister’s place too.”
“Any luck yet?”
“No,” Piper said. “We don’t have her on camera leaving the hospital, but the parking lot camera picked something up that could be Rachel. Just moving toward Vincente Boulevard, though. Nothing helpful.”
“You’re not sure it’s her?”
“The video is too grainy at that distance. Too hard to see.”
“All right,” Fenway said, disappointed.
“See you later, Fenway.”
Fenway hung up and turned back toward the entrance. The door opened and Dez came out. She wore sunglasses and had her keys in her hand.
“I hope your fingerprint shit was worth it,” she spat. “You’re going to drive back, and you’re not going to ask me about anything that bitch said to me in there. If you hurt my Impala I will kill you.”
Dez held out the keys. Fenway took them.