Forty-Three
Zach’s first choice for dinner wouldn’t have been the pizza the rest of the team and Marsh had opted to bring back to the station, but it was food. They all caught one another up, and Zach turned his attention to the hate mail delivered to the Kelters. He’d already pored over the threat sent to Henderson.
“I can’t imagine what it must have been like at Gordon’s this afternoon. And how you didn’t hit anyone, especially Ramirez.” Paige clapped. “Bravo.”
Kelly smiled. “It was questionable there for a minute.”
“Well, good for you. You’re stronger than I would have been.” Paige laughed.
Paige underestimated herself. She wouldn’t have lost her cool, either. She was far too professional to do otherwise. Zach could imagine the two women being friends if they lived in the same area.
“Let’s just say Ramirez can be a handful.” Kelly slid her gaze to Jack, who was watching her thoughtfully. “He said he’d have Henderson covered for the night, but tomorrow will present another battle.” Kelly balanced on the back legs of her chair. “He just doesn’t seem to care that the man’s life could be in danger. Though he’s never been a fan of lawyers, so maybe he has a biased viewpoint.” She met Jack’s eyes and smiled.
“It seems you might have gotten the impression that I don’t like lawyers.” Jack turned to Brandon—some inside joke, Zach surmised. Though there wasn’t anything unspoken about Jack’s dislike for suits. Skip impression, skip the fine print.
Zach’s eyes went from Jack to the whiteboard to the faces of the victims. A crime scene photo of Jenna Kelter had been added to the board. Another graphic reminder of the man they were hunting. A man with a face and an accent, of flesh and blood, but he may as well have been an apparition.
“What did you find with Kelter’s hate mail?” Jack asked him.
“The gist of many of the messages was the same,” Zach said. “Many struck me as coming from activists against drunk driving. The senders hold Jenna Kelter responsible for the death of Lester Jett. They all use the words murder, murdered, murderer, or killer.” In his mind, Zach had cataloged every piece of mail from its envelope, to the handwriting, to the messages.
Brandon turned to Jack. “That’s how Ava Jett termed her husband’s death several times.”
“And Agatha,” Paige added.
“Getting back to the letters,” Zach said, “most were mailed. Gordon had told me and Paige that someone had shown up to the house in person and banged on the door. Can’t say that the same person hand-delivered hate mail, but some pieces weren’t put through the postal system.”
“We know our unsub isn’t shy about being seen,” Brandon began.
“Again, we haven’t been able to conclude that our unsub dropped off West’s head,” Kelly said.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if he did,” Brandon served back. “We’re talking about a guy who showed up at the church to give the money in person. He went to where Ava Jett worked and gave her money there, too.”
And there’s the redheaded dog with a bone…
Zach smiled to himself. “Yes, Brandon, he could have been the one who banged on the Kelters’ door, though I doubt it. Right now, that’s neither here nor there,” Zach said. “There is a handwritten letter that makes me think of the one Henderson received via e-mail. This particular letter wasn’t sent—electronically or snail-mail—but the word chaos pops up again as it does in Henderson’s threat. And so does the word aftermath. I find the use of the two words together interesting. The meaning of the words have a similar effect, and while both can have a negative connotation, that’s not necessarily the case.” The others’ eyes were glazing over. “Let’s start with aftermath. It’s the result of a negative event that can have long-lasting and far-reaching consequences. But in farming, aftermath is the term used for grass that grows after mowing—essentially, creation. And chaos? Well, everything is created from it. In the Sunday school version of the beginning of the world, everything here was chaos and formless.”
“First the church connection, now the word choice,” Kelly started. “Hard to believe that’s a coincidence.”
“Agreed. So we need to find out what affected our unsub both negatively and positively,” Zach said.
“And does it have anything to do with St. John’s, or the Catholic religion in general?” Brandon asked.
“Too soon to know,” Jack started. “But we know that the Jetts and Coles were connected to St. John’s. Regina didn’t know the three families affected by West’s accident, but maybe there’s a less obvious connection between them and the church. We also need to know if they received any money. From there, we pinpoint what might have triggered our unsub,” Jack concluded. “For now, Zach, read the handwritten letter you said reminded you of the one Henderson received.”
“‘She is a killer and deserves far beyond any sentence this life has to offer for murder. The chaos she set in motion is unforgivable, the aftermath undeniable.’” Zach rattled it off from memory.
“‘Far beyond any sentence’? He could be speaking out against the judicial system. By killing West, Sullivan, and Kelter, he’s setting himself up to be judge, jury, and executioner,” Brandon reasoned.
“I think that’s entirely possible,” Zach replied.
“And the part about being unforgivable hints at a religious mentality,” Paige surmised. “I remember from church that the Bible speaks of an unforgivable sin.”
“Blasphemy,” Zach said.
“Not sure how that would fit our situation.” Paige grabbed a fresh water bottle from the middle of the table, twisted off the lid, and took a sip.
Zach was chewing on her question, and even his computer of a brain was working hard to pull up and sift through dictionary definitions of the word blasphemy and cross-reference them. “Actually, blasphemy is to speak or act sacrilegiously against God or sacred things. Sacrilegious is defined as a ‘violation or misuse of what’s regarded as sacred.’ That’s straight from Google.”
“And your brain.” Brandon raised his brows.
Kelly looked at him and angled her head.
“I swear.” Zach was smiling.
“What’s regarded as sacred?” Brandon mused. “Could it be life itself?”
“Exactly what I thought,” Zach admitted. “Now, we all know what Henderson’s e-mail said. It too mentioned chaos and aftermath.”
“I also thought it sounded quite personal,” Paige started. “It had said something about the aftermath Kelter set in motion being irreversible and destroying more than a family. Our unsub must have lost a loved one to a drunk driver.”
Brandon said, “Hate to play devil’s advocate here, but—”
“Since when?” Zach said with a smirk.
“Since when, what?” Brandon countered.
“Since when do you hate to play devil’s advocate? You do it a lot.” Zach was toying with him and having a lot of fun doing so.
“Anyway,” Brandon dragged out. “I think whoever sent that e-mail and the others were personally affected by drunk driving. I think we’re rushing to assume it’s our unsub.”
“I agree,” Jack said, and Brandon smiled.
“What was the sender’s name?” Kelly asked.
“Voice in the Crowd,” Zach answered.
“Huh,” Kelly said.
“Now, I never said the hate mail came definitively from our unsub,” Zach clarified, “but I do find them interesting enough that I think we should consider strongly that they might.”
Paige was nodding. “We need to revisit digging into families who were affected by DUI fatalities. This time from a fresh perspective. What if we narrowed the criteria to DUI victims’ funerals held at St. John’s Catholic Church?” Paige suggested. “He seems to be drawn there for some reason. From there, we could look into the families, see if our unsub pops out.”
“Okay, I’ll have Nadia take care of all that,” Jack said as his phone rang. He glanced at the screen and answered on speaker. “Talk to us, Nadia.”
“I’ve got some updates for you,” she started. “The threat sent to that lawyer, Henderson, came from a free online account. I tracked down the IP address, and from there I can get a physical one, but I have to wait until the morning to reach the owner of the IP.”
Zach perched on the edge of his chair, surprised. One didn’t need to be tech savvy to utilize an open-source router that hides IP addresses and provides fake ones. “You got an IP?”
“I did, but it’s too early to get excited about it.”
“I agree,” Zach said. Just as Brandon had pointed out, following the hate mail might not even take them to the killer.
“I’m still working on compiling a list of people whose names popped in relation to all the victims from the accidents and the ones who were murdered. I’ve just scratched the surface,” Nadia said. “I’ve found three names so far that are the same—one female doctor, a male nurse, and a female paramedic. Given their clean backgrounds, I’d say none are worth further scrutiny.”
“Let us be the judge of that,” Jack told her. “Send their information over to us, just in case.”
“You got it.”
“And what about the delivery guy?” Jack started. His phone pinged with notification of a message. “Tell me he was in the system.”
“No can do, but I wish I could. I ran his pic through facial recognition databases. Nada.”
Jack went on and requested what Paige had suggested, then added, “Did you get the deposit information from the church about the unsub’s payment to Ava Jett?”
“Not yet.”
“Let me know the moment you do.” He hung up. “Let’s carry on. Find out if the families affected by West’s accident received donations. See if they recognize our supposed unsub or delivery guy.” Jack sighed and pulled out his cigarettes. “We’ll talk to those families, then get a fresh start tomorrow.”
“I realize there are three families,” Kelly started, “but do you want me to go to one of them or get the signed subpoena for the cardholder information?”
“Stick with the latter. The team will divvy up the three families.” With that, Jack was out the door.
Zach was too tired to move. If he kept his job with the BAU, even if he did come home alive, would he have any energy left for his wife and child? He yawned, not too sure that he would.