On their way to the station, Alex, Logan, and Kaely stopped by a donut shop they’d noticed the night before. They bought a dozen donuts and coffee. Although Alex wanted to make a joke about the shop being so close to the police station, she wasn’t really in a humorous mood.
Of course, there hadn’t been anyone sitting in that chair last night. That was just her imagination. Kaely had stopped right after Alex’s hallucination. Alex had wanted to ask her questions about what she’d said, but Kaely told her it was late and they needed sleep. It was obvious Kaely was bothered about something too.
When they entered the station, they saw Chief Gorman on the phone in his office, so they just carried the donuts and coffee back to the empty conference room. Logan offered to get napkins and plates. When he returned, his expression was tight, his forehead creased.
“I don’t know, but something’s going on. Chief Gorman looks upset.”
“This is a police station,” Kaely said. “It could be anything.”
Logan nodded. “True, but when he saw me, he put down the phone and stepped out his door. He wanted to make sure we were all here. Said he’d meet with us as soon as possible.”
Alex shrugged. “He probably wants to ask us about our profile. We need to wrap this up.”
“Maybe,” Logan said slowly, “but I get the feeling he’s getting ready to tell us something we don’t want to hear.”
Alex took a chocolate donut from the box and grabbed a paper plate from the stack on the table.
“Alex is right,” Kaely said. “We need to get our profile ready this morning.”
“I agree,” Logan said. “We’ll start work after we meet with the chief. But first, let’s finish breakfast.” He took a bite of his donut and washed it down with coffee.
Kaely took a cake donut with cherry frosting and nibbled at it. Alex found that amusing. Logan’s donut was gone in three bites, but Kaely might be working on hers for a while.
Alex had just taken another bite of her donut when the door opened and Monty walked in. “Sorry,” he said. “Grandmother still wasn’t feeling well this morning. I had to run to the drugstore for her.”
“Is it anything serious?” Alex asked.
He sat down next to Logan and shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. To be honest, I don’t think she wanted me to leave. She seemed worried. I . . .” His eyes grew moist. “Sorry,” he said, his voice shaking a little. “My grandmother raised me. She . . . Well, she’s my only real family.”
Logan frowned. “Didn’t you mention your parents to me once?”
Monty nodded. “We’re not close. When I was young, they went back to China. I was in school and didn’t want to leave my friends, so Grandmother Wong offered to take me in. My parents moved to California a few years ago, but they don’t have much to do with either of us. It’s not that we’re really estranged. It’s just that they have their lives, and we have ours. And if my grandmother can’t care for herself, my father will probably want to put her in a nursing home.” He took a sip of the coffee he’d brought with him. “I won’t let that happen. I’ll take care of her if she needs assistance.” He chuckled. “She’s pretty stubborn, though. And strong. She’s eighty years old and determined to be independent.”
“She’s blessed to have someone like you in her life, Monty,” Kaely said.
He smiled at her. “Thanks. It goes both ways.”
The door swung open so suddenly it made Alex jump. Chief Gorman walked in without saying a word, then grabbed a chair at the head of the table and sat down.
“Something’s happened,” he said. “I think it might affect your profile.”
“Tell us,” Logan said, setting his cup on the table.
“Evan Bayne’s dead.”
“That’s terrible,” Kaely said slowly, “but he was getting kind of old, wasn’t he?”
“Seventy-one. But his death wasn’t due to natural causes.”
Suddenly Alex’s donut didn’t look so appetizing. “How did he die?” she asked.
“Like I told you, he and his wife live in Australia. On Monday, around noon, they were taking a walk at a location near Sydney called the Gap. They were vacationing there. It’s a beautiful place where high cliffs look out onto the sea. His wife, Gloria, said he got a phone call, and then his face turned white. He told her he loved her, put his phone on the ground, and jumped off the cliff. Gloria got to the edge just in time to see his body wash out to sea. By the time other people got there, he was gone. His body hasn’t been recovered.”
No one spoke. The chief opened a laptop on the table, then pressed a button on the large-screen TV that sat on a pedestal in the corner of the room. He brought up a grainy film that filled the screen. Although it was dark, a nearby streetlight showed a woman who looked to be in her mid-to-late twenties walking down a sidewalk, holding a little girl’s hand. It was obvious they were being filmed from the interior of a car.
“Evan Bayne, you have thirty seconds to take your life,” the same low voice they’d heard on John Davis’s video said, again obviously altered, “or I will drive this car straight into your granddaughter and great-granddaughter. If they don’t die the first time I run over them, I will back up and make sure the job is done. I will also kill them if you ask your wife for help or exit this app. This isn’t a joke. I’ve already killed John Davis. Now, put the phone where I’ll be able to see you end your life. Here we go, Evan.” Then he began to count. “One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . .”
As the count continued, the picture suddenly jiggled and then turned sideways. They heard Bayne tell his wife he loved her. Then they watched as he ran toward the edge of what appeared to be a cliff while his wife screamed, “Evan! Evan, stop! Evan!” But Bayne jumped. A woman ran toward the edge of the cliff, and when she got there, she looked down, then screamed again and fell to the ground. The screen went black.
“Gloria Bayne told the Sydney police her husband was fine until that call, so his phone was turned over to them. When we tried to locate Bayne for our investigation, one of his neighbors told us he and his wife were in Sydney, but they had no contact information to give us. That’s when we called the Sydney station for help locating him. By the way, they immediately contacted Bayne’s daughter and her family. They’re okay. No threats of any kind.”
Alex couldn’t seem to find any words. What they’d watched was horrible. A man so distraught that he could only think of jumping off a cliff in front of his wife. What a terrible way to die.
“He had only thirty seconds to decide what to do,” Kaely said. “Not enough time to think of anything else.” She looked at Gorman. “No drone?”
“No. Not that any witnesses saw. The Sydney police techs were investigating Bayne’s phone when we called. He had an app like Zoom. It’s called Chatter. The killer spoofed his granddaughter’s telephone number. Bayne wouldn’t have thought anything about answering the call since he and his granddaughter used Chatter all the time. And he made sure all Bayne could see was the video, not who was showing it. But unlike Davis’s call, both sides of this one were recorded. We can both hear and see what happened on Bayne’s end.”
“I . . . I have that app,” Monty said. “My grandmother and I use it. I’m so busy working I don’t get to see her as often as I’d like.”
“So the UNSUB hacked Bayne’s phone,” Alex said. “He knew about the app and that Bayne and his granddaughter used it. He didn’t have to be in Australia. Where does the granddaughter live?”
“In Maryland. Frederick.”
“He didn’t have to travel far from Bethesda to pull this off, then,” Kaely said.
“Was the video he showed Bayne recorded?” Logan asked.
Gorman nodded. “Yes. Like Davis, Bayne didn’t have the time or probably the technical knowledge to realize it wasn’t happening at that moment. You know, even if these videos were recorded at another time, it doesn’t mean this guy won’t go after the families.”
“Right,” Logan said. “Our unit chief said that too. This UNSUB is evil but a genius. Thirty seconds isn’t enough time to do anything but die.”
“You said Bayne died Monday around noon,” Monty said, “and we can see the sun shining on this video. But the video he was shown looks like it was taken at night. Or was it early morning?”
“The video of the mother was recorded around six a.m. She’s single and an early-shift nurse. Every weekday plus Sunday she takes her little girl to a babysitter who lives a few doors down. That made it easy for our perp to film her. But Sydney is fourteen hours ahead of us. Bayne died early Sunday morning our time but Monday around noon Sydney time.”
“Davis died around ten p.m. here, so that means the UNSUB orchestrated two suicides within about eight hours,” Alex said. “How long does it take to fly from here to Australia?”
“Over twenty hours,” Logan said. He smiled. “Church conference.”
“So the UNSUB probably wasn’t in Australia,” Monty said. “Looks like he got Bayne to kill himself from here.” He shook his head. “Murder by phone. This certainly is a new one.”
Alex was quiet for a moment before opening the file she’d brought with her. “The first message the UNSUB sent was an email to Davis. ‘Those in law enforcement pay a heavy price when they constantly look into the dark minds of evil.’ This was a general threat to those in law enforcement. Then came the page from Davis’s book. ‘In those early days, I worked with several great agents. The success we had didn’t belong to one person. We were a team, each agent bringing his special skills to our efforts.’”
Her gaze swept around to the people sitting at the table and then settled on Chief Gorman. “This was a clue. He was telling us who he was going to target next. We didn’t interpret it that way because we were focusing on Davis. We weren’t sure there would be other deaths although we suspected it.”
“If we’d realized it soon enough, maybe we could have stopped Bayne’s suicide,” the chief said.
Alex shook her head. “No. Davis worked with a lot of people. Bayne hadn’t been involved with him for years. I wouldn’t have guessed Bayne was the next target. None of us would have.”
“So was a page left at Bayne’s crime scene?” Monty asked.
Gorman nodded and picked up a piece of paper. He held it out to Alex. “This was mailed to their hotel and arrived two days before the phone call, but his wife said they hadn’t bothered opening it since they were on vacation. Mailed from here, by the way. From Bethesda. And the numeral two is on the back.”
Alex took the copy and read, “‘Down through the years, I’ve found that most people on the side of good or of evil have one thing in common. They were shaped and fashioned by their families.’”
The room was quiet. Alex was certain everyone was trying to figure out what the message meant.
“Is he threatening families more directly now?” Monty asked.
Gorman shrugged. “Maybe, but his anger seems to rest not on who Davis and Bayne were but on what they did.”
Alex remembered Kaely saying almost the same thing when she was profiling the UNSUB in their motel room.
“Does this make it harder to write a profile?” Gorman asked.
“Not harder,” Logan said. “Just . . . different.” He looked at his colleagues sitting around the table, then addressed Gorman. “We need some time to work. I know you need this profile as soon as possible.”
Gorman nodded just as Monty’s cell phone rang. He took it out of his pocket. “Sorry, I need to take this. It’s my grandmother.”
Sitting next to him, Alex suddenly recalled Monty saying he and his grandmother used the same app Bayne had. She had a sudden sense of danger and reached out in an attempt to keep him from answering his phone. But she was too late.