Monday Afternoon
Lucy returned to BCSO headquarters and told Jerry everything she’d learned. “We need to get someone out there to talk to Abby tonight. Everything about Teri fits the profile.”
“We can’t get a warrant because of the profile,” Jerry said. “They didn’t even put it in writing.”
“Jerry—why were you so certain that the profile in the Barton case was wrong?”
“I don’t want to talk about that.”
“It’s important.”
“So you can tell me how wrong I am?”
“So I can prove that you’re right.”
“You’re making no sense.”
“Humor me. Haven’t I earned at least that much?”
“It was just a feeling.”
“Intuition. Gut instinct. Experience,” Lucy said.
“Whatever you want to call it, nothing that damn Stocum would listen to. When I talked to the mother of those boys, I just had a sense that she wasn’t telling us everything. She was hysterical and crying and that was to be expected, but the way she looked at me—or didn’t look at me—I had a strong feeling that she harbored guilt. Now, I said as much to Stocum, and he shot back that most parents whose children are abducted feel guilty even though it’s not their fault. I argued with him that it wasn’t that, it was something else, but I didn’t have anything to back up my impression. He gets this damn profile and uses that as a club to tell me I don’t know shit.”
“For what it’s worth, I trust gut instincts just as much as—and sometimes more than—a psychological profile.”
Jerry clearly didn’t believe her, but he continued. “After the fact—after I’d been thrown from the case and came to blows with Stocum—we learned that the mom had been babysitting when her nephew drowned in the pool a year before. The day her boys were abducted was the anniversary of her nephew’s death. Her sister wanted to punish her by killing her boys. Then she couldn’t live with herself for what she’d done—that’s my guess—and she killed herself.
“I didn’t know all that—no one did—we would have learned it if we had more time, but we didn’t. It was my gut telling me that something was off, that this wasn’t a typical family squabble, and I wanted to go harder at the mom. I sensed the guilt, but had no basis for that. And profilers, especially if they’re not here, on the ground, they can’t know any more than we do. Less, in fact. You need to talk to a person, interview them, see them interact with people, listen, then you can make a good judgment.”
“Take that feeling … you had it again when you thought there was tension between Abby and her stepmother. There is. Abby doesn’t have a connection to Teri James. The woman is like a stranger to her—and Steven may have been considering a divorce. There’s no record of a marriage counselor, but Teri could have erased any scheduled meeting. I think that was her trigger—not the divorce as much as going to a counselor.”
“Based on what?”
“My gut. Sociopaths know there’s something wrong with them, that they aren’t like other people—but they don’t want anyone to see that. No way would Teri want to sit down with a shrink who might be able to see into the darkness of her soul.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“No, it’s not—just like I don’t think it’s ridiculous that your gut told you there was something about the Barton mother’s statement that felt off to you.”
“There’s no way we’re going to prove this.”
“Maybe not—but there’s two mistakes she made. First, trying to frame Garrett King. By killing Victor King, she tipped her hand … and the dog tore her clothes.”
“Why would she keep them?”
“Because she thinks she’s smarter than us. We have to at least look for them. And if she tossed them, that’s okay—because the dog will know.”
“No judge is going to let a dog testify.”
“We might be able to get her to incriminate herself.” Though considering how well-planned the murders were, that might be difficult.
“That’s a real long shot.”
“We have another thing—Steven James called his wife when he was leaving the airport. She answered. They spoke for two minutes. We subpoena those records. We find out where she was when she got the call. We get all her records for every night in question. We get a subpoena for the grease in her car—Ash said he could compare two samples and determine if they are identical. Now, the defense could argue that the grease isn’t a perfect match, that the oil could be in any car or ten percent of the cars out there, but it’s one more small piece to build the case. We may not find the smoking gun, but enough circumstantial evidence may be enough for the DA. We do exactly what we have been doing, but focused on one woman. Teri James.”
He looked at her for a long minute, then smiled, slightly. “This isn’t going to be easy.”
“No. But it’s going to be fun when we arrest her. How fast can we get an advocate and the ADA over to Abby to interview her?”
Lucy and Jerry were witnesses to the ADA interview with Abby. The advocate was a young lawyer named Elijah Christian. At first Lucy was skeptical because he looked too young to have graduated from law school, but he held his own with the experienced ADA, and staunchly protected Abby’s rights.
Lucy’s phone vibrated, and she took it outside. It was Sean. “I have something,” he said.
“Dinner?”
“What? No. The videos you asked me to collect. I found something. How fast can you get home?”
“Five, ten minutes? I’m in the neighborhood.”
“Call your partner, he’s going to want to see this.”
Lucy went back in and whispered to Jerry, “Sean found something on security. Want to look at it with me?”
“Yeah. We don’t have to be here. But that girl is good. The ADA is on the fence, but I think she’ll be with us to go to a judge. And—damn, I think you’re right about Teri James.”
They left and Jerry followed her home. Becky lived in nearby Alamo Heights, so it didn’t take long.
“That was fast. Good,” Sean said and led them into his office. He was excited. Jesse was sitting on the couch doing his homework. “Jerry, my son, Jesse. Jesse, this is Deputy Investigator Jerry Walker. He’s been working with Lucy on the case I was telling you about.”
Jerry leaned over and shook Jesse’s hand. “Good to meet you.”
“Dad found something really cool.”
“It’s my area of expertise.” He turned his computer screen so that they could all see, then he picked up a remote so he could play a compilation. “You’re lucky I have a good relationship with the neighbors and helped a lot of them with their security systems, without getting paid.”
“That’s neighborly of you, sweetheart,” Lucy said.
“More than half the people in Olmos Park have some sort of security system, but very few have external cameras. I focused on James’s street, as well as all entrances in and out of the neighborhood. A lot of systems don’t store data—no archive. But the data is usually there—it’s just hard to get to. However, out of the fifteen systems where I extracted data, I found three that should make your case. I’ll continue going through others—you’ll want them for court—but this should get you a warrant.”
He pressed PLAY and narrated. “The night Billy Joe Standish was killed, Teri James left her house at seven thirty. You see her vehicle passing the corner of her street as she turns onto the circle.”
“There’s no clear view of her face,” Jerry said.
“But it’s her car—the camera captures license plate numbers.” He pointed to the corner where the computer had input a digital number that matched the one that was slightly blurry. “I love this system, it’s used in a lot of gated communities, so I was surprised to see it here, but the owner is a doctor, a single mom with three daughters. A little paranoid, but I can respect that. I gave her a couple security tips in exchange for this data.”
“All heart,” Lucy said.
Sean grinned. “She returned, drove past the same camera, at eleven thirty-five p.m. Now, I don’t have a camera—yet—showing her arriving in her driveway, but at this angle you can see her face, partly. Enough to identify her.”
“I concur,” Jerry said.
“The night her husband was killed, she left before the phone call. I’m guessing she was tracking his plane, and knew when he landed, and was going to the golf club to wait for the call. The golf club doesn’t have an external security camera, but other businesses may.”
“We checked all the businesses—nothing pointed to that street.”
“Hmm. That surprises me. I can drive the most logical route and see if there are any home systems that might capture her car. But here—she returns home thirty-five minutes after the phone call.”
Sean hit the remote again. “The night Julio Garcia was killed—same thing. She left the house at eight fifty-five, arrived home at twelve thirty-five a.m. And this last Friday—she left at eight thirty, home at twelve thirty a.m.”
“What was she doing after the murder?” Lucy wondered out loud. “She had to be doing something—King was killed just before ten p.m., right? And it takes only an hour to drive back.”
“My guess,” Sean said, “was disposing of the evidence. Gun, mallet, duct tape. If her goal was to frame Garrett King, she doesn’t need them anymore.”
“How would you dispose of them?” Jerry asked Sean.
“Middle of the lake,” Sean said, “if I didn’t have time to really destroy them. If I had the time, I’d put everything in a vat of acid, seal it, and bury it somewhere, or dump it in the middle of a lake.”
“She didn’t get rid of them,” Lucy said. “She wants us to find them, so she hid them somewhere that would implicate Garrett King.”
“But we didn’t find anything in his apartment, King’s house, or his truck.”
“Because that would be too obvious,” Lucy said. “She’ll leave everything at a place that connects to Garrett King—or his father—but it’ll take us time to find it. She’s smart. Arrogant. And she doesn’t care if we don’t find it right away because there’s nothing to connect her to these murders, or so she thinks.”
“If she destroys them,” Sean said, “that is even better—you think the killer is Garrett because of circumstantial evidence, but without a witness, or the weapon, or physical evidence you can’t prove it. And ditto for her—no witness, weapon, or physical evidence. Even this time line is circumstantial. I doubt it would even go to trial.”
“But it might be enough for a warrant,” Jerry said. “The ADA is still with Abby. I’m going to have her come here and look at this.” He stepped out of the office.
“Great,” Sean said, adding sarcastically, “I love having a prosecutor in the house.”
Lucy rubbed his back. “We went by the book.”
“Mostly.” He winked. “But seriously—there is a camera right across the street from her house, but the owner wasn’t home and I couldn’t reach him. It could give us the final hammer.”
“The video won’t prove anything—except establish a time line. She could argue she went shopping or just on a drive. But it will layer on circumstantial evidence.” She sat down next to Jesse. “How you doing?”
“Good. My ribs don’t hurt as much, but I can’t play soccer until I’m cleared, which really sucks.”
“Yeah, but you don’t want to do more damage. You’re actually lucky, because it’s a small hairline fracture right where the cartilage attaches. It’ll heal quickly. I suspect you’ll be back in four weeks rather than six.”
“I’ll still miss half my games.”
Sean ruffled his hair. “Yeah, it sucks, consider it your punishment.”
“Is Kane still here?”
Sean nodded. “He isn’t going to leave until he knows there’s no repercussions to taking down Jose Torres and his gang. And Brian is having a tough time. Kane convinced him to go to practice today.”
Jesse said, “Uncle Kane stayed the whole time and watched.”
“Sometimes, I don’t think Kane was ever a kid,” Sean said. “Good news is Siobhan is driving up tomorrow. She’s staying in the pool house.”
“That’s wonderful,” Lucy said. “I can’t wait to see her.”
Jerry came back in. “The ADA will be here in a few minutes. She wants to know if you have signed permission from the homeowner.”
Sean said, “I can get it if necessary. I didn’t steal it, if that’s what she thinks.”
“She’ll probably want an affidavit from the homeowner, I’ll tell her to deal with it.”
They chatted a bit until the ADA arrived. She looked at the videos, took notes, asked questions. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “I’ll try. I’ll see who’s on call tonight, some judges are easier than others. Did she say anything to contradict what we see here?”
“Yes,” Jerry said. “I asked her where she was when her husband called her from the airport, and she said home. That’s in my notes. It was a standard question, I didn’t consider her a suspect at the time.”
“And you’re sure this video contradicts that?”
“Absolutely,” Sean said. “I’ve verified the time stamps on the data with the metadata.”
“I have no idea what you mean.”
“Basically, the video is time-stamped. There is hidden data on the disk as well, which confirms authenticity. So if your power goes out, and you lose ten minutes, the hidden data will show that while the time stamp may be off—depends on the system.”
“She didn’t make a statement about where she was the other three murders?” the ADA asked.
“I had no cause to ask,” Jerry said. “She wasn’t a suspect. Now she is. But I don’t want to tip our hand yet. Can you get it because of the one lie?”
“It’s better than the video alone. Can you come with me? If the judge has questions? Abby was great, and she’ll be terrific on the stand, but nothing she says is going to get me a warrant—except for maybe the hole in the pants.”
“We want those pants,” Jerry said. “The vet and our crime scene tech were able to retrieve fibers from between the dog’s teeth.”
The ADA made notes. “I’ll try for the broadest warrant possible, but what do we absolutely need to get?”
“Soil samples from front and back. Any gas cans. And hammer, mallet, or sledgehammer. Any gun on the property. And her car—we want to test the grease under the hood—Ash says we might be able to get a match, though it will only narrow it down, not be a definitive match. But Standish had to touch the engine, possibly under the hood or the frame.”
“Would fingerprints last that long? More than a month?” the ADA asked.
“I’ll ask Ash, but I would think so,” Jerry said.
“Absolutely,” Sean said. “You’re dealing with a greasy surface. Unless someone steam-cleans the engine, the prints are going to be there for some time. I used to work on cars a lot—I would find my prints all over the place, even months later.”
“We also want her computer and phone records,” Lucy said. “We’ll look at search history, any maps she may have viewed or downloaded, books she’s read. She’s smart—she probably didn’t keep any detailed notes about her victims, but she tracked them somehow. And even some of the smartest criminals don’t know how good the FBI is at undeleting data.”
“They’re good, I’m better,” Sean said.
“You’re the best.” Lucy smiled at him. “Plus, William Peterson, the CEO of Allied, is pulling down IT logs of every login into Steven James’s account. If we can prove she logged in on her computer when Steven wasn’t at home, it could help establish that she had reason to know information about Garrett and Victor King.”
“We’ll let the FBI cyber unit handle the computer,” the ADA said. “Okay, this is good. Jerry? You want to join me? I just got word from my office that Judge Mackey is on call, and he’ll give me a warrant for this.”
“Let me call my wife and tell her I’ll be late—again.”
“Are we going to serve it tonight?” Lucy asked.
“Why not? The sooner the better,” Jerry said. “But I want Ash heading it up since he’s been involved from the beginning, so I need to make sure he’s cleared for overtime. I’ll call you, and you can meet me over there, good?”
The ADA looked at her watch. “It’s seven—probably two hours, take or leave.”
“I’ll be ready.”