Rigas called her partner on his cell phone. While she waited for Crevins to pick up, she turned her phone over and looked at the back. Barnes had made it look easy to get the info off the SIM. She didn’t like that. The whole thing was just a trick, but it made the point: what Barnes did was just like regular police work in that intimidation and misdirection often got perps to confess things they didn’t want to tell you. She trusted Barnes’ technical skills, but wasn’t sure she wanted to rely on his sleuthing abilities. She’d have to keep a close eye to make sure he didn’t screw it up. She was spending more time with this guy than she was with her partner – or anyone she’d dated for a while, come to think of it. Telling him about Mills pushed the right button. Rigas had started to worry he’d back off now and let the cops handle everything. But she knew the guy who hired the dead woman and her partner wasn’t going to wait around for the feds to track him down. Barnes was dead if this didn’t get wrapped up, and she wouldn’t take any bets on his sister getting out of it either. Putting that fear into him helped him focus, and she needed him sharp. This was a dangerous game, and she wasn’t as sure as she’d led Barnes to think that she had it under control. Rigas wanted the score, but knew she had to balance the risk with the reward. She’d let Barnes come up with a plan for baiting the guy out, but she’d make any tactical decisions. And Barnes would stay out the line of fire – he could do everything he needed to do from home. Right now she needed Crevins to know enough to be there for backup when she needed it, but more important that he cover her ass so her boss didn’t catch wind she was still following the extortion angle.
Crevins answered and she told him she was following up on leads connecting the Mills case to Barnes. Crevins asked a couple questions that let her know he knew she was going beyond the scope of what the captain had said was okay. But he also got the message across he’d help when she needed it. She hung up, knowing she had some space to maneuver and help if she needed it. Sitting in the large information room at headquarters, Rigas looked up at the computer screen in front of her. She was connected to a string of databases covering crimes in LA County and four surrounding counties in southern California, with the ability to link up to federal databases if she got permission from her boss. She was looking for other hits, other deaths that might be tied to the pair of bodies Barnes was connected to. Mills and Barnes. Two wasn’t a pattern, but it screamed for attention. She believed there was a sophisticated operation behind all this and she wanted more places to go fishing in case neither of these two panned out.
After an hour, Rigas hadn’t found any other deaths by strangulation using piano wire, just a few with rope, bare hands, and one with a shoelace. If this pair pulled this scam regularly, they probably had it down to a rhythm and the M.O. would be the same. If she couldn’t find any similar strangulations, that probably meant there weren’t more bodies, at least in Southern California, but there might be a bunch of scared people with bruises who had given up whatever Helen asked for before it got too violent. She sat back in her chair, arms crossed on her chest. Her excitement from a couple hours ago had faded and now she was just pissed. No way to track these fucking psychos if their victims didn’t report what happened or got killed. She needed to find another way to connect their activities, something about the stuff they were stealing. That was out of her area of expertise. Rigas wasn’t a big fan of the Wall Street Journal or the business page. She got as far as the sports section in the morning and maybe skimmed the news headlines at night. No way she was going to track down some fancy white collar bullshit herself. She’d have to figure out another approach. Maybe Barnes could help out there, too. Barnes – it kept coming back to him. He was starting to get under her skin a little. Not in a bad way, though. Her thoughts drifted a little.
“Fuck me!” interrupted her reverie, as the expression erupted from the mouth of another detective sitting in the break area fifty feet away. CNN was on the screen above his head, turned down low and with the closed caption feature on. Rigas turned and recognized Tim Cooth, the only guy on the squad with a dirtier mouth than her own. Dumb as a sack of hammers was how she thought of him, but he had doughnuts in front of him so she stopped by for a hello. Along with the cruller, she got an earful.
“Goddamn Lockheed was down four bucks this week. Goddamn piece of shit company lost me three grand in one goddamn day. Couldn’t hit a barn door with a slingshot of cow shit, goddamnit.”
Rigas didn’t really listen, having heard his rants about playing the market and making money on the side. She watched the television screen and scanned the captions. A test of the missile shield system had failed earlier that week, Lockheed was being blamed for lousy work, the usual finger pointing among its vendors. Then she stopped chewing. Calypso Software of Pasadena, CA was identified as a key subcontractor. Rigas didn’t watch the rest of the broadcast. This wasn’t a coincidence, but she didn’t know what it meant. She finished her doughnut as she walked to her car, heading back to Barnes’. Maybe he knew what the hell the connection could be.