What Have You Done(68)

The latest trip to Doylestown had been another unexpected visit. Just after the helicopter had lost Liam on the banks of the Delaware River, he’d gotten a call from his mother. She was feeling ill, complaining of dizziness and nausea. Adena had already gone home for the day and wasn’t due back until eight the following morning. She didn’t want to be alone and refused to call the evening nurse because they didn’t have the same relationship that she had with Adena. Don had pleaded with her to call the front desk, but she had stood her ground. When she’d begun to cry, he knew he had to go. What else could he do? So he’d told her he’d clear it with his team and come up. The relief in her voice came immediately, and that made him feel a little better.

When he arrived at her condo, he helped her do her stretches, fixed her pain medication, and gave her some tea to chase it with. When the symptoms subsided, he fixed a plate of eggs for dinner, and they talked about nothing in particular. After she ate, he helped check her blood and gave her the two white pills for her diabetes. It wasn’t long before she was feeling like herself again, and he was able to leave with a kiss and a promise to visit over the weekend.

The Mustang sped around the bend. He could see the tip of the museum on the other side of the hill. There was no music playing on the stereo. Only the roar of the engine and the whining of the tires. He thought about Liam and the investigation as he drove into the city. Something wasn’t sitting right with him. How could a person whose profession it was to uncover crime scene evidence leave his own fingerprints at two separate crime scenes? How could he be so reckless? Sean had theorized that perhaps it was Liam’s way of crying out for help, but if that was the case, why would Liam order an NCIC search, knowing there were other victims out there to find? At the beginning of all this, Liam had been certain he was being framed. Don was beginning to think that perhaps he was right.

The road turned again, bringing him past Boathouse Row, closer to the museum. He could see the back of it now, the classic architecture, the pillars, the stone stairs leading up the rear, the scaffolding Liam had escaped down earlier that morning. His phone rang, and he hit the Bluetooth button on his steering wheel.

“Carpenter.”

“Hey, Detective, it’s Rocco. I’m done with the encryption. All solved.”

“Excellent. That was pretty fast.”

“I’m pretty good.”

“Is this the part where you show off by explaining all the ways you got into the system, purposely using words and phrases you know I won’t understand in order to make yourself look smarter?”

“Nope. Found the back door to the system. Got in. Done.”

“I love it.”

“If you bring the flash drive back, I’ll load everything onto it so you have one source with everything you need.”

Don pulled onto Benjamin Franklin Parkway. “I’ll be there in a few.”

“Cool.”

The phone disconnected, and he looked out his window as the Philadelphia skyline swallowed him. Despite all the chaos surrounding the department, there was a thread of truth somewhere. He just had to find it, follow it, and let it lead him to the big picture. All cases were solved in this manner. Liam’s case would be no different.





51

Don was pretty sure Rocco was still wearing the same clothes from yesterday. As before, he followed the hacker inside the cramped space and stood by the rows of mainframes and towers, next to the laptops that lined his desk.

Rocco sat down in front of the desk. “You got the drive?”

Don fished the flash drive out of his pocket and handed it over. “Be honest with me—did you look at the content after you bypassed the encryption?”

“I told you I would. I’m a hacker, Detective. That’s what I do. That’s all I do. My sole purpose in life is to break into systems that are thought to be impenetrable. Within the confines of whatever it is I break into, there is information being held that is supposed to be kept from the general population. This is my pot of gold at the end of every rainbow.”

“So you looked at everything?”

“Of course I looked at everything.”

Rocco plugged the flash drive into the laptop and started typing. The computer screen flashed once and then changed. Don leaned in so he could see better. Kerri had saved PDF copies of almost fifty photographs. Some looked as if they’d been taken out in public but from a distance. The others looked as if they’d been taken while she was hiding. He could see the corners of the buildings she’d hidden behind and the branches of trees and shrubs she’d taken pictures from. The subjects—a man and a woman—were kissing, holding hands, smiling, caught in an embrace. They were the same two people in all of the pictures.

Sean and Vanessa.

On the bottom of each photograph, Kerri had written in dates, times, and locations.

“She’d been tracking them for over a year,” Don mumbled.

“Yup. Who’s the girl? Who’s your partner touching that he shouldn’t be touching?”

“None of your business.”

“Ah, so you do know who she is. Nice.”

“Shut up.”

Rocco minimized the file with the photos and clicked on the second file that had been encrypted. Six different screenshots appeared, each one showing a black-and-green map of the Northeast. A red line followed a path to a harbor. Each red line originated from Penn’s Landing.