20th Victim (Women's Murder Club #20)(28)

“Excellent. What have you got so far?”

Noble said, “The parents at Little Geniuses, where Peavey was popped, are going, uh, ballistic. We’ve been bringing them in, giving them a chance to air their complaints and fears of their kids being shot, and hoping maybe someone would finger a suspect.”

“How’s that going?”

Chi’s voice came over the speaker, bringing Conklin up to date on the stakeout at Barkley’s house.

I tried listening to Chi, but Noble was excited and drew me in.

“Fred Peavey was a dentist,” said Noble, “and some of the other parents were posing as patients of his. I’ve confirmed he was writing scrips for painkillers. I spoke to ten people myself. Nobody wanted him dead. They liked him. We checked them out, and honest to God, except for some with an opioid addiction, they all live in Mister Rogers’ neighborhood.”

Another drug connection, I thought. This one, pharmaceuticals.

Chi was telling Conklin that he’d briefed Brady on the Barkley house stakeout: cars around the block and a team in the house next door with a clear view of all entrances.

“No sign of Barkley,” Chi said. “The dog was impounded pending release to its owner. Maybe you can use that with the wife.”

Cappy’s voice crackled over the line again.

“I checked out Barkley and his lady. Both of them served in Afghanistan, Boxer. They’re both expert shooters. Hey. We’re blocking traffic. I’ll call you or you call me. Ten-four.”

A new text from Brenda. Detective Richards on two.

I punched the button and said, “This is Boxer, Detective Richards. You’re conferenced in with our team.”

Richards got right to it.

“We have no suspects in Roccio’s murder, but to your theory of the case, we looked for a drug connection.”

I said, “My partner is here. Richards, meet Conklin.”

Richards said “How ya doin’?” to Conklin, then told us that a half kilo of heroin had been secreted in Roccio’s car.

“He was dealing big and small.”

According to Richards, Roccio sold the H on the phone, and the customers came into the store, bought a magazine, and took the H with them. Same with X and marijuana. Kids coming into his smoke shop would bring a magazine to the cash register and give Roccio a pair of twenties, and Roccio would stick a joint into the centerfold.”

Conklin said, “That could’ve been the easiest sting in the world.”

Richards said, “I got a meeting. Nice chatting with you.”

Conklin said, “Wait. Hang on, Richards. Any suspects? Any other victims?”

“In a word, no and no. Roccio wasn’t the only drug slinger in Chicago, okay? We’ve got gangs. Organized variety.”

“I hear you.”

“Later,” said Richards.

The line went dead. All of them did. So much for herding cats. I stared at Rich and he stared at me, the unspoken question lying like a dead fish in the space between us.

What now?

“Hello? Hello?”

Shit. It was Noble.

I apologized, asked him to go on.

“It’s okay. I was going to say we ran their names. Look in your inbox. I sent you a rundown on Peavey’s friends and associates, a mixed bag of moms and dads, white and blue collar, some military types and a couple of patrol cops.”

There was a knock on the door as Noble was saying, “Alibis for 8:30 a.m. on the day of the shooting are tight, and no motives we can see. Peavey hasn’t ever been sued or arrested. He gets four and half stars for his dental work. So maybe our shooting isn’t related to the others. But we’ll keep going until we hit a wall.”

Maybe Jennings and Peavey were random. What about the Barons and Roccio?

Random or planned to the second, what was the point of any of these killings and where was this going?

How was it going to end?





CHAPTER 43





I LOOKED UP to see Mike Stempien, our FBI computer tech, coming through the door.

He looked as excited as if he’d found a can of gold coins under his sink. He definitely had something to tell us. Conklin stood up, and Stempien took his chair at the desk and opened a laptop.

“This,” he said, “belongs to the Barkleys.”

I said, “Mike. I want to hear everything, but we’ve got a meeting upstairs with Mrs. Barkley and her attorney.”

“This’ll take one minute. You’re going to want to see this before your meeting.”

Conklin and I were standing at the edges of the desk.

Stempien said, “This was on the kitchen counter. I pulled up the last sites the Barkleys visited and found—ta-da.”

He turned the laptop so we could see it better.

What appeared to be a video game from the Pac-Man era filled the screen. There was a drawing of a carnival wheel of fortune in the center, and a chat box off to the right. Mike said what I was thinking. “I haven’t seen a game like this since the ’90s. But then I got the feeling there was more to it than it seemed.”

“How so?”

“This site doesn’t have an internet address. If you want to play, you’ve got to know your way around anonymous browsing and posting. Meaning, there’s a browser called Tor, which stands for the Onion Routing. It’s got different layers. One layer knows only what the next layer is. You can’t see the whole picture. The address isn’t something like Google.com or CNN.com. It’s like ABQ3d.