Touch of Red (Tracers #12)(75)
Sean pushed off his truck and walked over. “Matt Jorgensen?”
Suspicion kicked in. “Yeah?”
Sean stopped in front of him, blocking the path to his truck. The man had three inches and at least fifty pounds on him, but Sean’s detective shield counted for a lot in cop circles.
“Sean Byrne, SMPD. You and I need to talk.”
Jorgensen looked mildly annoyed. “What about?”
“Brooke Porter.”
The light came on as Jorgensen realized this wasn’t something work related. He crossed his arms, and Sean noted the scars Brooke had told him about.
“What about her?”
“Brooke’s a friend of mine. Which means I’m watching out for her.”
Jorgensen’s gaze narrowed.
“And when I’m not around, my friends are watching out for her. And when they’re not around, their friends are watching out for her. You need to leave her alone.”
Jorgensen stared down at him. Sean didn’t blink. Several seconds ticked by, and finally Jorgensen looked away.
“Look, you can tell Brooke I don’t give a shit what she does anymore.”
Sean studied him, trying to get a read. To his surprise, the man seemed genuine. Maybe he had come to terms with the situation and decided to cut his losses. Or maybe not. Only time would tell.
Jorgensen nodded at the door. “Do you mind?”
Sean stepped back. Jorgensen slid into his truck, started it up, and drove away.
? ? ?
“You’re late,” Callie hissed as Sean dropped into the seat beside her.
He glanced at the clock on the wall, then at the faces around the conference table. The whole team was here, with the notable exception of Christine, who’d pulled the overnight shift at the judge’s house, and Jasper, who was on surveillance right now.
“It’s always better if you have the devices,” Alex Lovell was saying. The cybercrimes expert sat at the head of the table with a laptop open in front of her. “But since those haven’t been recovered, I used data from the phone company to get an overview.”
Sean glanced at Callie, who was watching him closely. He’d gone by his house to shower and change, but something told him he hadn’t managed to erase the evidence that he’d been up most of the night.
“Anything interesting in the phone records?” Ric asked Alex.
“A lot. The records show that these victims were in contact with each other several weeks before they were murdered. I found phone calls on November first, third, and tenth.”
“Any record of them texting?” Sean asked.
“No.”
“What about any calls to Eric Mahoney, our prime suspect?” Callie asked.
“No, but I found some other communications you might be interested in.”
Around the table everyone perked up.
Alex tapped some keys on her computer. “Okay, so it doesn’t appear that Jasmine Jones owned a computer.”
“We didn’t find one,” Ric said. “She was renting a room in a girlfriend’s apartment, and her possessions were minimal. She’d sold her car after losing her job a few months ago, and it looks like she was pretty close to broke.”
Alex nodded. “But I was provided with a laptop belonging to Samantha Bonner. She had an email account through the university, where I understand she was a part-time student.”
“That’s right,” Ric said. “But I thought we checked those emails. You’re saying we missed something?”
“That edu email wasn’t her only account. A detailed search of her browsing history turned up a Gmail account that she used infrequently.”
“How infrequently?” Sean asked.
“The in-box is mostly ads and spam. So I’m guessing it’s a secondary email address she gave out to stores and companies that she didn’t want cluttering up her primary account. The in-box is full of junk and the out-box is empty, however”—Alex tapped her computer and an email message flashed onto the large display screen on the wall—“the drafts folder contained this unfinished message, dated October thirtieth.”
Sean’s pulse quickened as he read the words:
Time’s ticking. You know what you have to do. We have the— “It cuts off in midsentence,” Callie noted.
“Like I said, it appears to be a draft she never sent.”
“Who’s johnjohn9987?” Sean asked, reading the recipient address in the header.
“I don’t know.”
“It says ‘we,’?” Ric pointed out. “You think she’s talking about herself and Jasmine?”
“Could be, although I found no email communication between the two of them, only phone calls.”
Ric turned to Sean. “Sounds like some kind of extortion plan.”
That had been Sean’s first impression, too. “We need more on this johnjohn person. Clearly, it’s a guy.”
“You can’t necessarily assume that. But after running down this account, I’d say it’s a good bet.”
“What do you mean ‘running down this account’?” Callie asked. “You hacked into it?”
Alex smiled. “Let’s just say I accessed the account through creative means.” She tapped her computer, and another screenshot came up behind her. This one showed an in-box filled with unopened messages. “As you can see from the subject lines, whoever has this johnjohn9987 account is getting bombarded with ads for erectile pills, sex toys, online dating sites.”