Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 132962 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 665(@200wpm)___ 532(@250wpm)___ 443(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132962 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 665(@200wpm)___ 532(@250wpm)___ 443(@300wpm)
“Ahh, that’s right, you’ve been mentioning that nonsense about a relationship since you met the football guy and the cheerleader. Are you just settling for anyone?” Kreed asked.
“Aren’t you just Mary fucking Sunshine? And I’m not settling for shit. You’re pissing me off,” Mitch replied, refusing to look at Kreed.
“Good, then my job is done. I’m hungry. Stop by Mickey D’s up there,” Kreed said and pointed to the McDonald’s sign up ahead.
“Fuck you. You can wave as we go by.”
~~~
Four hours later, Mitch, Connors, Brown, and Kreed sat in the conference room, scouring over all the case information they’d accumulated. The wall of photos had become a maze of information, a puzzle of sorts. They had been thorough with each individual incident. Mitch had done a good job gathering and fact-finding. Even putting in all the hours and having all these eyes and minds working the information, nothing changed except a growing victim tally.
“So we have the Greyson kid. He’s the odd man out,” Kreed stated as he led this round of discussion while they all sat back studying the wall.
“Correct,” Brown agreed.
“He’s different from the rest,” Kreed repeated. Mitch answered with a nod, and Connors shook his head no.
“Let him finish,” Mitch said, holding up a hand as Connors started to speak.
“He’s different, Connors, because he’s not in the public eye.” Kreed kept talking as he rounded the table.
“That’s Mitch’s theory, but I disagree,” Connors argued.
“Hold up, man, and let him finish. You can have the floor next, but listen for once,” Mitch said, aggravated. Kreed continued without ever taking his eyes off the board.
“Yes, Greyson’s in the public eye for negative reasons. His father’s a hard-core republican with a gay son. I get that. But these others are established men who appeared in the news for some recent success they had. The Greyson kid hadn’t. My theory is when they left their original plan of going after middle-aged, publicized gay men that that’s when they started making mistakes. If they continue going outside their target base, that means something in all this. These mistakes could continue to happen with everyone they target. Besides, we know they have to have a huge ego by now. They’ve gotten away with murder. Or the kid might not actually be a part of the big plan. He might be a message.”
“I don’t know,” Brown started.
“Let’s play the what-if game for a minute.” Kreed jumped back in to take the floor. “They got cocky and went off their original plan of attack. The kid wasn’t intended to get out of the exploding car. That’s the first mistake these guys ever made, because it wasn’t a well-executed or organized plan.”
“We all agree with you on that,” Connors said drily, clearly still not completely on board, but participating.
“He was abducted from a coffee shop. His Secret Service agent was out front. The kid’s background check and record are coming back clean, plus surveillance shows his agent sitting out front, waiting for the kid to leave. Security cameras in the front and the back of the shop never showed him exiting the building. We have two mistakes right there. You can’t vanish into thin air, and he was able to work himself out of the car before it detonated.”
“Correct, but we’ve interviewed every person we could find who patronized the coffee shop at the time of the alleged kidnapping. We followed the receipt trail. We also interviewed the entire staff of the place,” Connors said.
“And what did you find from all that talking?” Kreed asked.
“Elliot Greyson was in the coffee shop for about an hour, studying. He went to the restroom and never came out,” Connors answered.
“And there’re no windows?” Kreed asked. Mitch kicked back in his chair, concentrating on the conversation. He’d gotten this far on his own, but had also read the investigation reports on the customers and helped interview the employees himself.
“Not a one,” Brown said, looking down at the report in front of him. “Connors did you look for yourself?”
“Of course I looked for myself,” Connors retorted.
“You still can’t vanish into thin air,” Kreed said. “This is where I think we concentrate. Someone had to see something. They had to get him out of the building. Whether they dressed him up or what.” Kreed looked over at Mitch.
“I believe that was the conclusion we made. There are no cameras in that part of the shop,” Mitch said as he bit at his fingernail.
“And the perps would have to know that,” Mitch added. He was on board with this. They’d been down this road already, actually a couple of times, but it was all they had after the debacle of interviewing the Secret Service.
“The video from the camera on the street’s too grainy to make out every person who entered or exited the building. About thirty percent of the nightly receipts are unaccounted for,” Mitch stated, thinking through everything they’d found.
Mitch’s phone vibrated at his hip, and he automatically took the cell from the holder, smiling when he saw the text from Cody. He didn’t want to lose the momentum the team had going right now, so he forced himself to slide the phone back in its holder. He’d call Cody when they took a break.
“Did you get your computer guy on it?” Kreed turned to Mitch and asked.
“Yeah, he couldn’t do much without enhancing the video beyond recognition. It lost too much integrity or something like that. The camera equipment at the coffee shop isn’t great.”
“And the garbage?” Kreed questioned.
“We took it all. It came back clean, or relatively clean.” Connors jumped in. “I still think it’s impossible to gather more from the shop. We were thorough in our investigation. We know where you’re at on this, Sinacola. That was the strategy we had,” Connors said.
“Then it won’t hurt to take a second look.” Kreed rounded the table as he began to gather his laptop and paperwork. “Let’s go by there now,” Kreed said to Mitch.
“Or we could do this the courteous way since we’ve disrupted their business quite a bit over the last week.” Both Mitch and Kreed stared at Connors. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Brown was surprised too.