“He wasn’t hobbling around in California, so he must have altered his gait somehow in DC,” Breck said. Then added, “He wasn’t heavyset in California either.”
Nina recalled the surveillance footage in DC of the chubby delivery man with a distinctive limp rolling the handcart with the oversize box toward the nightclub. She would never have pegged him for the muscular, athletically built man who had easily overpowered her. Now she knew why. The gut and the limp had been fake.
“There’s tons of video of him at Pier Thirty-Nine.” Breck’s comment pulled her back from her musing. “He stole a dinghy, threw an oversize chum tank in the back, and motored out to the floating dock. He opened the lid, pulled the victim’s body out—hidden in a black garbage bag—and tied it to one of the pylons in the early hours before dawn. You can see him reaching down into the water with a knife to cut the bag away. No one thought anything of it at the time.” Breck tucked a curly red tendril behind her ear. “The place was deserted, and he was dressed in a gray sweat suit with a hoodie covering his head. He had a turtleneck underneath pulled up over his nose and aviator sunglasses covering his eyes.”
“How did he transport the body to the pier?” Nina asked, sitting down next to her.
“Parked a pickup close to the dock nearest to the dinghy, unloaded the chum tank, which had wheels on one end and a handle on the other, and wheeled it down the gangway.”
“Damn,” Kent said. “Right out in the open.”
“It’s part of the thrill for him,” Wade said. “Part of the game. Proves he’s so much better than we are.”
“Any video of the unsub taping the envelope to that dumpster or walking through terminals in the surrounding airports?” Buxton asked.
“Nothing so far.” Breck angled the screen toward Nina. “Take a look and see if you can add anything. There’s still time for me to tweak the image if it’s way off.”
“My memories are out of date compared to what you have,” she said, giving Wade a side-eye. “And apparently patchy too.”
She studied the image on the laptop. The man had a well-defined jawline and pronounced features, all regular. Breck had left the sunglasses in place. There was nothing striking about him. Nothing to set him apart except an indefinable sense that made her flesh crawl.
“I remember that his eyes were blue,” Nina said after a careful inspection.
Breck reached for the mouse. “Any particular shade?”
Try as she might, she could not offer more. “Sorry.”
“Easy enough.” Breck dragged the computer back. “I’ll give him a neutral eye shape and add in a medium blue to the irises. I’ll have it ready in two shakes.”
“We’ll distribute it to law enforcement,” Buxton said.
“Do we give it to the public?” Nina asked.
Buxton frowned. “I don’t want to circulate it until we have a clearer image. With that heavy beard growth and dark ball cap, he looks like fifty percent of all white males between twenty and fifty years old in the US.”
Kent nodded. “Given the publicity this case already has, we’d get tens of thousands of false leads.”
“For the time being, we’ll just disseminate it to the officers detailed to the Freedom Trail this morning,” Breck said.
Dreading the answer, she asked the question plaguing her since Kent had prodded her awake. “Has anyone posted a solution to the Cipher’s clue yet?”
“Negative,” Buxton said. “We still have the advantage. If our luck holds, we’ll catch this guy without a public circus.”
“There are more teams forming all over the country,” Breck said. “Some of them want to win the five hundred grand, some want to catch the infamous Cipher, and some are trying to do both.”
Nina pulled out her cell phone. “I’ve been checking his social media sites. He’s set up a leaderboard on his Facebook page with the names of people or teams who are after him, listing the Brew Crew in the number two slot behind Julian Zarran. He’s making sure everyone knows about the reward too.”
“He’s fueling the rivalry,” Wade said. “The public attention is enhancing the whole power dynamic for him. He’s driving the national conversation right now.”
“Got everyone chasing their tails.” Breck nodded. “Third on the list is a group of sexual assault survivors who call themselves the Pink Wave. Fourth is a band of former Army Rangers. I can’t say much for his chances of survival if they get to him before we do. In fifth position is a group of students. He only lists the top five teams.”
Nina rolled her eyes. “So not only are we hunting this guy, we’re in direct competition with a bunch of Scooby-Doo gangs from around the country who are chasing him as well?”
“I know we’re watching the Cipher’s social media posts, but is someone monitoring the Scoobies?” Wade said. “The Cipher is the type who might try to insert himself into the investigation by posing as someone on a team and proposing solutions to his puzzles to either throw us off or manipulate us in some other way.”
“The segment of the task force monitoring social media engagement is looking into the background of every team that gets involved,” Buxton said. “They send me regular updates.”
Nina looked through the small cabin window at the city lights far below. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of civilians were wading into the investigation. There was no way to control what happened when they interacted with the psychopath who called himself the Cipher. He was reveling in the chaos. Stoking it.
“The unsub is using the public to run interference,” Kent said, echoing her thoughts. “So far, it’s working for him. This is only going to get worse.”
“Agreed,” Buxton said, bringing the conversation back around to logistics. “We’ve got to finalize our plan for Boston before we land. I’ve been in touch with the local FBI field office and the Boston police commissioner. They’ve done a soft activation of their EOC.”
Nina didn’t like it. An Emergency Operations Center activation usually involved authorization from city management and pulled in multiple local agencies. “Won’t that call attention to—”
Buxton held up a hand. “I emphasized that we need this operation to be as covert as possible and that if the unsub knows we’re onto him, he’ll switch up his plans.” He glanced at the lined notebook paper inside his portfolio. “They’ve reassigned all available plainclothes personnel to deploy along the Freedom Trail. They’ll be augmented by uniformed officers on bikes, motorcycles, and on foot beats, but they’ll be scattered around so it doesn’t look like increased patrol.” He flipped a page. “That’s a total of roughly two hundred police to cover the length of the Trail, which is about two and a half miles long.”
“Wall-to-wall coverage.” Kent gave Buxton an appreciative nod. “The bastard won’t be able to squeak out a fart without us smelling it.”
“Where does the Trail start?” Breck asked.
“First stop is Boston Common,” Buxton said. “It ends at Boston Harbor.”
Kent let out a groan. “Another harbor. This guy likes the water. What’s the BPD doing about that?”