I said, “From what our lab techs can determine, he’s in his mid-thirties, sandy-colored hair, five ten, and fit. They’ve refined his facial features as much as possible, but they don’t match with anything in ViCAP or DMV.”
Yuki asked, “What makes you think he has anything to do with Carly Myers?”
“Only this,” I said. “It looks like he’s leaving the second floor, and the photo is time-stamped Tuesday night, 11:23. Carly was probably killed right around then. And one other thing. A woman called the hotline saying she saw a dark-colored SUV drop Carly off at the motel on Tuesday night. I pointed to one of the photos of Mr. X, which included a lengthwise section of a dark-colored SUV parked a few yards from the subject in question.
“Crap,” said Cindy. “The license plate isn’t showing.”
I said, “You stole my line. Cindy, I’ll give you this photo of an unnamed male when it’s cleared for takeoff. But right now we need to find him, not send him running over the border.
“But,” I went on, “I do have something for you to run with your reward-for-information story. No one else has this.”
“Now you’re talking,” Cindy said.
“The assistant dean at Carly’s school, name of Karin Slaughter, gave it to me to use as we see fit.”
I showed Cindy a sweet photo of Carly, Adele, and Susan taken at the Bridge the previous week. The women were relaxed at a table and had pulled their chairs close enough to put their arms around one another.
Last week when this picture was taken, a tragedy was waiting for them in the wings.
But at that moment they all looked very happy.
CHAPTER 38
After lunch we said our good-byes outside of MacBain’s. Cindy cabbed it home, Yuki walked up the street to an off-site meeting, and Claire and I headed back to the Hall together.
As we walked toward the intersection of Bryant and Harriet Streets, Claire said, “I’ve got some breaking news for you.”
“Really? I’m listening.”
“The tox screen came back. Carly was drugged with Rohypnol. Large dose.”
“Carly was roofied?”
Claire went on. “The sexual assault kit came back, too.”
I grabbed her arm and looked at her.
“Give me something good.”
The traffic light changed and we crossed the street. I couldn’t wait for Claire to start talking again.
When we were standing on the far side of the intersection and Claire was about to take the turn to her office, she said, “There was no semen present, but we did find condom lubrication. On a hunch, I gave her a pelvic exam. I found one pubic hair. One. And it’s not Carly’s.”
I said, “Wow. That could be a breakthrough.”
Claire said, “It’s very good news, but I don’t have to tell you, that piece of evidence is going to have to get into line for DNA comparison.”
“Claire. Can’t we jump to the front of the line? Use your considerable influence, will you?”
“Linds. Every cop in the city is trying to shove to the front of the line. But I will definitely lean on a few people.”
I thanked her, hugged her, waved good-bye, and carried on down Bryant to the main entrance to the Hall.
I crossed the mostly empty lobby and headed for the elevator, thinking about Claire’s news, imagining Carly’s last moments.
I saw her waiting outside the Bridge, getting into a car with or without her girlfriends. Twenty-four hours later she checked into the Big Four. Where had she been during that twenty-four hour gap, and had she been with whoever had picked her up at the Bridge?
Maybe her driver or date or customer had driven her to the Big Four the next night and waited there while she checked into room 212, then parked his car at the back and met her upstairs.
If I was seeing this right, whoever this guy was, he’d planned his night with Carly. It was premeditated. Up in the room, he’d given her a drink of something that had been loaded with the powerful knockout drug Rohypnol.
She’d gone down.
While she was unconscious, Carly’s attacker had spread towels down on the bed and done horrific things to her. He’d sliced her, raped her, strangled her, dressed her in some items from his sick imagination, then hanged her corpse from the shower head.
He was good. But not perfect.
He’d left his calling card behind: a short hair with a skin tag, a neat little bundle of his telltale DNA.
We finally had a real lead.
I hoped like mad it would take us to Carly’s killer.
CHAPTER 39
Joe had met with Anna over the weekend to prepare for their Monday-morning meeting with supervisor Craig Steinmetz.
At 9:00 a.m. they sat at right angles to each other on the squared-off leather sectional in the FBI’s thirteenth-floor reception area.
Joe glanced over at Anna.
She seemed unperturbed, buds in her ears, eyes closed. A curtain of brown hair hid the terrible scar on her face. Joe flashed back to last week, Anna telling him in the dark of his car how Petrović had burned her with a cigarette lighter, men holding her down as he raped her.
Then and now, Joe felt enraged. It was all he could do to sit still in his seat. He thought about Anna and the hundreds of other women who had lived and died in that “hotel.”
He drummed his fingers on his knees and turned his eyes to the FBI seal hanging on the wall opposite the sofa. The medallion was round, blue and gold, with the words Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation encircling the outer rim, enclosing a circle of stars. At the center of the seal was a shield made up of red and white stripes and the scales of justice.
Beneath the scales were the words Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity.
Another way of spelling FBI. These were the values he’d built his life around since joining the Bureau.
He was startled out of his thoughts as he heard his name.
Supervisor Craig Steinmetz came through the doorway and asked him to come in. “Joe. Just you.”
Joe followed Steinmetz down the hallway to the corner office and took the chair across from his desk. Like his own office, this one was uncluttered, had a flag in the corner, and featured the seal on one wall, a couple of framed certificates and pictures with past presidents on another. In the picture with President George W. Bush, a younger Captain Steinmetz wore his USMC uniform with rows of ribbons over his left breast.
Joe knew Steinmetz’s history.
After his last tour in Afghanistan, Steinmetz had joined the FBI to head up an antiterrorism division for a dozen years at Quantico, where Joe had met him. Then he’d led the San Francisco branch for the last five years.
Steinmetz was unlikely to cut Joe a break for old times’ sake, and Joe had prepared himself for the possibility that he could get jammed up for conducting an unauthorized surveillance, which he’d done. Without an open case or a preliminary inquiry, he’d probably get time on the beach without pay.
Putting that possibility aside, Joe looked across at his supervisor and laid his weak cards on the table, knowing the conversation had to be recorded.
“A nationalized American, Anna Sotovina, originally from Bosnia, was riding her bike on Fell Street last Wednesday afternoon and sees a war criminal, Slobodan Petrović, coming down the steps of his house and getting into his car. She’s sure it’s him, and she follows him. On her bike. Several blocks later she gets sideswiped by a car. Walks the bike a couple of miles to us.