Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
March 28
Aiden swiped at the mustard splotch on his T-shirt then gave up. Glancing around his apartment, he acknowledged the place needed attention. He had purchased the unfinished loft space five years ago for a song and slowly did the renovation himself. Aiden was meticulous, a craftsman.
He was also obsessive, and, despite the fact that he had three active, solvable cases, he spent most evenings combing through the scant evidence in the now ice-cold Regina Phelps murder, trying to find some connection to Calvin Landry that might be a motive. Regina Phelps had taken residence in his psyche, evicting all thoughts of investigations or sleep or apartment upkeep. Noting the mess, he told himself he’d get to it and returned to the task at hand. Crossing one sneaker-clad foot over the other on the coffee table, he steadied the laptop and resumed reading. The file on his computer consisted of every article Regina Phelps had written in the past ten years, all two hundred and thirty-eight of them. He had searched for articles mentioning Cal Landry or his company, Landry Orbital, and shaved the count to twenty-three.
An hour into rereading, he set the laptop aside. The screen glare was giving him a headache. Walking to the kitchen, he massaged the ache in his stiff shoulder. He refilled his coffee cup and popped two aspirin. After adding milk to the mug, Aiden eyed the storage boxes stacked in an unfinished space behind a wall of cabinets. He had brought the paper copies of Regina’s articles home over a month ago. He couldn’t keep them by his desk, but he wasn’t ready to take them down to the no-man’s land of evidence storage.
Sparing his eyes from the screen glare, he hauled the two most recent boxes out. After checking the dates, Aiden pulled out the physical copies of the articles he needed and set them in a stack on the dining table. Although, dining table was an odd moniker for a piece of furniture that had never held a plate of food.
He was seven articles in when he saw it—not the words, but the picture at the top. The clipping was from a now-defunct New York lifestyle magazine called Two-One-Two, and the photo—unlike the version on his computer—was in color. A beautiful, beaming woman stood between two suited men with requisite photo-op smiles; she held a gold trophy cup nearly as large as her torso. But it was her striking red hair that fell around her shoulders that had Aiden’s heart pounding in his chest.
Seven years ago, the UVa computer science major had won HackAttack, a programming competition in New York City. She had beaten what Cal Landry and his partner had called the impenetrable system. He knew about events like these from his techy brother. He knew about this specific event from the same source.
His brother, Finn, had fallen for this girl.
Scooping up his phone, he brought up the contact information and scrolled back, back, back through the messages. It didn’t take long. He hadn’t received a text from Finn in years. When he found the thread, he tapped the archived photo and confirmed his assessment.
Regina Phelps, victim number one, had covered the hacking competition. An event sponsored by Cal Landry, victim number two, and won by Charlotte Devlin—the woman his brother had talked about nonstop for his entire week of leave. Aiden hadn’t remembered the name, but he remembered the photo Finn had sent. He remembered the red hair. And he remembered the text that had accompanied it: she’s the one.
He accessed Charlotte Devlin’s home address in Beaufort, South Carolina, and her place of work, Bishop Security. He knew the name. A couple of years ago, their mother had been in a car accident, and Finn had shown up out of the blue to help out. He stayed for two days and barely spoke. Before he left, he scrawled a name and number on the memo pad by the phone and handed it to Aiden, saying if he ever needed anything, this guy could help. At the time, Aiden almost crumpled it up and threw in his brother’s scarred face. The unspoken part of the message was clear: because you can’t call me.
Aiden opened his wallet. The piece of paper was still there, hastily folded and tucked in the billfold. He pulled it out and read the name: Miller Buchanan (goes by Tox). Below the number, Finn had written: Bishop Security.
Aiden’s head was spinning.
The killer had lured Regina Phelps with the promise of a whistleblower story. Had the same man killed Calvin Landry and left the newspaper article as some kind of message? And what, if anything, did Charlotte Devlin have to do with it? What did Aiden have to do with it?
Suddenly Dino’s words replayed in his head: If the killer had left the body where it was, it wouldn’t even be your case.
Aiden’s reflux kicked in with full force. Had whoever killed Regina Phelps moved the body because he didn’t want the cops with jurisdiction in the original crime scene to handle it, or because he wanted the detectives in Aiden’s district in charge?
Did the man who stabbed Regina Phelps want Aiden to investigate the murder? The thought was ludicrous, egomaniacal, and yet…
His jigsaw puzzle just had another thousand pieces dumped onto the table. After hastily packing a bag, Aiden grabbed his keys. If he drove all night, he could be in South Carolina by breakfast.