Chapter 24

Dan took the day off from his office grind to visit Brandt. The late morning air felt rejuvenating, and the long drive put his mind at ease. After being reassigned to look into Islamic extremists for potential involvement with the President’s aircraft, he could only think of the Jean and Avery situation. He knew that chasing what most of the intelligence community deemed ‘the most obvious persons responsible’ was just a waste of time. Besides, he was curious about what Brandt and Jean had come up with over the past few days. He didn’t like that he still hadn’t received a call or a text, so it was yet another excuse to come down and visit him.

When he arrived at the house, everything was just how he had last seen it. The weeds were growing a little taller, and the bushes needed pruning, but the home looked undisturbed.

The knock felt juvenile, but Dan did agree to use it before entering the guest house. Shave and a haircut. Dan rolled his eyes, waiting for an answer at the door.

Brandt answered the door in a pair of board shorts and a wrinkled t-shirt. He looked as if he had been sleeping in his clothes. His hair was a mess, and his face badly needed a shave.

“You remembered,” Brandt said with enthusiasm as he greeted Dan.

“Do you realize how embarrassing it is for a guy my age to do that knock?”

“You’ll get over it. Besides, nobody else heard it except me.”

“And me,” Jean corrected. “Good morning, Dan Hoskins.”

“Good morning to you both.” Even though Dan had accepted what Jean was and had come to terms with how she and Brandt would continue this investigation, he still couldn’t shake how awkward it was talking to a machine. He thought that perhaps it was something he might not ever get used to.

“Well, come in.”

When Dan walked through the door, his attention was immediately drawn to the scattered papers and sticky notes strewn about the room. It looked like he had just walked into the office of some crazed novelist trying to get their book out before their deadline.

Dan pointed at the mess, attempting to get an explanation from Brandt. “What is all of this? And have you been sleeping in your clothes?”

Brandt looked around the room as if everything was normal. “It’s just some notes that Jean and I have been coming up with.”

“Notes? It looks like the complete works of Edgar Allen Poe exploded here. You weren’t this disorganized back at the office.”

“Yes, well. At the office, I had a computer to type on. Here, I just have Jean and a pen and paper for my ideas.”

“Fair point. Do you need laundry service or something?”

Brandt looked down at his wrinkled shirt and board shorts and laughed. “They’re clean, just not folded very well. Who needs a suit and tie when you’re working remotely?”

“And you didn’t get a phone charger, did you?”

Brandt put his hands up to his temples. “Oh shit. I’ll get one today. I’ve just been so busy and making progress that I forgot all about it.”

“I have reminded him at least seven times in the past three days to get a phone charger,” Jean added.

“Thanks Jean,” Brandt replied with a minor annoyance.

“Well, what have we come up with so far?”

“Right.” Brandt wasted no time. He shuffled through the papers that littered the coffee table until he found one that had a list of cities on it.

“So far, from what Jean and I can determine, there have been at least fifteen prominent deaths related to information technology professionals across the United States in the past week. The causes ranged from apparent suicides, automobile accidents, and suspected gang activity.”

“Varied enough so that there are no flags raised, and local PD gets to deal with it,” Dan said.

“Correct. But we could not put a face to the crimes as there have been no arrests. At least until Jean was able to do some clever usage of already available online tools. Do you know what a reverse image search is?”

“I think so. Is it something like we use at the Bureau where we can match a photo against the others in a database?”

“That’s pretty spot on. There are hundreds of tools like that on the internet. Even Jean is equipped with image recognition software. But where would we start? Tremor. Jean was able to find images of Tremor and his car, tracing from Tarrytown all the way to Dallas, Texas.”

“How could you make that connection with just a photograph? Was he taking selfies along the way?”

“He didn’t need to. Here’s another question, where do most IT professionals tend to work and live?”

Dan wasn’t sure where this was going, so he gave a modest guess. “In a big office somewhere?”

“Wow. How many years have you been with the FBI?”

“Um, can you get back on topic, Edward?”

“Sorry. They tend to live and work in bigger cities. Los Angeles, Seattle, Austin, New York, etcetera. They have the infrastructure and the talent to run these technology companies. Do you know what else they have?”

Brandt answered himself before Dan could give another half-assed response. “They have a lot of tourists. And tourists take a lot of photographs. Where do they put all of those pictures? In the public domain, plastered all over social media to annoy their friends and family with.”

“Ah, so social media is the egg hunt.”

“Yes. It’s been a wickedly useful tool to find people that apparently don’t want to be found. Kind of humorous in a way.”

“So, how do you know Dallas was his starting position?”

“Because his travel habits beforehand originated somewhere in Idaho. No reports related to IT professionals in Dallas, at least yet. And he hasn’t gone near Austin, where many emerging technology companies reside. So why did he come down there? Maybe to meet with others. Say the likes of Nyx?”

“I’m glad that we can determine the travel of a dead man, but this isn’t enough to sell to the higher ups.”

“Don’t worry, I’m getting there. It took a couple of days, and a few reverse imaging servers are probably on fire by now, but I think we’ve narrowed it down to a crew of four to five people. We don’t know about Nyx yet.”

“I’m sure the owners wouldn’t mind if they knew it was for the greater good, or better yet, their safety.”

“We’ll just have to assume that comforting thought. Anyways. Using Dallas as a starting point, Jean found as many pictures as possible from social media and the people in the area and referenced it to the places that had the deaths. We have found five different vehicles, each with a solo driver leading from Dallas to the other cities. Go ahead, Jean.”

The television came to life in front of them as ten photographs were arranged across the device. There were five pictures of vehicles and five zoomed and enhanced pictures of the driver.

Dan was inspired and studied the photographs. Tremor was the most obvious and recognizable one. In all, there were four males and one female. “Do we have any names?”

“Unfortunately, no. I’m sure you could run these pictures against Interpol and every other database and probably pull up little to nothing. They are likely a ghost, just like Nyx.”

“We were able to pull up Tremor in the database.”

“That’s because he was cocky. He probably didn’t cover all of history as well as the others. But it’s worth a try.”

“As soon as I get back to the office, I’ll see what I can do. What about Nyx, anything?”

“We have found no link between him at Dallas and the site of Andrew’s murder. We were only able to search faces and vehicles, and it’s probably safe to assume that he didn’t use the same vehicle for transit. And Tarrytown isn’t exactly flooding with tourists.”

“So, what’s the next step? Do we wait for Jean to get another match and then rush in with our forces?”

“We are kind of at a loss there. We could get lucky and catch them in the act. We could send their pictures to every law enforcement agency across the country. I just have a feeling that they will not go down without a fight. And once they know that their cover is blown, I’m sure there’s no shortage of others Avery can recruit to replace them. It’s best to keep everything low key as possible. Besides, those photos can take days to get shared on social media, and maybe longer before they are searchable. By that time, these guys may be long gone.”

“Yes, but you’re talking about potentially letting more people die.”

Brandt looked down. His expression went from jovial about the new information to saddened and regretful. “It gives me no joy, but unless we get Nyx. We won’t be able to find this Avery and shut him down,” he said, looking back up.

Dan could see that Brandt’s choice was bothering him. He could not offer any words to make the decision more agreeable between the two. Words like ‘sacrifice’ and ‘the greater good’ were often used to ease the stress of a difficult decision, but he didn’t want to express such a cliché at a time like this. He accepted that Brandt had got this far and would probably get further without others running interference. “Alright, I’ll let you run with it. But I am still returning to the office to run a check on these guys. Can you put them on a thumb drive for me?”

“Alright, did it.” Brandt handed over the drive to Dan. “It also has known locations to reference against the database.”

“Thanks.” Dan pulled out his phone. It was nearly one-fifteen in the afternoon. “Damn, I should probably head back to the office and get started.” The drive was nearly two hours without traffic.

“Edward,” Jean spoke in an alarming tone.

Brandt gave a little jump. “Don’t scare us like that. What is it?”

“Your home security cameras.”

“You accessed my home security cameras? I thought you couldn’t break passwords?”

“It takes a long time unless your password is ‘password.’ I recommend a password change. Please watch the television.”

The ten photographs changed into a full motion image of a man walking into Brandt’s house from his wife’s office entrance just moments ago. Jean zoomed in a little closer. The image that was displayed shook Dan and Brandt to their core.

“What the f--. That’s the guy! He’s at the house. Shit, he’s going after Joyce.”

Dan joined in on the panic. “Call her now.”

“Phone is dead. Shit.”

Dan ripped the phone from his pocket and tried the number. “There’s no answer.”

“Shit, shit, shit. She keeps it on silent or off when she’s seeing patients. We need to get there now.”

“It’s two hours away; we won’t make it in time.”

“Call whoever you can but keep trying to call her. Sorry Jean, we have got to go.”

Brandt grabbed his keys and the holster housing his Glock 19 and sprinted out of the door and to his car.