Читать книгу Just Try to Stop Me - Gregg Olsen - Страница 13

CHAPTER FOUR

Kendall Stark didn’t expect anything from Jonas Casey, so when he showed up in her office with a couple of lattes she was caught off guard.

“Peace offering,” he said.

She thanked him and took the coffee drink.

“I guess it would be wrong of me to refuse the olive, or rather, coffee branch,” she said.

He smiled and slid into the visitor’s chair across from her. A framed photo of Cody and Steven taken on their front porch faced him from the credenza, but the FBI agent didn’t comment on her family.

“Look, we both know that Janie Thomas is a kidnapping case,” he said.

Kendall pulled the green stopper from the plastic lid and took a sip. Caffeine, she hoped, would kill the throbbing headache that started about the time Brenda Nevins came into her life.

“We don’t,” she said. “Not really. As for what we really know is that—at least initially—Janie went with Brenda willingly.”

“Yes. Agreed. Initially.” He took a drink. “But that’s not how things ended, wouldn’t you agree?”

She couldn’t argue with that. Janie didn’t expect to die, though she might have been willing to die for her lover’s freedom. But it didn’t happen like that.

“Is the coffee the peace offering?” Kendall asked. “Or is there something else?”

He gave her his incredibly disarming smile.

“Right. Something else. Something I want you to think about.”

He was probably playing her the same way he played other women who couldn’t deny that he was handsome and magnetic. Still a jerk. But his looks and charisma somehow mitigated his true personality.

“What’s that?” Kendall asked.

“We traced—and I’m using that word very loosely—the upload on Brenda Nevins’s YouTube channel.”

Kendall could feel her heart rate quicken. She’d been hoping for someone to tell her where Brenda was, how far she’d gone, and, more important, what it would take to catch her.

“Go on,” she said.

“Like I said, loosely. Our guys in the lab—and that’s no slam, this time it is a couple of guys—determined that Brenda Nevins uploaded her video in Iceland of all places. That didn’t seem right.”

“No,” Kendall said. “How could she get to Iceland? She doesn’t have a passport.”

“She couldn’t, of course. We checked to be sure. Dug a little deeper into the code and determined that it had bounced from Qatar to Spain and then over to Iceland. We checked again, and Brazil was added to the mix. You get the idea?”

“I’m not a computer expert,” Kendall said. “But yes, I get that someone is helping her do what she’s doing. And that someone knows a thing or two about untraceable IP addresses, servers, and the like.”

The FBI agent had cut himself shaving that day, and a piece of tissue clung to a spot just above his Adam’s apple.

Kendall fought the urge to pick at it.

“That’s right,” he said. “And by the way, I’m not an expert either. I only act like I know what I’m talking about so I can get what I need to get and then find what I need to find.”

She liked him for admitting that. He didn’t have to.

“So where does this leave you,” she said, quickly amending her words, “leave us?”

“You’ve dug into the Nevins case as much as anyone,” he said. “You probably have a feel for who might be able to help her with something as sophisticated as to upload files in a way that could not easily be traced. Not even by the FBI.”

“No,” she answered. “There isn’t anyone. The people who knew her before prison are scared of her. None of them want a thing to do with her. I bet most of them sleep with a gun under their pillows.”

“That fearful of her?”

Kendall set down her coffee. “No,” she said, “that hopeful.”

He cocked a brow. “Hopeful?”

“Yeah,” Kendall said, “hopeful that they’d be able to shoot her in the head if she came for a visit. Believe me, there’s no welcome-home celebration from anyone who ever knew her before she became famous for killing.”

“You’ve talked to some of her,” he let the word hang in the air, while he thought of the best way to rephrase it, “let’s call them, mentors.”

“Just one,” Kendall said. “Jerry Connors is a non-player here. He’s an older, male version of Brenda Nevins. Backed into a corner, warehoused, and still looking for the wrong kind of attention.”

“She managed somehow,” he said.

“She’s pretty smart,” Kendall said. “I have to call our IT guy here at the county once a month. I’m notorious here for screwing up my password and needing a reset. Ten letters, two special characters, numerals. And, right, don’t ever write it down. It’s getting ridiculous. But Brenda’s wired differently. Maybe she could figure it out.”

“It’s pretty sophisticated stuff,” SA Casey said. “And I’m about like you. Give me the days when my dog’s name and last four of my Social were good enough.”

Kendall laughed. “Tell me about it. Those were the days.”

When he got up to leave, Kendall wanted to ask him how tall he was. He must have been at least six-four, but that was a question that would imply interest, and she didn’t have any in him. Besides, she was married and very much in love with her husband, Steven.

“I don’t think any of us should underestimate her intelligence,” she said.

He gave her a look.

“We never underestimate at the bureau,” he said.

“Of course not,” she said. “I’m just thinking that she’s the kind of brilliant person that knows how to use people in ways that the rest of us can’t really fathom. Janie gave up everything, literally everything, because Brenda got her to that point. She found a way to get someone to do what she needed done.”

SA Casey lingered in the doorway. “She wanted to make those videos,” he said.

His head was three inches from the top of the doorframe. He was definitely taller than six-four.

“And more importantly, she wanted to keep making them,” she said. “She wanted the world to see all that she could do. How beautiful she is. How clever. How talented. She sees no distinction between fame and infamy.”

The FBI special agent took in every word. Kendall Stark might have been a detective for a small county in the middle of nowhere, but her assessment on Brenda Nevins was close to the briefing he’d been given when he got the case. “Grandiose narcissist” was the label given to the woman who’d seduced and then murdered a prison superintendent.

Among a deadly list of her victims that included a TV producer, a bar owner, and a student teacher, were her husband, and her baby.

“She needed someone to help her make those videos,” he said.

Kendall stood to walk the special agent out of the convoluted hallways of the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office—though it was clear he’d had no problem navigating his way to her office with that so-called coffee branch.

“Right,” she said, still thinking. “Someone who knew the ins and outs of media, computers, services, and video.”

“Someone,” SA Casey said as they made their way down the hallway, passing the evidence room and records offices, “she could dispose of when the time was right.”

He was right. Brenda’s helpers had the shelf life of lettuce.

“Brenda Nevins sees everyone as an object,” Kendall said. “No one is a person when she lays her eyes on them. All exist as merely something to be used by her.”

“Whoever is helping her doesn’t know that,” the agent said.

“And when they finally figure it out,” Kendall added, “I’ll bet it will be too late.”