Read GHOST_4_Kindle_V2 for Free Online

got what I needed: clear direction.  
    If the FBI was off the case, I was definitely on it.

Chapter 5

    “This is different,” said Special Agent Deanna Rezvani, pacing in front of her partner’s cubicle.  
    “It really isn’t, Rez,” LePoast replied tersely. He didn’t look at her. He kept typing. Maybe she would go away.
    “These are different women,” Rez explained. “No matches to the women killed during the original investigation. Six…new…victims.”
    “So?”
    Rez huffed incredulously. “So? So, Smiling Jack has gone active again. He’s taken more women. We’ve got to act on this.”
    “Smiling Jack,” LePoast coughed out the words. “There is no ‘Smiling Jack.’ Just some nutball with a lot of video tech gear and a sick sense of humor.”
    “You don’t know that.”
    “And you don’t know anything different. Plus, we’ve always had the pictures, Deanna! Where’d that get us?”
    Rez ignored the question. “We’ve never had the camera before. The killer’s prints could be all over it.”
    “Alleged killer, remember?” He sighed and thumped the delete key. Third time in a row he’d misspelled reconnaissance . Ignoring Deanna Rezvani wasn’t going to work. It seldom did.  
    He swiveled his chair, banging his knee smartly on the desk. He spoke through pain-clenched teeth. “We’ve never had a missing persons report. No one recognizes the alleged victims. We’ve never found a body—there’s no crime.”
    “You’re a hypocrite, John,” Rez replied. “And lazy.”
    He turned back to the keyboard and whined, “Oh, now I’m hurt. Mommy, make the bad woman go away.”
    Rez ignored the deflection. “When you first saw those shots, you said yourself they were real, that detail like that couldn’t be faked.”
    “That was before I saw what CGI could do,” LePoast replied. “That was before we mobilized almost the entire FBI and came up with zilch. Girls that hot, somebody would have missed them if they’d been killed. Can’t be real, Rez. CAN’T BE.”
    “Girls that hot? You sexist, son of a—”
    “Don’t bother trying to flatter me, Rez.”
    “But these women—”
    “Look, Rez,” LePoast interrupted, “I know this was your first big case back in the day. I know it burns you that you couldn’t solve it.”
    “It’s not that!” Rez fired back. “We’re talking the murder of twelve—no thirteen, now—maybe more to come.”
    “What’s your evidence?” LePoast asked. “’Cuz, that’s what this boils down to. Prove something.”
    “That’s what I’m trying to do,” she said. “We have new evidence now. We’ve got new pictures…and the digital camera that took them.”
    “Or maybe we don’t,” LePoast said.  
    The corner of the office where LePoast’s cubicle was fell silent. He went back to typing.  
    “We could be missing an angle,” Rez said. “Maybe this is more than murder.”
    LePoast stopped typing. “How do you mean?”
    “It could be human trafficking,” she said.
    “What?” he asked. “Like sex slaves? But why kill off the women? That’s his money train.”
    “Maybe it’s something darker,” she replied. “Weird fetishes or that kind of thing. A couple ATF guys I know were telling me about some sick stuff being brought in from overseas, Eastern Europe, I think.”
    “Overseas, huh?” he echoed. “Now, I’m confused. You think the sex slave kingpin from the Republic of Creep-istan is vacationing down in Miami—”
    “Destin,” Rez corrected.
    “Whatever. So this sick pup is catchin’ some rays in Florida and while he’s coolin’ off in the Gulf, he just happens to chuck his camera full of nasty pics into the water? Right.”
    That stumped Rez for a few seconds. “I don’t have all the answers,” she said. “But the loose ends are too promising to let it go. I could be right. The ATF guys know what they’re talking about. It could be human trafficking. Maybe Smiling Jack’s operation is overseas.”