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“Quite a bit. Our victim from Saturday, Robert Ralston?”
“I remember.”
“If I’m reading these messages right, he’s the one who first contacted Morton. Morton got out of prison, sent a few emails letting people know he was around, and then nothing—until the first week of August, when Ralston sends Morton a message.”
Noah put down his files and pulled the summary he’d typed out at home. “August sixth, Ralston asks Morton if he’s interested in a new game plan, that Ralston wants to retire to Florida but doesn’t have any money. Morton responds that he’s broke, too, and he hates being a mechanic. Ralston says he’ll see what he hears, but he’s not a techie.”
“Morton bought his computer a few weeks later.”
“I think that was incidental—he needed to earn the money to buy it, and after seven weeks working he had the funds. He immediately started going to all the online porn sites. Possibly doing research on how the technology and offerings changed.”
“Or maybe he was just a horny bastard after spending six years in prison.”
Noah shrugged. “Then Morton contacts Ralston in late September and says he has a new game plan—same phrase Ralston used—and would be ready in a few months. That’s about the time he started collecting porn and archiving it on his computer. A lot of the tapes and disks were older. I don’t know what his plan was—nothing in the messages give any details. But he had a lot of webcam films and our techs say it’s obvious one or both participants didn’t know they were being filmed.”
“Blackmail, maybe?”
“Possibly. And he would need money for equipment, setup, planning, and then of course the blackmail angle, if that’s what he was doing. Or, he could simply have been creating a voyeur site. I don’t know if we’ll ever learn the truth, considering both Ralston and Morton are dead.”
“Until whoever killed them launches the venture.”
Noah nodded. “We don’t have Ralston’s emails, but he must have been doing some work for Morton, because he gets back to Morton in late November and says he found a ‘game-player.’”
“Why didn’t Morton come out here then?”
“I don’t know. I can’t find any other messages from Ralston until late December. I’m wondering if they might have talked on the phone, and Guardino in Denver is going through Morton’s records. There were no 202 or 703 calls, but in this day and age disposable phones could have any number of area codes, Morton could even have had one we didn’t find. Our analysts are going through Ralston’s phone records. Something is going to match up but it’s going to take time.”
“So in December Ralston says what?”
“Pick a time and place. But get this—Morton didn’t tell Ralston when and where. There are no more communications from them.”
“Then you’ll love what I have here.” Abigail grinned like the Cheshire Cat and spread a greater D.C. map on his desk. “I mapped out everywhere Morton went in the rental car from the moment he drove out of the Dulles Airport parking lot. And two of his stops? Ralston’s apartment.”
Noah followed Abigail’s finger as she traced her pencil mark. “He was busy those two days.”
“Yes, he was.”
Noah scanned it. In addition to Ralston’s apartment, it included the Washington Marina where he was killed. He arrived there at 11:23 p.m. He died at approximately midnight. His body hadn’t been moved. At 11:59 p.m. the car left. “He went to the meeting—possibly to hook up with the money people for his new ‘game plan’—and they killed him. Took his car and went back to his motel—why?”
“If we’re going with the blackmail angle, maybe that was how he was going to fund his new project—and he blackmailed the wrong person.”
Noah considered. “He doesn’t bring the incriminating evidence, so the killer goes to his motel to look for it. Then drives the car to within blocks of Dulles Airport.”
“No—the car went one other place.” She put her finger down.
Noah’s mouth almost dropped open. “Back to Ralston’s apartment?”
“You know what I think? I think the killer was looking for something.”
“That would support the blackmail theory.”
“Morton didn’t have it on him. It wasn’t in his car, it wasn’t in his motel—”
“So they went to Ralston.”
Abigail nodded. “And killed him. Then they left the car in the warehouse near Dulles at four-thirty in the morning.”
Blackmail. It could pay enough to fund Morton’s “game plan.”
