I rolled my shoulders, stretched my neck, and girded myself to wade back into the slime. I still had a few videos left to check. Given the estimated timeline Cami had given me of the intimate part of their dating experience, I expected these to be Cami free.
I clicked on the next video. A shot of Riker’s bedroom and his black sheets came into view. My stomach churned and bile rose in my throat like it had the three previous times I’d seen this opening scene. When the woman’s face came into view, I paused the video and sat up straighter.
“Pasco, you need to see this.”
He pressed his lips together into a thin line and shook his head.
“It’s not Cami,” I said, “although according to the date, he recorded this while they were still seeing each other.”
“The fucker was cheating on her?” Wheeler asked.
“We’re all shocked at the thought,” Lang dead-panned. “The guy smuggles drugs, abuses animals, and stealth records unsuspecting women, but?—”
“I get it,” Wheeler said. “But it’s still shitty.”
“Kids, can you stop bickering?” I snapped, drawingsharp glances from both of them. “I recognize this woman from the background checks we ran on employees of Cami’s clinic.”
“I do, too,” Pasco said. “She’s one of the temp vets who fills in for them. Not often, though, because she lives about thirty miles from here.”
I pulled up our team’s shared drive and opened the background checks folder. “Dr. Deana Gore. She works at an animal surgery center.” I typed a couple of commands and projected my screen onto the smartboard, showing her file, which included her driver’s license photo.
“Wait a minute,” Hayes said. “I saw her, too.” He peered over the top of his laptop at me. “We didn’t want to tell you while you were... But we’ve found compromising videos of at least three other women from the time before he was dating Cami.”
“And, apparently, during,” I said.
“I’m running facial recognition on still shots of the other women,” Pasco said, “but I bet we’ll learn they all work in veterinary medicine.”
“We knew the drug rings would be targeting vets,” Kat said. “But I wouldn’t have guessed Riker’s blackmail scheme would be the way they’d do it.”
“Or maybe it’s just Riker’s way,” I said. “A special kind of evil.”
“The question is whether he only has victims,” Lang said, “or whether he’s found some accomplices who can keep him in a steady supply of animal sedatives and anesthetics so he can scale up his operation.”
“However he did it, I think we can pinpoint when,” Kat said. “Look at the timing of his break-up with Cami. I checked his phone records, and he suddenly stopped contacting her.”
“Because she broke up with him,” I said.
Kat shook her head, sorting through a stack of print-outs. “No. Here it is. After they started dating and up until the break-in at her office, he contacted her nearly every day. After the break-in, he went dark for four days. But what if the break-in wasn’t the impetus for ghosting her? What if he’d found his supplier? Then she sent him a text about meeting at the Thirsty Horse and he agreed, probably because he was worried she’d discovered the drug theft.”
“By that time, he’d found the BBD,” Hayes said. “The bigger, better drug supplier.”
“He never used the recordings against Cami because he didn’t need to,” I said. “He’d found another source to either coerce or pay off. He only threatened Cami with blackmail when she confronted him, to make her back off.”
Kat furrowed her brow as she stared at her screen. “This looks like legwork to me, the kind you do when you’re at the beginning of an operation. He’s just getting started.”
“In an attempt to get Anson’s attention.” Lang shook his head. “It keeps coming back to that damn cult. There’s a lot of cross-over between our investigation and the FBI drug case. Are you still okay with us keeping the kompromat files from the FBI?”
Kat shrugged. “X is fighting a turf war, I’m miffed about them breaking into Riker’s house without coordinating with us—yes, I do remember two wrongs don’t make a right, but still—and we’re all mad as hell that they screwed us over last night and let Riker escape. Not to mention, everything we’ve just surmised is merely conjecture at this point, so we can’t prove that any of it impacts their drug case.”
“Sounds like we owe them none of it,” Pasco said. “Everyone, send me the videos of the other women and I’ll make those recordings disappear, too.”
My phone alarm buzzed. “I have to leave to pick up Cami in fifteen minutes. I’ll bring her back here so we can finish.”
“No need,” Kat said. “Open those last few videos on your list. If Cami’s not on them, give them to me and I’ll finish checking them for other evidence. Then you can pick up Cami and Bella and go home.”
Wheeler stood and stretched. “Or I could pick her up. I’ve finished my list, so I’ve earned a break.” He grinned. “And I hear the women in that office like to flirt.”
“You’ve caused enough trouble for one twenty-four-hour period,” Kat said. “I’m happy to share my remaining files with you, then we’ll all be able to go home sooner.”
