Page 161 of Chameleon Killer

Perfect. It was all too perfect and even as Carter swore and Ruiz muttered something too low for me to hear, I was reworking the whole scenario in my head.

If the audio was synthetic, the unsub had anticipated surveillance. If he'd anticipated surveillance, he had anticipated us. If he'd anticipated us, then everything we had heard needed to be reconsidered.

We couldn’t just discard it, we had to examine the way it had been framed and what could have been reworded—strategically.

“Compare her audio too,” I ordered Ruiz.

“What?” The agent seemed startled.

“Mallory's.” I said by way of explanation. “We’re assuming the microphone inside whatever room she is in is feeding us her live voice.”

“Oh shit,” Ruiz muttered. “I’m on it.”

Carter glared at me, waiting for an explanation.

“If he’s controlling how the vocal is being routed, we don’t have any reason to think he has to pass it through the room she’s in.” I might not be an audio/visual expert, but I’d worked enough cases.

The devil was always in those little details that no one thought to pull apart.

“You’re saying that might not be her.” Carter stared at the monitor as he curled his fingers and his knuckles went white.

“It sounds like her,” Ruiz was quick to assure Carter, but he didn’t buy that answer anymore than I did.

“That wasn’t what I was asking,” Carter didn’t growl the words, but he was close. A vein throbbed in his temple a line drew taut along his jaw as though he were fighting to keep himself in place.

“It’s possible,” Ruiz said after another prolonged hesitation.

On the screen, Mallory spoke. “I believe you.”

Again. The same phrase.

I frowned.

Exactly the same phrase.

Same inflection.

Same breath at the beginning.

Same fractional rasp on the final word.

“Ruiz back that up and match it to the earlier iteration.”

“One sec,” the agent said. While he might not be in this van with us, I could practically feel his stress as I demanded more and more.

The third screen split into two and we had both instances up. He overlaid the waveforms. They matched.

Exactly.

“That's not live audio,” Ruiz said. “It might have been at some point, but what we’re getting is a remix, recorded, and packaged for sending.”

“Do we still have thermal eyes inside?” I was already pushing up from my chair.

Nobody answered.

“Get me eyes now,” I snapped. I was already yanking off the heavier headset and sliding the ear bud back into place.

I checked my weapon and headed for the van’s side door. Carter was a half-step behind me. We had spent the better part of an hour believing we were listening to Mallory McBryan have a conversation with a serial killer.