AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Evan Bayne, you have thirty seconds to take your life,” the same low voice they’d heard on John Davis’s video said, again obviously altered, “or I will drive this car straight into your granddaughter and great-granddaughter. If they don’t die the first time I run over them, I will back up and make sure the job is done. I will also kill them if you ask your wife for help or exit this app. This isn’t a joke. I’ve already killed John Davis. Now, put the phone where I’ll be able to see you end your life. Here we go, Evan.” Then he began to count. “One ... two ... three ... four...”
As the count continued, the picture suddenly jiggled and then turned sideways. They heard Bayne tell his wife he loved her. Then they watched as he ran toward the edge of what appeared to be a cliff while his wife screamed, “Evan! Evan, stop! Evan!” But Bayne jumped. A woman ran toward the edge of the cliff, and when she got there, she looked down, then screamed again and fell to the ground. The screen went black.
“Gloria Bayne told the Sydney police her husband was fine until that call, so his phone was turned over to them. When we tried to locate Bayne for our investigation, one of his neighbors told us he and his wife were in Sydney, but they had no contact information to give us. That’s when we called the Sydney station for help locating him. By the way, they immediately contacted Bayne’s daughter and her family. They’re okay. No threats of any kind.”
Alex couldn’t seem to find any words. What they’d watched was horrible. A man so distraught that he could only think of jumping off a cliff in front of his wife. What a terrible way to die.
“He had only thirty seconds to decide what to do,” Kaely said. “Not enough time to think of anything else.” She looked at Gorman. “No drone?”
“No. Not that any witnesses saw. The Sydney police techs were investigating Bayne’s phone when we called. He had an app like Zoom. It’s called Chatter. The killer spoofed his granddaughter’s telephone number. Bayne wouldn’t have thought anything about answering the call since he and his granddaughter used Chatter all the time. And he made sure all Bayne could see was the video, not who was showing it. But unlike Davis’s call, both sides of this one were recorded. We can both hear and see what happened on Bayne’s end.”
“I ... I have that app,” Monty said. “My grandmother and I use it. I’m so busy working I don’t get to see her as often as I’d like.”
“So the UNSUB hacked Bayne’s phone,” Alex said. “He knew about the app and that Bayne and his granddaughter used it. He didn’t have to be in Australia. Where does the granddaughter live?”
“In Maryland. Frederick.”
“He didn’t have to travel far from Bethesda to pull this off, then,” Kaely said.
“Was the video he showed Bayne recorded?” Logan asked.
Gorman nodded. “Yes. Like Davis, Bayne didn’t have the time or probably the technical knowledge to realize it wasn’t happening at that moment. You know, even if these videos were recorded at another time, it doesn’t mean this guy won’t go after the families.”
“Right,” Logan said. “Our unit chief said that too. This UNSUB is evil but a genius. Thirty seconds isn’t enough time to do anything but die.”
“You said Bayne died Monday around noon,” Monty said, “and we can see the sun shining on this video. But the video he was shown looks like it was taken at night. Or was it early morning?”
“The video of the mother was recorded around six a.m. She’s single and an early-shift nurse. Every weekday plus Sunday she takes her little girl to a babysitter who lives a few doors down. That made it easy for our perp to film her. But Sydney is fourteen hours ahead of us. Bayne died early Sunday morning our time but Monday around noon Sydney time.”
“Davis died around ten p.m. here, so that means the UNSUB orchestrated two suicides within about eight hours,” Alex said. “How long does it take to fly from here to Australia?”
“Over twenty hours,” Logan said. He smiled. “Church conference.”
“So the UNSUB probably wasn’t in Australia,” Monty said. “Looks like he got Bayne to kill himself from here.” He shook his head. “Murder by phone. This certainly is a new one.”
Alex was quiet for a moment before opening the file she’d brought with her. “The first message the UNSUB sent was an email to Davis. ‘Those in law enforcement pay a heavy price when they constantly look into the dark minds of evil.’ This was a general threat to those in law enforcement. Then came the page from Davis’s book. ‘In those early days, I worked with several great agents. The success we had didn’t belong to one person. We were a team, each agent bringing his special skills to our efforts.’”
Her gaze swept around to the people sitting at the table and then settled on Chief Gorman. “This was a clue. He was telling us who he was going to target next. We didn’t interpret it that way because we were focusing on Davis. We weren’t sure there would be other deaths although we suspected it.”
“If we’d realized it soon enough, maybe we could have stopped Bayne’s suicide,” the chief said.
Alex shook her head. “No. Davis worked with a lot of people. Bayne hadn’t been involved with him for years. I wouldn’t have guessed Bayne was the next target. None of us would have.”
“So was a page left at Bayne’s crime scene?” Monty asked.
Gorman nodded and picked up a piece of paper. He held it out to Alex. “This was mailed to their hotel and arrived two days before the phone call, but his wife said they hadn’t bothered opening it since they were on vacation. Mailed from here, by the way. From Bethesda. And the numeral two is on the back.”
Alex took the copy and read, “‘Down through the years, I’ve found that most people on the side of good or of evil have one thing in common. They were shaped and fashioned by their families.’”
The room was quiet. Alex was certain everyone was trying to figure out what the message meant.
“Is he threatening families more directly now?” Monty asked.
Gorman shrugged. “Maybe, but his anger seems to rest not on who Davis and Bayne were but on what they did.”
Alex remembered Kaely saying almost the same thing when she was profiling the UNSUB in their motel room.
“Does this make it harder to write a profile?” Gorman asked.
“Not harder,” Logan said. “Just ... different.” He looked at his colleagues sitting around the table, then addressed Gorman. “We need some time to work. I know you need this profile as soon as possible.”
Gorman nodded just as Monty’s cell phone rang. He took it out of his pocket. “Sorry, I need to take this. It’s my grandmother.”
Sitting next to him, Alex suddenly recalled Monty saying he and his grandmother used the same app Bayne had. She had a sudden sense of danger and reached out in an attempt to keep him from answering his phone. But she was too late.
