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“Yuki, you okay?”
“Not at all.”
“Did you tell Brady?”
“Not yet.”
“Okay,” Lindsay said. “I’ll do it and call you back.”
CHAPTER 82
BRADY STOPPED ME before I could say a word.
“Boxer. Hold up.”
I said, “Barbara Sullivan was murdered.”
“I know. I spoke to Hallows. I’ve assigned Conklin and Alvarez. You’re needed here. Task force meeting down the hall.”
I pictured Barbara: half blind, mostly crippled, maybe sedated, alone in a dark house. Her sons with their grandmother because Barbara was too sick to care for them. She’d never had a chance. I updated Yuki, then walked along the corridor to the war room.
Team Blackout was less than half present: Joe Molinari, Mike Wallenger, Brady, and me. The others were checking out tips, leads, and a fresh murder.
Brady said, “Cindy’s been missing for seventy-two hours. We’re borrowing time from a serial killer.”
He locked the door and said, “Boxer. You’re up.”
I reported on Barbara Sullivan, waiting now for the ME report, for the forensics lab, and added her to the Blackoutcase files. I wrote her name at the top of a whiteboard and leaned it against the wall. Then we compared notes, triple-checked procedures for oversights, anomalies, unfounded coincidences. We watched Blackout’s video reel again as well as the bookstore surveillance footage from different camera angles. I kept one eye on my inbox to see if Blackout had sent a new murder tape.
In that intense frame of mind, I silenced my phone. Brenda had called and finally knocked. Instead of screechingWhat?I got up and answered the door.
“You have a call from the tip line,” she said. “I screened it. You should take it.”
“Transfer the call. Thanks, Brenda.”
I picked up the receiver, said my name, and the caller told me hers. Marion Witmar. She sounded youngish and rattled. I was impatient, thinking about Barbara Sullivan and at the same time urgently wanting to get back to the meeting.
Witmar said, “Sergeant Boxer. I saw that YouTube and I recognized his voice. The man who called himself Blackout? His real name is Bryan Catton.”
That focused me.
I asked Witmar to spell the name and typed it into my browser while asking, “How do you know him?”
“He’s my ex. We lived together for two years. It ended five or six years ago. His face looks different in the video, like maybe he’s had work done. His nose is smaller. His eyes are narrower, and his hairline has receded. But that’s him.”
“You’re sure?”
Witmar got louder.
“I’ll never forget his voice. The rhythm of his speech andthe volume when he’s making a point. Listen, Sergeant. I’m lucky to be alive. He choked me nearly to death. That woman in the video is in serious danger.”
“How can we find Catton?”
Witmar didn’t know. Last time she spoke to him, Bob Brooks had hired him to work in the stockroom of Brooks’s Books nights and weekends. Then he joined the Marines. Last she heard he’d been sent to Afghanistan.
“The important thing,” said Witmar, “is that he had a 4.6 grade point average without trying. He’s cold, brilliant, and loves an audience. I loved him. Crazy neurotic kind of love. Now he terrifies me. I despise him. If you find him, don’t mention my name. I’m certain he’d kill me.”
Marion Witmar doubted that she had any old contact info for Catton, his friends, family, or his photo. “I burned all of it. But a guy named Austin Reynolds was Bryan’s roommate at Berkeley, and they moved back in together after Bryan and I split up. They were both drama majors and movie freaks. I heard Austin stole an idea for a play from Bryan. Austin would steal toilet paper from your bathroom. What a jerk. I haven’t seen him since I last saw Bryan.”
