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“Probably. He’s still young, maybe a year or so older than me. Françoise or her brother might know for sure. Or the chief. He probably keeps in touch. They were tight.”
“Yeah, I bet,” said Devine, who now had a whole new angle to explore.
CHAPTER
47
DEVINE CALLED CAMPBELL AND FILLEDhim in on his arrest, the missing rape kit, the fact that Benjamin Bing was the police chief when Alex was attacked, and his strong opinion that Françoise Guillaume was lying to him.
“She’s thinking of moving to Charlotte and fed me a bullshit story about losing the money, when her brother was giving her half regardless.”
“So do you think Benjamin Bing took the rape kit? Or Harper?”
“Why leave it there all those years in case it incriminates someone you know? I think Harper was going to look at it for the reasons he said, found the kit missing, and either kept his mouth shut or did speak to Bing and probably got his ass handed to him. We need to find out if Bing is still alive. Jenny came up here to take on some unfinished business and the attacker obviously didn’t like that.”
“And you said you believe Steve and Valerie Palmer saw who the attacker was or at least suspected, and thus they had to die?”
“Yes,” said Devine.
“But why didn’t they report it immediately? You didn’t have an answer to that.”
“The Palmers were going through tough times financially,” Devine said. “After their deaths their house was actually foreclosed on.”
“Why is that significant?”
“You have to understand I have no proof of this, but one possibility is they might have known the rapist and decided toblackmailhim to get needed money. But instead of paying, the rapist struck back, hard.”
“And Earl Palmer? I understand why he had to die. If he was forced to lie about finding Jenny’s body, he’s a loose thread. But how did the person get him to pretend to find Jenny’s body in the first place? From all accounts he was an honest man.”
“Maybe they had some dirt on him. If they did, I need to find out what it was.”
“I found something out about Jenny’s activities that might help you,” said Campbell.
“What?”
“Shediduse her CIA resources to investigate the attack on Alex.”
“How?” exclaimed Devine.
“Satellite surveillance imagery for the night in question.”
“How did that come to be?”
“As you know, we have satellites that sweep the globe around the clock. That particular part of the country is pretty important. The Canadian border is nearby. There are planes coming in from overseas nonstop along that route, and that sector is right along a principal trajectory path for both in- and outbound nuclear missiles. So there were pictures of Putnam, Maine, in the database.”
“How come no one thought of that before?” said Devine.
“I have no idea, but I confess, I didn’t.”
“But why did Jenny wait all this time before checking that angle?”
“I think I know the answer to that. It was only three months ago that she was elevated to a position at CIA where she would have unfettered access to intel like this. Knowing her, she probably tried before, and was rebuffed. But we have the digital trail of her requesting and accessing this data about three weeks ago, from sat pictures taken on the very night Alex was attacked fifteen years ago.”
“They keep that stuff from back then?”
“They keep a lot of stuff forever, Devine. Sometimes it’s patterns people are looking for and then changes to those patterns. And for that you need the context that onlytimedelivers. The U.S. government is the world’s biggest data hoarder when it comes to that.”
“Did the satellite record the actual attack on Alex?”
