Bend, Oregon
April 8
The yellow crime-scene tape spoke volumes. Behind closed doors, the neighbors all asked the same question: What happened? By the time the ambulance arrived, a crowd of about two dozen had gathered on the far side of the street. Some were holding cups of coffee; a few were drinking from beer bottles. The atmosphere was one of morbid curiosity.
The local television station had their van parked nearby and was transmitting live updates. The cameraman was there to film the covered body wheeled out on a gurney late in the evening, footage guaranteed to be played on the 11:00 pm newscast.
The forensics team was still busy collecting evidence, room by room, and documenting the crime scene. It was going to be a late night.
Standing in the living room, Ruth Colson was looking toward the kitchen and dining room. Colson was a handful of years away from retirement, yet her energy and passion for solving crimes had not abated in her 34 years of police work. Her gray hair was short, giving her a masculine appearance. She had been on her feet almost continuously for the past three hours; thankfully, she was wearing her trademark neon-green Oregon Duck sneakers.
With both hands braced on her narrow hips, she said, “No shell casing… we have a small-caliber entry wound, but no exit… and no stippling on the victim’s face, consistent with a lack of observable GSR…”
Standing beside Ruth was her junior colleague, Niki Nakano. “The lab may still find gunshot residue on the victim’s clothing.”
Niki was relatively new to the Detective Unit, and had been mentoring under Ruth for close to a year. A third generation Japanese-American, her parents had instilled in Niki a thirst for excellence and success that drove her from Patrol to Detective by age 32.
“True, but for now all we know is that GSR is apparently lacking, suggesting the shot was fired from a distance.”
Detective Colson stepped toward the kitchen until she had a clear view of the refrigerator. She stretched her left hand out, miming a gun. “If the perp was standing here, the gun would be only five or six feet from the victim. At that distance there should have been extensive blood stippling on her face from the powder and bullet residue.”
Niki walked around the dining room, which was separated from the kitchen by a wall of cabinets with a pass-through counter. Finding the spot where she had an unobstructed angle on the refrigerator, she repeated her mentor’s exercise. “This is as far away as the shooter could have been; and it’s still—what—maybe 12 feet?”
“Plus, the shot would have just missed the wall and cabinets,” Ruth pointed to the wall on either side of the pass through. “Make sure they swab this area for GSR.” She leaned in close, careful not to brush her face against the painted surface, her flashlight on, scrutinizing the white paint for particles that could have come from the discharge of a firearm. She shook her head. “I don’t see anything.”
“None of the neighbors reported hearing a gunshot. Maybe the shooter used a silencer?”
“No, it just isn’t right. In order to account for the evidence, the theory is getting too complicated. We have what appears to be a simple home invasion burglary that went bad because Emma Jones wasn’t supposed to be home. But why?”
“Sorry?”
“Why this house? It’s a rental. Two students. They don’t own much property of value. And to suggest that a silenced weapon was used… that’s for the pros. It doesn’t fit. This crime screams amateur.”
Niki understood. “Except for the ballistics.”
“Could be subsonic .22 ammunition.”
“Maybe. We’ll know more once the lab results are in.”
“The roommate—Kate—what did she say when asked what was missing?”
Niki referred to her notes before answering. “She didn’t take an inventory, she was pretty distraught. But she said they didn’t have much—no money or jewelry, no guns or expensive electronics. She did mention that Emma’s laptop was gone. She said it was on the table when she left in the morning, that Emma was working on something. We’ll have her go through the house later, probably tomorrow if she can handle it. She was taken to the station for a complete statement.”
“So only a laptop was taken. And we have a most unusual head wound on the victim.”
“I don’t know what to make of it,” Niki said.
Ruth frowned. “Neither do I.”
Sheltered from North Pacific storms by Vancouver Island, the quaint port city of Friday Harbor on San Juan Island is a recreational paradise. Accessed only by boat or plane, getting to and from this sleepy town takes just enough effort to keep the population at a little over 2,000.
When Mitch Kemmel dropped out of college to pursue his computer interests, Friday Harbor suited his needs well. With good civic infrastructure, including an undersea cable providing electricity and high-speed internet, he had all the modern necessities his newfound profession demanded. Yet he was far enough away from Big Brother that the thought of government oversight was almost laughable. Many of the people calling San Juan Island home embraced bartering to avoid taxes and aligned themselves with the most liberal political positions. Mitch had two friends living on acreage outside the city limits who had gone completely off the net—hadn’t filed tax returns in years and, for all intents and purposes, didn’t exist in the eyes of the local or Federal government.
Like most other days, Mitch was working at his office—a study in his modest house on Browne Street. The solitary window was covered with aluminum foil, ensuring no one could spy on his activities. He preferred a more powerful tower PC to a laptop for most of his coding. On the desk were three monitors side-by-side between two art-glass desk lamps.
Mitch lived on the dark web. He had complete confidence in his hacking skills to keep his actions untraceable. Now he was searching a popular bulletin board for the next opportunity.
The project he had just finished on the USS Liberty was sufficiently interesting to compensate for the poor payout. He’d added those files to his growing library, all stored on a server in the corner of his office. He was too paranoid to store information in the cloud—one never knew when the software and search-engine giants would be forced to grant back-door access to Big Brother.
Hell, maybe they already had for all he knew.
It was midafternoon, and he wasn’t expecting any visitors, so when the doorbell rang he ignored it. Then it rang again. Annoyed, Mitch left his study, ready to tell whoever it was to go away.
Through the peep glass in the front door, he recognized a mail carrier’s uniform, complete with a satchel hanging from her shoulder by a wide leather strap. The woman was holding a white box with red and blue markings indicating it was Priority Mail. The annoyance subsided, and he opened the door.
She said, “Mitch Kemmel?”
“Yes, that’s me.”
“Priority package,” she said as she extended the box forward.
Mitch grasped it with both hands, surprised at how light it was—as if the box were empty. “Thank you,” he said as he looked at the mail carrier.
Rather than a pleasant face, he was looking directly into the barrel of a gun. The carrier pulled the trigger and with a whisper of a metallic clang, Mitch Kemmel was dead.
The shooter glanced around quickly while pulling on latex gloves. Not seeing any passersby, she dragged Mitch inside and closed the door. Moving quickly from room to room, she tossed drawers in the bedroom and then found the study. She stashed a half-dozen memory sticks and about 20 CDs inside the satchel. Then she used a set of screwdrivers to expertly remove the solid-state hard drives from the tower as well as the server, placing everything into the satchel.
In less than 15 minutes, she picked up the empty Priority Mail box and was out the door, driving away in a white minivan with red and blue tape striping and a U.S. Postal Service magnetic placard on the door.