Laugh or Death (Lexi Graves Mysteries Book 6) (21 page)

"Still nothing. They're either all really good at evading cameras, or they're holed up somewhere out of sight."

"Keep searching." Solomon split the stack, pushing half of it towards me. "We've got all the information we need. Let's
tie Leo to the crimes now."

Leo was careful. I found two charges on his canceled credit cards that
confirmed his location where two crimes and kidnappings occurred around five years ago. Even I could see that, again, it was circumstantial. Solomon, however had more luck.

"See here, ten years ago
?" said Solomon, tapping his finger against a long list of transactions. "Leo was definitely in the area for the first four victims."

"Four is a lot."

"One or two is a coincidence. Three is suspicious. Four is enough to get us a warrant."

"Add the two I found
, and we have something," I said as Solomon gave me a grave nod. "But I can't find anything for the others. Dead zones, yes, for a few days here and there, but I guess everyone's financials show that from time-to-time, and Leo's have dead zones for times that don't even match up to our kidnaps."

"What about in the months running up to the kidnaps?"

I scanned several months’ statements in the run-up to the first victim I successfully tied Leo to. "Yeah, there are transactions within the area. He visited this victim's home town several times before the kidnapping."

"Same with my four," said Solomon. "But he got smarter after that. The last few years, nothing."

"Is it enough?" I asked.

"Lexi, today has been one hell of a day," Solomon said, reclining his chair, and folding his arms behind his head
. His biceps popped and strained the confines of his shirt sleeves. It was a wonderful sight and one of the better perks of my job. "I'm going to call this in to Maddox."

"Is it enough to get a warrant for Leo's arrest?" I
eagerly inquired.

"Yes."

"Good. If he's committed these crimes..." I waved a hand over the files spread across the table. It was awful knowing that all these women except Peta were either dead or presumed dead. I took some satisfaction in knowing that we provided the evidence for catching the killer. Maybe Peta would get her happy ending after all, with Leo out of the way. I just hoped we were right.

"Then he's going away for the rest of his life," Solomon finished
. It wasn't exactly what I wanted to say, but I hoped he was right as I stifled a yawn. "Go home and get some rest."

"What about you?"

"I'm going to stick with Lucas for a while. See if we can come up with any other ideas on finding Leo, Peta, or Joelle. When this case wraps up, I'm taking you all out for dinner."

"In that case, I may start
the pre-dinner drinks with Lily."

"You've earned it," Solomon said, as I zippered my purse and rounded the table to drop a kiss on his lips. "I know it wasn't your gut instinct. I know that's disappointing, but you might have helped solve one of the most prolific serial killer
cases in recent history."

I couldn't help
feeling a surge of pride. So what if my hunch was off? So what if I believed Leo? All the evidence was now telling me otherwise, and that evidence was all I had to follow. Too bad there was nothing more I could do until Peta was found. "I guess I can't be too mad at myself. Call me later?"

"Sure thing." Solomon held up his keys. "Do you want to take my car?"

"No, I'll catch a cab."

"And if Leo just happens to bump into..."

I cut him off. "You don't have to say it. I'm not going anywhere near Leo Chandler and if he finds me, I'll run like hell."

"Just get somewhere safe and call in the cavalry."

"Is the cavalry you, or MPD?"

"Same difference. Call one and the other will come."

"Good to know I can rely on all of you." I kissed him again and waved as I exited, knowing he watched me sashaying all the way out of the office. I don't always sashay, but when I do, I do it brilliantly.

Instead of calling a cab when I got outside, I paused on the steps to our building and called Lily. "What's happening?" I said. "Want to get a drink? I have so much to tell you."

"I would, but I'm following asshole. We're heading down the street where the agency is."

"My agency?"

"How many agencies do you have? Yes, your agency. Oh, I see you. Hey!"

"Pick me up!"

Lily's Mini veered over to the curb and the door popped open. I jumped in and we pulled out with a screech.

"He's still not doing anything interesting?" I asked.

"He's moving," said Lily. "And we're following him. How was Greenacre?"

"Confusing and disappointing. Leo Chandler is probably a serial killer."

"It's always the cute ones."

"I know. So depressing. So glad I'm not dating."

"Me too. We have the good guys. We're lucky."

"They have us. They're luckier."

"High-five sister!" Lily high-fived me. "No one is dating this jerk, you know. He only has guy buddies."

"Maybe he's dating one of his guy buddies."

"That's very liberal and non-judgmental of you."

"That's how I roll. Hey, he's making a left."

"I got him." Lily made the left very discreetly, behind a Toyota. "I'm good at this surveillance thing. I've been getting a lot of practice. Hey, he pulled over. I'm going to slow down. You see where he's going."

"He went into a cyber cafe," I said, having a good stare as we rolled past. It wasn't an elegant cyber cafe with leather sofas and expensive lattes, but more
like a “park your butt in a plastic chair, pay your money, and nobody asks any questions.” I suspected they scrubbed their computer histories at closing time and didn't look over the shoulders of their patrons. I also doubted anyone got up to anything seriously illegal in there. I figured it was probably somewhere people logged into secret email accounts their spouses didn't know about, or extra-marital dating profiles, or browsed cat videos on YouTube. Since I very rarely got up to no good, I couldn't really fathom what people might do there that they couldn't do on their home networks. I voiced that thought to Lily as she circled the block and rolled to a stop further down the street.

"Not everyone has home networks," she pointed out. "Remember when we had crappy jobs and we couldn't afford
one either?"

"No, because your parents paid for the Wi-
Fi even though we had crappy jobs."

"Exactly. We were lucky. Some people live hand to mouth. They can use these cyber cafes for an hour
, and it's only a few bucks, not a huge commitment. Maybe he's checking his emails or looking for a job online."

"You really think that?"

"Hell, no. He's up to no good!"

I laughed because I couldn't help it
; and after a moment, Lily joined in. "How do we prove that?" said Lily. "We can't go in there."

"Not while he's in there," I agreed, "so we wait until he comes out. Then we go in."

"But how do we follow him?"

"Call Ruby?"

"No can do. She's tending the bar."

"We either don't follow him and go in there instead, or we split up. One of us checks the computer, one of us follows."

"I'm tired of following him. He needs to get a job, or go back to school."

"Maybe he is getting a job. You just said he might be looking for a job online."

"I was being nice. I don't believe it. Let's both check the computer. We're only going to follow him home anyway, and I can't spend another night watching him hang out with his buddy and eat pizza. Do I get pizza? No, because I'm in my car and no one will deliver."

"Did you try ordering?"

"Yes. No one will deliver to a car. Not even Luciano's, and they deliver anywhere."

"I heard they don't only deliver pizza."

"I don't know what that means."

"It means they're a front."

Lily frowned. "What for?"

"Prostitution and drugs."

"Really? Huh. You learn something new every day."

"They
make good garlic bread."

"I definitely heard that before
, but since they won't deliver to my car, I'll never know. Look, he's leaving. Hurrah. He's a real action man tonight. I hope he goes home. I hope he wasn't looking at porn. I hope... hey, Lexi! Wait for me!"

Lily hurried after me as I took off for the cyber cafe. The sooner we got in there, I reasoned, the sooner we could grab his computer before someone else took it and messed up his search history. A bell over the door sounded as we entered
, but none of the three computer users, nor the bearded man behind the desk bothered to look up. Beard didn't even blink when we approached him. After we stood there a minute, seeing his eyes glued to a comic book, he looked up wearily. "What?"

"The guy who just left? Which computer did he use?" I asked.

"Why? What's it to you?" He looked from me to Lily, but looked a lot longer at Lily. I didn't take any offense at that since bearded guys weren't my thing. Stubble, yes. Stubble was hot. Full beards that needed a conditioning treatment, no. Also, Lily was wearing a very low-cut top.

"We need to look at it."

"I don't remember," he said, returning his attention to his comic.

I leaned in, lowered my voice, and pointed my thumb at Lily. "He's cheating on my friend and we want to find out with whom."

He blinked, then snuck a look at Lily. "Really?"

"Yep," said Lily. "I'm totally heartbroken."

"You don't look heartbroken."

"I'm internalizing it. Internalizing
bad."

"I still don't remember."

I pulled twenty dollars from my purse and slid it across to him. "How about now?"

"The one in the corner furthest from the window." I thanked him and stepped away. "Five bucks," he added.

"I just gave you..."

"Five bucks gets you thirty minutes online," he
clarified.

I huffed
, but handed him the money. Lily gave him a hard stare and we both crossed to the computer. I took the seat in front, and she grabbed one from the neighboring station. The screen was blank so I popped the space bar on the keyboard and it flashed to life.

"Get the browser history," said Lily.

I clicked
history
and the list came up empty. "Damn it. They must scrub the list after every user."

"Shame they don't bleach the keyboards." Lily folded her hands in her lap.

Glancing at my fingers that were just touching the keyboard, I sighed, but got on with it. "They may have deleted the browser history, but I bet they didn't delete the cache."

"Not at five bucks a pop," said Lily
. "That's a lot of cash for thirty minutes."

"Not that kind of cache. The computer cache."

"I'm absolutely not understanding this so just do what you gotta do and I'll be impressed if it works out."

After
a few clicks, there was the unadulterated cache in front of us. "Did it work?" asked Lily.

"Yep. This is what Kyle looked at in the ten minutes he was here. There's his email and a bar's website. I hate to say it, but you might be right about him looking for a
nother job."

Lily made a rude noise. "What bar? I might warn them."

I clicked on it. "It's Bar One-Eighty. They're holding some kind of special night with a... get this... cash prizes! Ten thousand dollars to the winner paid in cash! Five thousand bucks to the second place contestant, and two thousand to the third. There's a bunch of other smaller cash prizes too. This bar is giving out twenty thousand dollars tonight!"

Lily leaned in, reading. "What do we have to do to win?"

"I don't know. Let me check his email." I clicked the next link and his email popped up. He hadn't logged out of the system properly. There were several emails in his inbox, and judging by the random username, it wasn't his regular account. I clicked on the
sent
file and there was a message time-stamped for only a few minutes ago. I opened it.

"BAR 180. Seven pm. This is the last one. Twenty grand. We're getting out tonight."

"Holy shit!" squeaked Lily. "He's so busted. We're busting him!"

"He hasn't done anything yet."

"Oh, please!"

"We need to be sure and it's..." I checked my watch. "This is planned
to happen in forty minutes. We need to go now."

"Do we ever!"

I made a note of the email address so the police could check into it later and sat back. I missed something and I knew it. Who did Kyle email? I scrolled up, but the recipient's email was also a nonsensical line of letters and numbers. "Okay, let's say he's doing this," I said, keeping my voice low so only Lily could hear, "we don't know who his partner is. Also, forty minutes notice by email is bad planning for a theft." As I said it, I remembered my other case. The Hansons used message boards to communicate with Peta. The only thing was, they never said which one. What if I could get a message to her through that board?