Madonna must have heard something because she had turned on the lights in the master bedroom and seemed to have been getting out of bed when she was shot. She’d thrown up her right hand; the bullet that killed her had gone through her palm before hitting her high in the forehead.
We believed the Elliott kids, fourteen-year-old Marisa and eleven-year-old Zach, who slept in adjoining rooms, must have heard their father fall or their mother scream, because they were both out of bed.
Marisa had opened her door and been shot at near point-blank range. We found her lying on her back staring upward with unseeing eyes.
Her younger brother seemed to have tried to hide. We found him dead in his closet, curled up. That was the one that really got me, the one that had festered in my brain as I slept the night before, the one driving me to action now.
“Remember Paladin?” I said to Sampson.
“The needle-in-a-haystack people?”
“The same. They pulled it off for us in the Alejandro and Maestro killings. Let’s see what they can do with this case.”
“Worth a try. But you’ll probably have to do the formal request through Mahoney and the FBI director’s office.”
“I’ll alert Paladin that a request is coming,” I said; I found the main phone number in my list of contacts and called.
A receptionist answered. I identified myself and asked to speak with Steven Vance, the CEO of Paladin Inc. Vance had been our point person the year before.
“I’m sorry,” the receptionist said. “Mr. Vance is in Italy on vacation and won’t be back until early next week.”
“What about Mr. Malcomb? This is a big murder investigation.”
“I’ll see if he’s available.”
A few moments later, there was a click. The cofounder of and coding genius behind Paladin said in a soft voice, “Dr. Cross, what a pleasure. This is Ryan Malcomb. Steven speaks highly of you.”
“And we speak highly of him and your company. Paladin was a big help to us last year, and I wanted to tell you I’m going through formal channels to get approval for one of your precision data sifts.”
Don’t ask me to explain exactly how these sifts worked. But the results were sometimes remarkable. Paladin’s search algorithms had laser-focused our investigation into the Alejandro cartel the year before, and the director of Homeland Security had recently stated that the company had helped identify multiple terrorist plots that were thwarted as a result.
There was a pause. “Of course we’d love to help. What are you looking to sift?”
“Any data generated around the murders of three families down here.”
“I heard about that on NPR yesterday. The killer sounds insane.”
“At some level, I agree.”
“You’ll need federal wiretap approval on all cellular, GPS, video, and computer data you provide us. Then the algorithms will do the grunt work, and we’ll let you know what we’ve found when we find it.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I said. “And thanks.”
“We’re here to help.”
He hung up. I felt like we were going to get a break and fast. Paladin’s strong suit was its ability to use supercomputers and artificial intelligence to identify similarities and anomalies in given sets of data. They might find, for example, that one cell phone was active near all three crime scenes. Or that there were similar messages going out over computers active in the area. In essence, Paladin’s unique methods identified needles in the haystack of data that surrounds modern life.
I called Ned Mahoney over at Bureau headquarters and asked him to start the request process; he said it would take several hours to get to the attention of the right people at the highest levels of the agency.
“I’ve got something coming your way in the meantime,” Mahoney said. “Footage from the Elliotts’ backyard security camera.”
“Got it,” Sampson said a second after I hung up.
I came around the desk and stood behind him, watching a dark figure climb over the Elliotts’ back fence, land in a crouch, then aim a laser pointer at the camera, blinding it.
“Back up. I want to see that moment when he lands, just before—”
Mahoney was ahead of us because the video ended with a magnified and enhanced still from the video showing us the killer for the first time. He was crouched at the moment of landing and dressed in black hazmat gear head to toe, including a hood, an industrial respirator mask with dual filters, and night-vision goggles.
“No identifying features whatsoever,” Sampson said.
“But it’s him,” I said. “And we were right. He’s using hazmat gear to keep his DNA closely contained.”
“He’s wearing the night-vision goggles, and he uses the laser to blind the camera,” Sampson said. “Wouldn’t it blind him?”
“If he had the goggles turned on, but he doesn’t,” I said. “Otherwise we’d see a smoky green in the lenses.”
John nodded. “He comes over the fence prepared. Goggles off. Laser in hand.”
“And he knows right where that camera is,” I said. “Which means he’s scouted the place before, which means he may be on other cameras in the vicinity earlier.”
“I’ll start looking for any footage in the area for the three days prior.”
