Midnight Rambler: A Novel of Suspense

As the choppers faded from view an icy finger ran down my spine. The FBI wasn't going to stop Skell. Skell had been on the FBI's radar for three years, and they hadn't gotten close. They didn't understand what made him tick. His motivation was a crazy song, one I knew by heart. Only I could stop him.

I grabbed Buster and went outside. Coffen lay beneath a white sheet. Two uniformed cops stood behind him, making small talk. They paid no attention to me.

Linderman stood by the valet stand, talking on his cell phone. In his face I saw something that resembled hope. He folded his phone and approached me.

“Tell me you've got good news,” I said.

He nodded enthusiastically.

“Theis just cracked Coffen's computer,” he said.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

We limped down the sidewalk back to Trojan Communications.

“What's wrong with your dog?” Linderman asked.

Buster walked with his nose glued to the ground. The shooting had done a number on his head, and I promised myself to later take him running on Dania Beach. It was his favorite thing to do and would bring him around.

“He'll be okay,” I said. “What did Theis find on Coffen's computer?”

“Hundreds of photographs are stored on the hard drive,” Linderman said. “The memory's overloaded, which is why it froze on him. There's also a database. Theis is hoping it will lead us to the other members of the gang.”

And Melinda Peters, I hoped but would not say aloud, as if uttering her name might jinx our ability to rescue her. We reached the parking lot, and I put my dog into my car. Then we went inside.

Heidi the receptionist was still at her desk. Seeing Linderman, she slammed her fists on her desk and flew into a rage.

“My friend at the Riverview Hotel called and said you killed Mr. Coffen!”

Linderman put his palms on her desk as if he were doing a push-up.

“Calm down, or I'll arrest you,” he said.

“Why did you have to kill him?” she said.

“Let's see. For starters, he shot me.”

“Couldn't you have just wounded him?”

“Your boss had his chance.”

“You bastard!”

I walked around Heidi's desk and down the hallway to Coffen's office. Despite what had happened, it was business as usual, and through the walls came voices of faceless operators taking orders from around the state. They reminded me of Skell's victims, and how their voices were yet to be heard.

I stopped at the hallway's end and stuck my head into Coffen's office. Special Agent Theis sat at Coffen's desk, working the computer. He motioned me inside.

I stood behind Theis's chair. My eyes fell on the computer screen.

“How did you get it unfrozen?”

“I tried the idiot approach,” Theis said. “I turned off the power, then rebooted it. I needed a password to gain entry and found it on a business card in Coffen's briefcase. There's a ton of stuff on the hard drive, including a file that has pictures of you.”

“Let me see it,” I said.

Theis opened up a file called ENEMY. It contained a photograph of me taken from a newspaper article along with a short biography. There were also photographs and bios of Tommy Gonzalez, Sally McDermitt, and dozens of other Florida law enforcement agents who specialized in finding missing people.

“What about Coffen's database?” I asked.

“Who are you looking for?”

“Jonny Perez. Jonny's spelled without the h.”

Theis searched the database for Jonny Perez. Finding nothing, I suggested he try Ajony Perez. The results were the same.

“Try Neil Bash and Simon Skell,” I said.

Theis did and found nothing. On a hunch, he exited the database and checked Coffen's e-mail, first looking at his address book, then his sent e-mail folder and deleted bin. Everything he came across was business related and worthless to our search.

I shut my eyes and took a deep breath. Each road in my investigation had taken me to a dead end, and only an act of luck or God had let me progress. How the hell was I going to save Melinda if I couldn't locate Jonny Perez?

“Want to look at his photograph collection?” Theis asked.

“Sure,” I said quietly.

Theis exited the database and clicked on the My Pictures icon. It opened to reveal dozens of different folders. The ones at the top were labeled by city—Orlando, Miami, Tampa—while the ones on the bottom had cryptic notations. One file caught my eye:

MIDRAMB

“Open this one,” I said.

Theis opened MIDRAMB, and a page containing eight JPEG files filled the screen. Each JPEG had a date attached to it, spanning the past two and a half years.

I gripped the back of Theis's chair. I knew what the JPEGs contained without having to look at them. They were electronic snapshots of Skell's victims taken at McDonald's drive-throughs. I was one step closer to learning their fate.

I had dreamed of this moment. I was finally going to find out what had happened to Skell's victims. Yet, I was also filled with dread. Throughout the investigation, I'd continued to hope that I'd get a phone call from each of them, saying they were okay. It was what every person who lost someone told themselves.