"Well, at least it's from her left hand," Provenza said as they all looked down into the box. "He's a considerate son of a bitch."
"Shut up," Flynn said through gritted teeth. "We need to look at that video. Now."
Brenda handed the flashdrive to Buzz. "Lieutenant Tao, keep looking up property records for Stuart Mackie and any friends and family he might have. Detective Sanchez, stay on that phone and locate someone who knows him. Agent Howard can help you. The rest of us will watch the video."
Gabriel glanced at his watch. "Four hours till his next operation, Chief."
"I'm aware of that, Detective!"
As Buzz pulled up the video file, Flynn muttered to himself, "Come on sweetheart. We've got a name, give us a location." But when the image appeared, his stomach sank. She looked as bad as the other women had on their second videos. White as a ghost, hair disheveled, eyes unfocused.
"Oh, geez," Gabriel sighed.
The doctor greets you, she said tonelessly. There is no cow- no cause for alarm. Everything is proceeding as it should.
Flynn leaned forward. Could she be faking her stupor? He jotted letters on his notepad: c, cow, cause, caws, cows.
By the end of the gut-wrenching video he had a depressingly small set of senseless scribbles. Three possible letters: c, s, and p. What the hell did that spell? She had repeated some words, but they meant nothing. Cause or cows, small, plain.
"I got nothing," Gabriel said.
Flynn could feel everyone's eyes on him, the Chief's weighing heaviest of all. The letters swam in front of his eyes. All he could think about was the package that would show up tomorrow morning by overnight express, an organ inside, vessels neatly tied off. And tomorrow afternoon she would receive an overdose of anesthetic agent and that would be the end. He almost hated the Chief at that moment for assigning him to get to know the biographies of these women.
He slammed his yellow notepad down on Buzz's desk and stalked out of the room.
Five minutes later he returned to the murder room in a slightly better frame of mind, a large cup of coffee in his hand. The others studiously avoided looking at him. Most of them were gathered around the murder board, going over every piece of information for the thousandth time. Someone had drawn a cartoon cow off to the side, with Flynn's words below it.
Flynn stood behind the group and tried to take in the whole board at once. Not for the first time, he felt deep envy for the more brilliant members of the group. Tao with his encyclopedic knowledge of, well, everything. Gabriel's fancy education and sensitivity to psychological nuance. And, most of all, the Chief herself, who could think as many moves ahead as a chess master.
He accepted his role as the old-fashioned gumshoe detective. Give him a lead and he would follow it doggedly to the bitter end. If something tactical needed doing, he'd figure out how to do it and he'd plunge ahead into any situation, no matter how dangerous. But what the hell use were hair-trigger reflexes when the killer was nowhere to be found? His fingers itched to get ahold of the guy.
"Well," Tao said. "I guess the house he owns in Scottsdale could be described as small and plain, but the local police have already checked it out and it's been abandoned for months."
"How many properties does he own?" the Chief asked.
"Four around the country. I'm looking up his relatives' property now."
"Chief," said Sanchez. "Agent Howard and I have only been able to locate a cousin so far. She said she hasn't talked to him in years and doesn't know where he lives. She did confirm he wanted to go to medical school but never got in."
"Are any of his other houses small or in small towns?" the Chief asked.
Provenza exploded. "This is pointless! This woman was in no shape to be giving us messages, and even if she did she could have been referring to anything: a small room, a plain window, a cow-theme in the décor, anything!"
Flynn spoke up from the back. "No! She wouldn't try to tell us something like that."
Provenza turned around. "Oh, really? Would you mind telling us how you know that?"
Flynn walked to the front of the room and pointed at Hughes' picture. "Look, if there's anything I've learned from delving into this woman's history, it's that she's smart. She's also a good writer. I scanned one of her published papers and it was short but dense as hell. I remember my old philosophy professor hounding us to make every word count."
"So?" Gabriel said.
Flynn glared at him. "So, assuming she's alert enough to try to tell us anything at all, she'd tell us something useful and she'd use words efficiently. She's not going to waste time describing the house or the décor. She'll either give us more on the guy's identity or on the general location."
"Then why doesn't she just spell out 'Bakersfield' or something?" Provenza asked.
"I don't know. Maybe the city name has too many letters, or maybe she doesn't even know what city she's in."
"If she doesn't know what city she's in," Sanchez said, "how can she tell us her location?"
Brenda was close to the board now, staring at the picture of the cow. "She could describe it."
"Yeah, I guess she could describe what she's seeing or hearing…" Gabriel said, excitement creeping into his voice.
"Or smelling," Brenda whispered. She spun around. "Lieutenant Tao, are any of the properties you've looked up close to cattle yards?"
"Cows!" Flynn exclaimed. "Of course! And planes! As in small airplanes!"
Ten minutes later, Tao had his results. "Chief, Mackie's aunt owns a house in Chino, close to the private airport. There's a big feedlot operation on the outskirts of town."
"Fritz? Will you notify-" The Chief stopped and looked around. "Where's Fritz?"
"He shot out of here as soon as Tao said 'Chino,'" Provenza said with disgust.
"What?" Flynn exclaimed. He turned around from his desk, his suit coat halfway on. "Are they gonna let us do all the work while they get to play hero again?"
Brenda paused as she buttoned up her coat. "Relax, Lieutenant. We were going to have to get help from local law enforcement anyway. We can't let that poor girl stay tied up while we're driving through rush hour traffic to find her. Lietenant Tao, how close is the FBI to Chino?"
"There's a field office in San Bernardino. They can get there in 20 minutes. It's going to take us a good hour."
Brenda nodded. "Okay, let's let them handle it. The local police are probably closer, but they don't know the situation."
Flynn sighed and followed the group out of the room and down the fire stairs, all of them moving at a fast clip, though not nearly fast enough to suit him. He knew he was being stupid, but he hated letting the FBI take over. It wasn't as though they had a great track-record with rescuing hostages. When they reached Provenza's car, Flynn said, "Let me drive."
Provenza took one look at him and handed over the keys.