"Yes," said Nora. "The lab figured it out this morning. Someone wanted to mess with us."

"Are we looking into who sells it?" asked Ava.

"I a.s.signed it to Henry."

"Dammit. I'd really hoped that'd lead somewhere." Someone was having a good laugh at their expense.

"Did you get the children's names from the mentoring program yet?" Nora asked.

"No," said Ava as she finished the last bite of her sandwich. "Scott Heuser has been out of the office and hasn't returned any of my voice mails. The receptionist says those records are pa.s.sword-protected and that Scott hasn't gotten back to her, either. I'm about ready to go down there and take their server."

"What about Micah's mother?" asked Zander with a thoughtful look on his face. "Are we ignoring her as a possible suspect? Remember how she flew off the handle when she first got here? She clearly has a thing for cops and we already know Micah was in the program. That's three things we just talked about in a suspect."

"Are you suggesting that's how Micah knows so much about the murders? Because he was there helping his mother?" Nora sounded skeptical. "He's still sitting in a holding cell downstairs. I'm having a DA figure out what else to charge him with so we can hold him longer."

"Do we need to have Regina come back?" asked Zander. "We were so focused on Micah, maybe we need to take a closer look at Regina."

"It can't be Regina," said Ava. "Jeanine Fujioka said her husband didn't mentor Micah Zuch."

"Just because Lucien didn't mentor Micah doesn't mean he didn't encounter his mother," argued Zander. "Maybe Regina attended some of the organization's public events. She could have met Lucien there, or possibly she knows other mothers who crossed the line when it came to the mentors. It could be someone in her peer group."

"I don't think women discuss their cop conquests." Ava rubbed her eyes. "Or do they? Oh, what if it's like a private little club where they pa.s.s around the names of the cops who are willing to step over the ethical lines?"

"Seriously?" asked Nora. "I think that's following a very weak tangent. This isn't a soap opera. Women don't do that."

"You haven't met my sister," muttered Ava as Zander deliberately nodded.

Nora stared at them. "You're both cracked. The chance that we're dealing with a scorned woman who's planned revenge on every cop who refused to sleep with her is minuscule."

"I want to talk to Regina again," said Zander. "I want her to get a look at her son in a pair of jail coveralls, too."

"He's not in coveralls," said Nora.

"Find him some and tell him to put them on. I think it'll be a good image for his mother to see."

"There's no way Micah is the muscle to go with his mother's murdering rampage," said Ava. "It doesn't fit. Regina is the type who uses her tongue as a weapon, not a blade to the neck."

"Maybe that's how she wants you to view her," said Zander.

"Quit messing with my head." Ava glared at him as she silently questioned her perception of Micah's mother. Had the woman completely fooled her? "You think she'd let her son sit in jail, possibly taking blame for the crimes she committed?"

"I'm not ruling it out."

"Let's get Regina Zuch back here," said Nora, making a decision. "Zander and I will talk to her." She looked at Ava. "Get a warrant for the Cops 4 Kidz server. Take a computer tech with you so the equipment is removed appropriately."

"I filed a request for the warrant an hour ago," Ava said, smiling. "It should be ready any minute."

Nora's eyes lit up. "Nice."

What if we're wasting too much time on Cops 4 Kidz?

Her face must have shown the direction of her thoughts because Nora immediately spoke up. "I've got Henry following up on a domestic terrorism suspect that Vance Weldon argued with and the other guys are digging through records, searching for another common connection between these men. I'm also expecting forensic results on footprints at the Schefte and Samuelson scenes."

"All of the prints from both scenes indicated a male," added Ava.

Nora held up a foot. "See this boat at the end of my leg? Not all women have tiny cat feet like yours. Any woman with half a brain will try to mislead us if she knows she might leave footprints behind, right? My point is we aren't just focused on this mentoring organization. I've got a lot of irons in the fire. We're going to get lucky very soon. I can feel it. Now go get that computer equipment."

Ava went.

32.

The FBI computer specialist who rode with Ava to Cops 4 Kidz talked nonstop. She'd grabbed one of the techs from the FBI Northwest Regional Computer Forensics Lab near Portland's convention center. Keith looked as if he should be riding a Harley or directing a construction crew instead of playing with computers. She wondered if he didn't have anyone to talk to at work. His floor in the lab had been silent except for the nonstop hum of fans and computer equipment in the huge workstations. She'd spotted a bookshelf full of ancient computer hardware she'd seen only in movies from the seventies and eighties, and wished Zander could see it.

She listened to Keith's banter. Small talk was never high on her priority list and today it was even lower than usual. Luckily he carried 90 percent of the conversation on his own, and the Cops 4 Kidz office building was only a fifteen-minute drive in the early-afternoon traffic.

With a firm shove, she pushed open the door to the familiar waiting room. The receptionist looked up with a stunned look. "h.e.l.lo again, Agent McLane." Her forehead wrinkled in confusion and her black cat ears shifted on her head. She'd drawn a cat nose and whiskers on her face to go with her black furry sweater and rhinestone collar. Ava wondered if she had a tail.

A few minutes ago, Ava had called her to see if Scott had contacted his office yet. The receptionist had grown snippy on the phone, and repeated that when she'd heard from her boss she'd let Ava know. Ava hadn't warned her to expect a momentary visit. She didn't want the woman hiding any equipment they might need to remove.

"Why didn't you tell me you were stopping by?" the woman asked.

Ava handed her the warrant. "We have a warrant to remove computer hardware. We're very concerned that your boss is not returning calls-I'm worried for his safety in light of the recent murders," she exaggerated. She didn't need to expand, as her mention of the murders immediately caught the woman's attention. Her whiskers stretched as her mouth opened in shock, and she automatically accepted the paper.

"Surely you don't think something has happened to Scott?"

"I don't know what to think about his silence. I do know we need the information in your databases and you've told me you can't get to it." She paused and lifted a brow. "Is that still the case?"

The woman had turned her gaze to the warrant, but it jumped back to Ava. "Oh, yes. I can't get into the files you've asked me for." She looked back at the paper. "I don't know who I need to call about this. Without Scott here, I guess I should contact one of the board members to see if I can do this."

Ava smiled sweetly. "There's no point in asking anyone for permission. That paper allows me to get exactly what's listed on there. It's not a request."

"But I can't let you take our equipment," the woman said earnestly. "I need it to get my work done."

Ava turned to Keith, who'd been listening quietly and standing at her side like a bodyguard. She pointed over the reception counter to a hallway in the rear of the office. "It's the first door on the right."

Keith nodded and opened the door between the waiting room and the office business area. The receptionist stood up but stayed quiet as Ava silenced her with a pointed look.

Her tail was black.

"I need you to stay off your computer until we're done," Ava told her as she followed Keith to Scott Heuser's office and stood at the door. She kept one eye on the receptionist as Keith took a seat at the desk.

"Do you want me to take a quick look first?" Keith asked. "Or you can wait until I get it back to the office and hook it up to my equipment." His fingers flew over the keys.

"If you can get in, let's look now. We can remove it afterward."

She glanced back at the receptionist, who'd sat down in her chair and was tapping rapidly on her cell phone. Ava strode back to the woman's desk and looked over her shoulder. The name at the top of the messaging screen was MOM.

"I'd like you to refrain from using your cell phone while we're here, too," Ava said.

The receptionist laid her phone on her desk, facedown. "Anything else I can't do?" she muttered. Her mouth turned down. Grumpy cat.

"Maybe you should go get a soda from the machine down the hall." Or milk.

She stood and reached for her phone.

"Your phone will be safe left on the desk," Ava stated. The woman marched out of the office without looking back. Her chin was up, but her tail swayed awkwardly behind her, destroying any sense of dignity. Highly amused, Ava checked on Keith.

"What exactly are you looking for again?" Keith asked. "The mentoring program?"

"Yes." Ava went around the desk to look over his shoulder. Lists and lists of files covered the screen. "How did you get in?"

"It's a private server." Keith glanced around the small office. "It's got to be close by. It has a wireless connection and Scott set it up to connect automatically with this computer. I didn't even need to enter a pa.s.sword." He shook his head. "It's pretty lazy on Scott's part and not secure at all. I bet the receptionist's computer isn't set up that way. If you tried to log in from hers, it'll probably ask you for a pa.s.sword. The files are organized by type and date. He really should have someone build him a database so that he-"

"Can you search by names?"

"Not from this point. That's why I'd started to say he should have his information placed in a database so it's easy to search. Right now I need to be in the specific file to search for a name. What year do you want to look at?"

She wrote down the names of the four murdered men and handed them to Keith. "Start with last year and give me the name of every child they were paired with."

"How many years do you want me to go back?"

Captain Schefte volunteered for almost twenty years. She remembered the smile on Scott Heuser's face as he made that statement two days ago in this very office.

"Twenty years," she said.

"This server only has seven years of data."

"Are you sure? Is it stored in a different way?"

Keith made a dozen clicks. "I don't see anything older than seven years. Even his payroll and accounting files only go back until then. I suspect they weren't computerized until then."

"So there should be paper records somewhere."

"Somewhere."

"I'll ask the receptionist. Maybe she knows where they're stored."

"Be nice," Keith suggested.

"Can you search for those names while I grab her?"

"Sheesh. I'll need a spreadsheet." Keith clicked on the Excel application and created a blank chart. "Beats pencil and paper every time."

"Uh . . . should you be using that?"

Keith looked over his shoulder at her. "Really? You're worried about me using his Excel program to make a tiny chart when we're authorized to take all the hardware?"

It wouldn't be the end of the world if Keith built a little spreadsheet. "Add Micah Zuch to your spreadsheet. I want to know who's worked with him."

They were onto something. She could feel it.

33.

Her arms loaded with two file folder boxes, Ava shouldered open the door to the task force room. She felt a pull in her left side where her gunshot wound had been st.i.tched back together. It wasn't painful; it was simply uncomfortable enough to remind her that she was human. Behind her, Keith carried two more boxes. The receptionist had led them to a small storage room where they'd found the dusty boxes. By the fresh fingerprints in the thick dust, Ava could tell they'd been recently disturbed, and she asked the receptionist about it.

"Scott went through them before your visit the other day," she'd said, looking down her cat nose at Ava. "It took him an hour to dig up the information you asked for. I a.s.sume all that work didn't help you in your investigation?"

"It helped. Now we need more," Ava had replied. The warrant had been worded loosely enough that Ava was comfortable removing the hard copies of the records. Keith located the private server and removed that along with two computer towers.

Now they had to search through the paper files and see whom their victims had mentored. Keith's electronic search of the last seven years had found three children's names a.s.sociated with Denny Schefte, two with Louis Samuelson, and two with Lucien Fujioka.

None of them were the same.

Ava had stared at Keith's mini-spreadsheet, a sinking feeling in her stomach, and wondered if they were on a wild goose chase. She'd hoped there would be a common name among the men. "We need to dig through the older records," she'd stated.

At the police department, Zander and Nora stared as she dropped her boxes on the conference table. Keith set his down gently next to hers.

"What did you find?" Nora asked, skeptically eyeing the big boxes.

Ava gave her a quick rundown. "Are there any spare eyes to help us go through this?" She glanced at Keith, who was inching backward toward the door. "Where are you going?"

"I need to get back to the computer lab."

"I still need your help," she said, planning to use him to sift through the paperwork.

He grimaced. "I'm better with a screen and keyboard."

"Give me two hours. Please." She gestured at the nearly empty room. "We need help."

Zander pulled the lid off a box and lifted out an old accounting notebook. He flipped through it. "s.h.i.t. This is going to take forever."

"Where's Mason?" Ava asked. "We could use him on this."