1st Case - James Patterson Page 0,2

hard to know anything right now.

“Come on, then,” Keats said. “Let’s get you to work.”

CHAPTER 3

“WHY ISN’T THERE any blood in here?” I asked as soon as we stepped into Gwen Petty’s bedroom.

I always ask a lot of questions, especially if I’m nervous. Facts are always reassuring. And if I didn’t know what I was doing, well, at least I could ask questions. Always that.

Keats ran a hand over his jaw like he was trying to decide how much to say.

“It looks like he shot the others, but our best guess in here is asphyxiation,” he said.

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. Whoever did this had strong feelings about Gwen, one way or another.”

I could feel some kind of empathetic tightness in my chest. Did that mean Gwen Petty had been strangled? Something else? What were her last moments like?

I couldn’t help the morbid thoughts cascading like lines of code through my mind. It was force of habit, in the worst possible way. So I tried to focus on the room instead—on what I could actually do.

I walked over to a built-in desk in the corner. A whole collage of photos was tucked into a crisscross of yellow ribbon on a gray fabric pin board. Another photo, framed on the desk, showed a family of five, smiling on the edge of what I guessed was the Grand Canyon. They all looked so happy.

“Is this them?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Keats said.

“How recent?”

“Not important,” he told me, and pointed at the Faraday bag on the floor by the bed. That meant Gwen’s phone had already been physically fingerprinted and sequestered. Now it was time for the geek squad, a.k.a. me. All things considered, I was grateful for the distraction and listened carefully as Agent Keats went over my instructions.

“I want to know who she’s been in contact with, what she’s deleted, what someone else might have deleted—everything,” Keats told me. “Specifically, I’m looking for texts or images that are romantic or sexual.”

I stuck my hands through the mesh sleeves that would give me access to the phone inside.

“What is it, do you know?” I asked. “iPhone? Android?”

“iPhone 11,” he said. “It was powered up when we got here.”

That told me where the port would be and what kind of cable I’d need to run a copy of the whole thing without altering any files. I dropped a connector cable into the bag, ran it through the exit port, and plugged it into the field kit I’d brought from the office.

One thing I’ll say for the FBI: they’ve got the best toys.

“Soon as you finish that, I want you in the mobile unit outside. Any other devices we find, we’ll bring to you. But this phone is your priority.”

“What’s the hurry on the phone?” I asked. I assumed it had something to do with the fact that Gwen Petty had died so differently than the rest of her family.

Instead of an answer, though, Keats only gave me a tight smile. “Listen, Angela. I know this is new for you, and I’m going to do my best to help you through,” he said. “Part of that is knowing your role and sticking to it. These questions are only wasting time, and from an investigative standpoint, the clock is always ticking. Got it?”

I got it, all right. I really did. This wasn’t about me, and I didn’t need Keats treating me with kid gloves, either. If anything, I appreciated that he didn’t.

I’d deal with the inhumanly sad thing that had happened here on my own time. Right now, the best thing I could do for Gwen Petty—and for that whole family—was to tighten my focus and IT the shit out of this assignment.

CHAPTER 4

IF ANYONE HAD told me five months earlier that I’d be collecting evidence at this hideous scene, I never would have believed them. But five months earlier, almost to the day, was when it all got set in motion.

The day I was kicked out of MIT.

There we were—me, my mom, and my two little sisters, packing me out of the graduate apartments in Ashdown House on Albany Street, where I was no longer a registered student, and therefore no longer welcome.

“Is this yours?” Mom asked, holding up a ratty old MIT crew T-shirt.

“No,” I said. “Leave it.”

I jammed shoes into a box alongside an algorithm design textbook, the world’s ugliest teddy bear, and a huge tangle of miscellaneous cables. I’m not the most organized person under the best of circumstances, much less as I was hurrying to get