25 minutes left…
9:04 p.m.
“Cheyenne.” I was on my way to Evidence Room 3a. “Something came up just a few minutes ago. We’re looking into the possibility that there might be a bomb set to explode at 9:29.”
“A bomb? Where?”
“We don’t know. Is everything all right there?”
“We’re just sitting around talking about good and evil, Jekyll and Hyde, original sin. Nothing heavy. Tell me about the bomb.”
Angela flagged me down. I stepped into her office and saw that Lacey had finished her analysis of the credit card charges at the Lincoln Towers Hotel on the night Hadron Brady tried to shoot the vice president.
No Patricia E.
No Aria Petic.
No one from the suspect list.
“Pat?” Cheyenne said.
“Sorry. Listen, there were traces of C-4 found in the van. We have a timer, a countdown that was emailed to Mollie’s laptop. That’s all.”
“Were they there when the van was first checked?”
“What?”
“The traces of C-4. I read the files, Pat. That van was processed on Wednesday. Maybe the ERT didn’t find the traces the first time because they weren’t there. Then.”
Now there was an interesting thought.
Cassidy and Farraday cleared it, then rechecked it.
Plant the traces of explosives after the gas station explosion?
Another clue to a future crime?
I scribbled a note for Angela to look for the names Cassidy and Farraday in the credit card list. She stared at me incredulously but tapped at her keyboard.
Cheyenne said, “Is there anything I can do from here?”
“I’ll call you if there is, and I’ll get there as soon as I can, but things are a little up in the air right now.”
No one by the name of either Cassidy or Farraday had paid for a room at the hotel on either the night before the shooting or the day of it. I pointed to the printer to let Angela know I wanted her to print a copy of the names that she did have.
“Okay,” Cheyenne said. “Be careful.” The same thing Lien-hua had told me just minutes ago.
“I will. Keep a close eye on Tessa, all right? Tonight, I don’t know, everything feels off balance.”
“Don’t worry. She’s safe with me.” She hung up, the printout finished, and I grabbed the pages. Studied the names.
The As… Bs… Cs…
I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for.
D… E… F…
Just a name I might recognize. Anyone.
G… H… I…
Anything out of the ordinary.
J… K… L I stopped.
Stared.
At the name: Lebreau, Renee.