The Siren Song by Georgia Wagner

Author:Georgia Wagner [Wagner, Georgia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-11-30T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

“What if we cross-check sound technicians with violent crime records? Oh, there! Follow that link.” Sophie tapped a fingernail on the monitor with a quick series of soft tiks.

“Do you want the keyboard? Because we can switch seats.” Greer’s fingers popped off the keys, his voice strained with fraying patience.

“Sorry, sorry,” Sophie said, leaning back and waving in the air between them. “I’m just not used to—you know.”

“Waiting? Yes, I’d noticed that’s a hard one for you.”

“All right, easy,” Sophie shot back playfully.

With a sigh, Greer rubbed his eyes and clicked the link Sophie had indicated. “No, I’m sorry. Last night, I thought Hitchens cutting your database access was just him being petty. Now I see it was a tactical strike meant to torture me as well.”

Sophie jabbed Greer’s shoulder and he gave a silent laugh as he entered the next search term.

After their meeting with Hitchens, the IT team had commandeered Greer’s desk, so the pair had separated for the night to get some rest. Now it was the following morning and they were back in the field office, trying their best to navigate the obstacle course of permissions and access gates that Hitchens’ new rules had imposed over the files and databases they needed.

If they’d both been able to work independently, it would have been one thing. They could have divided the work and covered twice the area. As it was, Sophie had already gotten coffee and reviewed the few physical files they could get. So all that was left was to sit behind Greer’s shoulder and watch as he entered various filters and keywords, hoping some suspect would leap out of the data at them.

“Any progress on decrypting the code from the spectrogram?” she asked as another thirty seconds ticked by with only the sound of Greer’s keyboard for feedback.

The former Marine engineer shook his head. “I have it running in the background, but so far no luck. It could be that there’s still a key we’re missing. But even if we had a key, I’m unsure how we’d even use it.”

“What about the playing card?” Sophie prompted.

“If you see some clue on how to use the cards to make a random jumble of numbers and letters make sense, let me know. As it is, I don’t see it. Not yet anyway.”

The stalemate they were in was infuriating. And Sophie found herself slouching back as her mid-morning fatigue and the even-paced tick-tacking of Greer at the keyboard threatened to hypnotize her.

Two voicemails. Two cards. Suicide Kings…

Suddenly, Sophie sat up. “What about other murders with a playing card left behind?”

Greer raised an eyebrow. “You think there are others the police might not have sent our way?”

“Maybe,” Sophie conceded. “But what if the reason we’re missing a key is because these aren’t the first killings. What if this is a continuation of a cold case. It has the feel of a calling card, so there could be other unsolved cases attached to it.”

After only a moment’s consideration, Greer nodded along with the idea and switched the FBI database to a new set of filters.

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