Page 61 of Made of Steele
“Were these adapters available when he was killed?” Drew asked.
“Yeah,” Nick said. “They were around back then.”
Drew really wished he could get excited about this lead, but so far he didn’t see how it helped. “Still, it’s a long shot at best that we find this phone.”
“Agreed,” Nick said. “If you do find it, I have another new tool that could help.”
“What is it?” Teagan sounded far more eager than Drew felt.
Nick pushed off the table and planted his feet. “Let me explain. If I get too much into technobabble let me know, and I’ll dumb it down.” He chuckled. “So every camera has embedded sensors. Noise is produced in these sensors that’s invisible to the naked eye. Not noise as in irritating sound like you think of as noise, but imperfections. This noise or these imperfections are unique to the camera. You with me so far?”
“Yep,” Drew said, though he really didn’t understand how this noise could be visualized.
“Good.” Nick gave a tight smile. “The next part I know you’ll understand. These imperfections are as unique as specific grooves on a fired bullet. As you know, these grooves allow the bullet to be matched to the gun that fired it. In a similar way, I can match the video to the camera that filmed it.”
“Ifwe can find the phone,” Drew said.
“Yes, well there’s the catch.” Nick’s eyebrows drew together. “Especially since Kelsey said Smiley was murdered so many years ago.”
Drew liked that the guy was not only a geek, but he also seemed to understand criminal investigations. “What if our suspect knew about this whole noise thing and got rid of his phone?”
“Not likely he’s even heard of it.” Nick shoved his hands in his pockets. “Technology to match the noise to the phone was only developed a few months ago. It isn’t even commercially available yet.”
“So he really couldn’t know we might have this information,” Teagan said.
Nick shook his head. “Highly unlikely.”
Drew still didn’t get why the killer didn’t look in the air duct, but maybe something or someone interrupted him, and he had to flee. Still, he could’ve come back or if he killed the other victims at the same location, he could’ve looked then. Maybe he thought it fell into the duct and disappeared down the vent.
Only one explanation to Drew. “Sounds like the killer is thinking he’s in the clear and that if he couldn’t find the drive, no one was going to.”
Teagan looked at Drew. “All he has to do now to know he could be in jeopardy is go to Smiley’s place and see the excavated graves.”
“Yeah, that’s a problem there’s no solution to,” Drew said. “Which means we have to work even faster to find him before he discovers we’re on to him and goes to ground.”
Teagan led Drew straight past her family room and into the dining room, her mind still filled with details from Nick and thoughts of a sword as the murder weapon. Who in today’s world would use a sword to murder someone? Drew had dropped her at the restaurant to get her car, but she wished they’d ridden together so they could’ve discussed the findings from the Veritas partners. On a positive note, it gave them a chance to process the information before talking about it.
Her sisters sitting in the family room looked up, but Teagan lifted her laptop and pointed at the one Drew carried as if that explained everything. She hoped it told them to back off. Fat chance of that. At least not for long. They would try to heed her request for privacy, but one of them might crack and just happen to be passing. Teagan surely didn’t want them to hear about the graves. As an added measure, she pulled the sliding doors closed behind them.
She gestured for Drew to take a seat at the far end of the table, and she moved the picture to reveal the whiteboard that they’d cleaned off after their last session here. She drew a quick sketch of the layout for the graves and the circle with the sword cross in the middle.
She turned to him. “So the sword used to murder Smiley fits with the theme of the circle and sword, but why use a sword in the first place, and what does it mean?”
“That’s our biggest question to answer right now.” He set his computer on the table and draped a long arm over the chair next to him where he’d hung his jacket. “And we need to focus our search on it. Could fit as related to the Rossi’s connection to the Catholic church or to his connection to Iraq due to the stolen antiquities.”
“Sounds about right,” she said. “We can divide the search. Which one do you want?”
“Since I spent time in Italy, I’ll take the church.” He swiveled to open his computer.
“Then Iraq it is.” She sat behind her computer and typed sword and circle into a search engine. A large number of images populated the screen.
“FYI,” Drew said without looking at her. “I called Dr. Albertson on the way over here and the autopsies are at nine a.m.”
Just the thought made Teagan’s stomach turn. Was bad enough to attend an autopsy where the body wasn’t severely decomposed, but the bodies found at Smiley’s place? That was going to be tough to take. Still, she had a job to do, and she wouldn’t shirk her responsibilities.
She swallowed. “We’ll be attending, right?”
He looked up, his expression tight. “Yes, if you think you can handle it.”
