Page 70 of Every Last One
It didn’t take effort to do the math on that. “Four people. That can’t be a coincidence either.”
Neal shook his head. “And that first one you mentioned, Brice, would likely be a woman. By process of elimination, Alaya Princess could be who is holed up in that boardroom.”
“I can get a warrant rolling and submit the request to the website to release their information,” Gibson volunteered.
Kreiger pointed at Gibson. “Get on that ASAP.”
The information officer got on the phone.
“I don’t like the sound of Broken Bridge, as in there’s no going back,” Monica weighed in. “Does he plan on walking away from today?”
Sandra kept her thoughts to herself, as it was far too early to voice her theory. But to her that sounded like a name a matureman would give himself, rather than a twentysomething. The rash action taken by the man on the fourth floor could support what Monica just suggested.
“Let’s hope they all do,” Neal said. “We don’t need anyone going out in a blaze of glory and taking people with them.”
Brice glanced at Sandra, and she caught the message in his eyes. He wasn’t one for hyperbole. “Going back to the website, from the look of it, private messaging isn’t an option.”
“So we still don’t know how they conspired today,” Sandra said. “Assuming these four are the ones inside.”
“Which I’d say the chances of are pretty good,” Neal offered.
Sandra nodded.
“Right, so this leaves us to figure out how they communicated,” Brice began. “Now, there is one concerning comment in the forum from Alaya Princess. ‘Someone needs to take a stand. Who’s with me?’”
“It’s a call to action. She’s looking for help,” Sandra said. “It also explains why Carmen Feeney and the shot caller didn’t admit to being friends with the others. They were people brought together by a shared purpose.”
“We’re still waiting on Feeney’s phone records, but what about email on her laptop?” Monica asked. “Any stand out?”
“Nope, I looked in there first,” Brice said.
“They could have been deleted, and they started communicating over the phone.” Sandra turned to Neal. “Speaking of, where are we with Feeney’s phone records?”
“I’ll follow up on that,” Neal told her and pulled out his phone to put the call through.
“Save yourself the trouble,” Gibson blurted out, just after ending his call to a judge about the website. “The report for Feeney’s call history just came in. Give me a few minutes to look it over…”
Everyone in the vehicle remained silent, and Sandra debated contacting the shot caller and using the name Alaya. But until she had proof that she was the woman in that room, it was best not to go that route.
“All right. We might have something,” Gibson said. “Obviously, I can’t see the content, but Feeney had a conversation with three other people. Let me see if I can find out who the numbers are registered to.” He typed on his computer. A few moments later, he was saying, “Shane Perkins, Tom Sparling, and a third number that’s a burner. Doesn’t appear to be in service now.”
Sandra would wager it belonged to the shot caller on the eighth floor.
“Perkins is twenty-six, single, works for a dot com company,” Gibson said.
“That confirms what we thought. He’s a techie,” Brice said.
“Next of kin?” Neal asked. “Possibly someone who died recently?”
“Looks like his mother is still alive, and he has, or I should sayhad, a brother but he’s showing as deceased nine months ago,” Gibson said.
“That could be where his motive started, but what’s his recent trigger?” Monica asked.
“Assuming he’s one of the people from that Fat Cats forum, he could have gone there already angry and hurt, only to have his feelings validated,” Sandra began. “This empowered him and incited him to act.”
“Well, the site does seem to radicalize people,” Brice said. “One chat room on there is called ‘What you’d like to do…’, and it encourages people to share revenge schemes.”
“Then it needs to be shut down. It preys on vulnerable people, and instead of giving them a healthy environment to heal and find belonging, it fosters violence,” Sandra said.
