Page 73

The woman with the peculiar name who’d been leaving him messages.

‘The FBI have been trying to get hold of me?’ Poe said, nonplussed.

‘I have.’

‘I’m sorry I haven’t had a chance to call you back, Special Agent Lee. I haven’t found the time yet.’ Poe thought it sounded better than telling her he’d forgotten.

‘That’s OK, Sergeant Poe,’ she drawled. ‘I can’t tell you how glad I am to speak to you.’

She pronounced her ‘I’ as ‘aah’ and her ‘can’t’ rhymed with paint not aunt. Poe reckoned she was originally from one of the southern states, maybe Louisiana or Mississippi.

‘How can I help you, Special Agent Lee?’

‘Can you tell me about the case you’re currently working on?’ she said.

‘Can you tell me about the case you’re currently working on?’

Silence.

‘I didn’t think so,’ Poe said.

More silence. This time he relented.

‘Look, why don’t you tell me what this is about? I can then decide if I’m in a sharing mood.’

She did.

And when she’d finished, Poe had to re-evaluate everything he thought he knew …

Chapter 47

‘What I’m about to tell you is not the FBI’s formal position,’ Special Agent Melody Lee said. ‘This is my theory, and repeatedly voicing it is why, instead of being in DC, I’m in South Dakota investigating the crap that goes on in the oil-producing region of the Bakken.’

‘I’m listening,’ Poe replied. ‘You’re not the only person in this conversation who’s held a minority opinion before.’

‘You know that the FBI has liaison officers with all the world’s major law enforcement agencies, right?’

‘I do.’ He didn’t but, as a national agency, it was definitely the type of thing the NCA would be involved in.

‘For a while now I’ve had a standing request for our liaison officers to look for cases with … certain peculiarities. Yours is the only one I’ve found.’

‘Peculiarities?’

‘I need to give you some context,’ she said. ‘A few years ago, when I was with DC’s violent crime task force, we had a series of seemingly unrelated assaults that crossed state lines. “Happy slapping”, you guys might still be calling it. Initially we thought it must be a gang initiation ceremony we weren’t aware of, but when we eventually caught a couple of assailants they were good kids, not the usual gangbangers at all.’

‘What did they say?’

‘Not much. By the time we got anywhere near them they’d lawyered up and taken the fifth. Eventually one of them agreed to speak to me off the record. She told me a right yarn.’

‘Go on,’ Poe said. ‘She said she’d been playing an online dare game and it had gotten a bit out of hand. Started with silly stuff but the final dare had them assaulting a stranger.’

‘She admitted it?’

‘Before her asshole lawyer stopped her.’

‘I’m assuming you’re not ringing because of an assault?’

‘I’m not. Predictably, one of the victims died.’