CHAPTER 42

Athens, Georgia

FOR SOME REASON, THE way Detective Forbes downloaded the footage from the doorbell camera to his thumb drive had corrupted it and the camera’s hard disk.

It was by no means a total loss, but we had to upload and send the pertinent footage to my friend Keith Karl Rawlins, a computer expert who, like me, worked as a consultant for the FBI. It took Rawlins a good six hours to isolate and repair the video footage and another two to get the audio to jibe.

Mahoney, Detectives Forbes and Warren, and I were eating in a cafeteria at the Athens police department and thinking about calling it a night when the file finally came back. We went to their office and pulled it up on Warren’s computer.

Professor Carver appeared across the street from the camera, on the sidewalk. He seemed a little off balance, a little tipsy, as he went up his driveway.

Similar to the previous video, we got only a two-second look at the assassin. She appeared in a dark hoodie, moved left to right down the middle of the street, and squared off in front of the driveway in a combat shooting stance, her back to the camera, Carver’s back to his killer and the gun.

Her shoulders moved. He turned around to look at her with puzzlement in his eyes.

She shot him square in the chest, knocking him backward on his driveway. She took five quick strides, stopped beside him, and shot him in the face.

“Cold bitch,” Forbes said.

Mahoney said, “I could not agree with you more, Detective.”

The killer moved quickly across the driveway and vanished from the screen a moment later. We rewound the footage and watched it all again, pausing whenever a frame showed some of her face.

The best view we had was as she left Carver and moved diagonally back to the sidewalk. We froze the image when we could see the color and cut of her hair clearly. Her nose, cheeks, and eyes were blurry for some reason.

“Blond,” Mahoney said. “Short spiky hair. It’s her again.”

I said, “But what’s with her face? Can you zoom in on it?”

Detective Warren gave her computer a command, and the killer’s face occupied the entire screen. She was wearing what appeared to be a semitransparent plastic mask that distorted her features from the top of her lips to above her eyebrows.

“She’s smart,” Warren said.

“And efficient,” Forbes said. “She doesn’t waste any time, does she?”

Mahoney nodded. “She’s always like that. Decisive. No hesitation.”

We watched it yet again. I saw the killer’s shoulders move before Carver turned.

“She said something there,” I said. “Just before Carver faced her.”

Warren frowned, played with the controls, said, “Well, there you go, the volume was almost off.”

She rewound it, turned the volume all the way up, and hit Play. We could suddenly hear the brisk breeze that had blown that night and some distant sirens.

When Professor Carver appeared, we could hear him chuckling a little as he turned unsteadily onto his driveway and started up the grade. The killer came into the frame in total silence, moving like a cat stalking prey. She squared off, called, “Professor Carver.”

Carver hesitated, then pivoted to face her. Those sirens got closer. She said something else to him and shot him twice; the suppressed rounds sounded like pillows being plumped.

“Did anyone get what she just said to him?” Warren said.

“Garbled,” Forbes said.

I shook my head. Mahoney did too. He dug in his pocket and came out with a white AirPods case.

“Connect me to your computer. Play it again but try to damp down the high tones of those sirens. Maybe I can make it out.”

Warren connected him and adjusted the equalizer on the computer to limit the upper range. She hit Play and Mahoney listened closely, his index finger to his lips.

“Again, but squelch it down more this time,” he said, glancing at me with some concern.

Warren further adjusted the equalizer and hit Play. When Carver turned to face his killer and her shoulders moved again, I saw Ned lose color.

He tore out his right AirPod. “Detectives, I’m going to have to ask you to leave the room for the time being. I’m sorry, but this is a national security issue now.”

I was shocked. Warren and Forbes seemed taken aback and a little angry.

“The two of you did good, real good,” Mahoney said, seeing their reaction and getting out of their way so they could leave. “I will write a letter recommending a citation for both of you. Your nation thanks you. And I promise to explain when I can.”

“We get it—we’re small-town,” Forbes said. They left, shutting the door to the office.

“What does she say?” I asked.

Mahoney took out his other AirPod and handed me the pair. “Listen for yourself.”

I put them in. He rewound the video and hit Play.

With the high-frequency noises dampened, I could hear Carver chortling and the light steps of the killer following him.

“Professor Carver,” she said clearly after squaring off to shoot him.

The constitutional law professor turned.

Before she shot him, she said, “Maestro knows what you’ve done. It’s over.”