“It’s based almost entirely on this material you’ve had in your possession for months,” Kendra said.

“Okay, I can see you want to rub it in,” Griffin said. “And it’s your right. We’re playing catch-up, I admit that. You’ve been looking for Colby for months, and we’ve only been on this for forty-eight hours.” He gestured to the piled Colby info on the table. “But we’re making progress. You can see we’re trying like hell.”

“Yes, I can see that.” He wanted her to praise him, exonerate him. But there in the conference room, surrounded by Colby’s mementos, Kendra felt the walls closing in on her. She tried desperately to push the sensation away from her. She’d had the same reaction when she last saw the man himself at San Quentin.

She drew a deep breath, trying to steady her racing heartbeat.

Power through it. If she let this rattle her, then the monster wins.

She couldn’t let that happen.

Lynch did not glance at her, but he gave her arm an unobtrusive squeeze. She felt a rush of gratitude. He alone could see what she was going through, but he wasn’t about to blow her lack of control in front of this roomful of agents.

“Fine,” Kendra finally said. She pulled out her phone. “I’ll text Beth and ask her to be here at noon for the meeting and bring her docs and source materials.”

“Thank you.”

Lynch quickly turned to Griffin and changed the subject. “Do you know for sure where Stokes was abducted?”

“We have a pretty good idea.” Griffin jerked his head toward the doorway. “I’ll show you.”

They followed him to another conference room just a few yards away. It looked positively barren compared to the room they had just left, but the two bulletin boards were filled with photographs of a home and driveway.

“Stokes never showed up for work that morning, but he’d made a few calls from home between seven thirty and eight.” Griffin pointed to a photo of a silver thermal travel mug lying on the driveway. “It looks like he was taken here as he was getting into his car. Autopsy results show that he had a fast-acting muscle relaxant in his system, so it’s likely he was caught by surprise and injected with it.”

“Was there anyone else at home?” Kendra asked.

“No, he lived alone. Divorced. His wife and three kids live with husband number two in La Jolla.”

“None of the neighbors saw anything?” Kendra pointed to some of the other photographs. “These houses look pretty close together.”

“Yes, but the driveway at that point has limited visibility. Colby chose his spot well.”

“He always has.”

Lynch was staring at a pair of blurry photos of a white van. “What’s this?”

“Neighbors did report a white van on the street, and one of them even puts it in Stokes’s driveway that morning. Traffic cams captured these between 8:15 and 8:25 that morning, with this van moving away from Stokes’s neighborhood.”

Lynch’s eyes narrowed on the grainy photos. “Can’t read the license plates, of course.”

“Of course. I’ll be the first to chip in whenever the hell this city decides to invest in some HD traffic cams. We’re trying to round up some security-camera footage in the area to see if we can get a better look at it. It’s a Ford Transit with fifty/fifty rear cargo doors and a 130-inch wheelbase. Naturally, there are about a million of those around. And Stokes’s neighborhood was just as ordinary. We were lucky that anyone even noticed the van.”

Kendra fought back a wave of sadness as she turned back to look at Stokes’s modest home. She hadn’t known about his failed marriage, and she realized that she actually knew very little about the man. They had only met a few days before, at the scene of that domestic homicide case. It seemed like so much longer ago that she and Stokes had made their introductions and discussed her work on the Van Buren investigation. She’d never imagined that just a few days later he would—

The Van Buren case.

She sharply turned away from the bulletin board.

He’d been so impressed that her lip-reading abilities had blown the case wide open. Is it possible that he—?

“I need to see the video of Stokes’s death,” she said abruptly. “Right now, Griffin.”

Griffin wrinkled his brow. “Once wasn’t enough for you?”

“Once is too much for anyone. But I need to look at it again in your A/V lab. It may need to be zoomed in and sharpened. Can you arrange that?”

Griffin still seemed mystified by her request, but he nodded. “Zoomed in, sharpened, forward, backward, or upside down. Any way you want to see it. Do you mind telling me why?”

“It may be nothing, but there’s a chance Stokes might have been trying to tell me something. I can’t be sure until I look.”

“We can go downstairs and have one of the A/V techs pull it up on his console. It’s the same guys who are combing security-camera footage for more views of that van. I can pull one of them off for a few minutes.”

“Thanks, Griffin. It’s worth a shot.”

*   *   *

FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, KENDRA, LYNCH, and Griffin stood in a small, windowless room looking over the shoulder of a chubby, young A/V tech named Nate Copley. Nate sat at his video console, looking up at a flat-panel monitor as he turned a shuttle-wheel control next to his keyboard.

Kendra felt a wrenching pang as Stokes’s agonized face appeared on the screen. “It was around five minutes before the end. Please skip as much of this as you can.”

“Gotcha,” Nate said. “I logged this myself. I hoped I would never have to see it again.”

Kendra turned around to avoid the Stokes video as it sped past. Behind them, a tech was at another console, scanning through parking-lot security-camera footage that also happened to capture a busy street. He slowed the footage whenever he saw anything that resembled the elusive white van, then resumed the high-speed scan each time it proved to be nothing.

Nate pointed to his monitor. “Around here?”

Kendra turned back to the monitor. “I think so … Go a little slower.” She studied the image. “Stop when you see Stokes’s head angle slightly to the right. It happens someplace around … There!” She touched Nate’s shoulder. “Play it at regular speed.”

She moved in for a closer view of Stokes’s final moments. His face twisted in agony, and his lips moved as if muttering a curse. Yet no sound came out.

He did it again.

“See that?” Kendra said. “Still no sound, but I think his lip movements were identical.”

Seconds later he did it once more, then settled back on the table in a state of collapse.

Kendra turned back toward Lynch and Griffin. “Stokes knew I broke the Van Buren case by reading the lips of the murderer on the phone at the crime scene. He might have been trying to tell me something.”

She turned toward Nate. “Can you zoom in on his face and play it again?”

He turned back the shuttle dial. “Yes, but it’s going to get blurrier. I’ll enhance it as much as I can.”

He scanned back and used his keyboard controls to zoom in on Stokes’s face. He used another control to adjust the sharpness, finally finishing with a setting that was slightly more defined than where they started.

She leaned forward, tensely examining the shape and movement of the detective’s mouth.

What are you saying to me, Stokes?

I’m here. I’m listening.

“Play it again, please.”

Nate punched a key and leaned back in his chair. “It’s now on a loop. It will keep repeating until you tell me to stop it.”

Lynch leaned closer to the monitor. “Can you even get a read from this angle?”

“It’s not the easiest, but I…” She was silent, her gaze on the ever-repeating video. Detach. Focus. Take the movements one at a time. Then bring them together. Her eyes narrowed. “Wingate!”

“What?” Griffin said.

“Hush.” She stared at the screen for a moment longer. “That’s it. I’m positive.”