“I started checking into Agent Livingstone’s idea over the weekend, but I needed more information to lock down exactly where each victim disappeared. If this hacker is as good as he thinks he is, he may have deleted the electronic trail and even removed the app from the victim’s phones and deleted their user accounts. It might be difficult to find out anything after all this time, although we could check bank statements for any previous payments made to rideshare companies.”

Shane glanced at her in surprise.

“What? It was a good idea.”

He carried on staring at her with an expression she couldn’t decipher.

“We have most of the victims’ bank records. We can look for that activity.” Ashley added a note to all the other leads they were following before continuing with her summary. “Unfortunately, payments to him are proving harder to locate after the auction closes. As you all know, he’s being paid in anonymous cryptocurrencies in a foreign crypto exchange. We can’t subpoena foreign companies.”

Yael and Alex exchanged a look. While they generally followed the rules, they occasionally veered into territory that would be thrown out of a court of law. But the dark web was the wild west of the internet and you couldn’t hope to patrol it with a gun and a shiny badge. You needed to blend in and bend the rules.

Ashley continued. “Cramer, Parker & Gray are working around the clock to trace the crypto but we suspect Evi1Geni-us takes the money offline and obviously knows how to cover his tracks. We’ll get him eventually but it’s taking longer than we’d hoped and he might already have cashed out into offshore bank accounts.”

“Where are we on tracking the people paying to watch?” Sloan asked.

“This is much easier. We have collected various aliases and are connecting these to real people at real IP addresses despite their best efforts to cloak their identities with VPNs,” Ashley assured the task force leader. “They will face charges of accessory and in some cases accomplices to murder.”

“Good. I want them all prosecuted. Every one of them.” ASAC Sloan rested against the desk at the front. “The cyber angles are out of my area of expertise and I know your cybercrime team Agent Chen, and Mr. Parker and his associates, are amongst the very best at what you all do. I am going to assume you know the best way to proceed. But are there any ideas as to how we might figure out who this guy is using old-fashioned criminal investigation techniques?”

“Traffic cams?” Frazer suggested. “See if the same license plate shows up in nearby towns or cities around the times of the kidnapping and murders? Same with cell phone data?”

Sloan pointed her finger at him. “That’s a good idea.”