If Zack had to guess, she’d stumbled into this murderous mess by accident; but since she hadn’t come home to the apartment or shown up to her classes that morning, it appeared she was at least along for the ride, either under duress or as a player. Marsh’s detectives were scouring the city for Nick Patterson, the much more likely candidate for the murder itself, but it was clear from the evidence they’d already gathered that Hailey might well be a willing participant in whatever was still going forward.

Witnesses had placed Hailey with Patterson in the taxi that had taken them from the casino to the warehouse in South Boston—now, a second brutal crime scene. After a fair amount of verbal fingernail pulling over the phone, Marsh had described to Zack the open, empty crates; enough crates, of the right size and shape, to have once contained the Gardner paintings. But the crates were just crates; the bodies were something else.

According to the ME on the scene, it was certainly a double homicide, but it was unclear exactly how the two young men had died. A toxicology report would take time, and even that might not be conclusive. Zack knew there were plenty of toxins that didn’t show up on a toxicology report; chemistry was a fickle sport. A piece of crystal could power a radio, but it could also start a fire big enough to burn a house down.

Zack crossed the small bedroom, taking a pair of gloves out of his jacket pocket and slipping them on over his fingers. He unplugged Hailey’s laptop, retrieving it for the techs back at the field office, who would make short work of the device’s password protection. He’d already called them from the bedroom, bringing into play an even more sophisticated technical weapon from the FBI’s arsenal. Now that the roommate had provided Hailey’s cell phone number, they could both use it to place her location and also begin the process of getting a warrant for a remote wiretap. Not only would they be able to listen in on any calls she might make, but they could also attempt a “phishing” expedition: call the phone, remotely disable the ringer and any screen indications that a call was coming in, and force a connection. Hailey’s cell phone would become a listening device, a remote bug. Zack had used the tech before to varying degrees of success. If the phone was in a coat or a purse or a deep pocket, you didn’t get much. But if you were lucky, if the phone was out in the open, it was like you were right there, along for the ride.