Derek’s wheels were turning again. “You said he told you to come with him or he’d slit your throat. You also said he muttered some things you couldn’t make out. Was it because he spoke too quietly or because his words were muffled by the mask?”
“Neither. The words he used didn’t sound like English. I don’t know what language they were. The first phrase was something like ‘tai kee.’ He used it when he first came at me. If he were
n’t holding me at knifepoint, I would have assumed he was calling me by someone else’s name.”
“‘Tai kee.’” Bob glanced at Sloane. “You speak, Mandarin. Does that mean anything to you?”
Sloane frowned. “Tai ji means ‘birthmark,’ but that makes no sense in this context. If it’s a Chinese dialect, I wouldn’t recognize it.”
“What else did he say?” Bob asked Tina.
“When I attacked him, he shouted a couple of things. He’s was probably swearing at me.” She squinched up her face, trying to remember. “Bow za was one. And chao ji bei. Oh, and at the end he yelled out, ta ma de.”
“Oh, he was definitely cursing at you,” Derek assured her. “Even I know ta ma de. It means ‘fuck.’ As for bow za, you’re pronouncing it phonetically. It’s biao zhi.” He spelled the English transliteration. “That means ‘bitch.’ Chao ji bei must mean something equally flattering, but I don’t know what. I’ll check with my squad or one of our language analysts on both chao ji bei and tai kee.”
“Since when do you speak Chinese?” Sloane asked in surprise.
“I don’t. I just know how to curse in it.” Derek gave Sloane a half smile, then turned back to Tina. “You said you caught a glimpse of your attacker’s eyes through the holes in his mask. Would you say he looked Asian? And what about his voice—did he sound Asian?”
“No and no.” She shook her head again. “His eyes were round, not almond-shaped. And they were light. So was his skin. I saw his wrist when I broke his knife hold. He was Caucasian. As for his English, it was unaccented. It was also the primary language he used, with the exception of those curses.”
“He could be second- or third-generation American,” Sloane pointed out. “His family could originally be from the Far East.”
“Or he could have been stationed there.” Derek took another belt of water. “The dog tags imply that he served. He’d certainly master curse words that way. What I don’t understand is why was he resorting to using them when his victim—all his victims so far, for that matter—were clearly American.”
“Something else to ask whoever develops a profile on this guy.”
At that moment, Derek’s cell phone rang. He glanced at the display, then rose. “Excuse me for a second,” he said, heading into the far corner of the room.
He punched on the phone, turned his back to the table, and spoke as quietly as possible. “What have you got for me?” he demanded.
At the other end of the phone, Joe Barbados, one of the FBI’s top forensic engineers down in Quantico, hunched forward in his chair. “I’ve been going through all the DVDs, one by one,” he replied. “But I’m primarily concentrating on the footage we have of the exact date and approximate time that Penelope Truman vanished. I’m examining the footage from every angle captured by the four different cameras in that area of Lake Fred.”
“And?”
“And in one of the segments that’s focused on the woods behind the lake, I spotted some lens flare. It seemed out of place because it was coming from the lower half of the frame. So I isolated it and did some tweaking to see what it was or where it was coming from. I can’t be a hundred percent sure, but to me, it looks like a knife. And a large one, at that.”
“Yes,” Derek hissed under his breath. Aloud, he said, “Nice work, Joe. Can you e-mail me a picture or two ASAP?”
“Sure. I’m not completely done with my analysis, but I’ll send you a jpeg of what I have so far, and a final when I’m finished. You’ll have the rough within the hour, and the final by tomorrow morning.”
“Great. Oh, and include the time stamp on it.”
“Done.”
“Thanks.” Derek punched off the phone and rejoined the group. “Sorry about that. What did I miss?”
Sloane edged him a sideways glance. He’d gotten a lead. She could feel it, even though his expression remained unchanged. His adrenaline was pumping. Whoever had called him had given him something solid. But whatever that lead was, she’d have to pry the details out of him later. Clearly, it wasn’t for sharing with everyone in the room—at least not yet.
She turned her attention back to the interview.
Southern New Jersey Medical Center
Trenton, New Jersey
2:30 P.M.
The high school across the street is letting out, students trampling one another on their way to athletic practice or the nearest mall.