by Steven James
Margaret assigned Anderson and two other officers to the comparative case analysis.
“Finally,” I said, “I think we can narrow down the search area, focus our efforts more efficiently on eliminating suspects.”
I tapped at my phone and cross-referenced the hot zone against the suspect list. “Only 19 percent of the people on our suspect list live or work within this nine-block perimeter. Let’s take a closer look at them first.”
But as I stared at the hologram, I began to wonder about the geoprofile itself, whether this was even the right approach to be taking.
I flashed back to a discussion I’d once had with Calvin: “From where does your familiarity with a region, your cognitive map of an area, derive?” he’d asked me.
“Your movement patterns, obviously; your activity nodes and the routes to and from them.”
“So how are those formed?”
“Agent Bowers?” Margaret caught me lost in my thoughts. “You were saying?”
“How are those formed?” I mumbled.
“Pardon me?”
The task force members were staring at me curiously. “I was saying . . .” My eyes went back to the hologram. “I think I might be wrong.”
“You think you might be wrong,” Margaret replied.
With my finger, I traced a holographic street through the air. “For most people the origination of their movement patterns is their place of residence. But if their work place is the locus of their activity, then they would likely get to know the city from that point instead.”
After a pause, Cassidy said, “So, a pizza delivery guy who shows up at work and then leaves from there, travels to a part of the city, then returns. Doing this over and over, he gets to know the street layout.”
“Yes.” I nodded. “Exactly.”
“And with two offenders,” Lien-hua said, “the cognitive map of the dominant partner would be the more determinative factor in the selection of the crime scenes.”
“So,” Margaret said, tracking, “we should focus on identifying and following the cognitive map of the dominant offender.”
“Typically, yes,” I replied, still distracted by my thoughts.
“Typically.” She was sounding more and more unimpressed by my briefing.
I switched the hologram mode so that it only showed the crime scene locations, not the victims’ travel routes. “Apart from perhaps the Connecticut Street bridge, these locations—the primate center, the hotel, the car in front of the police station, the gas station bordering Quantico—it wasn’t simply familiarity with the DC area that led the offenders to choose them. And it wasn’t simply victim availability that caused them to choose Rusty, Mollie, and Twana.”
Lien-hua was following my train of thought. “It’s likely they chose Mollie because of her father, Twana because she resembled Mollie, Rusty, because he was Mollie’s boyfriend.”
“Yes.”
“And the primate center, and hotel.” Margaret added. “They chose those because of the congressman and the vice president.”
Lien-hua nodded. “And the police station and Quantico because of their relationship to the investigation.”
“It appears so,” I said. “So it looks like the choice of locations isn’t based on the killers’ cognitive maps of the city but on whatever message they’re trying to send. The metanarrative they’re working from.”
“Their motive,” Anderson said.
I hated the thought of having to say that word. “Their ultimate agenda. Yes.”
“And do you have any idea what that is?” Margaret looked like she regretted asking me to share my thoughts.
“Justice reform.” The words just came out.
Everyone stared at me “And you’re referring to . . . what exactly?” Margaret asked.
I shook my head and turned off the hologram. “I don’t really know.”
As I took my seat, I felt defeated by the evidence, by the dead-ends. Figuring out the killers’ motives might be the key to solving this case after all.
For a few minutes, the team explored the relationship between the Fischer family and the crime locations, but when we didn’t seem to be making any headway, Margaret handed out assignments to make sure all of the investigative avenues were covered.
I was lost in thought.
It would have to be a combination, Pat—cognitive mapping and metanarrative. Crimes are almost always committed within the offender’s awareness space. So the killers had to have been familiar with the hotel and primate center to pull this off.
Margaret concluded by saying, “We’ll meet tomorrow morning at 10:00—unless there’s a break in the case, in which case I will apprise you of any changes in the schedule. You are dismissed.”
As people dispersed to their work stations to begin their assignments, Margaret called to me, “Agent Bowers, may I have a moment, please?”
Okay, here we go.
“Certainly.”
86
9 hours left . . .
12:29 p.m.
Margaret and I stepped to a corner of the room, and she hardly waited until we were alone before ripping into me. “The next time you go above my head to Director Rodale . . .” Her words scorched the air between us, but she paused mid-threat, and I took advantage of it. “I didn’t go above your head, Margaret. I went to talk with Rodale about something else, and he asked me to work the case.”
“Mmm-hmm.” It was not her way of agreeing with me.
“I don’t care if you believe me or not,” I said. “Let’s just focus on catching these guys. We can argue about all this later.”
A moment passed. I had the sense she was trying to slice me in half with her eyes. “I have a question for you,” she said.
“What’s that?”
She leaned close and spoke in a tight, whispery voice, “When you were meeting with Director Rodale, did you get any indication that he was being unduly influenced by Congressman Fischer?”
Her question came out of nowhere. The answer was yes, I had gotten that impression, but it didn’t seem appropriate to say so. “Why would you ask me that, Margaret?”
She did not reply, seemed to be deep in thought.
“Does this have to do with Project Rukh?” I asked. “The research of Dr. Libet?”
Her gaze narrowed almost imperceptibly. “What do you know about that?” I’d posted the information from Rodale and Fischer on the online case files this morning, but I realized she might not have had a chance to review it yet.
“I know it’s being utilized by the Gunderson Foundation, and I know Fischer supports their work and doesn’t want word about his involvement to leak out.”
“No,” she mumbled. “He doesn’t.”
“What’s going on here, Margaret?”
“Did you find any information about abortion?”
“Abortion? No, I . . .” That was even more out of left field. “What does that have to do with any of this?”
“The right to life,” she said enigmatically.
“What?”
“That’s what Vice President Fischer was going to speak on six years ago when he was shot at.” She seemed to have disappeared into her own private world. “The changing views about the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee that you cannot be deprived of life and liberty without due process.”
“Changing views?”
“When does life begin? At birth? At conception? How do you define liberty?”
I was getting more and more lost here. “How is all of that connected to what’s going on here this week?”
She shook her head. And when she spoke, she didn’t answer my question. “There are some things I need to check into.” Before I could get a word in, she added sharply, “If you have a problem with me, you talk to me. Not Rodale.”
“If I have a problem with you, I’ll make a point to let you know. Now tell me what—”
But, abruptly and without any further explanation, she excused herself and walked away.
All right. That was odd.
And a little unsettling.
After she was gone, Lien-hua approached me. “What was that all about?”
“Good question.” I shook my head. “She started off by getting on my case, but when I mentioned Project Rukh, her whole attitude, her entire demeanor, changed.”
“In what way?”
“She seemed uneasy.”
No, she seemed scared.
Silence passed between us, then Lien-hua softly stated the obvious, but for some reason it felt reassuring to have it out in the open: “This case goes a lot deeper than just these four homicides.”
Twana Summie, the college student.
Mollie Fischer, the congressman’s daughter.
Rusty Mahan, the boyfriend.
Juarez Hernandez, the gas station attendant.
“Yes, it does,” I said. “And Margaret knows something she’s not sharing with the rest of the class.”
What is obvious is not always what is true.
I gazed around the room. “Lien-hua, what are you going to work on right now?”
“Clearly, the killers had some grounds for choosing to use the same two Lincoln Towers rooms used by Hadron Brady. I think the key to solving this case will be zeroing in on the killers’—you’re not going to like this—”
Motives, I thought.
“Reasons,” I said.
A half smile. “Close enough. I’m looking into that. And there’s one other thing: the lack of DNA and prints at each of the scenes, it really troubles me. All of these crimes? No physical evidence?”
“Hmm.” I considered that. “The dog didn’t bark.”
“What?”
“Sherlock Holmes. It’s . . . well, the idea is to avoid looking at what did happen and focus on what didn’t happen that should have—and they should have left DNA.”
“Yes.”
“So by not leaving any, the killers have revealed something significant about themselves: they know how to avoid leaving even the most minute physical evidence at a crime scene.”
“Someone in law enforcement?” she said softly, repeating her observation from the briefing.
“Or the military.” I showed her the six names I’d pulled up during the briefing.
“Great minds.” She jotted down the names. “What about you?”
“I’m going to review that video of Rusty Mahan’s death,” I said. “And then I think I’ll spend a little time watching the news.”
The baby kicked.
For the first time ever, she felt the child inside of her kick.
“I’m alive! Don’t forget about me! Let me live! Let me live!”
The struggle to survive.
Always.
Always.
To live.
“Two for the price of one,” her ex-lover had said just before rolling her into a shallow grave on top of a rotting corpse.
Her baby kicked again.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t stronger,” her father had written the night he gave up on life.
The night he let death win.
She heard a voice, nearly audible, “Don’t let it win! Don’t let it win!”
And as she felt the tiny life inside of her move again, despite her raw exhaustion, despite her broken hope, she promised her child that she would be stronger, that she would be strong enough to survive.
And she began to rage against her bonds.
87
Twenty minutes later
I pressed play.
It was my fourth time through the footage of Rusty Mahan’s death. Each time I’d been trying to keep myself objective, focused not on his death itself but on what the video might tell us about his killers.
But I was finding that nearly impossible.
Watching him die was just too troubling.
This time, I did my best to keep my eye on the camera angles and the orientation in reference to the background images in the frame.
When I finished, I went to the WXTN website and reviewed the footage of the on-sites filed by Nick Trichek and Chelsea Traye, starting with the discovery of Mollie’s body yesterday at the Lincoln Towers Hotel, and moving backward through the homicides this week to those they covered over the last two months, comparing the camera work to the footage of Mahan’s death.
And came up empty.
Not surprisingly, almost all of the newsreels had been shot with stationary cameras rather than handheld ones, like Rusty’s death had been.
In my searches I found that Chelsea had done a special in April on the Gunderson facility’s primate research, but so had three other local stations over the last year. She covered most major crimes in the Metro area and had done a controversial piece recently on the movement to legalize prostitution in the District of Columbia. Other than that, nothing jumped out at me.
When I searched for any previous criminal offenses or mis-demeanors, I didn’t find anything for Chelsea and only a few speeding tickets and a marijuana possession charge against Nick from three years ago.
No red flags in the location of Nick and Chelsea’s work or home addresses, nothing suspicious about the arrival times at the scenes.
In frustration, I slid my laptop aside.
Tunnel vision.
Try to disprove your theories, don’t try to confirm them or you’ll be blinded by your desire to prove yourself right!
I needed to clear my head.
I made a trip to the snack machine at the end of the hall, grabbed a three-course mini meal of Snickers, Cheetos, and a hermetically sealed cinnamon roll that might have been left over from the days of the Cold War, and returned to my work station.
C’mon, Pat, think this through.
How are this week’s crimes connected to the assassination attempt on Vice President Fischer?
Why did the killers choose Mollie Fischer?
Brush off conjecture with the facts until only the truth remains.
Cheetos in hand, I pulled up the active screen for the case file updates and saw that Anderson, who’d been working the ViCAP linkage analysis, had posted a list of three homicides in the northeast that could potentially be linked to this week’s crimes.
(1) A dismembered body in New York City three months ago. The body hadn’t been found in suitcases but rather in three large boxes. Apparently, the killer had been planning to mail them to an ex-employer.
(2) In April a twenty-two-year-old male Baltimore native was found in his bathtub with his wrists slit, but there were lingering questions about whether or not it was homicide or suicide. His phone was beside the tub and had been used to record his death.
Hmm.
A possibility.
(3) A homicide in Vienna, Virginia, last month. The killers had left a text message on the female victim’s laptop, taunting the authorities.
Because of its proximity to DC, the Vienna crime had been covered by Chelsea Traye and the WXTN News team, and I’d seen the footage just a few minutes ago, but from what I could tell by glancing over the case files, there weren’t any obvious links to the crimes this week.
As far as being related cases, none of the three looked especially promising, and none of them had anything to do with license plates—which might have just been a red herring anyhow.
A quick check of the time: 1:22.
I rubbed my head. I had less than forty minutes before I needed to pick up Tessa.
With a growing sense of apprehension about the 3:30 custody meeting and a tightening sense of disappointment from my lack of progress on the case, I turned my attention to the active screen and saw one more crime appear.
A triple homicide in Maryland last month. Two police officers had been killed as well as a female civilian, apparently as the result of a domestic dispute. Anderson seemed to think that the proximity to DC, a crime scene that appeared staged, and a possible discrepancy between the arrival time of the husband at the house and the time of death of the officers made it a crime to look into.
However, Philip
Styles, the woman’s husband, had pled guilty, presumably to avoid the death penalty, and was now in jail awaiting his sentencing trial. A connection seemed unlikely to me.
Still, we had four separate crimes that might be linked to the killings this week. And despite my initial impressions, I needed to have a closer look at them.
Taking a bite of my Snickers, I clicked to the first crime listed to try to eliminate, rather than corroborate, its relationship to this week’s crime spree.
88
8 hours left . . .
1:29 p.m.
Brad used his fake ID to gain entrance to the police headquarters’ parking garage.
“I’m a National Academy student,” he explained to the officer by the gate. “I was asked to help with the Fischer case’s task force.”
The officer called Quantico and verified Mr. Collins’s name and license plate against the NA student roster, and let him through.
As Brad searched for a parking place, he thought about his plan.
Q. How best to destroy someone?
A. Kill the person he loves the most.
And of course, where most killers get it wrong is that they assume there’s only one kind of death.
Killing someone psychologically, slaughtering his reason for living, destroying his hope—these are at least as satisfying endeavors as just slitting his throat.
Q. What is a fate worse than death?
A. Wanting to die but not being able to.
Q. So, hell.
A. Yes. Or being buried alive.
And again, you could be buried alive in more ways than one. Some pain is even more suffocating than the lack of air.