by Steven James
True.
“The killers are intimately familiar with the DC Metro area, including traffic camera locations, and they’re forensically aware and adaptive to our investigative approach. The staged crime scenes and strategic misdirection techniques indicate possible law enforcement, forensic, or military training.”
That was a troubling thought. I clicked to the suspect list and noted the current or former law enforcement and military personnel whose names appeared on it.
Six out of the 758. Two ex-cops, four ex-military.
No one I knew.
Lien-hua went on. “Considering the deliberate shock factor of the crimes-the chimpanzee attack, filming Rusty Mahan’s death and then leaving the video for us to find, dismembering Mollie Fischer-all of these actions point to a motive beyond that of hatred, anger, greed, or malice.”
“It’s a game,” Anderson said, cutting in almost before she could finish her sentence. “They’re doing it for fun. Mocking us.”
Despite my best efforts to remain objective, I had a feeling he was right.
“Taunting the authorities,” she said. “Yes, I agree. So far we find no apparent sexual sadism directed toward the victims, nevertheless there are clearly sadistic tendencies in both perpetrators. They will closely monitor news coverage of the crimes, possibly try to insert themselves into the investigation, perhaps as hotline volunteers, vigil organizers, or community watch coordinators. One will be more dominant-almost certainly the male, but both are narcissistic and have pathologically high self-esteem.”
“Wait a minute,” an officer in the second row said. “Did you just say high self-esteem? Don’t you mean low self-esteem?”
“Esteem incorporates love and respect,” she replied, “but the only people whom these killers esteem, value, or love is themselves. They seek only their own pleasure, care only about their own future. Contrary to popular belief, it’s almost unheard of for a person to commit a criminal act because he has low self-esteem or ‘doesn’t feel good enough about himself.’ People who kill, steal, rape… or even break the speed limit… do so because they place their own desires and needs above those of other people.”
Hmm. Good point.
“Low other-esteem,” the officer said poignantly.
Lien-hua nodded, and as she went on, the email from Bryan Tait, WXTN’s president, arrived in the online drop box. The work hours for Nick and Chelsea coincided with the crimes-they’d arrived at the primate center on Tuesday at 7:29 to film their remote and at 3:44 on Wednesday afternoon at the Lincoln Towers.
Of course they did, Pat. It’s their job. To report on-site.
During an investigation you should never do what I caught myself doing now: associating a name with a crime before it’s solved. Once you start down that road, you’ll begin to conveniently find all sorts of evidence to prove yourself right. It’s just human nature.
Still-Lien-hua finished, and Margaret turned to me. She had a slight gleam in her eye, and that’s never a good sign.
“Agent Bowers.” She was well aware of how much I hate giving briefings, and even before she went on, I had a feeling what she was going to say. “Anything to add? I’d love to get your perspective on this case.”
Great.
“Great,” I said flatly.
As Lien-hua sat down, I took the floor, set my cell phone on the table beside me, and turned on the 3-D hologram projector.
85
10 hours left…
11:29 a.m.
The hologram hovered above the table.
Glowing pathways, one for each victim, wavered along the city streets, sometimes intersecting wherever shared travel routes overlapped.
As I summarized the geoprofile, I input the street on which Mollie’s laptop had been found, as well as the location of last night’s gas station explosion. The hot zone shifted west.
“You think that’s related?” Margaret asked, referring to the gas station.
“The receipt found in the van is from that station. Also, the killers left a stolen vehicle and laptop in front of police headquarters, and last night there was an explosion on the county road running along the perimeter of the FBI Academy at Quantico Marine Base. So here we have-”
Doehring leaned forward. “The roads bordering the two agencies who are running point on this case.”
“Yes,” I said. “But those aren’t the only agencies involved in this investigation. Capitol Police, US Marshals. It’s very possible the killers might leave a clue at their offices as well.”
Margaret assigned an officer to notify the other agencies’ headquarters. He left the room, and I went on, “I don’t believe we’ve probed deeply enough into the possible links between these crimes and others in the past. We need to see if there are any other known faked deaths with related dismemberments, videotaped staged suicides, or.. .”-and this was the kicker-“video traffic footage of two different license plates for the same vehicle-either the suspect’s or the victim’s.”
Blank stares.
“Different license plates?” Tielman asked.
“I know it’s unlikely that responding officers would record this type of information on ViCAP, but we’re looking for patterns here. We don’t know why the killers switched Rusty Mahan’s plates, but it appears likely that they wanted us to find out that they had. I want to know if they’ve done it before.”
“So, a message?” Anderson said.
“Possibly, but I’m more interested in locating the killers than in deciphering their-”
Lien-hua gave me a slight head shake, and I backpedaled a little. “What I mean to say is, it’s possible that this is a red herring. But whatever the killers’ motives are, it’s likely that in a crime spree this elaborate, they would follow patterns established or learned during previous crimes. And if that’s the case, linking the crimes from this week to earlier offenses will help us shrink the suspect pool and better focus our investigative efforts-and let’s go beyond simply prior convictions and explore similar crime patterns and associated behavior. Anything at all, even if it appears insignificant at first.”
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.