by Todd Travis
“You haven’t returned our calls or emails. Most of the time we can’t even locate you.”
“I don’t want to be located. What do you want?”
“In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve been a little busy ourselves.”
“I haven’t noticed, Pete, I don’t care anymore.”
“If I really believed that, I wouldn’t have come all the way up here on my own just to talk to you.”
“You really think that you’re here alone? If that’s true, then who were the two guys in the auditorium watching you watch me?”
“My shadows. I figured you’d make them. But officially, I’m the only one here to talk to you, no one else. The feeling was that, if we sent anyone else, you would have just said no without even hearing them out.”
“And who says I won’t do the same to you?”
“You might. But it’s been noted that you tolerate me more than most and I hope that you will at least talk to me.”
“I’m talking, aren’t I? What do you want? I’ve asked you three fucking times.”
“Jake, we want you back.”
“We do? We-who? WE as in you and a couple guys who want a consult on something or WE as in the director, MacVey and the Bureau? Which kind of WE are we talking about here?”
“We as in the Bureau.”
“The Bureau wants me back, the whole fucking Bureau, the whole house of cards, that’s the WE that wants me back?”
“The WE that makes these kinds of decisions do,” Viera replied. “They want you back with a badge.”
“Why? You don’t need me, you’re loaded with profilers, psych-shrinks and forensic specialists.”
“Not like you, you’re different. You’re ahead of the curve. That’s why I badgered the director into bringing you back.”
Thorne fixed him with a look that, Viera would later swear, was a hell of a lot more intimidating than any polygraph he knew of. Thorne sniffed.
“And he said yes?”
“He said yes. He wasn’t happy about it, but he said yes.”
“I’ll bet he wasn’t happy. Prick.”
“You did tell him to go fuck himself, Jake.”
“Say I do come back. To do what?”
“Case in Nebraska called the Heartland Child Murders.”
“Not the Mercy Killings?” Thorne asked.
“The Heartland Child Murders.”
“Never heard of it.”
“You’re serious, you haven’t heard anything?”
“I don’t read the papers or watch the news. I told you, I stopped caring once I got the gold watch.”
“It’s a bad one. It’s taken a backseat in the media from the insanity of the Mercy Killings, but it’s there and it’s real bad. Twenty-two kids missing, nine confirmed dead, all little girls, ages five to twelve.”
“Kids, huh?”
“Papers are calling him the Iceman.”
“Whose bright-eyed fucking idea was that?”
“Some dickhead television reporter, I don’t know, the name stuck and there isn’t anything we can do about it.”
“Iceman,” Thorne snorted.
“He’s definitely got balls, of that we have no doubt. He waltzes in and takes kids right from under their parents’ noses. He’s done this without breaking a sweat or losing his cool. We don’t even find any trace of them most of the time. We have remains on nine of the victims, but even then they’re not whole, he leaves a leg here or an arm or head there.”
“You sure it’s a he?”
“You tell me. Most profilers agree our subject is male, but you tell me, that’s why I want you on this. Talk to me, could it be a female?”
“Don’t know. Won’t know until I get a look at the file, if I decide I even want to.”
“It’s a nasty one, he snatches them, parts them out and leaves little forensics when doing so. Jake, this is not even funny, it’s evil and ugly and it absolutely has got to be stopped. We’re behind the curve on it and we need help.”
“The Heartland Child Murders,” Thorne mused.
“I need you, Jake, I need you to work your magic on this case.”
“I was working my goddamn magic on the Mercy Killings when MacVey and the director shoved a gold watch up my ass, Pete.”
“I know they did and you know how I felt about it at the time. That’s why I’m here now. I need your game on this, Jake, it’s turned into a real fucking hairball. The Task Force commander is a homegrown corn-fed cop who can’t find his ass in the dark with both hands; all he’s thinking about is press conferences and who’s going play his part in the movie version of this whole shitstorm.
“The local profilers are lost and the agent we had advising them, Riggs, was nursing a divorce and a drinking problem that we didn’t know about. He had a breakdown and fucked the whole thing up. I need you on this. Take the badge and bring them home.
“You may have stopped caring but I bet you haven’t stopped missing the chase. You miss it, Jake, I know you do. You know you’re the MAN on this kind of show, you’re my star and I need you in the game. Catch this sick bastard. We can’t let this turn into another JonBenet Ramsey fuck-up, this is over twenty kids we’re talking about here. It’s as big or bigger than Atlanta ever was.”
“Big but not the biggest.”
“What do you want, Jake?”
“What do you think I want?”
“All right,” Viera said after a moment, “take the Heartland Child Murders, help them close it and close it fast. You do that for me and I’ll get you what you want. I’ll get you back on the Mercy Killings.”
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
“No way MacVey would ever agree to that, he wouldn’t even let me in the same fucking room as him, no way.”
“MacVey’s dead, Jake.”
“Dead?”
“Dead. Got it same way as Mueller and Cosmo.”
“Holy fucking shit,” Thorne had to sit to think about this. “Okay. Now you have my attention.”
“Nobody, NOBODY knows about this, we’ve kept it out of the media, it’s even kept out of the official reports by order of the director and the president himself. Story is just like it was the first time, we got their families cooperating, everything. This goes no farther than you and me. When it’s over and done and we got the fucker, then we’ll bury our own proper. Until then we say nothing. We have a national frenzy going on as it is, if word got out about this it might lead to a complete breakdown.”
“So who’s running the Mercy Killings now?”
“I’m the new SAC. The director and the president want the Mercy Killings closed fucking yesterday, top priority. I’m going to do that. But I need you to catch this Iceman, he’s killing goddamn little kids, Jake. Even the Mercy Killer doesn’t target kids. I need you to stop him right-fucking-immediately.”
“I close the kid case, I get another shot at the Mercy Killings. Your word?”
“My word,” Viera said. “If I don’t close it first, you get your shot at it.”
Thorne stood and offered his hand to Viera. They shook hands.
“I always liked you, Pete.”
“Just catch him, unleash that Jacob Thorne voodoo and catch this cute cocksucker. I got a plane waiting for you, let’s go.”
“First Mueller and Cosmo, then MacVey,” Thorne picked up his coat and followed Viera out of the lobby. “You’re up at bat. That what the shadows are for?”
“We have shooters watching me everywhere I go, I am watched constantly, I can’t even shit by myself anymore. The director is hoping that if the Mercy Killer is tempted to make a run at me next, we’ll nail him.”
“How nice, a big fucking target on your back, you gotta like that. Where would you rate your ass-pucker factor these days?”
“On a scale from one to ten? Eleven.”
4
Thorne and Viera exited the front doors of the auditorium and made their way to the street where Kane stood against the sedan.
“She’s not one of your shooters. This your secretary or what?”
“Didn’t I mention? There’s a catch,” Viera allowed himself to smile for the first time this day. “You have to work with a partner on this one.”
“What? No fucking way.”
“That’s the deal. She’s a top investigator out of DC, just joined ISU.”
“Pete, have you lost your fucking mind?”
Kane stepped forward to meet them.
“Special Agent Emma Kane, Jacob Thorne.”
“Agent Thorne, I’m a big admirer of your work,” Kane held out her hand.
“Honey, I don’t need any blow-job groupies, understand? Goddamn it, Pete-”
“It’s the only way the director would agree to bringing you back,” Viera replied. “It’s non-negotiable. We don’t let anyone work alone anymore, not with what’s been happening.”
“No fucking way, I work alone or forget it.”
“Come on, Jake, don’t put me there. This is how it is. Remember MacVey? Nobody works alone anymore, nobody. You have to have a partner, and I figured you’d prefer to have a rookie who doesn’t know anything as opposed to a veteran who’s going to constantly butt heads with you. Think about it, it’s much better this way. You take her along, show her the ropes. She’s a good cop, she’s been proven under fire. That’s the deal, Jake, take it.”
Kane stared at the two of them, stoic. Thorne glared at Viera. Finally Thorne kicked the sedan fender with a curse.
“Shit. Great, just great. You set me up, you bastard. You get me hooked, get my mind on the game again and you stick me with a goddamn Girl Scout!”
“Agent Thorne, it’s the twenty-first century. Women have long been recognized as being just as capable as men,” Kane said, fire in her eyes.
“Great, she’s a feminist with issues, too. I’m going to get you for this, Pete.”
“You’ve always said it was the brains and balls that count,” Viera reminded him.
“Key word, balls, key word.”
“What’s wrong with him, is he in the middle of a raging mid-life crisis or something?” Kane said.
Viera liked that. “No, he’s always been this way. Probably popped out of the womb exactly as you see him now.”
“I can’t believe this. She looks like a fucking refugee from the Playboy channel,” Thorne spit out his gum.
“Hey, I’m right here, you got something to say about me then say it directly to my face, don’t talk over my head like I don’t exist, clear? And I suggest that you can this woman shit right here and now, it’s old and it’s tired,” Kane said. “It’s a long proven fact that women can do anything men can do. We can even pee standing up if we choose.”
“If that’s true, how often do you do it?”
“I’ll do whatever I have to do to catch this shitbird, even if it means pissing on you. Got it?”
“I can tell right now that this is going to be interesting,” Viera said as they all climbed into the sedan.
5
“What do you know about Jacob Thorne?” Viera had asked Kane earlier on the plane to New York.
Kane had of course heard of Thorne, he was much discussed at the academy, especially when his retirement was announced while she was at Quantico. She’d also heard of him well before going federal, back when she was a cop, and not all that she’d heard about him was good. She took a moment to decide how much to say or not to say.
“A few things. I know that he’s a profiler, been with the Bureau for years. He’s a legend, that’s how I’ve heard him described. A legend. Some say he’s the best there is,” Kane replied.
“The some that say that are exactly right.”
“We studied some of his case files in class at Quantico, the work he’s done is impressive, to say the least. Very smart. A lot of the instructors talk about him, but …”
“But what?”
“But … I don’t know, they don’t really say much about him, I don’t know how else to put it. We hear quite a bit about some of the Old School profilers, study their cases so closely we almost get to know the man himself in addition to the work he did. Not true with Thorne. It was hard to get a picture of who he was just from the case studies. Even the instructors that talked about him didn’t seem to really know him.
“Also, most of the other retired guys come back and lecture, tell us stories, you know the drill. Thorne’s never done that.”
Viera acknowledged that with a grunt. “Nor will he. You ever meet him?”
“No. I’ve heard stories, especially back on the job. They flew him down to DC to consult on the sniper shootings. The skinny was that the information he gave the commander was of considerable help in the end.
“Thorne was the first to suggest that there was more than one killer and that our subjects were black. No one else had suggested that up to that point. Some in the division were opposed to that view; in fact, opposed would probably be too polite a word. Race relations in DC have never been very good, and it was feared that suggesting to the public that we had not one, but two, black serial killers without solid evidence backing that up could possibly make things worse.”
“And what was Thorne’s response to that?”
“I heard, I don’t know for sure, but I heard that Thorne suggested to the chief that having his head up his own ass, as the chief obviously did, couldn’t make things any worse than they already were. I only heard the rumor, I don’t know if it really happened.”
“Sounds about his speed,” Viera grunted.
“It was also said that after the subjects were caught, the brass tried to contact him in order to offer congratulations, give him credit, and he told them to keep his name out of it and not to bother him again.”
“Yeah, he does that, too. Anything else?”
“At Quantico it was said that Thorne burned out on the Mercy Killings and had to retire, that’s what the word was.”
“He burned, but I don’t know that I would characterize it as a burning out, but he definitely burned something, especially a lot of bridges. No, he may have crashed but he sure as hell didn’t burn out. Don’t let the retirement fool you, the day he left he was still as sharp as a fucking tack, I doubt he’s lost anything in his game.
“But even if it were true and he did burn out, it would be hard to blame him for that, because the Mercy Killings are the biggest pain in the balls case this country has ever had. More than a few good men have burned out on that twisted fucking cocksucker already, burned out and then some.”
It was a curious thing to say and Kane wanted to ask him to explain further, but something in Viera’s tone cautioned her against it. It was also, she noted, the very first time Viera cursed in front of her, not casual polite cursing either, but the true blue coarse language favored by cops everywhere.
Serious cursing was an act usually avoided by your average federal officer who, in their dry-cleaned dark jackets, ironed white shirts and dark ties, were courteous and polite to the point of obscenity itself. This was their history since Hoover, and Kane had yet to meet a fed who swore like a good cop can, especially a fed as high up on the food chain in the Bureau as Peter Viera.
When she first met Viera, Kane thought he had the air of a tough high school principal, the kind of disciplinarian that came down hard on unruly behavior yet could be counted on as a dependable shoulder to lean on when real trouble arrived. Now Kane realized that she couldn’t have been more mistaken.
“The Mercy Killings,” Viera said, looking Kane right in the eye, “are a fucking national disaster and that may even be understating the situation, but it didn’t burn Thorne out. And don’t ask me anything regarding that case, I couldn’t tell you even if I wanted to.”
Viera must have read her mind, because Kane would have loved to gotten some dirt on the Mercy Killings. The one thing cops liked to do more than curse was gossip, especially about the Mercy Killings, the most sensational serial killer in the history of the form with over tw
o hundred victims across the country. The whole world was watching, waiting to see where he’d strike next.
“Keep in mind,” Viera said, “you’re working on the Heartland Child Murders, that’s what you requested, that’s why you are here. Don’t waste a minute thinking about the Mercy Killer, that’s my problem. I want you eating, sleeping and shitting one thing and one thing only, the Heartland Child Murders. That is the single solitary object on your plate. Are we clear on that?”
“We’re very clear,” Kane replied.
“It better be. Now I want to tell you a few things about Jacob Thorne. He’s an arrogant, touchy bastard. That’s what I think and I like him more than anyone else in the Bureau. He’s never been a cop, came straight into the Bureau from college and drifted over into Behavioral Sciences mainly because it was new at the time and he couldn’t get along with anyone anywhere else. Behavioral Sciences was what they called that division in the beginning, they later changed the name to Investigative Support Unit primarily because everyone kept referring to it as the BS Unit, bullshit central, which drove the elders nuts. Thorne did really well there in spite of himself. He’d be running ISU if he could just get along with people.
“He pushes buttons on everyone, and usually the wrong ones, just for the hell of it. He’s not a shrink, he’s not a forensic scientist, thinks police procedure is a waste of time and that he’s a lot fucking smarter than anyone else. He might even be right about the last one. He’s a legend for a reason, Kane, he’s a genius when it comes to catching psychopaths.
“I’m very good at what I do, but I couldn’t tell you how he does what he does, I just know that he can do it and do it better than I can. He gets in their heads until he finds them. Sometimes he gives us our guy and we can’t prove it, but he’s always right. If it weren’t for the mess the Mercy Killings was making of our reputation … never mind that.
“He’s the best I’ve ever seen, bar none, and I’ve seen everyone. The two guys that started Behavioral Sciences with him went on to write books, go on talk shows, advise for the movies and all that shit, now regular people know who they are. Not Thorne, he truly doesn’t give a fuck about that.