by Mike McKay
“Dick. DIQ. The Direct Identification Query. You have to supply the full name of the person and his military ID number. The things found on the military ‘dog-tag.’ Then, the database returns you a record for the particular person. Also, instead of the ID number, you may supply the SSN. The same deal: the full name and the SSN. Obviously, only one person can have the match. The database returns you a single record, or tells you such person is unknown to the military. It's binary – one or zero. Either: ‘yes, this one,’ or ‘no such person’.”
“What if you type the wrong SSN or misspell the name, let say?”
“No such person.”
“What if you got the fingerprints, but not the name?”
“Oh, yes, these are called BIQ, the Biometric Identification Queries. I can get the fingerprint code, all these loops and deltas, and the DB will return me all the matching records. For a single finger, there may be six or seven, and for a partial fingerprint – even more. But we seldom do it here. The fingerprint identification is an art. We trust this to the Sheriff Office ladies, at the Travis Street HQ. To be complete, there are also the BIQ queries for the DNA codes and for the iris scans. That's all.”
“But you cannot search by an address, or by a service status, or by a birth date, or by a branch of service?”
“Nope. None of those. The national security reasons.”
“What do you mean: national security?”
“In the military itself, many people have the DIQ access, but there is only a handful of people who have the DLQ access level. You see, if somebody has the logical query access, he can easily figure out the size of the Army, how many people are deployed to what place and so on. Any spy would be more than happy.”
“So what do you do if you need to make a list of the ex-special forces men around here? Like the one you made for me last year?”
“I would first fire a request to our liaison officer in Wash. She would pass it to the Pentagon, and within a month or two they would return me a bunch of military records what match my profile. Although, this type of searches is very low-priority. They always reply, but not at all fast.”
“But the last time you made the list for us just in few days. Did you get lucky, or something?”
“No, I used a trick. Just made a pseudo-index based on the local AFCO DB.”
“A pseudo-index?”
“Something I have invented in the spare time between cutting the corpses and tracing the bootleg gas. You first go to the local AFCO database and search for suitable candidates: by the age, and the service dates, and such. You would end up with a list of several thousand names and SSNs. Then, you would feed the list to my Python script. It will go name-by-name and extract the records from the military DB. Using the dick! Exactly as a human would do, DIQ, one record at the time, just completely automatic. The server in the Pentagon imagines that I sit here all night and type the names and the SSNs, like mad. In reality, I go to bed, and the software robot does all the typing for me. You can start it on Monday evening, and by Wednesday morning you have several thousand military records, sitting nicely in your local folder. Then, I have another script, which reads each record and puts the information I need into MySQL database.”
“Neat. You are a mighty hacker. I wonder why the CIA and the NSA are not after you yet. OK, OK, I am not going to tell them! Besides, I have no clue, how you have figured it all out… So what do you do next?”
“I use MySQL to narrow the search. Look for the Special Ops, Navy SEALs, Paratrooper Courses, and such. Finally, I end up with those few hundred records of interest. By the way, that time, the Pentagon replied something like five weeks later. They had six hundred and something hits on their list, and I had five hundred and ninety-nine. They have found five or six men, which were not on my list. Remember, I e-mailed you those additional names? But instead I have spotted three perfect candidates, who were not in the Pentagon's list.”
“And what about the majority of the records in both lists?”
“Identical! Only, I got my result one month faster.”
Mark remembered this list very well. Six hundred and nine ex-servicemen, who could have learned the special forces' skills. Mark asked Benito Ferelli to give the FBI six Police officers for two weeks. The Major could only spare two men, but for two whole months. For two whole months, they were going from address to address, asking the same set of questions. What did you do in the Army? Where do you work now? Do you have a standard-issue Army knife? The answers to the first two questions were somewhat different. The last one almost universally produced: yes, why do you ask? The problem was that back then the FBI did not know much at all. The knife and the polka-dot working gloves – all they could ask for. Although, Mark decided not to mention the polka-dot gloves in the interviews. They had too many information leaks, and he was concerned about potential copycats. The hope was that they could identify the men, who would get too nervous being confronted by the Police. If someone from the list would see the policeman and run away, it would be a possible hint for further digging. But – no luck. If the killer was amongst the listed men, he had enough guts to stay calm during the short interview. Another hope was that the perpetrator would hear about the Army knife and change his weapon. This would indirectly indicate ‘their’ man had been on the list. But – no luck again. The knife remained the same through the subsequent kills. Perhaps, ‘their’ man was not amongst the ones they had questioned. Or he anticipated the trick and left the weapon as is; ‘forensically aware,’ exactly as the profile said.
“Great, Tom. Who, do you think, may have the necessary skills from the military, and was somehow missed the last year's list?”
“The non-reports, for starters. Let say, somebody is properly registered in the other city, moves to Houston and never gets re-registered. In the Pentagon DB, his last known address would be invalid, and the AFCO and the IRS would be all in the dark. Although, it's not common for the non-reports to stay in one place for more than a year. Not registering in the AFCO and not paying taxes are both criminal offenses, so the non-reports move on to a new place each year or so. Or even more often.”
“We can ignore these for now. The Butcher has been with us for almost two years. What a mess. I wish he decides to move on to some other place.”
“Right!”
“Who else?”
“The ones who do not fit for service and move from another city. Like that Deputy Kim's girlfriend. Although, most of them would update the Pentagon record and the IRS eventually. The disability compensation payments, the prosthetic clinics, and such. Finally, in my pseudo-index method, I cannot identity the stale records in the AFCO, within one to three years period on average. The Pentagon DB would have them listed correctly, by definition.”
“The stale records – you mean, the discharged vets, still listed as on ‘Active Duty?’ As my William?”
“Exactly.”
“OK, we can ignore these too. As far as we know, the Butcher is not a vet.”
“Sure… Although, just a thought, sir…”
“Yes?”
“There is a fine difference between being a vet and being medically unfit for the military service.”
“For example?”
“Like having an internal injury: missing one kidney, or having a shrapnel fragment in your lung. Or infected with MDSV or DRTB. These cases would not be called ‘vets,’ at least by the regular public. But they are unfit to be in the Army.”
Mark nodded in confirmation. The HIV vaccination, introduced back in 2015, helped to control one virus. The enthusiasm from the medical victory was short-lived. The new sexually-transmitted disease, MDSV, or Muscular Dystrophy Syndrome Virus, appeared out of nowhere few years ago, and was steadily spreading. It was at least as deadly as the AIDS, and so far had no vaccination and no cure. The drug-resistant TB was another scare, although in Texas it was not yet as prominent as in some other states.
Now, the Government had no money for microbiology research grants. Hey, they hardly
had enough resources to produce and deliver enough of the well-developed vaccines! Twenty years ago, Polio was almost eliminated. The USA had been polio-free for good fifty years. Now the outbreak reports here and there followed in rapid succession. In their immediate neighborhood, there were two boys with paralyzed, twisted limbs – a grisly reminder of the major epidemic Houston experienced back in the Summer of 2024. Patrick and Pamela were not vaccinated at that time. Mark and Mary managed to obtain the polio vaccine almost a year after the outbreak began. They were not even sure if their kids had been infected, but just got lucky not progressing into the full-blown disease. Their family spent the whole year in constant fear. Mark recalled how Mary had to explain to their younger kids why they should not visit one particular house in their cul-de-sac, or play with those, who had a little fever, or even come near the unfortunate crippled kids, – the ‘spider-boys,’ how the others started calling them after a while. Now, it was the same danger period for little Davy. He had been on a waiting list for the mandatory vaccinations, but there had been no full-blown epidemics in Houston for a while, so he would probably need to wait for another year or so to do the shots. The limited supply of vaccines was sent to the places there they needed them the most.
“If you want, today, on my way home, I can swing by the AFCO and see if their sysadmins can output me a list of the purged records from their backup drives,” Tom offered, “tomorrow, I can use these to pseudo-index the Pentagon DB. This will give me most of the men, who we have missed in the original list. If any of them have been to the special forces, – you will have some potential names to check.”
“Only if you have time, Tom. The AFCO is what? Four, five miles from here?” Mark agreed reluctantly. The idea of going around and banging on the doors of the people sick with MDSV or tuberculosis was not too attractive. Yet, this was not an unreasonable suggestion. In the absence of any better investigation actions, this could do. He wished this list would not be too long.
“Not a problem, sir. As I said, for me, it's on the way home. Kind of… Besides, I need to see in person if one of the AFCO sysadmin girls is as cute as she sounds on the phone…”
“Ah, that's a good reason to cycle an extra mile or two. Even in the rain.” If only the rains would continue for a while, Mark thought. The Butcher never killed on a rainy night. Likely, because not too many couples would be in the woods, or the killer simply did not like the rain. “Meanwhile, do you still have the original records of the ex-servicemen? The ones you compiled last year?”
“Sure. Nothing is ever lost in the CSI lab.” That was not quite true. Half a year ago, one of the Station deputies had been caught replacing Heroin in the evidence bags with custard sugar. But indeed, Tom was excellent at keeping the computer data. “I have the list of all the possible hits from the East-side AFCO DB and the list of the ex-special forces I gave you last year. Which one do you want?”
“How large is the full list?”
Tom clicked with his mouse for a little while, opening the right file. “OK, all the servicemen from our area – just under sixty thousand hits.”
“That would be the ones who served full-term and returned with full set of arms and legs? Vets excluded?”
“Right. I'll dig through the backup files, and add all the vets tomorrow.”
“OK, got it. Can we find out how many of these men would be between five-eight and five-ten in height?”
Tom's fingers ran over the keyboard. “Fourteen thousand hits. And some change. Lucky us. Five-nine is an average for the adult male population, so the normal distribution plays against you. If you had a very short or a very tall man, this would work far better.”
If it took them two months to deal with six hundred records, going trough fourteen thousand would take… well, about three and a half years, Mark computed in his head. “Can you tell how many of these are well-built? Like our Russian Bear, let say, between 185 and 260 ponds?”
“Not possible, sir. The service records have the height and the eye color, and complexion, but not the body mass. Presumably, it's possible to get the medical records from the Pentagon, but we have no direct access to those.”
“OK, let's approach this from the other end. These six hundred records we had for the special forces' men, how many of them are between 5-8 and 5-10?”
“Easy,” Tom replied, running another query. “Three hundred and eighty-seven. You see, for the special ops, the distribution doesn't follow the general population. Those who are too short – cannot run…”
“…And those who are too tall – probably, cannot hide?”
“Right!”
“OK, give me the three hundred and eighty-seven lucky men. I will ask Ben to give me a couple of his deputies. At least, the next week's Friday, we can convince the Wash we are doing something useful. And yes, could you, please, follow up with the AFCO today, as we discussed?”
“Already on it, sir…”
Chapter 20
Mark walked back to his office, turned the chair towards the area map and stared at the spread of the color dots. The first time he included the map with the numbered dots in his teleconference PowerPoint after the murder number six. At that time, the Washington experts insisted that eventually they would see a doughnut pattern. Presumably, the serial killer would not commit his crimes close to home. On-foot, he would be able to reach a radius of ten, maximum fifteen miles, so the crime scene locations would indirectly point to the location of the perp's own home. They even suggested a special computer program which compared the travel times along each possible route to each of the crime scenes. Mark remembered, how Ben asked the expert how many more people need to die before the pattern could emerge. The answer was that the statistics would work reliably only if the number of cases was above twenty. Then, another expert pointed out that the suggested program was excellent for analyzing the movement in motor vehicles, along the paved roads. But now, people moved on-foot or on bicycles. The ‘shortcut’ dirt paths were everywhere. According to the second expert, eye-balling the map was better than using the pre-Meltdown program.
Now, after the case number sixteen, the pattern on the map was anything but the expected doughnut. The case dots peppered a ten by twenty mile area between the McCarty Road Landfill on the west and the Muleshoe Lake on the east. On the north, one case was reported at the corner of the Sam Houston and the Lockwood. In the south, two victims were found at the former Texaco Country Club, half-way between the Crosby and the East Freeway. The only pattern Mark could see was that the kills were always in the woods. That was in-line with the killer modus operandi: he was looking for the young couples dating in secluded areas.
Perhaps, they had to listen to the Washington and call in the volunteers? They could patrol the woods after dark, just to show the FBI brass something being done. Not very promising, and downright dangerous, Mark thought. How the Russian Bear put it another day? The members of public, after having few drinks too many, would climb on the stage and try to dance alongside with the professionals? Enough volunteers would come, no doubts. However, they would not be professional and would not keep their heads cool. There would be inevitable mistakes. Not too bad, if the vigilantes would catch and beat a petty criminal or two. But they might kill someone – a totally innocent person. Even worse, the Butcher might realize the opportunity and volunteer himself! He would be patrolling the woods, carefully learning what the FBI knew about him. And preparing his new kills. Besides the clowns, there were real experts in Washington. These experts were sure, there was no way to maintain the volunteers under control for more than a week, maximum two. No, Mark would go for the volunteers only if they had better information. Or no other options.
The rest of the day had been uneventful. A couple of telephone calls. Answering more e-mails. Writing an action plan. As Mark was cycling home, the weather was sad, with the drizzle continuing. While on the bicycle, he thought of the rational way of explaining himself, why Samantha should drop off from the school. It was anot
her mantra, his parents liked to repeat: ‘The education is a long-time investment.’ This was the absolute truth. A long-term investment. Unfortunately, after the Meltdown, the long-term investments did not work very well. If you had no way of guessing what and how was going to break tomorrow, how would you decide if the investment was worth it in ten years? It would be much wiser to learn on-the-job, one step at the time. So freaking nice, he though suddenly. I sold my fourteen-year old daughter to the 'Fill, and now almost convinced myself it was all good and proper.