Anatomy of Fear

18

Agent Richardson handed Monica Collins a printout two inches thick, then took a seat at the conference table beside his fellow field officer, Mike Archer. “Active and inactive soldiers in the tri-state area,” he said.

Collins fingered the stack of paper. “How is it broken down?”

“Military divisions-army, navy, National Guard, active and inactive; New York, New Jersey, everything highlighted by color. Blue is anyone over the age of fifty, so not worth looking at. Yellow are active, but out of state or overseas, also eliminated. Green is active, full-time, which would leave little time for a homicide hobby. Orange are your badly wounded and handicapped, obviously not our man. Red are your psyche discharges, which I’m thinking are priority. Twelve hundred and sixteen of them. National Guard are purple.”

Collins acknowledged his work with a slight nod of approval, then slid the mass of paper back toward him. “Like you said, start with the psyche discharges. And see if anyone’s got a police record or done time.”

She turned her attention to Archer, who had an equally impressive tome in front of him.

“Current list of every art student and art teacher in New York,” he said, patting the papers. “Borough schools included, like Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, Queens College, and a place called P.S. 1 in Long Island City, which has an artists-in-residence program. I’m having a couple of Quantico interns go through everything. Off the bat we eliminated the girls. Don’t see our Sketch Artist as a woman.”

Collins nodded. Though she knew all about Eileen Wuornos, the serial killer about whom they’d made that movie Monster, and had read about others, women serial killers were still a rarity. “Stick to the men, particularly upperclassmen and teachers.”

“Right,” said Archer.

“This is all fine,” said Collins. “But it’s just a start.”

She spent the next twenty minutes going over each of the murders, the confusing issue of the three vics’ being of different racial backgrounds, which was uncommon, and the fact that the killing method had varied.

Archer displayed a photograph of the knife that had killed the college student, Rice, a detail of where the blade met the handle, the words WEAPON OF CHOICE clearly etched into the steel. “It’s a small mail-order company,” he said. “They advertise in the back of magazines like Soldier of Fortune. Problem is they stopped making this particular kind of knife six years ago and their files only go back five, or so they say. Even so, they were not happy to give up their client list, but I’ve got it.” He waved a fax. “Quantico ran the addresses. Ninety percent of these yokels have their weapons sent to PO boxes.”

“No surprise there,” said Collins. “Did you check out the ownership of the PO boxes?”

Archer nodded. “Got about a fifty percent return. The other fifty rented boxes under John Smith, paid for the month their weapon was being shipped, and that was it, gone. Paid cash, of course.” He sighed. “Interns are checking out the fifty percent that are checkable.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky,” said Collins, but she had a feeling their unsub was too smart for that. If he’d bought the knife by mail order with intent to do damage, he’d have covered his ass. Still, it was something to do. She’d report what they had found and what they were doing to her superiors at Quantico. They liked reports and paper and at least she had plenty of that. She was scheduled for an audiovisual hookup in a couple of hours, which did not thrill her; the idea that there were a whole bunch of agents in a room watching her made her nervous.

She glanced at her watch. “Locals will be here soon for the meeting. Let’s see what they have to offer.” She looked from Archer to Richardson. “This meeting is strictly informational. There’s no need to give them what we’ve got.”