Dance Of Death

FORTY

Laura Hayward paced the small room like a caged lioness, glancing frequently at the ugly clock behind her desk. She felt that, if she didn't work off her nervous energy, she would explode. And since she couldn't leave her office, she paced.

She had spent almost the entire evening organizing the evidence from the Duchamp and Green killings, and cross-comparing it to evidence she had cajoled, pried, and bludgeoned out of the New Orleans and D.C. police departments. She had cleared her cork wall of all other cases and had divided it into four cantons, one for each homicide: Professor Torrance Hamilton on January 19; Charles Duchamp on January 22; Special Agent Michael Decker on January 23; and Dr. Margo Green on January 26. There were micrographs of fibers and hair, photographs of knots and footprints, abstracts of the M.E. reports, blood splatter analyses, photographs of the murder scenes and weapons, fingerprint reports, diagrams showing ingress and egress where determined, along with an embarrassment of other evidence, relevant or not. Pushpins with colored strings drew red, yellow, green, and blue connections among the evidence. And there were a surprising number of connections: while the M.O.'s were all quite different, there was no doubt in Hayward's mind the same person had committed all four homicides.

No doubt.

Sitting on the middle of her desk was a thin report, just in, from the top guy in the forensic profiling division. He had confirmed that the homicides were psychologically consistent and could have been committed by the same perp. What's more, he had prepared a profile of the killer. It was startling, to say the least.

D.C. and New Orleans didn't know it yet; the FBI didn't know it yet; not even Singleton or Rocker knew it yet: but they were dealing with a serial killer. A meticulous, intelligent, methodical, cool, and utterly insane serial killer.

She spun, strode, spun again. As soon as she showed Rocker that she'd connected the cases, the shit would hit the fan. The FBI, already involved because of Decker's murder, would descend like a ton of bricks. There would be an earthquake of publicity-serial killers always garnered big headlines. But a serial killer like this was totally unheard of. She could almost see the screaming 72-point headline in the Post. The mayor would get involved, maybe even the governor. It was going to be a mess. A god-awful mess.

But she couldn't call Rocker until she had the last piece of evidence, the last piece of the puzzle. The smoking gun. She was going to get raked over the coals, no matter what. The political fallout would be terrible. It was important she had all her ducks in a row- that was the only thing that could save her ass.

A timid rap came on the door, and she halted midstride. "Come in," she said.

A man holding a manila envelope poked his head in.

"Where've you been? I was supposed to have this report two hours ago!"

"I'm sorry," the man stammered, taking a few tentative steps inside the office. "As I explained on the phone, we had to run the match three times because-"

"Never mind. Just give me the report, please."

He held it out from a distance, almost as if fearful of being bitten.

"You got a DNA match?" she asked, taking the report.

"Yes. A pair of beautiful matches, blood from the box cutter and the spot on the floor. Both from the same individual, not the victim. But here's the problem: the DNA wasn't in any of the FBI criminal or juvenile databases, so we did like you asked and ran it against all the DNA databases. When we finally did get a match, it was in a federal database, and we had a major problem because of confidentiality issues and… well…" He hesitated.

"Go on," Hayward said as gently as she could.

"The reason I had to run the program three times was to be absolutely sure about this match. This is explosive stuff, Captain. We can't afford to be wrong."

"And?" Hayward could hardly breathe.

"You aren't going to believe this. The DNA matched one of the Bureau's top agents."

Hayward breathed out. "I believe it. God help us, I believe it."