“Beth, wake up.”
She remained asleep, still talking to herself. He tried a different approach.
“Special Agent Daniels, wake up.”
That didn’t produce the desired result, so he gave her a gentle shake. Her eyes snapped open, and she grabbed his wrist. Within seconds he was lying on the floor.
“Hey, cut it out!” he said.
She released him and shot him an angry look. “God damn it, Jon. I have a hard enough time sleeping as it is. Please don’t ever do that again.”
“You got it.”
He pulled himself off the floor and collected himself. Then he sat down on the couch beside her. He picked up the legal pad and passed it to her. She spent a long moment staring at what he’d written. She shook her head, not understanding.
“I was wrong,” he explained. “Our killers aren’t nurses. It took me a while, but I figured out who they are, and why they’ve evaded you for so long.”
“I’m listening,” she said.
“We missed several important clues, which I’ve written down. Let’s start from the top.” He pointed at the top of the page where he’d written DRIVING IN REVERSE. “One of our killers is trained in tactical driving. I saw him drive a van in reverse on a street outside your sister’s house in order to get away from me. The street had cars parked on the curb, but he didn’t hit any of them.”
“He could have learned that anywhere,” she said skeptically.
“I disagree,” he said. “I was a SEAL and also a cop for fifteen years, and I took my share of driving courses. I don’t remember any time devoted to driving in reverse. The only other person I’ve ever seen do this was you.”
“You think there’s a connection,” she said.
“Yes, I do.”
“It’s flimsy. What else have you got?”
He pointed at the second line on the page where he’d written TIMING OF FIRST KILLING/APPEARANCE OF PHOTOS. “Two weeks after you were promoted to run the Violent Crimes Against Children/Online Predator unit, the first envelope of photographs was sent to the FBI and given to you. That’s when the investigation officially began. Correct?”
She nodded. “And I’ve been chasing them ever since.”
“You also told me that profilers at the FBI’s Behavioral Science Division believe the photographs are payback because you escaped from the killers at Dartmouth.”
“Right again. What’s the significance?”
“Think about the timing of the first photographs. They appeared two weeks after your promotion. During those two weeks, the killers abducted a victim, kept her in a house, killed her, photographed her body, then dropped the film off at Walgreens to be developed. An employee developed the film, saw it was a murder, and contacted the police, who in turn sent the photos to the FBI. Each one of these things took a few days. If you back them up, it appears the first victim was abducted right after you were promoted. Call it the first payback.”
She spent a moment processing what he was saying. Then it hit her.
“The killers knew I’d been promoted.”
“They did. Which leads to my next question. How did they know? The FBI doesn’t issue press releases, and the names of its agents and their job titles aren’t posted on its website. I know because I tried to look you up.”
“They must have found out through some other channel.”
“What channel? Let me show you something.”
He took out his cell phone and got on the internet. Opening the Google app, he typed in “Special Agent Elizabeth Daniels FBI” and hit “Enter.” A page of links appeared on the screen, and he clicked on the first one. It was the story from the Boston Globe of Daniels and her team busting a child-trafficking ring and included her photograph and job title. It was the same story that had led him to finding her.
“If you go on the internet and type in your name and the word ‘FBI,’ this is the oldest story that pops up,” he said. “This bust in Boston took place three years after you got promoted. The information about your promotion wasn’t available for public consumption. Yet our killers somehow knew. They knew the day you were promoted, which led them to abduct and kill their first victim.”
She took a deep breath. “I admit, it’s a strange coincidence, but it still doesn’t prove anything.”
“There’s more.”
“Lay it on me.”
He pointed at the next line on the page. It said FUNDING. “You told me something interesting yesterday that I didn’t know. You said that every six months, the FBI reviews its active investigations and decides which should be continued and which should be put on the back burner. These investigations are also reviewed by the Justice Department. If an investigation has stalled, the funding usually stops.”
“Correct,” she said. “My bosses prioritize investigations based upon forward progress. If there isn’t any, the money dries up.”
“You also said that for the past seven years, your investigation into the Hanover killers has hit a wall every six months, and that you were just about ready to lose funding when another envelope of photographs landed on your desk, which led to the investigation being continued.”
“Correct again. The photos usually showed up a week or two before the review process would begin.”
“How many times did this happen?”
“Fourteen. If the killers hold true to form, the bureau will receive a new envelope of photos from a pharmacy in Fort Lauderdale in the next week or so.”
“That can’t be a coincidence.”
She shook her head, not understanding.
“The photographs showing up every six months was a ploy by the killers to keep your investigation going so they could torture you.”
“Where’s your proof?”
“My proof is that it worked, and it did torture you.”
“But how would they know about the review process?”
“I asked myself the same question. How could the killers know about the review process or how funding worked in the FBI? I did an exhaustive search on the internet and couldn’t find a single mention of it anywhere. The information simply isn’t available.”
“So how did they know?”
“They work for the bureau as field agents. Or I should say ‘worked.’ I’m pretty sure they’re semiretired now.”
Daniels rocked back on the couch and gave him a condescending look. “That’s ridiculous, Jon. The vetting process to become an FBI agent includes a battery of psychological exams that are meant to weed out people with mental disorders, which our killers certainly have. You’re barking up the wrong tree.”
“No, I’m not. And I can prove it.”
“You can prove these are FBI agents?”
“Yes. You may even know them.”
Her expression bordered on hostile. She had become blinded to the clues. It happened to even the best investigators when they spent too long working a case.
“Go ahead,” she said.
“Eighteen months before the killings at Dartmouth, two girls were kidnapped and murdered in Bedford, New Hampshire, which isn’t that far from Dartmouth,” he said. “There were a number of similarities between those killings and the Dartmouth killings. The victims were teenagers who were abducted coming home from work. Their bodies were also dumped in fields.”
“I’m well aware of the Bedford murders and the parallels to the Dartmouth killings,” she said. “On their face, they appeared to have been committed by the same killers. Only that couldn’t have happened, because the man responsible for the Bedford killings was a house painter named Clyde Bessemer, and he was caught before the Dartmouth killings started. He’s serving a life sentence.”