She needed him. Couldn’t lose him. “Wait. We’ll split it down the middle. Fifty each. Plus cover credit.”
He seemed to accept that. “I’ll be in touch.”
“They’re watching me. Someone might find out.”
“Leave that to me.”
“And we won’t be the only ones working on a manuscript.
Promise me you’ll pass along any information about subsequent crimes as soon as you have it so I can keep writing and stay ahead of the pack.”
“I promise. You’ll be the first to know about the next victim.”
He stepped into the shadows.
And then he was gone.
She waited for a few minutes until she heard the warehouse’s door close, then she pulled her digital voice recorder out of her purse and verified that it had recorded the entire conversation.
She would work with the profiler for now, but if she needed to, she would use the audio tape to keep him on a short leash.
Yes, it was happening. The story of a lifetime.
Things were finally coming together.
She immediately emailed three of the literary agencies she’d been in touch with and told them about the qualifications of her coauthor and about her personal connection with the last two victims.
After the emails went through, she left the warehouse to transcribe her conversation with the FBI profiler onto her laptop.
And she realized how much she liked the feeling of being in control.
A feeling she never intended to give up.
No matter what.
97
Tessa Ellis.
Tessa Ellis.
Tessa Bernice Ellis.
On every exam, she’d had to write her name. Her first and last name. And on this stupid chemistry final, her full name.
Tessa Bernice Ellis.
Her mom had complained that the day she found out she was pregnant was the worst day of her life, and then-surprise, surprise-decided to get an abortion.
So here Tessa was: stuck forever with the last name of the woman who hadn’t wanted anything to do with her. Who’d wanted to abort her.
Ellis.
As she thought about her name, it occurred to her that she hadn’t mentioned to Pandora that she’d read the story.
Later.
No big deal.
Just focus on this test.
But as she stared at her chem exam, her thoughts felt soggy and thick, and even though, normally, the finals would have been a total breeze, with everything that was on her mind, she just couldn’t concentrate. Her eyes wandered to the name at the top of the page.
Tessa Bernice Ellis.
As she scribbled down a few more fumbled answers, she realized that if nothing else, if nothing else at all, she at least needed to find out her real name.
But her mom didn’t use last names in the diary. So, how was she supposed to find out Paul’s last name?
Duh, Tessa: she stuck postcards in the diary. Postcards have return addresses.
Yes. It was possible “Two minutes!” her teacher announced. Tessa still had a quarter of the exam to finish.
She waded through the test questions but was still distracted thinking about the diary. She’d already decided that she couldn’t read anything else in that thing, I mean, what if her mom wrote about how much she wished she’d gotten the abortion in the first place?
The hall bell rang. “All right,” her teacher called. “Set down your pencils and place your tests on my desk as you walk out.”
Tessa joined the crowd of kids heading toward the door, turned in her unfinished exam, and went to find Dora in the hall to see if she could look through the diary after school to find her father’s last name.
I figured that the note John had left in Dr. Bryant’s house promising to complete the last three crimes tonight justified breaking a few FAA guidelines. So, despite the regulations prohibiting the use of mobile transmitting devices on commercial flights, I spent the trip to Denver reworking the geographic profile using my computer’s wireless access to the
military’s defense satellite network through FALCON.
We still hadn’t heard from Father Hughes, the priest who’d disappeared on Tuesday. And even though I couldn’t be certain that he’d been abducted, considering the timing and progression of the crime spree, I felt that his disappearance was too much of a coincidence to be unrelated, so I added his home, only two blocks from Rachel’s Cafe, and the location of St. Michael’s Church to the geoprofile. Then, I included the home and work addresses from the last two victims: Benjamin Rhodes and Professor Adrian Bryant, and the route Bryant had driven to the Denver News building.
Using the updated data, I analyzed the distribution and temporal progression of the crimes and discovered that the travel routes of the victims intersected in four geographic regions-near DU, Cherry Hills Mall, a section of downtown, and the neighborhoods surrounding City Park. FALCON told me there was a 58.4 percent chance he lived or worked in one of those four areas.
It wasn’t much, but it was something.
Most crimes occur at the nexus of opportunity and desire-the offender sees the chance to get away with something and acts. But John was different. With him, everything was premeditated. Everything was carefully planned. In fact, I couldn’t shake the thought that so far we’d only discovered what he wanted us to discover.
As I considered all of this, the advice I’d gleaned from Poe’s fictional detective, C. Auguste Dupin, came to mind: “It is essential for the investigator to understand his opponent’s intellect, training, and aptitude and then respond accordingly.”
That’s what I needed to do. Respond accordingly.
I typed three headings into my document and filled in my notes beneath them.
Physical description
Male, Caucasian, medium build, approximately six feet tall, athletic.
Training
• Drugged or poisoned at least six people. Knows lethal dosages/how to remove a human heart. Medical training? Medical background?
• Subdued Sebastian Taylor. Possible background in martial arts/self-defense?
• Knew how to distribute the hay and boards to most effectively burn down the barn. Diversionary tactics or explosives/ ordnance training? Arsonist?
• Blocked the GPS location for the phones he used to make his calls. Hacker? Military/communications experience? Intellect/Aptitude
• Broke into Taylor’s home and Dr. Bryant’s home.
• Picked the lock to the morgue. Skilled in disabling security systems, picking locks, locating video surveillance cameras, breaking and entering.
• Avoided leaving fingerprints or DNA. Forensically aware.
• Knew the location of Baptist Memorial’s video cameras. Access to blueprints or hospital security?
• Knew to ask for the Rocky Mountain Violent Crimes Task Force and that I was a member.
• Found out my unlisted phone number.
As I examined the list, I recalled Tessa’s comments about the Dacoits: to find them, the Indian authorities evaluated the most likely travel routes, studied land use patterns, and compared those with the proximity of the crimes to reduce the suspect pool.
Yes, reduce my suspect pool.
I still hadn’t had a chance to follow up on Jake’s surprisingly cogent suggestion that the killer might have access to the Federal Digital Database, so now I logged in and pulled up the access directory for all federal, state, and local government employees in the city.
Denver trails only Washington DC for the highest number of federal employees in a U.S. city, and I ended up with a huge list: 21,042 names.
But the list shrank exponentially with each of the search criteria I added: male, Caucasian, height between 5'10" and 6'2", weight between 175-190 pounds. Then I weighted the search with consideration to military or medical background, previous convictions, forensic and hand-to-hand training, inclusion on the suspect list, or residential or work addresses in one of the four hot zones.