Текст книги "Killer Profile "

Автор книги: Max Collins

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 13 страниц)

“We can be, if you’re coming by. I can cook us something, real quick, and—”

“No sale, Mom! Home-cooking another night. We’re going out. Tate’s driving, and we’ll be by to pick you up in…”

He glanced at Lorenzon who mouthed, “An hour or so.”

“…an hour or so,” Morgan said. “Can you call the girls?”

“I’ll take care of it,” his mother said. “It’ll be good to see Tate! He’s been way too long a stranger.”

“An hour then. Love you, Mom!”

He ended the call.

“That woman loves me like I was her own, you know,” Lorenzon said. “Always treated me like family.”

Morgan chuckled. “Much as you were eatin’ our food, maybe she thought you werefamily.”

“Ain’t my fault she kept inviting me to stay for dinner.”

She had done that many a night because Tate’s mother wasn’t always home. Both Morgan’s mom and Tate’s were single parents working hard to make a better life, but Mrs. Lorenzon worked a lot more nights than days and Tate had done more than his fair share of homework at Morgan’s. They had also found lots of ways to get in trouble together.

Glancing at his old friend, Morgan decided they had both turned out pretty well. They could easily have wound up going down the wrong path, but thanks to their mothers—and each other—they had stayed true to the way they’d been raised.

Morgan knew that very likely their UnSub’s family life had been far worse than either his or Tate’s. People who mistreated their kids raised people who mistreated others—sometimes such people took their rage out as verbal and even physical abuse on their own families; but sometimes that rage became something even more monstrous and reached out into the world, to make the world suffer, too.…

But one thing was certain: UnSubs usually had a lot more trouble in their family histories than Tate Lorenzon and Derek Morgan.

And as they wove through traffic, Morgan couldn’t help but wonder what kind of home life Jake Denson had had.

Chapter Six

July 30 Chicago, Illinois

   Supervisory Special Agent Aaron Hotchner had his back to the laptop screen when Garcia’s voice behind him called, "Sir?"

Hotchner turned to the flat screen, and for one odd moment he recalled watching the old I Dream of Jeannieshow on TV as a child—their computer tech’s pleasant, pretty face on a laptop screen somehow made her the BAU’s resident genie, capable of modern magic.

“You have something, Garcia?”

“Yes, sir. I think I found Bobby Edels’s car.”

“Where?”

“There’s a navy blue 1995 Honda Civic,” Garcia said, “with a vehicle identification number matching Edels’s in a lot owned by a towing company in Lincoln Park.”

“And where is that?”

“It’s an area of the city that runs from Lincoln Park Zoo on the east to Clybourn on the west, from Diversey Parkway on the north to, fittingly enough, North Avenue on the south.”

Hotchner couldn’t help but smile; Garcia always overdid it a little with him, and was more formal than with anyone else on the team, since she’d embarrassed herself in front of him, a few times, with her chummy, even flirty relationship with Derek Morgan.

“I’m sorry, Garcia. I meant where’s the towing company?”

“Oh. Sorry, sir. On Lincoln Avenue between Armitage and Dickens.”

“Do we know how the car got there? And how it escaped notice of the local police?”

Garcia brightened. “Yes, sir. It took a little digging, but I tracked that down.”

“And?”

“Bobby Edels disappeared on March twenty-first. The North Barrington police ran his plates the next day and came up empty. The car disappeared until this morning, when the company, Buccaneer Towing, filed to get the title of the car, so they could sell it. That’s how I found it. And that’s where it’s sitting– in Buccaneer Towing’s lot.”

“How could they file for title? What’s that about?”

“That means the vehicle has gone unclaimed for one-hundred-twenty days. And that gives Buccaneer the right to file title claim.”

“They’re an aptly named company.”

Her face on the screen froze a little; he could almost see a dozen quips passing behind those eyes, but because it was Hotchner, she wouldn’t share an “Aye aye, matey” or “Arrrrrr” with him. He was tempted to share one with her, but, truth be told, he preferred her in this more businesslike mode.

So he just told her, “Good job,” and signed off.

The area detectives were out in the field with Rossi, Reid and Morgan, running down leads. Jareau was upstairs with SAIC Raymond Himes going over logistical matters. That left only Prentiss, hard at work on the victimology of the crimes, in the conference room with Hotchner. He considered not bothering her and going upstairs to request an agent from the local office, but talked himself out of it.

Turning to Prentiss, who was hunkered over her laptop computer, Hotchner asked, “Interested in taking a break?”

Prentiss stretched. “When the boss suggests I take a break, I take a break. What did you have in mind?”

“How about taking a ride?”

Prentiss displayed her dazzling smile and said, “Let me guess—this is not an invitation to enjoy a gently breezy day in the Windy City. You have somewhere you want to go, and you don’t know your way around the city.”

Shrugging, Hotchner said, “It still qualifies as a break.”

“A break, or work away from this conference room,” Prentiss said. “Either way, I’m in.”

“Do you know where Lincoln Park is?”

“Yes, sir. Piece of cake.”

An hour later, they’d made the jog up Lincoln Avenue, past the Lincoln Park Zoo, and the legendary Second City comedy club just off Lincoln on Wells. Cruising northwest now, as they passed Armitage, Prentiss started looking for a parking place.

They were a block up and around a corner before she found one. The Buccaneer Towing lot would have been hard to miss, with its sign painted on the side of a junked car sitting atop a twenty-foot-high steel pole. The lot was surrounded by a seven-foot cyclone fence with canvas attached on the inside, in an effort not to be a neighborhood eyesore– meaning, someone figured a square block of seven-foot green canvas was somehow less of a blight than a lot full of parked cars.

A mobile home next to the lot’s front gate served as the office of Buccaneer Towing. Hotchner held the glass door open for Prentiss, then followed her in.

The interior design was 1980s metal desk chic. They stood temporary sentinel between the front door and a twelve-inch color TV and a coffee urn that were perched on a table against the back wall. Louvered windows were just clean enough to let in light but little more.

The desk on the left, nearer the door, was occupied by an Hispanic woman in her early twenties, her long, black hair pulled up in a bun; she had the high cheekbones of a model and the world-weary smile of not a model, and wore a black sleeveless button-down blouse and jeans. One the desk itself were a huge logbook, a telephone with five lines, a computer keyboard and monitor. The computer tower resided on the floor next to the desk, a mouse on the pull-out leaf.

The desk at right was recessed a foot or two from its twin and Hotchner’s reading of the setup was that the woman had secretary/receptionist duties, while the male occupant of this other desk actually ran the place. The male’s desk had a stacked in-and-out box, a newspaper open to a crossword puzzle, a pen next to it, and a phone. On the back wall, a two-way radio perched on a shelf.

The boss, maybe fifty and balding, had a squat, troll-like look, as if he’d hopped off a tall building, landed on his feet and compacted himself. He wore a white short-sleeve shirt and what was probably a clip-on tie, red-and-blue stripes.

Prentiss showed her credentials to the probable receptionist, who immediately glanced over at the boss.

“That’s okay,” Hotchner said to her with a trace of a smile. “We’ll introduce ourselves.”

Turning to the heavyset man behind the other desk, Hotchner again displayed his credentials.

“FBI—Supervisory Special Agent In Charge Aaron Hotchner and Supervisory Special Agent Emily Prentiss.”

The squat little man made no move to stand or to offer a handshake. His eyes held a cold but unconcerned suspicion. In an undistinguished second tenor, he asked, “What can I do for you?”

Putting away his credentials, Hotchner said, “To start with, what’s your name?”

The troll shot a look at his secretary/receptionist, then said, “Jake Guzik.”

Hotchner nodded. “Any relation to Jake ‘Greasy Thumb’ Guzik, the mobster who died in 1956? Sharing a name with a felon is no crime, of course, but maybe we should take you down to the field office, so we can fingerprint you just as a precaution.”

Prentiss was smiling just a little.

The guy patted the air in front of him. “Whoa, whoa, I was just havin’ some fun with you guys.”

Prentiss said, “Do we look like we stopped by for the matinee?”

“Sorry, sorry. Bad joke. Stupid joke. We don’t get the FBI around that often.”

Hotchner arched an eyebrow and asked, “But sometimes you do?”

Now their host wasworried. “I was just kidding around. I am glad to help you people. What do you need?”

The secretary turned away, possibly stifling a laugh, albeit probably not the laugh her boss had hoped to get out of her.

“Let’s start again,” Hotchner said. “Name?”

“Marshall—Art Marshall.”

“Good,” Hotchner said. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Marshall smiled feebly.

Prentiss said, “Would you mind if we sat down?” “No. That’d be fine.”

“Do you have any chairs?”

“Sure. Absolutely we have chairs. Consuela, couple of chairs for our guests!”

She said, “Yes, sir,” and rose and got them chairs.

The agents sat down.

Then Hotchner said, “Now, let’s talk about a car.”

“ Whichcar?” Marshall asked, suddenly finding himself on more comfortable ground.

Actually, that was a good sign: if Marshall were up to anything illegal with this business, Hotchner knew, the question would have unnerved him, not relaxed him.

Prentiss said, “A 1995 Honda Civic, navy blue.”

“Consuela, bring it up.”

The young woman, back at her desk, ratty-tat-tatted at the computer keyboard and the screen on her monitor changed to display a table.

“We have three 1995 Honda Civics,” she said.

“Three?” Prentiss asked, obviously surprised. “All navy blue?”

“All navy blue.”

Hotchner said, “This one was registered to a man named Edels.”

Consuela nodded, checked the screen, then took a sideways look at her boss. “We just filed the paperwork to sell that car.”

“We know,” Hotchner said to her. To her boss, he said, “Did you know the police had run this plate number as a missing car?”

Marshall shrugged. “I can’t keep track of every car that the cops are looking for. I stop at due diligence.”

Hotchner had not expected above and beyond the call of duty from the manager of a business self-dubbed Buccaneer.

Prentiss asked, “When was it towed?”

“March thirty-first,” Consuela said.

“Ten days after Bobby Edels disappeared,” Hotchner said to Prentiss. He asked the secretary, “Where was it towed from?”

Consuela read the screen again. “A private lot north of Davis Square Park, down by the railroad yards.”

“What was the car doing there?” Hotchner asked, as much to himself as anyone.

Marshall was shaking his head. “Not much down that way.”

Hotchner stood. “We’ll be calling in a crime scene team to take the car.”

Marshall frowned. “What about my money?”

Prentiss said, “You’ll have to settle for the satisfaction of knowing you may help catch a murderer.”

“You can’t eat satisfaction.”

Hotchner, with no expression whatsoever, said, “Skip a meal.”

They nodded good-byes to the manager and his secretary, and stepped out onto the lot.

Prentiss said, “That was pretty funny.”

Hotchner gave her a look. “Don’t tell anybody.”

Using his cell phone, Hotchner phoned SAIC Himes at the Chicago field office and arranged for someone to come tow the Civic to the FBI garage.

Hotchner said, “We’ll need somebody to finger-print all the Buccaneer tow truck drivers, too.”

“Not a problem,” Himes said. “What isa problem is we just got a call from the police department in Des Plaines. They’ve found a body in the crawl space of a vacant house at 8213 West—”

“Summerdale,” Hotchner said, finishing the sentence.

“How in the hell did you know that?” Himes asked.

“That’s where John Wayne Gacy lived.”

“You have got to be shitting me.”

“I wish I were,” Hotchner said. “We’re on our way.” He clicked off and punched in Rossi’s number, knowing all he had to do was give David the address, and the significance would be obvious.

Rossi said, “Morgan and I can be there in…”

Hotchner could hear Rossi conferring with the Chicago native.

“…an hour.”

“I’m with Prentiss,” Hotchner said. “We’re farther away, but we’re coming too.”

In a Tahoe a few miles away, Supervisory Special Agent David Rossi clicked off and pocketed his cell phone.

Shaking his head, Morgan said, “Gacy?”

“Yeah. The clown prince himself. Let’s shake it.”

Along with Lorenzon (who rode in the back), they had been in Chinatown canvassing the neighbors along Twenty-fifth Street, looking for anyone willing to talk about the house at 213. They had been there over an hour and were pitching a shutout—not a single person thus far had let them get past showing their credentials before the door closed in their faces.

The midafternoon traffic was light and Rossi watched with some admiration as Morgan wove expertly through it; in forty-five minutes, they were pulling up to the house of death.

Although untold misery had been perpetrated within, from the outside this was an unprepossessing brick-front bungalow with a picture window left of the propped-open front door, and a long, narrow driveway running up the left side. The gateway to hell had rarely looked more benign.

Several police cars, both marked and unmarked, sat on either side of the street, an ambulance backed into the driveway. The yard had been cordoned off with crime scene tape and several officers milled around outside. A nearly constant parade of personnel, both uniformed and plainclothes, made its way in and out of the front door.

Morgan parked and the two agents and the detective climbed out of the SUV. As they crossed the street, a plainclothes guy, obviously a detective, came out of the house and saw them. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with a block-shaped head with thinning gray hair. This obvious old-timer wore a suit that screamed Sears-off-the-rack, barely disguising the gun on his hip, and Rossi would have pegged the guy a cop even without his erect posture and swagger. Right behind the plainclothes veteran came a slightly shorter guy with brown, curly hair and a digital SLR camera hanging on a lanyard around his neck. He wore a maroon polo, black jeans, and black sneakers and appeared pretty fit. Another lanyard around his neck held a plastic ID.

The Old School detective instantly nodded in their direction and cut across the lawn toward them.

“Lorenzon!” he called in a husky baritone, as he neared them, the photographer trailing slightly.

“Andy Wallace,” Lorenzon said. “Haven’t seen you since that crazy asshole on the expressway, couple years ago.”

“That crazy asshole you shot, you mean.”

Lorenzon shrugged. “He didshoot at me first.”

“There is that. But tell me, Tate—was it worth enduring the shooting board?”

Lorenzon managed a grin. “You know, I think it was.”

“So much for nostalgia. What are you doing out here at thiscrime scene?”

“FBI investigation,” Lorenzon said. “Task force. And speaking of nostalgia…”

Wallace grimaced, glanced at the Gacy house. Then he nodded toward the photographer. “This is Daniel Dryden. Crime scene photographer with Cook County. Helping us out today.”

Lorenzon made introductions to Rossi and Morgan and they shook hands all around. Rossi explained to Wallace and Dryden about the copycat serial killer, the snail-mail photos to departments, and the investigation in general.

Rossi said, “We’ll talk to your chief about joining the task force. In the meantime, maybe you can get us caught up on what happened here.”

“Hell of thing,” Wallace said, shaking his head. “What kind of sick fuck thinks copying Gacyis a good idea?”

Rossi said, “That’s what they pay me to find out.”

They were about to get down to business when Wallace’s cell phone trilled.

He stepped away from them, answered, said, “No shit,” a couple of times, then clicked off.

He turned back to the task force members and said, “You guys were right. That was my captain– he told me he just got a picture in the mail.”

“Jesus,” Rossi said. “He’s not even paying any attention to the dates anymore.…”

Morgan said, “Definitely escalating.”

“This task force is growing faster than I’d ever want it to,” Rossi said. Then to Wallace he said, “Who found the body?”

Wallace said, “Meter reader. The house still has an old-style gas meter. Inside the house, in the laundry room. Reader had a key to get in and noticed the cover off the crawl space. He shone a flashlight down there, saw what he saw, then called us.”

“How did the killer get in here with the body?”

“Window in the kitchen in the back of the house,” Wallace said, gesturing. “He cut a hole in the window, slipped in, then unlocked the back door. It’s a quiet neighborhood. If he did it late at night, no one would have even noticed.”

Rossi asked, “Have you identified the victim?”

“White male, early twenties, no ID, still dressed, partially buried in the crawl space under the house.”

Morgan nodded toward the innocent-looking, nondescript bungalow. “House is vacant?”

“Has been, off and on, since Gacy,” Wallace said. “No one with even a vague idea of what went on in there has ever wanted to live in that house. Of course, there’s nothing vague about thiskilling– looks like it was done by someone who knew about the original crimes.”

“What makes you say that?” Rossi asked.

Wallace jerked a thumb at the bungalow. “I was a rookie when this went down back in ’seventy-eight and ’seventy-nine. I hadn’t been on the force six months when the excavation started. I hate this goddamn house. The body? To me, it looks like the killer, to pull this off? Hadto’ve been in the house with us back then.”

Rossi said, “It could be as simple as he saw photos. This thing was heavily covered.”

“Yeah, well, what we saw didn’t make the papers or any of the magazines or even the books about the case.” Wallace’s tone and his expression were grave. “He must’ve seen the actual crime scene photos.”

“Who had access to those?”

Wallace shrugged. “Really, just cop shop people.”

“From just around here, or Greater Metropolitan Chicago?”

“You know how it is, Agent Rossi. Cops cooperate. Somebody wants a look at famous crime scene photos, you show ’em.”

“But there’d be no record of who looked at them.”

“No. Nothing like that.”

Rossi and Morgan traded a wary glance. Rossi figured their UnSub would be a police buff, but maybe he was more than just a buff. He had never met this Wauconda detective, Jake Denson, but Hotchner had told him about the encounter. Now, Rossi wondered if Denson had some tie to their new John Doe, too.…

“Excuse me,” Dryden said. “But… I’veseen them. The photos?”

They all turned to him.

“And so have a lot of people all over the country, who have no connection to Chicago.”

Rossi frowned. “How’s that?”

“Well, I’ve seen the Gacy shots at forensic photography seminars, crime scene analyst seminars, and, frankly… if you know where to look… some of ’em are even on the Internet.”

Rossi sighed, shook his head. This news did not make their lives easier.

“We canvassed but got bubkes,” Wallace said. “This guy’s a ghost.”

Rossi laughed humorlessly. Then he said, “ ‘Even then the cock crew loud, and at the sound it shrunk in haste away and vanished from our sight.’ ”

Morgan’s forehead frowned and his mouth smiled as he said, “ Hamlet?”

Rossi gave up a rumpled grin. “It was either that or ‘I ain’t afraid of no ghosts.’ ”

After her meeting with SAIC Himes, Jennifer Jareau had returned to the conference room to find it empty.

This was not unusual. Though much of the public, and even some cops, thought what the BAU did was hocus pocus and that they sat in an ivory tower divining their profiles from crystal balls or tea leaves, the truth was they spent most of their time out in the field… which meant the media/police liaison spent a great deal of her time alone, or at least away from the rest of the team.

None of the agents had ever made her feel like anything less than a one hundred percent participant in the BAU, but it still nagged her, sometimes, that they were off busting their humps while she was sitting here in the office.

In her worst moments, she felt like the team mascot or the little sister who wanted to tag along and rarely got to. She worked hard and contributed to the effort, she knew that. Still, they were out in the field now.

And she wasn’t.

Going to her laptop, she hooked up a video feed with Garcia.

“What’s up?” her friend asked.

Jareau shook her head. “Everybody’s in the field.”

“But you,” Garcia said. “Listen, while you were—”

“Meeting with SAIC Himes?” Jareau offered.

“Yeah, while you were doing that, they got a call about another body.”

Jareau straightened, surprised she hadn’t been alerted. “Where?”

Garcia’s eyes widened, and—with much more melodrama than a mere address would seem to warrant—she said, “8213 Summerdale in Des Plaines.”

Jareau shrugged. “Oh-kay—what am I missing?”

Garcia stared at her a long moment. “That’s the former address of John Wayne Gacy.”

A momentary wave of nausea passed through her. “Great. Just swell.… All right, I better sign off, then. It’s going to get ugly around here. Uglier.”

“Sometimes,” Garcia said, “I’m very happy to be sequestered in my little domain.”

Then she was gone.

Jareau wondered why her cell phone wasn’t ringing itself crazy already. She snapped it off her belt to see if it was turned off or the battery’d gone dead. But the phone was on and the battery indicator read full.

The police, the media, someoneshould be calling her for help or a comment or something.

She continued to eyeball the device, confused by why it remained mute. She was concentrating so hard, she couldn’t help but flinch when the thing vibrated in her hand, and she almost threw it, reflexively, against the wall.

“Jareau.”

“Hotchner. You heard?”

“Yes, Garcia told me. I’ll get right out to the scene.…"

“No—sit tight. The Des Plaines Police are waiting for your call—they’re going to join the task force.”

“Yes, sir.”

“The victim at this crime scene is a John Doe, male, white, early twenties. Garcia’s working on the identification.”

“All right.”

“I guess I don’t have to tell you.…”

“That the media’s going to run wild with this? No. You don’t.”

Hotchner said, “Just a heads-up. I wouldn’t wish this on anybody, but I know we’re in good hands.”

“Thanks, Hotch.”

“We should be back soon,” Hotchner said, and clicked off.

The phone remained silent for almost ten whole seconds before it rang again. “Jareau.”

“Supervisory Special Agent Jennifer Jareau?”

She didn’t recognize the voice. “Yes. May I help you?”

“My name is Logan Brinkley. I’m managing editor of the Chicago Examiner.”

That didn’t take long,Jareau thought as she said, “What can I do for you, Mr. Brinkley?”

“I think it might be what I can do for you, Special Agent Jareau.”

“Please explain.”

A momentary pause. “I just received several photos via e-mail.”

“Yes?”

Again Brinkley hesitated before continuing. “They are very… disturbing.”

Jareau felt another wave of nausea, only this one hung on a while.

“They were photos of murders that have occurred in the Chicago area over the last few months– homicides that the involved communities have no idea are related. And it’s clear the policehave known.”

Jareau wondered how many other media outlets had been sent the pictures. The Trib? The Sun-Times? The television stations? The potential media onslaught was almost too much to consider.

The overriding factor, however, was that she had to tell Hotch. Not just to alert him that the media was going to be more intrusive now, but to tell him that the UnSub’s behavior had escalated.

Taunting the police was one thing; sending full-color press releases another.…

Managing editor Brinkley was saying, “The publisher wants to run all the photos in tomorrow’s edition, despite their… graphic nature. I can’t blame him, since the police behavior here is certainly questionable. Still, I managed to convince him that we should call the FBI first. So, here I am.”

“Running those photos,” Jareau said, “could seriously impede a federal murder investigation.”

“Please, Agent Jareau. How many times has a government flack uttered those words?”

“I can’t deny that,” Jareau said coolly, though the harshness of the word “flack” offended her. “I can’t comment directly on an ongoing investigation, of course… but it would be safe to say that any killer who sends pictures of his crimes to a newspaper is looking for attention.”

“Agreed. But perhaps, if we give it to him, he will stop.”

“Mr. Brinkley, how long have you been in the newspaper business?”

“Thirty-two years.”

“And in all that time? Have you ever heard of a serial killer stopping becausehe got attention from the press?”

Several moments crawled past. Then: “You make a reasonable point, Agent Jareau.”

“Thank you,” she said. “You seem like you want to do the right thing here, Mr. Brinkley. Perhaps we can work something out.”

“You’ll give us an exclusive?”

She wanted to say: How many times has an editor of some tabloid rag uttered those words?

But what she did say was, “I can’t make that promise, Mr. Brinkley—not where the public safety could be jeopardized. I do have an idea of how you can sell papers and not interfere in our investigation… and you can do a service to your community as well.”

“I’m listening,” Brinkley said.

“I can give you a twenty-four lead on one thing. Did you get a photo of a young man partially buried in a crawl space?”

“Yes,” Brinkley said.

“The victim is a John Doe. You can run a photo of his face with a plea for anyone who knows him to come forward and identify him.”

“I don’t havea picture of just his face.”

“You will. Our digital intelligence officer will send it to you while she investigates the path the killer’s e-mail took to get to you.”

Brinkley considered that. “And if I fight to keep your agent out of our computers?”

“First, our tech is smarter than you and smarter than me and you couldn’t keep her out with Bill Gates’s help. And second, you want to help us catch this killer—I know you do. That, Mr. Brinkley, makes for favorable press… and it won’t be limited to just your own paper.”

After a moment’s thought, Brinkley said, “Special Agent Jareau, I believe you have yourself a deal.”

“Thank you, Mr. Brinkley. Now, I have one more question for you.”

“Yes?”

“Did he send the photos to the other media outlets?”

Brinkley’s voice was subdued. “I don’t think so. Mine was the only name in the address box and there were no others in the courtesy copy box either. If he didsend the pictures to all the media outlets, would he have taken the time to send a copy to one person at each outlet, individually? That would take a lot longer than just spamming us.”

“I agree.”

“And if he did send mass copies, why send a singlecopy to me? No, Special Agent Jareau, I think it’s possible that he only sent them to us. Then again, it’s not like any other media outlet would tell me if they had copies of these things.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“You might put your computer whiz on it.”

“I might at that.”

“Now, Agent Jareau, if I may… one bonus question?”

“All right.”

“You haven’t told Chicago that there’s a serial killer out there—why?”

“It’s a policy of the FBI and the BAU not to discuss ongoing investigations.”

“Yeah, right, that’s the officialese,” Brinkley said. “But how long have you known?”

“Off the record?”

“I could do that,” he said.

“Because of the jurisdictional considerations, and the involved departments not sharing information until now? Two days.”

“Oh hell,” Brinkley said.

Jareau sighed. “That kind of response I’ve been hearing a lot lately.… Our digital intelligence officer, Penelope Garcia, will be in touch within the next half-hour. She’ll send you the picture and start tracking the e-mail, Mr. Brinkley. I want to thank you for your cooperation.”

“We’re not all in it just to make money, Agent Jareau. I’ve seen the photos and I would do everything I could to keep them out of the Examiner, but the last word here is seldom mine. As a concerned citizen, though, I want you to catch this monster and relegate him to some dark hole forever.”

“We’re trying to do just that.”

“Well, good luck.”

“Thank you, Mr. Brinkley.”

“And, uh, Agent Jareau?”

“Yes?”

“Sorry about that ‘flack’ remark. That was un-called for.”

“That’s all right. I almost called your paper a tabloid rag.”

He laughed. “You wouldn’t have been the first.”