“What does Brass say?”
“That it obviously confirms the linkage theory. There are references here to both strings, the detectives and the others. She and Brad were right. One offender. She’s now going with the Florida killings as our model. Everything that follows is just a repetition of the initial crime sequence. He’s repeating the ritual.”
“In other words, find out why he killed Beltran and you know why he killed the rest.”
“Right. Brass and Brad have been talking to Florida all morning. Hopefully, it won’t take long to get some answers and put the model together.”
Everybody seemed to brood over this for a few moments.
“We’re going to stay here?” Rachel asked.
“I think it’s best,” Backus said. “The answers may be in Florida but it’s static. History. We’re still closest to him here.”
“It says he’s already chosen his next intended,” I said. “Is that the next cop, you think?”
“That’s exactly what I think,” Backus said somberly. “So we’ve run out of time. As we sit here talking, he is watching another man, another cop, somewhere. And if we don’t find out where that is, we’re going to have another dead man on our hands.”
He pounded a fist on the table.
“We’ve got to make a break, people, we’ve got to do something. We have to find that man before it is too late!”
He said it with force and conviction. He was marshaling his troops. He had asked for their best work before. He needed it to be even better now.
“Bob,” Rachel said. “The fax makes reference to Orsulak’s funeral being today. When did this come in and where did it go to?”
“Gordon has that.”
Thorson cleared his throat and spoke without looking at Rachel or me.
“It came to a fax line at Quantico that is assigned to academy business,” Thorson said. “Needless to say, its sender used a masking option on the sender ID. Nothing there. It arrived at three thirty-eight this morning. That’s eastern time. I had Hazelton chase down the sequence. A fax call came into the general Quantico number, the operator recognized the fax beep and switched the call to the wire room. She couldn’t tell where or who it was going to because all she had was the beep. So she took a guess and switched it to an academy fax and it was there in the basket until this morning when it was finally noticed and brought down to the center.”
“We’re lucky it’s not still sitting there unnoticed,” Backus added.
“Right,” Thorson said. “Anyway, Hazelton took the original to the lab and came up with something. Their take is that it wasn’t a fax-to-fax transmission. It came from an inboard fax.”
“A computer,” I said.
“With a fax modem. And since we know this guy is a traveler, it’s not likely that he’s lugging around an Apple Mac on his back. The speculation is he has a laptop computer with a fax modem. Most likely a cellular modem. It would give him the most freedom.”
Everyone digested this for a few moments. I wasn’t sure of its significance. It seemed to me that a lot of the information they had amassed during the investigation was useless until they had a suspect in custody. Then it might be used to build a case against him for trial. But until then, it wasn’t much help in catching him.
“All right, so he has state-of-the-art computer equipment,” Rachel finally said. “What do we have in place for the next fax?”
“We’ll be standing by to trace any fax calls to the general line,” Thorson said. “At best we’ll get the originating cell. No closer.”
“What’s that mean?” I asked.
Thorson seemed reluctant to answer any question from me. Rachel stepped in when he didn’t.
“It means if he’s on a cellular we can’t make a trace to a direct number or location. We’ll get the city and the originating cell where the call came from. Probably at best that will knock it down to a search area of more than a hundred thousand people.”
“But we’ll have the city,” Backus said. “We’ll be able to go to the locals and look for cases that may serve as bait cases. It would only have to be a homicide committed in the last week. Just since Orsulak.”
He looked at Thorson.
“Gordon, I want another flag sent to all FOs. Tell them to check with the locals on any recent homicides. We’re talking about all the whodunits in general, but child cases in particular and anything with unusual MO or violent assault on the corpse, before or after death. Get that out by this afternoon. Request acknowledgment from SACs by eighteen hundred tomorrow. I don’t want it to fall through the cracks.”
“Got it.”
“Also, FYI, Brass suggested one other thing as well,” Backus added. “And that’s that the bit in the fax about his next target being selected could be a bluff. A design to make us react and scramble while the offender is actually slipping away, going under. Remember, it was the chief fear that we had about publicity.”
“I disagree,” Rachel said. “Reading this, I see a braggart, someone who thinks he’s better than us and wants to toy with us. I take him at his word. There’s a cop out there somewhere and he’s in the sights.”
“I tend to think that way, too,” Backus said. “I think Brass does as well but felt the need to put the other possibility on the table.”
“So, then, what’s our strategy now?”
“Simple,” Backus said. “We find this guy and arrest him before he hurts anybody else.”
Backus smiled and everyone but Thorson followed suit.
“Actually, I think that until something else breaks, we stay put and redouble our efforts here. And let’s keep this fax to ourselves. Meantime, we’re ready to move if something develops. We hope for another fax from our guy and Brass is working up another alert for the field offices. I’ll tell her to stress its importance to the FOs in the Pacific time zone.”
He scanned the room and nodded. He was finished.
“Need I say it again?” he asked. “Your best work. We really need it now more than ever.”
30
The meeting with the locals didn’t get under way until almost eleven. It was short and sweet. It was the kind of situation where the suitor asks the bride-to-be’s father for approval of the marriage. Most of the time it doesn’t really matter what the old man says. It’s going to happen. In carefully chosen, friendly words Backus told the locals that the Big G was in town and was now running the show. There was a little bit of posturing and disagreement on some particulars but they rolled over with the empty promises Backus made.
During this meeting, I continued to avoid eye contact with Thorson. While driving over from the federal building Rachel had explained to me the reason for the morning’s tensions between her and Thorson. The night before she had run into her former husband in the hotel hallway while leaving my room. Her disheveled appearance probably told him all he needed to know. I groaned when I heard, thinking about how it complicated things. She seemed to be unconcerned and viewed the situation as amusing.
At the end of the meeting with the locals, Backus divided assignments. Rachel and Thompson were given the Orsulak crime scene. I was to ride with them. Mize and Matuzak were to start backtracking on the interviews the locals had conducted of Orsulak’s friends and try to reconstruct the dead detective’s movements on his last day. Thorson and Carter were given the Little Joaquin case and assigned to re-cover the ground trod by the locals. Grayson would act as liaison to the Phoenix cops, and Backus, of course, would run the show from the field office, maintaining contact on other developments in the case in Quantico and the other cities.