Steven Womack - By Blood Written

As he stood there, a rush of fatigue came over him. He hadn’t slept well the night before, had been up since four A.M. in order to make the train to New York. He tried to sleep on the Metroliner, but couldn’t turn his brain off.

Maybe it was the anticipation of meeting Taylor Robinson; maybe it was dread.

Taylor Robinson’s assistant stepped back through the door and held it open. “Ms. Robinson can see you now. May I take your coat for you?”

“Thanks,” Hank said, handing her the coat.

“Would you like some coffee? A soda?”

Hank shook his head. “No, I’m fine.”

His stomach tightening, Hank stepped through the doorway of Taylor Robinson’s office and looked around. The office was much smaller than he expected, not what one would think would be the inner sanctum of a high-powered New York agent. The room was full of clutter as well: manuscripts piled high on the floors in haphazard stacks, books stacked against the walls over a worn carpet, cheap bookcases overflowing with books and more manuscripts.

Taylor’s desk was piled high with magazines, correspondence, stacks of paper laid on top of one another in layered pyramids. A window badly in need of cleaning looked out onto East Fifty-third.

Taylor Robinson stood up from her desk and motioned to the cheap visitor’s chair on the other side. “Please,” she said.

“Sit down.”

Her picture didn’t do her justice. She was elegant, he thought, wearing a sheer silk tan blouse over a camisole, a pair of dark designer pants with a thin, narrow belt, and a simple string of small pearls around her neck. She looked educated, well-bred, and well-tended, with almost a Ken-nedyesque air about her.

Hank sat down, crossed his legs at the knee. “I appreciate you seeing me without an appointment. I know you’re busy.”

“I’m confused, Agent Powell. It is ‘agent,’ right? Not ‘officer’ or something else?”

Hank smiled. “Technically, it’s Special Agent Powell. But we don’t have to stand on ceremony.”

She leaned back in her office chair and watched him for a moment. She was cool, he thought, completely professional.

“So I’m confused, Special Agent Powell. Why would you want to see me? What can I do for you?”

Hank tried to choose his words carefully. “Ms. Robinson, I’m going to ask you for some help in an investigation that we have under way. For some time now, the FBI and a number of other local law enforcement agencies of different types all over the country have been looking into the background of one of your clients. We’ve hit a wall and we need your help.”

If Taylor Robinson’s face gave away anything, it wasn’t much. She shuffled slightly in her chair, but never took her gaze off him.

“Is one of my clients in trouble?” she asked.

“That’s what we’re trying to determine. Several weeks ago, the New York Times published a series of articles-two or three, I think-on a serial killer who has killed at least thirteen women we know of. All across the country and one in Canada. He’s been dubbed the ‘Alphabet Man.’”

She shook her head. “No, I didn’t read them. I often don’t have time for newspapers.”

“I’m with a division of the FBI called VICAP, the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, and I work out of an office at the FBI Academy in Quantico. I’ve been coordinating our investigation into this person’s activities and I’ve been working with police departments in places like Seattle, Milwaukee, Scottsdale, Vancouver, and two places in Tennessee, Nashville and Chattanooga. That’s among other places, you know. Is any of this resonating with you?”

Taylor Robinson’s brow seemed to tighten just a bit, but again, Hank thought, she kept a good game face. She’s probably a shark sitting across a negotiation table.

“No, none of this means anything to me. Why should it?”

Hank leaned forward almost imperceptibly in his chair and looked her directly in the eye. “Ms. Robinson, virtually every serial killer does something to set his murders apart from everyone else’s. A common weapon, a motif, a sign, something … You look at a David Berkowitz killing and compare it to, say, a Ted Bundy scene or a Henry Lee Lu-cas scene; there’s no mistaking the differences. And while every murder scene is different, there seem to be common threads.”

Taylor Robinson’s face darkened and she seemed almost weighted down. “What has this got to do with me? I still don’t understand-”

“The guy we’re after has a very distinct signature that he’s left behind at every murder scene. In the victim’s blood, he paints a neat, almost artistic block letter somewhere in the scene. The first one was A, back in 1995 in Cincinnati. The latest two were L and M, and they occurred in Nashville just this past February. That’s how we know there’ve been thirteen.”

This time, Taylor Robinson’s face almost certainly gave away more than she intended. Hank sensed that she was beginning to get the message. Her eyes almost went into a squint.

“But wait, what’re you saying is that-”

“Letters, Ms. Robinson. The Alphabet Man. Get it?”

Her mouth opened slightly, her jaw muscles quivering.

“Just what in the hell are you trying to say?”

Hank let her hang there a moment, the silence between them growing heavier with each breath. Taylor Robinson stared at him, her jaw and chest tight, her hands on the desk, knotted into tight fists.

“What I’m trying to say, Ms. Robinson,” Hank said softly, breaking the terrible silence, “is that we think the Alphabet Man is your client, Michael Schiftmann.”

Hank Powell knew the next words out of her mouth would tell him what she knew.

The explosion came a moment later. “You’re crazy!”

she yelled, slapping the desk hard. Hank wondered what the young honors graduate English major assistant outside thought of that. “That’s ridiculous! You’re out of your mind!

And I’m here to tell you, Special Agent Powell, that if anything of this gets out to the media and you either libel or slander my client in any way whatsoever, I’m going to sue you from one end of the Earth to another!”

“Ms. Robinson, if I could just acquaint you-”

“You can’t acquaint me with anything, mister, unless the U.S. Constitution has been finally done away with in the past twenty-four hours and I missed it on the TV news.

We’re still presumed innocent until proven guilty, right?”

“Yes, of course, Ms. Robinson.” Hank felt himself slipping into a defensive mode. This was not what he expected. Protest was one thing, but this woman was ready to go straight to war. “But if you’d just let me explain.”

Taylor Robinson jerked herself up out of her chair and glared down at him. “You have wasted enough of my time.

I don’t have to sit here and listen to this insanity and I’m not going to.”

Hank scooted forward in the chair. “Ms. Robinson, if you’d just let me lay out some of the facts for you.”

“The last time I checked, the FBI manual didn’t have a swastika on it. You’re not the Gestapo and this is still sort of a free country and you are in my private space. I’ll thank you to leave now.”

Hank stood up. “Ms. Robinson, you’re making a mistake here.”

“Now,” she commanded, her voice lowering and stone cold. “If you don’t leave my office immediately, I’m going to call my attorney, and if he approves, I’m going to call the New York City police and have you arrested for trespass-ing.”

Hank stood there a second, helpless. He held out his hands, palms toward her in supplication, and pushed the chair backward with the backs of his knees.

“Good day, Ms. Robinson,” he said as he turned for the door. “Thanks for your time.”