P Tracy - Play To Kill aka Shoot To Thrill

'Happens all the time. I take it you didn't grow up here.'

'Southern California.'

'There you go. Anyhow, nothing happened on any golf course, either, which we figured would fit with the "hole in one" message in the post. But here's something interesting. On February 1st, about thirty miles north of Duluth, they found a snowshoer dead at the bottom of a cliff on the North Shore of Lake Superior.'

Magozzi said, 'Sounds like another accident to me.'

'That's what I thought, but then Ole told me the guy was impaled on one of those ice spikes they get up there when the wind blows into shore.'

Magozzi grimaced. 'Poor bastard.'

'Actually, not really, according to Ole. The guy did time twice for child molestation. A real scumbag, and I hope he suffered. Anyhow, the cop Ole talked to said it looked like somebody had taken a big donut holer to him once they pulled him off the spike. Colorful language, huh?'

Magozzi's face went still. 'Hole in one.'

'Exactly what I was thinking. Of course, there were never any suspects because it was ruled accidental, but given the guy's past, there could actually be a lot of suspects. They're going to beat the bushes for us and do interviews with the guy's friends, family, colleagues, parents of his victims, like that. Maybe something will pop to connect the dots.'

Chelsea was sitting very quietly at the table, looking down at her lap as she listened to two homicide cops talk horror shop.

'Are you okay?'

She glanced up to see Magozzi's look of concern. 'Fine.' She flipped open her computer, then pulled up a list of the pre-posts and spun the screen to face Gino and Magozzi. 'Look at these – exactly as they appeared on the message boards.' She watched their expressions change as they read and reread the list. 'Revealing, isn't it?'

'Hmph,' Gino grunted, squinting at the screen. 'Look at that. They all start with city of something, and they've all got typos in the same places. Like a signature, almost, which is pretty compelling support for my traveling-serial-killer theory.'

Chelsea gave Gino a look he couldn't read, but it felt like he'd been slapped by a kitten. 'You need to see all the films now. Watch them as if you were responding to the crime scene, investigating'

After fifteen brutal minutes watching human beings kill other human beings, Magozzi felt like somebody had taken a donut-holer to him. 'Jesus.'

Gino put his head down and rubbed his eyes, as if to wipe away the unpleasant visuals that were flashing behind them. 'No way all those were done by the same killer.'

Chelsea nodded like a teacher who had heard the correct answer. 'And the film I'm going to show you next clinches it.'

Magozzi winced. 'Oh, Christ. There's a new one?'

'There were two warning posts without a corresponding video showing up on line, remember?'

'Yeah,' Gino said. 'Our North Shore Popsicle was one of them.'

Chelsea flinched a little at the phrasing. Yes. The other was "City of Roses, Bert's barmaid, near deer," posted just last night, so Monkeewrench went after it full bore, thinking there might be a chance to save a potential victim. Unfortunately, they found the film on MySpace this morning'

Gino rubbed at his eyes again, half-hoping he could blur his vision so he didn't have to see too much. 'So why does this film clinch the multiple-killer angle?'

'For one reason: because the victim is still alive. You'll see the other reasons when you watch the film.' She pushed a key combination and angled the laptop so Gino and Magozzi had a clear view of the screen and she had a clear view of their faces.

Reading people and the acts of people was as much of part of Chelsea's job as it was any cop's. She'd always thought it was pretty funny that her superiors thought she was a genius at it. All you had to do was pay attention. In profiling you looked at what they left behind; with suspects and witnesses you listened to what they said, and watched their faces when they weren't talking. That's all there was to it.

She'd counseled enough agents when things went south for them to recognize the patterns you saw only in law enforcement types and military men. Those were the ones whose jobs mandated a kind of emotional lockdown that made reading their faces a real challenge, and Gino and Magozzi were better than most.

They both had their stone faces on, which was pretty common for homicide cops looking at a scene. Most of the time they looked as dead as the victims, with no giveaway facial-muscle movement, no nervous tics or lip-pursing, none of the blinking-neon-sign clues. But their pupils still dilated or contracted, and their breathing patterns changed, and those things told you a lot.

To the casual observer, Magozzi and Gino looked utterly emotionless, but Chelsea saw the signs of extreme tension when they watched Marian cross the parking lot; the stunned surprise when the attacker grabbed her; the frustration and the rage when they saw her tied to the bumper; and then the transparent jubilation when Marian kicked her attacker between the legs.

'Oh, goddamnit to hell,' Gino groaned at the end, when the blood started to flow. 'Goddamnit, goddamnit. For a minute there I thought she was going to walk away.'

Magozzi was shaking his head. 'I can't believe she survived that.'

'Barely,' Chelsea said. 'She survived the attack, but the doctors aren't optimistic about her surviving the next forty- eight hours. Right now she's comatose.'

'Are they copying you on reports?'

'Yes. The Chief of Police out there' – she consulted a handwritten note – 'Chief Frost, is in contact with Agent Smith, and bending over backwards to cooperate. This was a pretty shocking crime for that area, so he was more than happy to have some Federal help. There was nothing of note in the first-responder report; the bar is about a half mile from the closest residence, so there was no one around to see or hear anything. We have local agents assisting with crime scene, but no reports on that yet. It could take forensics into the night to cover the parking lot and the bar. If anything significant turns up, they'll give us a call; otherwise they'll fax all the reports when they finish up, probably tomorrow.'

Gino blew out a sigh. 'She's the first woman victim that we know of.'

'And the guy talked,' Magozzi added. 'None of the others did that. Not to mention that he didn't hang around long enough to make sure she was dead. This one was a newbie.'

Totally different from the others,' Gino growled. 'This bastard was into the fear angle. That's what gets him off. None of the others did that.'

Chelsea said, 'They all kill very differently. Take Cleveland, which was fast and obviously fueled by rage; then the Austin stabbing, where the wet work was excessive and slow, suggesting prolonged pleasure; then the Seattle shooting, completely hands-off…'

The Bureau's had these films for a while,' Gino interrupted. 'Didn't they already figure that out? I mean, I'm just a ham-and-eggs homicide cop, but it was pretty damn obvious to me.'

'Look at it from where they started. All they had was a couple of films, then a couple more. There are hundreds of homicides in this country every day. It wasn't unreasonable to assume that certain killers would start showing their home movies on the Web just like everybody else. We didn't know they were connected until Monkeewrench found all the pre-posts written in the same format.'

Magozzi stood and started pacing. 'Okay, so now we're pretty sure we've got multiple killers. And they're all religiously pre-posting details of their up-and-coming murders – location, method, and victim descriptions. Same pattern. So what does that mean? Are they communicating?'

Chelsea nodded. 'Maybe… in a way. The formatting of the pre-posts is like their secret code. If you're on these sites they're using and see the pattern, you know you're getting the real thing'