Lisa Gardner - The Next Accident

Quincy nodded. Frankly, he was surprised the number was not higher. As profilers served a consulting role, each routinely juggled over one hundred cases at a time.

"That's a lot of people who may feel they have the right to be unhappy with you."

"Assuming they ever knew I was involved." Quincy shrugged. "Be honest, Glenda. For a fair amount of our cases, we receive a request by phone, get the case file by mail, and return our report via fax or FedEx. In those incidents, I have a hard time believing, the perpetrator's focus ever leaves the local homicide detectives who actively work the case."

"So weeding out those cases…" she prodded.

Quincy did the math in his head. "Maybe fifty-six convicted inmates."

"What about open cases?"

Quincy shook his head. "I haven't worked an active case in six years."

"Last year," she began.

He said quietly, "Henry Hawkins is dead."

Montgomery leaned forward, his elbows resting on the knees of his rumpled pants. The fluorescent light flickered, jaundicing his jowls, and Quincy found himself pondering the agent's presence once again. Montgomery 's expression was sullen, almost as if he was here against his will, and yet what kind of agent begrudged helping a fellow agent in trouble? That hardly boded well.

"Aren't we putting the cart before the horse?" Montgomery grumbled. "You got a bunch of calls. Whoopdee doo."

Special Agent in Charge Everett replied sternly, "The fact that an agent's personal telephone number was disseminated to over twenty correctional facilities is whoopdee doo. We don't need any more whoopdee doo than that."

Montgomery turned to the SAC. Quincy thought the disheveled agent would quit while he was ahead; he was wrong. "Bullshit," Montgomery snapped, making them all blink. "If this was something personal, if this was someone serious, the instigator would do more than pass along a private number to a bunch of schmucks behind bars. He'd visit the house. Or he'd arrange for someone else to visit the house. Phone calls? This is fucking child's play."

Everett 's face darkened. A thirty-year veteran of the Bureau, he was a throwback to the days when an FBI agent dressed, spoke, and carried himself a certain way. Agents were the good guys, the last bastion of protection against gangsters, bank robbers, and child moles-ters. Agents did not arrive on the job in wrinkled suits and they did not go around saying things like "fucking child's play."

"Special Agent Montgomery – "

"Wait a minute." Quincy surprised them all by raising his hand and saving Montgomery from a lecture that wouldn't be career-building. "Say that one more time."

"Phone calls," Montgomery drawled as if they were all daft. "The question is not who, but why phone calls."

Glenda Rodman sat back. She was nodding her head now. Randy Jackson yawned.

" Montgomery 's right," the techie agreed. "If it's a hacker, guy could get your home address from the phone company just as easily as your unlisted number. If it's just some person who happened to snag your number, they could still call information and get your street address from a reverse directory. Either way, home phone number equals home address."

"Wonderful," Quincy said. Somehow, he hadn't put those pieces together, another sure sign he was not himself these days. The dull ache was back in his temples. Morning, noon, and night. Grief was like a hangover he couldn't shake.

Why phone calls? The obvious answer was that someone was out to get him. Probably someone from an old case. Psychopaths were like sharks. They probably viewed his daughter's death as blood in the water and now they were moving in for the kill. So why not keep it simple? Move in. Attack. Finish him off. Hell, he definitely wasn't in any kind of shape for a fight.

Was that why he had gone to Rainie? Because he knew he was becoming too isolated? Or because he wanted to remember how to fight the good fight? Rainie never gave an inch, not even when backed into a corner. Not even when she should.

Focus, Quincy. Why phone calls?

"This is serious," Everett pronounced. "I want an immediate follow-up with the newsletters and Web sites involved to determine the origin of these ads. Furthermore, we need to figure out just how many inmates now have this information. We ought to be able to trace something."

Quincy closed his eyes. "So many grassroots newsletters," he murmured. "Big ones, little ones, and for all we know, he placed ads in all of them, which is a lot of work. So why…" His eyes popped open. He had it. Dammit, he should've thought of this last night. "Cover," he said.

"What's that, Agent?"

"Cover," Montgomery repeated for him, then grunted. He stared at Quincy with red-rimmed eyes that appeared reluctantly impressed. "Yeah, probably. Let's say this guy has your home address right now – which, by the way, he probably does. He goes after you tomorrow, we can hunt him down through process of elimination. But he spreads that info to dozens of prisons where the inmates will pass it along to dozens more… Now we gotta look at superfelons A, B, and C, their pals on the outside, and the pals of their pals on the outside. It's like a fucking criminal spider web. Well be tracking down nasties for years after your funeral."

"Why thank you," Quincy said evenly.

"It's true," Glenda chimed in, though she had the courtesy to look at him with more concern than Montgomery. "If something had happened to you yesterday, standard procedure would have been to investigate personal acquaintances as well as people from prior cases. Not an easy feat, but certainly a manageable one. Now, however, entire prison populations have your personal information. You could be targeted by any neo-Nazi who hates federal agents, any gangster looking to build a rep, or any psychopath who's simply bored. If something should happen to you now… The playing field is wide open. No matter how many agents were assigned to the task, we'd never wrap our arms around a suspect list this big. Frankly, it's a brilliant strategy."

"This is serious," Everett pronounced again.

As the one who was being targeted by some unknown stalker, Quincy thought he already knew that.

Glenda flipped through the file Quincy had put together. "In the good news department," she reported, "some of these newsletters are more reputable than others. If they ran an ad, it was because they received specs and payment by mail. If they've kept the original letter and envelope, we're in luck. We can trace the postmark back to city of origin, test the envelope for DNA and fingerprints, plus test the whole package for chemical residues, dirt, debris. On the other hand…" She hesitated, glancing at Quincy apologetically. "Prison newsletters are mostly grassroots journalism. It could take us weeks simply to track down every publication carrying the ad. And even then…"

She didn't have to say the rest. They all knew. Not all prison newsletters were really about journalism and not all were reputable. In the sixties, information was smuggled into prisons in packs of cigarettes. When the drug problem grew too big, however, correction departments across the country cracked down on all contraband by universally banning outside packages, including ones bearing tobacco products. Prisoners were allowed to receive only money, which they could then use to purchase cigarettes from the prison commissary. While it was unknown if this policy truly limited the drug problem, it did cut off the information flow.

Which brought the underground information network into the nineties and the miracles of constitutionally protected free speech. Prisons got computers, complete with desktop publishing software, and prison newsletters sprang up across the country. While some were small, many garnered national distribution. And the coded ad was born. Got some information you want to disseminate? Disguise it as a request for a pen pal, and pay five, ten, one hundred bucks to bring your message to the masses. Financially constrained? Some Web sites would now run pen pal ads and even build personal Web sites for inmates, free of charge. Just because you murdered eight people doesn't mean you shouldn't have a voice in society. Or a pretty blond writing correspondent named Candi .