Макс Коллинз - You Can’t Stop Me

Laurene said, “This isn’t the kind of case where a disappearance doesn’t get an investigator thinking.”

“No, ma’am, it isn’t,” the chief said.

“Like... maybe our suspect took her out.”

“On a date?” Choi asked. “Or just out ?”

Silence draped the room briefly.

“Either way,” Walker said, “we haven’t found the van.”

“Doesn’t feel right,” Harrow said. “He switched other plates and didn’t have any contact with the owners at all — why her?”

“Maybe,” Laurene said, “she caught him in the act.”

Pall said, “He’s too careful to get caught like that. He’s committed murders all over the country, for nearly a decade, and you could fit all the evidence we have in a drinking glass. He’s not going to get caught switching license plates.”

Laurene cocked an eyebrow and asked Pall, “You trying to profile this son of a bitch?”

Like all of them, Laurene believed in evidence, hard science — that was the team Harrow had put together, which notably lacked a profiler. The forensic sciences were Pall’s mantra as well — fingerprints, footprints, tire tracks, tool marks, DNA, chemistry, computer forensics, and firearms examining, these were the tools of their trade.

“I understand your desire to catch this guy with hard science,” Pall said, choosing his words carefully, Laurene being his other boss, and the camera rolling. “But, Laurene, we have to use all the tools we have at our disposal... and profiling is one of them.”

“All right,” she conceded. “But have you had the training?”

“Yes,” Pall said flatly. “It’s not a specialty, but what I said about using all the tools also goes for acquiring as many as I can. I’ve taken seminars with the best in the field.”

“Okay,” Harrow said. “Take a run at our man.”

“He’s a loner,” Pall said.

Laurene rolled her eyes. “ He was a quiet loner ,” she said.

“I know, I know,” Pall said, patting the air. “But this guy really is . They’re not all loners, you know. Look at BTK. He was married for thirty-three years, had two kids and killed ten people without anybody even considering him a suspect. John Wayne Gacy was active with the Chamber of Commerce — in Waterloo, Iowa , boss.”

He had Harrow’s attention. All of their attention.

“This guy though? He travels extensively, probably days at a time, in the case of the Placida murders. These are not targets of convenience — he’s picked them out and planned them. The victims are family members of a male civil servant. He didn’t just happen to be in Florida and open a phone book. He struck when the male wasn’t home in every case. That tells us several things.”

Carmen asked, “For instance?”

But it was Laurene who quickly answered: “Males weren’t the targets.”

Pall said, “Good.”

“He maintained surveillance on them,” Harrow added. “Somehow he’s chosen these particular families and scouted them well enough to know when he could expect to not run into the male.”

“Exactly,” Pall said.

Wincing in thought, Choi said, “It’s not just that the male isn’t the target — the killer wants to avoid that confrontation. He’s a chickenshit.” He looked at the camera. “If you don’t want to bleep that, I’ll start over... He’s a coward. He doesn’t think hecan take the male, no matter who that male might be, so avoids him.”

Pall said, “That’s my theory as well.”

Harrow asked, “Then, why the families of civil servants?”

Glances were passed around the chief’s office like a game of keep-away.

Carmen said, “He hates the government?”

“Join the club,” Choi said.

Chief Walker pitched in: “Then why not just kill the civil servant?”

Carmen mulled that momentarily. “Like Billy said, he’s a coward.”

“I’m not so sure,” Laurene said, shaking her head. “Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t... but even if he is afraid of the male, it’s more than that. He wants his victims to suffer.”

Jenny Blake spoke up, surprising everyone, including herself: “The victims don’t suffer. He takes them out with killing shots.”

“But they aren’t his real victims,” Laurene said with an awful smile. “His real victims, his primary intended victims, are the males. The survivors. That suicide in the Hanson case? It may represent our killer’s greatest triumph.”

The chief asked, “What kind of sick shit is this?”

They all considered the crude, profound question for several seconds.

Finally, Harrow — who had reason to know — tapped his own chest and said, “He wants us to suffer. Like he suffers.”

“ He’s suffering?” Jenny asked.

Grabbing onto this new insight, Harrow said, “Somehow he feels the government has made him suffer... and he wants the ‘government’ to suffer just as deeply. An individual like me represents the government — stands in for the government.”

The chief asked, “What could make him feel like he’s suffering as much as people who have lost their wives and children?”

“Maybe he lost his,” Harrow said.

The room fell silent and still.

Then Harrow said, “He’s someone who thinks the government took away his own wife and family.” He looked around at his people, one at a time. “We need to start looking for someone who fits that profile.”

Glancing up from his map, Anderson said, “Someone who fits that profile... and who probably lives in Kansas.”

“That’s why we’re here,” Laurene said, pointing to the floor. “The trail ran out in Kansas.”

Anderson moved to the chief’s desk and spread the map of the United States out on it, big black dots from the Sharpie showing the scattering of towns where attacks on families of civil servants had occurred.

“What do you see?” the blond chemist asked.

They all stood over the map looking down.

“Easy,” Choi said. “Bunch of black dots.”

“Try connecting them,” Anderson said.

His voice soft and dry, Harrow asked, “If you do... what picture does it make?”

“Several, sir. I tried spokes, I tried grids, I tried all kinds of stuff — then I got it.”

They watched as he drew a big circle that connected dots in California, Texas, Placida, Florida, Pennsylvania, the upper peninsula of Michigan, Rolla, North Dakota, and Montana.

Laurene squinted, then widened her eyes. “What the hell ...?”

Anderson drew another circle, this one smaller. It connected dots in Utah, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Texas.

“Oh,” Pall said. “ I get it.”

Garcia was frowning. “Well, I wish you’d tell me, then...”

The next smaller circle included Harrow’s town, South Dakota, Colorado, Oklahoma, and southern Illinois.

The next circle included Lincoln, Nebraska; Blue Rapids, Kansas; Garden City, Kansas; and North Platte, Nebraska.

“Chris, you earned your pay today,” Harrow said, then asked the others, “Does anyone remember Luke John Helder?”

Pall said, “The dippy Minnesota kid with the pipe bombs.”

“Right,” Harrow said.

“I’ve heard of that,” Laurene said. “I just don’t remember the details.”

Pall explicated: “Kid was a student at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. He planted eighteen pipe bombs in the Midwest in the spring of 2002. When he was caught, he confessed he’d set the bombs to make the pattern of a smiley face across a map of the United States.”

“Right,” Harrow said. “Only this son of a bitch is making a target .”