Jonathan Santlofer - Anatomy of Fear

She turned her attention to Archer, who had an equally impressive tome in front of him.

“Current list of every art student and art teacher in New York,” he said, patting the papers. “Borough schools included, like Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, Queens College, and a place called P.S. 1 in Long Island City, which has an artists-in-residence program. I’m having a couple of Quantico interns go through everything. Off the bat we eliminated the girls. Don’t see our Sketch Artist as a woman.”

Collins nodded. Though she knew all about Eileen Wuornos, the serial killer about whom they’d made that movie Monster, and had read about others, women serial killers were still a rarity. “Stick to the men, particularly upperclassmen and teachers.”

“Right,” said Archer.

“This is all fine,” said Collins. “But it’s just a start.”

She spent the next twenty minutes going over each of the murders, the confusing issue of the three vics’ being of different racial backgrounds, which was uncommon, and the fact that the killing method had varied.

Archer displayed a photograph of the knife that had killed the college student, Rice, a detail of where the blade met the handle, the words WEAPON OF CHOICE clearly etched into the steel. “It’s a small mail-order company,” he said. “They advertise in the back of magazines like Soldier of Fortune. Problem is they stopped making this particular kind of knife six years ago and their files only go back five, or so they say. Even so, they were not happy to give up their client list, but I’ve got it.” He waved a fax. “Quantico ran the addresses. Ninety percent of these yokels have their weapons sent to PO boxes.”

“No surprise there,” said Collins. “Did you check out the ownership of the PO boxes?”

Archer nodded. “Got about a fifty percent return. The other fifty rented boxes under John Smith, paid for the month their weapon was being shipped, and that was it, gone. Paid cash, of course.” He sighed. “Interns are checking out the fifty percent that are checkable.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky,” said Collins, but she had a feeling their unsub was too smart for that. If he’d bought the knife by mail order with intent to do damage, he’d have covered his ass. Still, it was something to do. She’d report what they had found and what they were doing to her superiors at Quantico. They liked reports and paper and at least she had plenty of that. She was scheduled for an audiovisual hookup in a couple of hours, which did not thrill her; the idea that there were a whole bunch of agents in a room watching her made her nervous.

She glanced at her watch. “Locals will be here soon for the meeting. Let’s see what they have to offer.” She looked from Archer to Richardson. “This meeting is strictly informational. There’s no need to give them what we’ve got.”

Terri left the meeting with Dugan, Perez, O’Connell, and a headache. The bulk of the agenda had been how to manage the media. According to Denton, by way of the mayor, by way of the FBI, they still wanted a total blackout. No serial killer. No racial angle. Any crime that had to do with race, even hinted at being a hate crime, was incendiary. But trying to keep a story like this out of the press these days?

As if, thought Terri.

The work was to remain divided between the three precincts, each assigned to handle one of the three murders, thereby dispelling the notion that they were in any way related, though in actuality they would be tripling efforts and pooling information.

To Terri’s mind this baroque process would undoubtedly slow down the investigation. She had worked enough cases to know that the number of bodies working on it did not necessarily mean success, particularly if the bodies would be working out of different precincts and under separate commands. It seemed to her a guarantee for confusion, but there was nothing she could do about it. Her crew was on the Harrison Stone murder, the black man shot in Brooklyn, which was further complicated by the fact that the Brooklyn division still had official jurisdiction, another way to allay suspicion that the cases were connected. She wasn’t sure why the feds had not completely taken over, her best guess being they were short on manpower and wanted the NYPD to do the legwork.

Collins and her field officers had arrived late and tried to act like they knew nothing and everything all at once. Terri could see they were fishing but not sharing.

For now, she was just happy to be out of the meeting. She leaned toward one of her detectives. “You’re related to Cole in the Twenty-third, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, he’s married to my sister, a good guy,” said O’Connell. “You want me to keep up with what they’re getting on the Acosta case, that it?”

“We’re supposed to share information, right?”

“I hear you.”

“You can tell Cole we’ll share too.”

“So what did you make of Lewinsky ?” asked Dugan.

“Who?”

“The case agent, Monica, as in…‘Lewinsky.’”

Terri cracked up. She needed the laugh and appreciated it. “Nice,” she said. “It’s Lewinsky from now on.”

“What do you say we chip in and buy her a blue dress?” O’Connell said.

“With a big fat stain on it,” Perez added.

All three men laughed and Terri joined them, enjoying the joke at Collins’s expense. A rarity. The men working under Terri had rarely shared anything with her except their resentment.

Nothing like a common enemy, she thought.

“The G has more than they’re letting on, but that’s nothing new.” She dropped her voice to a whisper so her men had to move in close. “But so do we, and let’s keep that between us.”

Terri had asked me to join her crew after their meeting with the feds. We were on the third floor of Midtown North, a conference room between Terri’s office and Department Command. It had a view looking west over Fifty-fourth Street with a quarter inch of the Hudson River visible between a couple of high-rise buildings. I was feeling a little uncomfortable, Dugan and Perez eyeing me, their faces saying: What the fuck is he doing here? Perez, in particular, maybe because he was Puerto Rican and saw me as some sort of competition for the Latino seat, which was absurd, but what could I say? O’Connell was friendly, but he seemed a little drunk. When Terri had finished her recap of the meeting with the FBI, Perez finally came out and said it: “So what’s Rodriguez doing?”

“Making a sketch,” she said.

“How can he make a sketch if we don’t got any witnesses?”

“Some of the witnesses saw more than they think. Rodriguez is trying to piece something together.” She looked over, gave me a slight smile, and I returned it.

The detectives were all on last-name or nickname basis. Dugan was alternately “Duggie” or “Howser,” Perez was “Pretzel,” and O’Connell was “Prince.” I had no idea why they called him that. Maybe he was a fan of the Purple Rain pop star. None of the guys had a nickname for Russo. She was just Russo, though they probably had plenty behind her back. I could only imagine what they were calling me.

Terri reviewed the cases, stopping to ask her men for their opinions, a smart move. I’d seen enough to know that guys on the force didn’t much like taking orders from a woman, particularly one younger than they. She had this way of tilting her head and squinting when any of her men were talking, as if she was really listening. It could have been an act, but I didn’t think so. I was really starting to like her; respect her too. And there was another factor: She was sexy as hell in her tight black jeans and white blouse open at the neck, thin gold chain resting against her olive skin. I thought about doing some sketches of her while she walked back and forth, but was afraid I’d start imagining her naked and the way my drawings had been spontaneously creating themselves these days, I couldn’t chance it.