Max Collins - Fate of the Union

Nichols said, “I covered that one. Perfect place for a murder. Twenty employees who mostly run machines and don’t talk except at breaks. Office is separate, away from the workers. Trucks bring material in, take product out, mailman, FedEx, UPS, people in and out all the time. If you’re a killer, here’s the beauty part — no security cameras. They have no problem with theft, so there’s no need.”

Reeder asked, “Robertson got shot twice in the head and nobody saw or heard anything ?”

“Factory noise there is pretty intense,” Nichols said. “Plus, the killer might have used a sound suppressor — some damn good ones available these days.”

Rogers asked, “But would a pro do that? A hit at a busy workplace?”

Reeder said, “A pro who has done his homework would do that sooner than some serial killer might.”

“There are exceptions,” Ivanek said, “but most serials operate under conditions they’ve thoroughly stage-managed — they like things wholly in their control.”

Reeder glanced back at the screen, then said to Nichols, “You went to this factory?”

“I did.”

“I take it Dunnelin Machine’s not the building in the Bryson SIM card photo.”

“It’s not.” She smiled, mildly embarrassed. “Sorry, I should have said that right away. No, Dunnelin is a smaller building, brick.”

Rogers could see Reeder’s wheels turning, though his expression itself was typically unreadable. But everyone seemed to sense he was mulling something, and all eyes were on him.

Finally he said, “Rule out serial killer.”

Ivanek frowned. “Mr. Reeder, it’s too early for that. We still can’t know that—”

“You can rule it out. Narrow your focus. This is a professional killer. This is a killer with a list. Your job isn’t so much to find the connections between these victims as it is how they got on the same kill list.”

Rogers asked, “Was Chris Bryson on that list, do you think?”

“A late addition.”

Ivanek sat up so straight he almost stood. “But the mode is completely different. A faked suicide by hanging is hardly a double-tap execution.”

“Chris was a special case,” Reeder said, “and required more than a lone killer to carry out the execution. The others got themselves on the list for reasons as yet unknown. But we do know how Chris got on there.”

Rogers said, “We do ?”

Reeder nodded. “He stumbled onto something that he recognized as something big, something bad. Possibly these murders you’ve been looking into... but I think it’s more than that. Chris was a fine investigator, with the same kind of top-notch training everyone here has had. If he’d run into a possible serial killer, he’d have gone to you guys at the FBI. Not pursue it himself.”

Bohannon said, “So what the hell are we dealing with then?”

“I’m not sure,” Reeder admitted.

Wade was shaking his head. “I don’t see how we can rule out a serial killer yet. Maybe your pal Chris didn’t come to us or the cops because he wasn’t sure what he had.”

“Agent Wade — Reggie?” Reeder’s smile was barely there. “Why would a serial who killed four victims in their homes — counting DeShawn Davis — break the pattern for this one vic, Robertson, and kill him at work?”

“Because Robertson had a family maybe.”

“Okay, but why not take out the whole family?”

Wade shrugged. “Not his deal.”

“All right... but why not choose a victim who was his ‘deal’? Not strike at the vic’s workplace, where the possibility of getting caught was exponentially greater?”

“No idea,” Wade admitted.

“Trevor,” Reeder said, turning to the behaviorist, “I don’t mean to tread on your specialty. But nothing’s been taken, no trophies.”

Ivanek said, “Serials don’t always take trophies.”

“Granted. But if this is a serial, how did he get so goddamn good, right out of the gate?”

Nobody had an answer.

Reeder turned to Bohannon. “You’ve said the entry-wound groupings are damn near perfect.” Then to Ivanek: “Does someone killing out of a need to fulfill a compulsion usually display that kind of skill?”

The behaviorist let out some air. “That bothered me, too. Most serials perfect their craft over time and out of experience. Assuming he hasn’t been operating elsewhere...”

“FBI computers would have picked that up,” Miggie said.

“... this guy is already good at his killing craft.”

“ Professional -level good?” Reeder asked.

Trevor nodded.

Rogers said, “Which brings us back to a professional killer with a list of victims.”

“It does,” Reeder said, and gestured to the flat-screen. “If Chris somehow tumbled into whatever these pictures add up to — and started looking into something suspicious — then we’ll find the answer in the three photos that he left behind for us.”

All eyes were on the screen.

Reeder continued: “We need to figure out what the black cube is... and what and where that building is... and who our blond man-on-the-street is. A potential victim... or Chris Bryson’s suspect? And it follows there is indeed a connection between these five victims... and my late friend’s murder.”

Luke Hardesy, who had mostly just been listening, said, “Mr. Reeder... Joe... we have been digging. What we have so far mostly falls into the negative column — victims who didn’t know each other or frequent the same places or live in the same towns. No work similarities, no social connections.”

“Understood,” Reeder said. “But something is there. And now with DeShawn Davis and, yes, Chris Bryson, we have two more victims to look at.”

“We?” Rogers said with a smile. “Sounds like you plan to do your typical brand of hands-on ‘consulting.’”

He grinned at her. The others in the room were almost surprised, because Reeder was usually so deadpan, and his smiles barely visible. Not this time.

“Patti,” he said, “you were looking for a possible serial killer, and I was trying to find Chris Bryson’s murderer. Those inquiries have clearly converged.”

She grinned back at him. “Should I say ‘welcome aboard’?”

Looking around the room, he said, “I was thinking of saying the same thing to all of you people.”

That got smiles and a few laughs.

Reeder and Rogers took seats at the conference table and they dug in, beginning with their new member briefing the team on Chris’s murder, concluding with the possibility that the blond man might have been last night’s attacker at the Bryson Security office.

Rogers said, “Even when our unknown subject deviated and killed Robertson away from home, he used the double-tap method. The faked suicide is an entirely new one.”

Reeder said, “Chris was ex — Secret Service. You don’t execute a former agent with two bullets in the back of the head without calling undue attention to the crime. Make it a suicide, and it goes away.”

“And doesn’t get connected,” Hardesy said, nodding, “to the double-tap killings.”

Nodding back, Reeder said, “And the ‘suicide’ buys the killer time to search out and find... and destroy... anything an investigator like Chris might’ve come up with.”

“It’s a workable theory at least,” Rogers said. She slapped the table. “So we see what we can find out about Bryson’s activities in the week before his death, and DeShawn Davis, too. Got to be something.”

Miggie chimed in: “Maybe I can help... Mind if I take your pictures down?”

“Go ahead,” she said.

Miggie used his tablet, tapped some virtual keys, and the photos were replaced by a grainy video image of a man in black walking down a corridor, doors on either side.