Strike Dog (21 page)

“Anywhere in the whole country?”

“Hell, anywhere in the solar system.”

“Some sort of geographic starting point, at least; location of the first killing or something along that line?”

He tried to remember the state where the first murder had taken place, but he couldn't. “Let me call you back on that.”

“Never mind,” she said. “There's enough in the way of unique factors here to get me rolling. I'll be back at you if I find something. You got your cell phone with you?” She paused and added, “You understand that the system has flaws? Some local agencies, especially in cities, don't enter all their current cases, and a lot of them don't have the funding or enough trained people to go back and log the old cases. The program started up in 1985, and most agencies have lagged behind since the beginning. VICAP is a great tool when it works, but win or lose, it's always a crapshoot.”

“Thanks, Shamekia.”

She laughed and said, “Stay safe,” before breaking the connection.

Service called Chief Lorne O'Driscoll, who answered his own phone.

“Service.”

“Are you still in Wisconsin?”

“Just back from Missouri,” Service said.

“What the heck is going on?”

Service described the cases and imagined he could hear the chief's blood pressure rising.

“Forty-nine officers?”

“Yessir.”

“Grady, I don't know what crap they're shoveling at you, but no such list came out of here, certainly not without my knowing. I'm telling you I would
never
release such a list unless the FBI director himself was standing here in my office holding a gun to my head—and even then the chances would be fifty-fifty.”

“My name is on the list, Chief.”

“
Dammit!
” Lorne O'Driscoll exploded.

“Sir, I'm thinking we ought to at least alert our people.”

“You let me worry about that,” the chief said.

“And sir, it was the FBI who asked the Wisconsin secretary of state to request me from Governor Timms. You want me to stay?”

“Why did the FBI do this?”

“Partly to protect me, but beyond that I'm not sure.” There was something else, his gut told him, but so far he couldn't get a nail into it.

“Do what you think you have to do, Detective. List, my ass,” O'Driscoll muttered with disgust before hanging up.

Service walked over to the main drag to join the sheriff at the ­Puddin-Et-Pi.

Thorkaldsson greeted him as he sat down, “You've got the look of a man with fresh dog shit on the soles of his brand-new church shoes.”

“Did you call the FBI when you found Wayno?”

“No reason to call the feds out of the gate,” Thorkaldsson said. “I got my people in to secure the site and called the Wispies. We rarely get homicides in this county, but when we do, I call the state first.”

“You don't know who contacted the feds?” Service asked.

“Not me is all I know. I assume it was the state,” said Thorkaldsson.

“When did the feds come in?”

“Monica was about an hour behind the Wispies, and her people swooped in an hour after that and took over,” said Thorkaldsson. “The Wispies musta known the FBI was coming because they just stood around and waited with their thumbs up their keesters.”

Service asked, “Special Agent Monica strike you as competent?”

The sheriff shook his head slowly and said, “Define competent.”

Service drove back to the encampment near the crime scene, hoping Shamekia would come up with some answers. Had the feds missed something? This was more than possible, he knew; the Bureau was the same outfit that knew some jerkwads from the Middle East were taking flight lessons with more interest in takeoffs than in landings, and did nothing about it. Shit happened in bureaucracyland; investigators blinded themselves with their own assumptions, and it didn't hurt to question everything, even with an agency with more assets than God.

In his experience the FBI and other government agencies tended to reach for an ICBM when a bottle rocket might better do the job. Maybe they had handled this just fine, but he needed to know, and so far what he was seeing was way below his own standards. Back at the camp he walked into a clearing, opened his cell phone, got three bars, and punched in Father O'Brien's number.

“OB here,” the priest answered.

“Service.”

“I gather you're okay,” O'Brien said.

“I guess I deserve that,” Service said. “But I got called out of state on a case and I haven't been back yet. Call my captain.”

“I already did,” the priest said. “I wasn't being sarcastic.”

“Do you remember a psychology student from your days at Marquette?”

“Does she have a name?”

“Last name is Monica.”

“Ah,” the priest said. “The indomitable Tatie. Sure, I knew her.”

“What can you tell me about her?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I can't say.”

“Pretty good student, hardworking, strictly out for herself, which is normal for students seeking higher degrees. What's she doing now?”

“She's an FBI agent.”

“That doesn't surprise me,” O'Brien said. “She had a strong interest in abnormal psychology and did a couple of insightful papers on serial killers.” There was a pause. “Is
this
about a serial killer?”

“I can't say.”

O'Brien remembered her. Good student. He felt disappointed, wanted to hear something else, only he wasn't sure what. “Aren't most students in PhD programs supposed to be more than pretty good?”

Long pause. “She was superb at memorizing facts but less strong at analysis.”

“In what way?”

“She'd get a notion into her head and not let go, even when her approach was clearly wrong.”

“Yet she got her doctorate.”

“She qualified. I was sure she'd never make it in a practice, but in the context of the FBI or a large organization, she'd do okay.”

“She did papers on serial killers?”

“Borderline obsession for her.”

“You remember which ones?”

“Sorry; it's been a long time, and I had a lot of students. My memory isn't so good anymore.”

“Anything else you can tell me about her?”

“I remember that she had a tendency to rely more on instinct than empirical data, and sometimes she tried to stretch miminal data beyond its inherent value to support her position.”

“That's it?”

“Martin Grolosch,” O'Brien said. “He was a killer in Wisconsin in the 1920s. He got caught by some people up near Hurley and they hung him before the authorities could intervene.”

“She was interested in Grolosch?”

“Like I said, it was close to an obsession.”

“Any idea why?”

“Sorry. Something about a minister in Rhinelander who hung himself.”

“I don't get it,” Service said.

“Me either,” the priest said.

 

“So . . . ,” Tatie Monica said from the trees. “The prodigal son.”

Service stepped toward her. “I talked to my chief. He says there's never been a Michigan list and he sure as hell didn't talk to you.”

“Semantics,” she said. “There are lots of roads to the same destination.”

“You want me here for something more than protecting me,” he said.

“We'll talk about it.”

“When—after my lungs are pulled out my back?”

He was not surprised when she didn't follow him.

The eastern sky was hinting azure when Service stepped into Tatie Monica's tent with two cups of coffee from the camp urn. She was asleep, an arm draped over her face, snoring a steady buzz.

He sat down beside her. “Wake up.”

She answered with a snort.

“Coffee,” he said.

She removed her arm and looked up at him. “I hate this outdoor shit,” she said.

“You're not outdoors. You're in a tent.”

Tatie Monica winced as she swung her legs off the cot and pushed herself up. She was wearing running shorts and rumpled gray T-shirt. Service held out a cup.

“What?” she asked.

“Too many question marks,” he said. “The only constant in this thing has been inconsistency.”

“You see what I've been living with for three years,” she said. “Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. I don't remember who said that.”

“From where I stand you look like the vector of inconsistency.”

“I said I've made mistakes. You haven't?”

“I try to fix mine.”

“Must be nice to have a job that lets you,” she countered.

“Where did the list come from?”

“I had our field agents talk to game wardens.”

“That's not exactly a scientific sample.”

“Fuck science,” she said. “It's vastly overrated.”

“Did you even try to approach state agencies?”

“A few, but they stonewalled me.”

“So you gathered the names based on gossip.”

“Don't give me any shit,” she said. “How many of you in Michigan?”

“One eighty or so in the field, two forty overall.”

“In an operation that size, everybody knows who the go-to guy is. All cops keep track; you know that: who's good, who's a liability. Walk into a New York or Detroit police precinct and every officer can tell you who their top cop is, so don't preach to me about science. The point is that the killer has validated the list by his actions. He's hitting only the top people.”

“Except in Missouri.”

“Spargo was the control. The conclusion stands.”

“You let a man die.”

“Your long-term ‘violets' don't know how to use the system against you? This guy sure seems to know ours. He crosses jurisdictions and uses time and geography to his advantage. The fact that we even found the first group is close to a miracle. The biggest problem we have sometimes is getting local agencies to cooperate with us. They want to hold on to their cases, can't see beyond what they've got. I suppose you've never held things back from other agencies?”

“It's a two-lane road. You're not telling them more, so they go with what they know.”

“Bullshit. The real problem is elected law enforcement personnel. They all want merit badges for their next election.”

He agreed, but this was off the point. He needed for her to focus. “How did you find the pattern in the first group?”

“VICAP,” she said.

“You mean VICRAP?” he countered. “I'm told it's not particularly useful in cases before 1985, and the older the case, the greater the crapshoot.”

Monica paused before responding. “That's partially true,” she said. “But rural areas are pretty good about loading their cases. It's mostly the cities that seem to lag, and where have our killings taken place? Not in cities. VICAP has its weaknesses and its critics, but it did the job this time.”

“Who actually found the first group?”

She took a sip of coffee before answering. “Micah Yoder.”

“A Milwaukee buddy?”

“Why are you asking this? You going to redo all of our work, check on us twice, like Santy Claus?”

“Your idea for me to ask questions.”

“Micah's not just a computer geek, he's an analyst, and VICAP was only one source. There are half a dozen other national databases. Do you think I made this up?” Her voice was rising.

“I'm trying to focus and get up to speed. You brought me in blind and the light hasn't been fast in coming.”

“Okay,” she said. “Let me back up. Micah
is
a computer nerd, but he's also more than that . . . a lot more. I've known him for ten years, and he can always find what I can't.”

“Like tying your Houston killer to LA?”

“Know how we learned he was in LA?”

Service didn't answer.

“The Houston killer took credit cards but never used them. We assumed he threw them away. But a Houston vick's card popped up in LA, and Micah was the only one who caught it. We checked all the suspects for the date and all but one had an alibi, and that one couldn't be found in Houston anymore. He'd blown town. I took the suspect's photo to the store that processed the card, the clerk made a positive ID, and the LAPD helped us take it from there.”

“Quite a story,” Service said. He didn't point out that if Houston agents had been keeping close tabs on all their serious suspects, they would have known the man was gone. Still, it was pretty good police work.

“In our business, networking supports luck,” she said. “You find good people and maintain relationships. They help you, you help them.”

“Any chance I can talk to Yoder?”

“Why?”

“Maybe I can use him for my network,” he said sarcastically.

“You really can be an asshole when you set your mind to it.”

“I haven't even tried yet,” he said. “I just want to understand how he did this.”

“Micah's pretty hard to see.”

“He works, right?”

“Not regular hours.”

“The FBI allows this for its staff people?”

“I never said he worked
for
the Bureau. I said he's an analyst and he's out of Detroit.”

“Has Yoder worked with Bonaparte?”

“Micah works alone.”

“You mean he freelances for you. The Bureau allows agents to use outside analysts?”

“You're suddenly an expert on Bureau culture and procedures?”

“The woman your boys talked to about being with the guy on the four-wheeler by the river that night?”

“What about her?”

“She and Ficorelli had a thing.”

“A thing?”

“A seven-year thing.”

“Jesus,” she said, “how did you learn that?”