“General—” she started to say, then stopped. The bright crimson droplet on the floor caught her attention. At first she thought it might be coffee she’d spilled earlier in the day, but it seemed thicker and redder. She took a paper towel from the countertop and bent down to dab it. She blinked at the way it smeared across the linoleum.
She rose slowly and noticed a whole string of deep red drops, each about a foot or two apart, reaching 6
James Grippando
from one end of the kitchen to the other. Most of them were small, but some were as big as quarters. The trail ended at the back door, which had a pass-through in the lower half that allowed her pets to come and go.
“General Lee?” Her voice shook with concern. Had he cut his paw in the darkness? she wondered. Was he hemorrhaging? Maybe he crawled outside to die in the weeds. In a panic she rushed for the back door, but it was locked and there was no key in the dead bolt.
“Damn these new locks!”
She raced from the kitchen, retracing her steps through the pitch-dark hallway and into the living room. Her breath was short and her heart was pounding as she neared the front door and reached for the keys in the lock, right where she’d left them. She froze.
The keys weren’t there.
She stared in disbelief. Her hands began to shake, but she was standing completely still when the floorboard creaked directly behind her.
She wheeled and gasped, looking straight into the eyes of a dark silhouette—a huge man dressed from head to foot in some kind of black hood and tight-fitting bodysuit.
She was about to scream, but his hand jerked forward and grasped her throat. His quickness stunned her. The strength of his grip made her knees buckle.
“I can’t…breathe.” Her voice broke as she fought for air.
“I don’t…care.” He used the same broken cadence, mocking her struggle.
As his grip tightened, the knife appeared. It hung before her eyes with the flat side toward her, and she 7
THE INFORMANT
saw her own terror in the eerie reflection. She could hear his voice, even make out a few words. He was talking
at
her, demanding something. The intense fear and pain made it all seem jumbled. The room began to blur. But the voice grew louder.
8
s
pecial Agent Victoria Santos was staring down the barrel of the gun, watching the marksman take aim from just thirty feet away. He was in the classic stance with feet spread wide, arms extended, and both hands on the revolver. His gun moved erratically from left to right; his eyes darted up and down. He had all the telltale signs of a nervous young cop trying desperately to get a bead on the man behind the hostage.
Her captor held her tightly with a knife pressed to her throat and one arm twisted behind her back. His breath felt hot on the back of her neck. The cop had kept him talking for nearly two minutes, but he was growing ever more angry and showing no interest in taking her alive.
“Drop the knife!” the cop finally shouted.
“Drop dead!”
“Drop it, now!”
The knife pressed against her jugular. A shot rang out.
9
THE INFORMANT
“Ow,”
she cried.
Deep, red rivulets ran down her forehead, onto her plastic safety goggles.
The lights came up in the packed auditorium as Kevin Price, director of the FBI’s Hostage Negotiation Training Seminar, tossed the rubber knife aside and stepped toward the microphone at center stage. He was a thirty-year veteran, gray-haired and ruggedly handsome. A dark blue FBI raincoat had shielded his striped tie and starched white shirt from the exploding mock bullet. “Thank you very much, Officer Crowling.”
The embarrassed volunteer placed the training gun on the prop table, then stepped quickly off the stage.
“The point of these crisis simulations is not to single anybody out,” Price continued. “Rather, it’s to show that in real life, it’s frighteningly easy to end up with a dead hostage. A face-to-face confrontation is one of the most volatile situations an officer can encounter. It draws on instinct, but also on proper training. It requires split-second application of some basic negotiating skills. There
are
right and wrong things to say and do.”
Victoria wiped the last vestiges of red dye from her forehead. “Let’s take a fifteen-minute break,” she said,
“and when we come back we’ll talk about some alternat-ives to shooting the hostage in the head.”
A light round of laughter rose from the crowd, followed by the hum and bustle of two hundred cops heading for two rest rooms.
Victoria removed her raincoat. The waterproof material had made her hot beneath the spotlights, but 10
James Grippando
she couldn’t feel too indignant—it had protected her suit from the pinkish red splatter. She smiled at Price as she rubbed the center of her forehead. “I must look like Cyclops.”
He stepped closer to check where the mock bullet had impacted. In two-inch heels she stood eye-to-eye with him—six feet even.
“A third eye can come in handy,” he said with a straight face. Then he smiled. “Seriously, it doesn’t look too bad.
I wish there were another way to give these demos authen-ticity.”
“It’s okay,” she said as she folded up the raincoat. “Let me ask you something, though. We’ve done this seminar how many times now?”
“Oh, geez. Six years, three or four road shows a year.
Probably thirty or forty times, I’d guess.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but why is it that I’m always the hostage and you’re always the hostage taker?”
A funny look came across his face, like he’d never really thought about it. “I guess I didn’t think it mattered.”
She shrugged. “Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. I just want you to know I can play both roles. Besides,” she said with a disarming smile, “I’d really
love
the chance to slit your throat.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” he said with a smirk.
One of the event coordinators emerged from behind the stage curtain. “Agent Santos?” she said. “You have a phone call. They said it’s important.”
Victoria felt sudden apprehension. For the past four months, she’d been the FBI’s task force coordinator in 11
THE INFORMANT
the multistate search for a geographically transient serial killer. By far, it was her most important assignment since transferring from hostage negotiation to the Child Abduction and Serial Killer Unit in Quantico, Virginia. Too often, an “important” message meant very bad news.
“You can take it in the office,” the assistant said. Victoria followed her behind the stage. They meandered through a dark path of pulleys, ropes and props until they reached the office near the rest rooms. It was a windowless room no bigger than a closet, with books and papers stacked high in every available space. The desk was so cluttered it might have been impossible to find the phone had it not been for the red blinking hold button. Victoria closed the door for privacy and picked up the receiver.
“Santos,” she answered.
“Pete Weston here. Sorry to bother you in the middle of your road show, but you told me to call as soon as I had anything.”
She rubbed the last bit of red dye from her eyebrows, then blinked hard, switching completely out of her training mode. Dr. Weston was a DNA expert in the FBI laboratory at headquarters, one of hundreds of experts she relied on for support.
“Don’t apologize,” she said. “Thanks for working a Saturday. Got my results?”
“Yes, but you won’t be happy.”
She sighed, but showed no surprise. “What did you find?”
“Well, I looked at the specimens from the Eugene, Oregon, scene first. You remember we had some drops 12
James Grippando
of blood in the bathroom, around the sink and tub, well away from the body. Unfortunately, I’m afraid you can rule out your theory that the killer cut himself and left behind a trail of his own blood.”
“How do you know?”
“On a hunch I compared the unidentified blood from Oregon to the blood of the other four victims—Cleveland, New York, Arkansas, Miami. I got a match with Miami.
He must have taken it with him from the Miami victim, or maybe it had just collected on his knife or soaked into his clothing. He could have frozen it to preserve it, then brought it with him to Oregon and sprinkled it at the scene.”
“He’s collecting blood now?” she said warily.
“In a way, yes. But it doesn’t mean you have a vampire on your hands. If you did, you’d probably have me examining blood from blenders and coffee cups by now.”
Victoria said nothing, though she tended to agree. From the psychological profile she’d helped construct, she already knew the killer was no raving lunatic spewing his own blood, hair and fibers for the police to gather in their evidence bags—the so-called disorganized sociopath.
Beyond that, though, no one was sure
what
they were after. The mixed signals were what made the case so baffling, and the thought of yet another dead end brought a knot to her stomach. “How sure are you about the match with Miami?”
“Virtually certain.”
“That’s certain enough for me,” she said. “Given the case history, I guess it was pretty unrealistic to 13
THE INFORMANT
hope for a break that big. Thanks anyway, Doc. You do good work.”
She hung up, then pushed aside a stack of books to sit on the edge of the desk. After a minute of thought, she dug in her purse for her Dictaphone.
“Saturday, January eleventh,” she began. “Lab results suggest further modification of profile. Savagery of attacks, level of carnage left behind at crime scenes, absence of actual sexual penetration continue to suggest disorganized qualities. Level of staging and increasing manipulation of evidence, however, indicates a keen presence of mind and well-conceived plan to taunt police and/or thwart the investigation, consistent with an intelligent and organized serial killer.”
She paused and took a deep breath, as if suddenly comprehending the size of their problem. She switched the Dictaphone back on. “In short,” she said solemnly,
“subject can be classified neither as organized nor disorganized. It appears as though we’re dealing with a unique sociopathic hybrid. One killer, with attributes of both.”
Church let out at noon on that clear but cold Sunday. A call came in to the Candler County sheriff’s office in Metter around twelve-forty-five. The clerical staff didn’t work weekends, but it was time to order new supplies for the detention center on the other side of the sally port, so Barbara Easton was working overtime. The Bible had taught her never to work on Sunday, but she was a nineteen-year-old single mother
14
James Grippando
who needed food on the table. “Sheriff’s office,” she answered in a polite southern drawl.
“Good afternoon.” The man’s voice was completely calm, lacking any sense of urgency. His speech, however, was thick and gravelly, seemingly disguised. “I want to report a homicide.”
“A
homicide
? You mean someone was murdered?”
“That’s the only kind of homicide I know of.”
“Where! I’ll call for an ambulance.”
“Too late. I told you: She’s dead.”
“Okay, uhm. Just calm down, all right?” She was fidget-ing with her hair, speaking more to herself than the caller.
“Are you sure she’s dead?”
“Dead sure. I’m the one who killed her.”
Her mouth opened but words didn’t follow. “You—”
her voice cracked, “you’re calling to report your own murder?”
“It’s not
my
murder, missy. I’m not dead. I’m the murderer.”
The patronizing tone gave his words even more impact.
Her hands started to shake, and her mind went blank.
“Are you—is this some kind of joke?”
“Let me put it to you as plain as I can, lady. The last person I talked to is now a bloody mess on her bedroom floor.”
A lump came to her throat. She’d been a secretary only a month. Her training hadn’t covered
this,
but her instincts told her to get him to talk to a cop. “Sir, would you like to speak to the sheriff?”
“I’d like to speak to
somebody
who knows what the hell they’re doing. Make it fast.”
“Just one sec.” Her shaky finger hit the HOLD button, 15
THE INFORMANT
then she dropped the receiver and peeled down the hall.
“Sheriff!” she shouted. “Come quick!”
Sheriff John Dutton was in the back, chatting with his deputy by the Mr. Coffee machine. He was fifty-two years old, fair-skinned and freckled with wavy red hair that was turning precipitously gray. Twenty-eight years of cruising in patrol cars and pigging out at the local Egg ’N You Diner had put an extra thirty pounds around his waist.
Barbara was panting and wide-eyed with panic when she reached him.
“Man’s on the line,” she blurted. Her chest was heaving as she tried to catch her breath. “Says he killed someone.”
He blinked in disbelief, but her eyes told him she was deadly serious. He dropped his chocolate doughnut on the counter and sprinted to the phone. A ringful of keys jingled on his belt loop, and his heavy thighs rubbed together to the tune of tight polyester slacks. He jumped in the chair and caught his breath. “Did he say anything else?” he asked quickly, before getting on the line.
“Nuh-uh. Just that he killed someone. His voice sounds kind of funny, though. Like maybe he’s disguising it.”
He grabbed the receiver, then paused and grimaced.
For years he’d been pushing for an upgraded phone system, but the county budget didn’t even allow for automatic recording of calls to the new 911 service, let alone to the sheriff’s office. “Fetch me my Dictaphone,” he barked.
Barbara scrambled across the room to his desk, rifled through a drawer full of pens, pencils, and crumpled 16
James Grippando
candy bar wrappers, and came up with the Dictaphone.
She hustled back to the sheriff, who picked up the receiver and switched on the Dictaphone, holding it by the earpiece. He cleared the nervous tickle from his throat and pushed the blinking button on the telephone. “Hello, this is Sheriff John Dutton. Who am I speaking to?”