Snyder stood in back of the car and asked, “How’s your driving?”
“I like to drive,” Matt said. He’d read somewhere that the vast majority of people considered themselves excellent drivers. He’d worked in a police department long enough to know the actual statistics.
“Then the wheel is yours.” Snyder tossed him the keys.
Inside the SUV, Snyder arranged the coffees in the cup holders while Matt motored out of the Quantico campus. Snyder directed him onto Interstate 95, south, toward Richmond.
“I’ve been asked to do a threat assessment.” He took a surveillance shot out of a file and placed it on the dashboard between them.
Matt glanced down at a photo that seemed to have been pulled from a DMV record: a man with a round, ruddy face, a receding hairline, wire frame glasses, a stare halfway between blank and hostile.
“Wayne Gilman,” Snyder explained. “He’s come to our attention because of an anonymous tip that Gilman has been making threats against the Bureau and the ATF.”
Matt felt his pulse jump.
“He’s a resident of Richmond and he’s our surveillance target today. But for now, drink your coffee and keep your eyes on the road.”
Matt was buzzing with curiosity and anticipation, but did as he was told.
The freeway was lined with dense trees on both side, a relentless corridor of green.
He was used to the breathtaking coastal views of Highway 1, and the ever-changing pastoral meandering of 101. It was a disconcerting thing to drive a freeway of such sameness: no vistas whatsoever, just that impenetrable wall of trees.
Snyder spoke from the passenger seat. “I-95 is the main North-South interstate on the Eastern Seaboard. Or South-North, as it’s wise to say here,” he added wryly.
Matt had already picked up on the antebellum obsession. In fifteen minutes of driving, he’d already passed five or six trucks with Confederate flag bumper stickers. The one directly in front of them had a second flag sticker, a coiled rattlesnake with the words DON’T TREAD ON ME. He had to call up his high school history for the name of it: the Gadsden flag. Something to do with the American Revolution. He was wondering idly what the bumper sticker’s owner was trying to say when Snyder spoke.
“Do you know anything about the Dwight D. Eisenhower Interstate Highway System?”
“Not really, sir,” Matt replied, and felt a stab of anxiety. Am I supposed to?
Snyder smiled faintly, as if reading his thoughts. “You’re not going to find it on any written test. But this job is going to take you all over the country. You’ll be dropped at a second’s notice into a completely unfamiliar state, and you’ll need to make your way.”
Matt felt a quiet thrill that Snyder was talking as if he was already an agent. He had to force himself to concentrate on the veteran’s next words.
“There’s a precision to the numerology of the interstate system. If you know the numbers, you can always get a quick sense of where you are and how to get to the next place you need to be. We’re on I-95, the major interstate of the Eastern Seaboard, traversing from Miami to New York City, parallel to the Atlantic Coast, and serving most of the major Eastern cities in between: Jacksonville, Savannah, Richmond, DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston. Odd interstate numbers mean a North-South route across the length of the country; the even-numbered highways are West-East across the width, starting with I-5, which you will be familiar with…”
“Oh, wow,” Matt said. He felt like he’d just been given the keys to the country… and simultaneously like an idiot for never having seen it. Highway 1 was the California coast road, Pacific Coast Highway. I-5 was the main interstate through the middle of California. And if I-95 was parallel to the Atlantic coast….
“So the interstates go up by multiples of five across the whole country? 5 to 95?”
Snyder nodded, looking pleased. “There isn’t one for every multiple of five. But they ones that are there, yes, they’re divisible by five, in ascending order.”
Matt had never stopped to think that there was an actual plan. He drove in silence through the green corridor, marveling at how useful that information was going to be, as Snyder continued.
“The interstate system may actually have contributed to the rise of the modern serial killer. It certainly made hunting easier for serial rapists. These men could suddenly move freely around the country. The anonymity of travel and the constant crossing of jurisdictions makes it far harder to catch them.”
Roarke stared out the windshield at the dense trees. He could imagine another Green River Killer operating here. Stopping to pick up a truck stop prostitute or a lone female traveler…
The thought was a stab of unease.
Who would ever find a body in these woods?
Chapter 23
Quantico, Virginia -June 2005
Matt
On the beach she had decided she would take I-95 all the way up the East Coast to the Canadian border.
But driving it is another story entirely. The freeway is densely traveled and monotonous, mile upon mile of wooded corridor. The trees are ominous; there is no way to see if anyone is coming. It is a cold and anxious feeling. In just a few hours of travel, she is longing for the breathtaking vistas of the West. Worse, she sees few women travelers in cars on their own, and she feels constantly under a spotlight. The pickup trucks with their Confederate flags and NRA bumper stickers make her queasy. She is afraid to stop even for gas, where she is watched by unsmiling men as she fuels up.
She considers abandoning the South-North route and turning back at 64 to head for the wide-open spaces of the West. But that non-major highway will take her through even more back woods. Best to stick to major corridors. Surely she will be more anonymous in the cities.
She resolves she will make it as far as New York, then head west on I-80, ending in San Francisco.
But later that day the plan changes.
It begins when she must make another pit stop for gas, which entails driving off the highway into that endless maze of trees. Southern gas stations seem to be further off the main highways than in other parts of the country.
She fills her tank without incident and is just driving back to the interstate when a monstrous truck, an old Ford, pulls up beside her.
The humidity outside is so oppressive she has removed her cap, and her hair gives her away.
The truck slows to keep pace with her, and several men inside the truck stare into her truck at her, a lone girl-woman, driving.
She accelerates.
The truck pulls up alongside her again.
This time, one of the men inside, a sweaty round-faced man with wire frame glasses, lifts a shotgun so that she can see it, and caresses it lewdly, licking his lips at her. The other men laugh.
It is not the only firearm they have in the truck, she is sure.
And there is no one on the road to prevent anything they intend to do.
Chapter 24
I-95, Virginia - June 2005
Matt
As Matt stared into the wall of trees, enmeshed in thoughts of serial killers, Snyder spoke abruptly. “I know that you’ve come here hoping to work Behavioral Sciences.”
Matt glanced away from the road, startled. Again, Snyder seemed to have read his thoughts.
“It’s clear in your choice of major, your course selection, your psychiatric internship. I also read your thesis on Ridgeway.”
Now Matt felt almost spied on, stripped bare. The same year Matt had begun college, Gary Ridgeway, aka the Green River Killer, was finally arrested and charged for more than four dozen homicides of prostitutes in the Seattle-Tacoma area of Washington State. Matt had done his senior thesis on the use of new advances in DNA technology in Ridgeway’s apprehension.
“2001,” Snyder said. “A banner year in the advance in use of DNA technology. And of course, the year of the 9/11 attacks.” He turned in the passenger seat and looked at Matt directly. “That year the Bureau radically changed direc
tion and focus. You need to know this, Matthew. Behavioral Science, the division you’ve obviously grown up learning a great deal about, and pinning your hopes on joining, is being cut to the bone. Since 9/11 the Bureau’s focus has been on counter-terrorism. Budgets have been slashed. Agents have been reassigned. Prospective agents will be selected according to the new criteria.”
Matt felt a sinking sensation. What’s he trying to tell me? That I’m not going to make it into the Bureau?
“It’s a rising tide and virtually unstoppable in this political climate,” Snyder continued.
Matt hazarded a guess. “But… you don’t agree?”
Snyder looked bleak. “It’s the way of the world, to focus on outside threats, to cast the Other as the enemy, rather than to look for the monster within. Shadow projection, Jung would call it. Not to mention that the politics of it have very little to do with social good.”
Matt was fielding a barrage of feelings. Disappointment, anger, confusion. “But—what are you going to do?”
Snyder half-smiled. “We keep doing the same work and call it by different names.”
A thrill rippled through Matt at the “We.”
“Violent crimes against persons won’t stop because we’ve chosen to look outside ourselves for our enemies. Crimes within the family unit, for example. One in ten children will be sexually abused by the age of eighteen. Twenty percent of those will be abused before the age of eight. Twenty-three percent are abused by family members. These are only the identified cases. The estimate is that sixty percent of victims will never report.”
Matt was vaguely aware of the math. It was sickening.
“I believe that in a truly moral nation, the eradication of these atrocities should be a top priority.”
Matt had never heard that idea spoken so plainly. “I agree,” he said. What he’d seen in his brief stint with the SLO police department was an ongoing, depressing game of whack-a-mole. “But how do you even…” He didn’t know how to end the sentence, and felt the familiar, sickening surge of frustration. How do you start? How do you make people care?
Snyder answered his question without being asked. “I’m working on a correlation between these domestic abuses—child sexual abuse and domestic battery—and violence that’s perpetrated outside the home. It’s part of what we’ll be looking at today.”
Matt was dying to ask what he meant, but Snyder was on a roll.
“Domestic violence and child abuse are excellent predictors of other violent, aberrant behavior. If we can establish familial abuse as a marker for other, more visible crimes, I believe law enforcement and the world at large will pay more attention to those intimate abuses.”
Matt gripped the wheel. “But—that’s so easy.”
“And yet there’s a deeply ingrained national reluctance to prosecute rape and child abuse. Partly patriarchal. Partly religious. But there’s a larger problem with ViCAP. At present only one and a half percent of violent crimes are making it into the database.”
For a moment Matt was certain he’d heard wrong. He’d been reading about the ViCAP system for years.
Snyder glanced at Matt’s face, and read his mind. “You thought that ViCAP was the cutting edge of nationwide law enforcement? It’s sold that way. Excellent public relations job. The truth is, the database is almost entirely unused.”
Matt stared out at the road, stunned. Snyder’s voice was grim. “And because of that, almost ninety-nine percent of identified violent predators aren’t being tracked at all.”
Chapter 25
I-95, Virginia - June 2005
Cara
She grips the steering wheel of her truck as the driver of the red truck steers his vehicle right beside hers. The sides of the trucks scrape in a scream of metal.
She slams the gas pedal to the floor and manages to pull ahead, breathing shallowly through fear and rage.
She takes a quick glance in the rear-view mirror. Behind her, the truck is accelerating, gaining. The driver and the man in the passenger seat are laughing, leaning forward…
Her heart hammers in her chest.
No. Never.
She breathes in, scans the road in front of her, and sets her intention. It is a terrible risk, not one for anyone to take who is not willing to die.
She is willing to die.
Then she lets them draw up beside her once more… her eyes flicking from the rear-view mirror to the side mirror… watching… waiting…
The truck is side by side with her now…
She grips the steering wheel and swerves. Hard.
There is a thud and another shriek of metal as her truck plows against the side of theirs. She holds tight to the steering wheel, her arms locked, keeping her vehicle hard against the side of the other truck. And then quickly twists the wheel the other way at the sudden release of friction… as their truck runs itself into a ditch.
She straightens her truck on the road, pushing the gas pedal to the floor. Her truck shoots away, leaving her pursuers in the dust.
Her heart is beating, off the charts. The exhilaration is immense.
She bears down harder on the accelerator, burning up the road.
Chapter 26
Richmond, Virginia - June 2005
Matt
Matt had to force himself to concentrate on driving. He was feeling a sick, falling sensation, as if the ground had opened up under his feet.
Snyder’s voice turned apologetic. “I’m throwing a lot at you for a first day, I know. But this is the most important thing I can tell you about the Bureau. You can create your own cases. We have great latitude in that area. You’ll have no power at first, but that will come.”
Through his daze, Matt understood that he was getting an offer of mentorship from the exact person he would most want to be mentored by.
“Why me?” he blurted.
Snyder took a long, level look at him. “Because you’re not afraid to look evil in the face.”
Matt was so startled he couldn’t speak.
“It’s partly your Catholic upbringing. But there’s something else, something that started this. It’s got its hooks in you. Maybe someday you’ll tell me about it. But not today,” he finished. “We’re getting off here.”
He directed Matt off the highway and down an industrial street into the parking lot of a fairgrounds, with aircraft hangar-style exhibition buildings.
Huge yellow and orange banners advertised:
GUN SHOW TODAY!
Matt paid the parking fee at the gate and drove the SUV into the lines of cars in the lot.
“We want to park with a view of the entrance gate,” Snyder said beside him.
Matt found a space at the end of one line and parked. He and Snyder stared out the windshield toward the gated entrance.
A line of armed men snaked up to the gun-check table outside the gate, waiting to demonstrate to security guards that their weapons were unloaded. An NRA recruitment table under a tent advertised Free Entry—with an NRA membership signup.
Snyder put the surveillance shot of their target on the console between them. Wayne Gilman stared up out of the photo.
“The party who called in the tip said Gilman was enraged by a crackdown on illegal activity at Richmond gun shows by the ATF last year and is vowing revenge.”
Matt nodded, intent.
“Gilman is a Patriot. In the militia sense of the word. He attends these gun shows regularly and always purchases multiple weapons. We believe he’s stockpiling for his militia organization, the Richmond League.”
“But Gilman has no criminal record. And I want to be clear about this.” Snyder’s tone had become severe, and Roarke unconsciously straightened in his seat to listen carefully. “I’m inclined to be highly skeptical of helpful tips to the FBI. Always remember that it was a tip from a feuding neighbor that sent the Bureau too aggressively into the standoff at Ruby Ridge. A tip that started with the truth—and then exaggerated the truth into a situation that agents could and
should have vetted more carefully to avoid disaster.”
Matt’s stomach twisted. He’d studied Ruby Ridge, the 1992 fatal standoff between U.S. Marshals and the Bureau, and a family of heavily armed white separatists in Idaho. It had resulted in a backlash of right-wing fury that the Bureau was still reeling from today. Would the FBI ever recover from that tragedy?
“Nonetheless, it is a fact that our subject has been buying alarmingly large numbers of automatic weapons and ammunition at gun shows. The assault weapons ban that took the AR-15 and similar semiautomatic rifles off the market ended last year. Gilman has been especially busy acquiring these. It’s legal. But sudden acquisition of numbers of weapons is never a good sign. Timothy McVeigh went on a gun-buying binge before he killed 168 people in the Oklahoma City bombing. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold used a friend to purchase multiple weapons at a gun show before they massacred thirteen people at Columbine. I can name a dozen others and not scratch the surface.”
He paused, and Matt sensed all the rest had been background to what he was about to say. “But I believe the most immediate danger is to Gilman’s wife and their three young children.”
Matt sat up, startled.
“The police have been called to Gilman’s house on three occasions to investigate reports of suspected domestic violence. The latest was just a few days ago. Jenny Gilman went to the hospital and was treated for concussion, multiple contusions and a broken collarbone—but declined to press charges. Gilman’s violence against her appears to be escalating.”
Matt felt familiar anger rising. Snyder took a second photo from the file. A pretty young woman looked out of the shot, with a smile on her face that didn’t reach her eyes.
Matt looked down at her, jolted. “But she’s—she’s so young.”
“Twenty-two,” Snyder said.
Matt’s age.
“She has three kids already?” he asked, in disbelief, and realized immediately how naïve he sounded.
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