by E. E. Borton
“I had a feeling something else was distracting you,” said Tom. “No apologies necessary now that we know you were under some hefty constraints. So where do we go from here?”
“I know where I’m going, but what I need to make clear that I’m not telling you three to come with me,” said Ryan. “I’m only asking. Before you answer, it’s important each of you understand a few things. You should know me well enough not feel any pressure to do something beyond your level of comfort. If you decide to walk away from this, I’ll completely understand.”
“Enough with the disclaimers, Boss,” said Dallas. “We’re in.”
“You have no idea how premature that statement might be,” said Ryan. “I’ll start with what I know. Donaldson called me in his office a few months ago and handed me four files. Those files contained the dossiers and crime scene information similar to what I was allowed to disclose before we hit Arrington. There were two scientists in attendance from the Michaels Lab in Maine during our meeting. They gave me very little information about the nature of the research and experiments they were conducting on the Marines. They basically told me they were super soldiers with greatly enhanced capabilities. But after what we experienced in Harrisonburg, they seemed to have left out a few important details. I strongly believe understanding those details could’ve helped me keep our agents alive. Needless to say, I’m a little pissed.”
“Obviously, their strength and speed are enhanced, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say their mental capabilities were as well,” said Michelle. “At least not in Arrington’s case. The fact that he basically let us walk into the farmhouse undetected doesn’t lend weight to his mental strength.”
“They told me he was the weakest of the four men,” responded Ryan. “They emphasized his physical abilities were much stronger than his mental. The other three scored much higher on the cognitive testing. I’m not saying he was retarded, but based on their scale, he was less formidable.”
“After what he did to our agents with his bare hands, they have an incredibly skewed definition of less formidable,” said Tom.
“Exactly,” responded Ryan. “Somebody knew. But whether or not that somebody was Deputy Director Donaldson remains to be discovered. And that brings me to what I don’t know.
“I’m having a hard time swallowing the assumption that he’s intentionally holding back information that could’ve prevented unnecessary deaths. I do, or did, trust him. Now I’m not so sure. I need to find out. But even if his office is compromised, my plan is to continue with the mission. We all witnessed Arrington killing that woman. Regardless of how they turned, we need to stop them.”
“What’s the plan?” asked Dallas.
“The plan is, you and I are going to find out who put that bullet in Arrington’s head,” started Ryan. “I’m thinking it was a .50 caliber sniper round. Our snipers weren’t using rifles with that type of ammunition. That has military written all over it. I’m also thinking they’re a part of the same group Scott eluded was shadowing us. Again, I can’t confirm if the deputy director is the one giving up our location and plans. Hell, I don’t even know if I can trust Scott, but oddly enough, he’s the only one that seems to be pointing me in the right direction. He also gave me the name of a scientist we need to track down. She may have some answers for us, but she’s not the priority at the moment.”
“I didn’t find any bugs on us or our gear,” said Dallas. “I’ll check our cell phones before we leave. I can guarantee our safe house is wired in every corner, but every FBI safe house is tapped. I should be able to determine if the devices are ours or someone else’s.”
“Okay, before we go any further,” said Ryan. “We’ll have to conduct our investigation as if we’re cut off from the resources of the Bureau. That means I don’t intend to report our methods or findings. We have to dumb it down and leave no trail for anyone to follow. And to make it more interesting, we still have to make the deputy director believe we’re following his orders as normal without question.
“What I just asked of you is grounds for your dismissal from the FBI or even criminal charges. I’ll take full responsibility for anything I ask of you, but know you may suffer consequences for sticking around.”
“Ryan, I’m in agreement with Dallas,” said Tom. “Disclaimers aren’t necessary. I can’t speak for Michelle, but I’m pissed, too. It could’ve easily been us that Arrington ripped apart. Not to mention we had to stand by and watch him kill an innocent girl. If I had known more about what we were dealing with, I never would’ve let him take her into the house.”
“Actually, Tom is speaking for me and quite well,” said Michelle. “I don’t like being used. It feels like we were set up. If you’re right about the other group shadowing us, it seems we’re taking all the risks flushing out the target so they can kill it from a mile away. I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on the assholes looking at me as expendable. Of course I’m in.”
“Thank you, Michelle,” said Ryan. “I promise I’ll try to give you that opportunity to put your hands on them. I feel sorry for the guy making the mistake of looking at you as a defenseless girl.”
“Many have, but not one of them will again,” she added with a slight smile. “What do you need me to do?”
“It’s actually what I need you and Tom to do,” said Ryan. “I need you to start with a clean slate profiling the remaining three. You can begin with the several photos I took with my phone of the Virginia crime scene. I had a feeling they’d come in handy. I also need you to look at the files I’m not supposed to show you. I want you to work up a second profile focusing on who created them. We all know Arrington’s file didn’t fit what we saw, but I’m not sure it was completely fabricated. I suspect the Syracuse killing may not have been one of his. What it should do is give us another angle to possibly identify the other group crashing our party.”
“Reverse engineering a serial killer’s profile,” said Tom. “That’s an interesting approach. You basically want us to figure out the artist who painted the fake picture of Arrington.”
“I do,” emphasized Ryan. “But even that takes a back burner to working up an accurate profile on Richard Elliot. The second order from Donaldson I’m going to ignore is not finding him before he has a chance to take another victim. We’ll let the deputy director believe we’re following the designed plan of allowing Elliot to abduct her and then assaulting his hideout afterwards. I’m no longer a fan of waiting to take them down while they’re preoccupied with killing.”
“That makes much more sense,” said Michelle. “I don’t ever want to see that again. I can’t shake the feeling we used that poor girl as bait.”
“I can’t either,” affirmed Ryan. “While you’re digging for information, Dallas and I will be focusing on identifying the unknown players. I’m hoping it’s just another FBI team Donaldson sent as our backup, but my gut tells me we’re going to find something more sinister. I believe the other players are military, or ex-military. And if I’m right, those may be the real animals we’re hunting. Not only did they break the law by conducting a mission within our borders, but they assassinated a U.S. citizen. It doesn’t matter what Arrington did; the Constitution guarantees him the right to face his accusers and stand trial. It’s impossible for me to ignore that.”
“This got complicated pretty fast, didn’t it, Boss?” observed Dallas.
“Yes, it did,” confirmed Ryan. “And we’re going to try and sort it out just as fast.”
The team ordered another round of drinks. Dallas retrieved the bag containing their cell phones from the bartender. He scanned each, and then took them apart to look for listening devices. He found nothing.
“These are clean,” said Dallas. “It doesn’t mean they haven’t been listening to our conversations. They could’ve easily cloned them, which would also give them our constant location using the embedded GPS chips.”
Ryan handed each member on his team a cell phone and USB flash drive. “Not with these
.”
“That would explain your little trip today,” said Tom.
“You don’t chase fugitives all over the country and not learn a few things from the bad guys about how to evade the good guys,” explained Ryan. “The cell phones are untraceable, and the GPS tracking chips have been removed.
“The flash drives are for our laptops. They’ll give us internet access anywhere without identifying our IP address or our location. There are also several links to criminal databases, including NCIC. Phony access codes and login information will automatically be populated when you open the links. Again, all of it’s untraceable.”
“You have phony access codes and user data for classified information the FBI maintains?” asked Michelle, somewhat perplexed.
“I have a guy,” responded Ryan with a smile.
The team finished their drinks and returned to the safe house. Dallas scanned each room and found the standard number of cameras and listening devices. All of them were hardwired to one room upstairs full of video screens and tape recorders. Dallas didn’t find one active device either transmitting or receiving data. Ryan recognized it as standard operating procedure for an FBI safe house. There were no indications that another group was listening in on the team. Ryan requested Dallas do a second sweep, and again, the results were negative. The agents could speak freely in one room upstairs. It was the only space without windows.
The lack of bugs in the safe house didn’t make Ryan less suspicious. All it did was add weight to the suspicion that the Deputy Director of the FBI was feeding information to the unknown group. There was no need for them to risk being exposed by physically following Ryan’s team or attempting to plant bugs in their path. All they had to do was wait for the deputy director to tell them when and where to go to murder the fugitive Marines.
Ryan needed to create a plan that would expose the group without their knowledge. He also couldn’t alert the deputy director of his mistrust. Dallas was right. It was getting complicated fast.
7
Treasure Island
Ryan woke early with renewed determination after some much needed sleep. He hoped a morning run would set the tone for the day. An hour later, he found himself pacing back and forth in the small windowless room of the safe house. Dallas was the first to join him and handed him a cup of coffee.
“Thank you.”
“Were you up all night?” asked Dallas.
“No, I wanted to get a jump on the day. The problem is the day jumped on me with more questions I can’t seem to answer.”
“We’ll try to take care of some of that today, Boss. Now that the cat’s out of the bag, you can utilize our world-class skills,” he said with a smirk. “Well, at least Michelle and Tom’s skills. I’ll kick the shit out of a door for you, though.”
Ryan smiled at Dallas, knowing he was kidding about his lack of investigative skills. Dallas was responsible on numerous occasions for putting puzzles together and putting very bad people behind bars. But he hit the bull’s-eye about his door kicking ability. Ryan couldn’t think of anyone else he would want beside him in a fight. As tenacious as Ryan was about finding fugitives, Dallas was equally tenacious when it came time to put hands on them.
In the freshman year of the IRAT team, the group was hunting a militia leader in Utah. He was wanted for the murder of a U.S. Marshal and the attempted murder of two others. The compound was located on the edge of Wasatch Mountain State Park, which is one of the largest in the region. The lifelong woodsman fugitive who grew up in the area slipped away from the initial grasp of the assault team and disappeared into the Herber Valley. Dallas didn’t hesitate to follow. For two days, he never stopped moving. Bad weather grounded any air support, and no one was prepared with the gear normally carried on a wilderness manhunt – no one except Dallas.
Ryan remembered the looks and chuckles other agency officers gave Dallas when he showed up at the Sunday morning briefing wearing forty pounds of equipment, including a pouch containing NVGs. Dallas’s core philosophy was to be better prepared and equipped than the guys he was going after. Everyone stopped laughing after Utah.
At the start of the pursuit into the woods, fourteen agents went in with Dallas. It didn’t take long for the first officer to collapse trying to keep up. One by one, he’d radio the position of another exhausted officer that gave up the pursuit. A support group of marshals carrying food, water, and medical supplies would scoop up the cold, dehydrated, hungry, ankle sprained, and all around miserable professional man hunters. At the end of the second day, the weather finally cleared. Thirty-two miles into the dense heart of the state park, helicopters retrieved a smiling Dallas and his not-so-happy prize from a river bank.
“Do you really think the deputy director is feeding information to another group?” asked Dallas.
“I send all my reports as well as our movements only to him,” said Ryan. “I know that doesn’t mean he’s intentionally leaking information or even knows it’s happening. But until I know for sure it isn’t him, I have to treat him like it is.”
“Any idea how we can find out?”
“I do, but before we set that plan in motion, you and I have to go on a little trip.”
“I love trips,” said Dallas. “Where to?”
“Baltimore.”
“What’s in Baltimore?” asked Tom, joining them in secure room.
“Kristina Anderson,” replied Ryan. “I need you and Michelle to work up a quick and dirty background on her. According to Scott, she’s on staff at Johns Hopkins University. I need as much information about her daily routine as possible.”
“Consider it done,” replied Tom. “Will I be using our new gadgets to gather the data?”
“What data?” asked Michelle, walking in the room and taking Dallas’s coffee out of his hand. “What are you boys up to?”
“Those two boys are going to Baltimore to visit Kristina Anderson,” explained Tom. “And you and I are going to stay behind and put her life under a microscope.”
“Sweet,” said Michelle. “I love digging up dirt on unsuspecting civilians.”
“Our trip and your digging will be under the radar,” said Ryan. “Your profiling and hunting Elliot can be out in the open, but Kristina needs to stay a ghost. Dallas and I will be leaving our company phones behind so it looks like we never left New Orleans. My guy cloned my number into my untraceable phone, so if the deputy director calls, the GPS will show me in this room. But you guys are free to move around the city.”
“Okay,” replied Michelle. “When are you leaving?”
“This afternoon, so I’ll need a dash of speed on her itinerary for the next few days. But for right now, I want you both to talk to me about Peter Arrington. You know, the subjects I cut you off on earlier.”
“Sure,” said Tom, going first. “Back at the farmhouse, I was making the point that the crime scene didn’t look anything like the others. Arrington created a comfortable space to work on his victims in the basement. It was meticulously cleaned, and the furniture was arranged to mimic a woman’s bedroom. It seems to me he wanted them to have some comforts of home.
“In Syracuse, the scene resembled a sadistic torture chamber. There was no attempt made by the killer for comfort. The degree of brutality suggested an extremely elevated level of anger. The ritual was about inflicting pain and prolonging suffering until the anger apparently subsided. Like I said, I’d stake my reputation on Arrington not being responsible for Syracuse.
“As far as him killing the woman in front of us and our two agents, I believe it was his reaction to being cornered. I’m not saying he was going to let her live, but all indications were it was less about torture and pain and more about being powerless to stop himself from hurting her. If you remember, before he knew we were there, he apologized to her and told her they made him that way. I’d sure like to figure out who they are.”
“I agree with Tom,” added Michelle. “The Syracuse killer left her body to decompose out in the open after
he repeatedly raped and then disemboweled her. Once he was finished with his ritual, he simply left without even trying to hide his work. Arrington buried his victims and marked the graves with their names on crosses. That would indicate he felt some sense of remorse or even guilt for what he did to them. And like I said, no serial killers on record have ever marked the graves of their victims in that way.”
“Unfortunately, we’re not going to know for sure how he killed the other three he buried in the basement unless we get ahold of the autopsy reports,” said Ryan.
“Those would speak volumes as to his method and frame of mind during the killings,” said Tom. “If we could find a way to get our hands on those reports, I’d know without a shadow of doubt if Arrington was responsible for Syracuse. I’d also know a hell of a lot more about the killer who actually is responsible.”
“I might have a way to get ahold of those findings,” said Ryan.
“Let me guess, you have another guy?” asked Michelle.
“I just might. I’ll see if I can reach out to him while I’m in Baltimore.”
“What about the reverse engineering of the profiles?” asked Ryan. “Any clues on who or what created them?”
“Well, it took very little time for us to figure out they weren’t fabricated,” answered Tom.
“You just told me it wasn’t Arrington in Syracuse.”
“Correct,” said Tom.
“English, please,” pleaded Ryan.
“The information in each of their files is real,” explained Tom. “The crime scene photos, the police reports, witness accounts, and even the coroner’s reports are all real. The interesting part is, I believe they’re all the same killer. All the data points to one guy.”
“We fully expected the information in the reports to be fabricated,” added Michelle. “A made-up crime scene, a fake police officer making a fake report, and so on. But they seem to be legitimate. From a profiling standpoint, it’s as if they carbon copied one suspect four times. Now, taking what we know about Arrington, we can rule him out as the suspect. That narrows it down to Richard Elliot, Derek Mathews or Joshua Bell as the man behind the murders. Well, at least the killings in these files.”
