10 hours left…
11:29 a.m.
The hologram hovered above the table.
Glowing pathways, one for each victim, wavered along the city streets, sometimes intersecting wherever shared travel routes overlapped.
As I summarized the geoprofile, I input the street on which Mollie’s laptop had been found, as well as the location of last night’s gas station explosion. The hot zone shifted west.
“You think that’s related?” Margaret asked, referring to the gas station.
“The receipt found in the van is from that station. Also, the killers left a stolen vehicle and laptop in front of police headquarters, and last night there was an explosion on the county road running along the perimeter of the FBI Academy at Quantico Marine Base. So here we have-”
Doehring leaned forward. “The roads bordering the two agencies who are running point on this case.”
“Yes,” I said. “But those aren’t the only agencies involved in this investigation. Capitol Police, US Marshals. It’s very possible the killers might leave a clue at their offices as well.”
Margaret assigned an officer to notify the other agencies’ headquarters. He left the room, and I went on, “I don’t believe we’ve probed deeply enough into the possible links between these crimes and others in the past. We need to see if there are any other known faked deaths with related dismemberments, videotaped staged suicides, or.. .”-and this was the kicker-“video traffic footage of two different license plates for the same vehicle-either the suspect’s or the victim’s.”
Blank stares.
“Different license plates?” Tielman asked.
“I know it’s unlikely that responding officers would record this type of information on ViCAP, but we’re looking for patterns here. We don’t know why the killers switched Rusty Mahan’s plates, but it appears likely that they wanted us to find out that they had. I want to know if they’ve done it before.”
“So, a message?” Anderson said.
“Possibly, but I’m more interested in locating the killers than in deciphering their-”
Lien-hua gave me a slight head shake, and I backpedaled a little. “What I mean to say is, it’s possible that this is a red herring. But whatever the killers’ motives are, it’s likely that in a crime spree this elaborate, they would follow patterns established or learned during previous crimes. And if that’s the case, linking the crimes from this week to earlier offenses will help us shrink the suspect pool and better focus our investigative efforts-and let’s go beyond simply prior convictions and explore similar crime patterns and associated behavior. Anything at all, even if it appears insignificant at first.”
Margaret assigned Anderson and two other officers to the comparative case analysis.
“Finally,” I said, “I think we can narrow down the search area, focus our efforts more efficiently on eliminating suspects.”
I tapped at my phone and cross-referenced the hot zone against the suspect list. “Only 19 percent of the people on our suspect list live or work within this nine-block perimeter. Let’s take a closer look at them first.”
But as I stared at the hologram, I began to wonder about the geoprofile itself, whether this was even the right approach to be taking.
I flashed back to a discussion I’d once had with Calvin: “From where does your familiarity with a region, your cognitive map of an area, derive?” he’d asked me.
“Your movement patterns, obviously; your activity nodes and the routes to and from them.”
“So how are those formed?”
“Agent Bowers?” Margaret caught me lost in my thoughts. “You were saying?”
“How are those formed?” I mumbled.
“Pardon me?”
The task force members were staring at me curiously. “I was saying
…” My eyes went back to the hologram. “I think I might be wrong.”
“You think you might be wrong,” Margaret replied.
With my finger, I traced a holographic street through the air. “For most people the origination of their movement patterns is their place of residence. But if their work place is the locus of their activity, then they would likely get to know the city from that point instead.”
After a pause, Cassidy said, “So, a pizza delivery guy who shows up at work and then leaves from there, travels to a part of the city, then returns. Doing this over and over, he gets to know the street layout.”
“Yes.” I nodded. “Exactly.”
“And with two offenders,” Lien-hua said, “the cognitive map of the dominant partner would be the more determinative factor in the selection of the crime scenes.”
“So,” Margaret said, tracking, “we should focus on identifying and following the cognitive map of the dominant offender.”
“Typically, yes,” I replied, still distracted by my thoughts.
“Typically.” She was sounding more and more unimpressed by my briefing.
I switched the hologram mode so that it only showed the crime scene locations, not the victims’ travel routes. “Apart from perhaps the Connecticut Street bridge, these locations-the primate center, the hotel, the car in front of the police station, the gas station bordering Quantico-it wasn’t simply familiarity with the DC area that led the offenders to choose them. And it wasn’t simply victim availability that caused them to choose Rusty, Mollie, and Twana.”
Lien-hua was following my train of thought. “It’s likely they chose Mollie because of her father, Twana because she resembled Mollie, Rusty, because he was Mollie’s boyfriend.”
“Yes.”
“And the primate center, and hotel.” Margaret added. “They chose those because of the congressman and the vice president.”
Lien-hua nodded. “And the police station and Quantico because of their relationship to the investigation.”
“It appears so,” I said. “So it looks like the choice of locations isn’t based on the killers’ cognitive maps of the city but on whatever message they’re trying to send. The metanarrative they’re working from.”
“Their motive,” Anderson said.
I hated the thought of having to say that word. “Their ultimate agenda. Yes.”
“And do you have any idea what that is?” Margaret looked like she regretted asking me to share my thoughts.
“Justice reform.” The words just came out.
Everyone stared at me “And you’re referring to… what exactly?” Margaret asked.
I shook my head and turned off the hologram. “I don’t really know.”
As I took my seat, I felt defeated by the evidence, by the dead-ends. Figuring out the killers’ motives might be the key to solving this case after all.
For a few minutes, the team explored the relationship between the Fischer family and the crime locations, but when we didn’t seem to be making any headway, Margaret handed out assignments to make sure all of the investigative avenues were covered.
I was lost in thought.
It would have to be a combination, Pat-cognitive mapping and metanarrative. Crimes are almost always committed within the offender’s awareness space. So the killers had to have been familiar with the hotel and primate center to pull this off.
Margaret concluded by saying, “We’ll meet tomorrow morning at 10:00-unless there’s a break in the case, in which case I will apprise you of any changes in the schedule. You are dismissed.”
As people dispersed to their work stations to begin their assignments, Margaret called to me, “Agent Bowers, may I have a moment, please?”
Okay, here we go.
“Certainly.”