Killing Hour - Lisa Gardner [47]
“Actually, I was getting information from him.”
“Really. I find that extremely interesting. Particularly since ten minutes ago, he became Special Agent Kaplan’s primary suspect.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Mac burst out. “I’m doing my best to help with a case that is only the beginning of one long, hot nightmare. Do you have any idea what you’ve waded into the middle of—”
“Where were you last night?” Special Agent Kaplan interrupted curtly.
“I started the night at Carlos Kelly’s in Stafford. Then I returned to Quantico, where I ran into New Agent Quincy on the firing ranges. It doesn’t matter—”
Kaplan’s gaze had swung to Kimberly. “What time did you see him on the ranges?”
“Around eleven. I didn’t look at my watch—”
“Did you see him go back to the dorms?”
“No.”
“Where was he headed?”
“I don’t know. I was heading back to the dorms. I didn’t pay attention to him!”
“So in other words,” Kaplan homed in on Mac, “no one knows where you were after eleven-thirty last night.”
“Don’t you think it’s an awfully big coincidence,” Watson spoke up, “that we should just happen to get a homicide that bears so many resemblances to one of your past cases, while you’re staying here at the Academy?”
“It’s not coincidence,” Mac said. “It was planned.”
“What?” Watson finally drew up short. He shot a glance at Kaplan, who appeared equally perplexed. Apparently, they’d both been big fans of the Georgia-cop-as-a-killer theory. Why not? Get a dead body at eight A.M., wrap up the case before six P.M. It made for good headlines. Assholes.
“Perhaps,” Quincy interjected quietly, “you should let the man speak. Of course, that’s only the advice of the independent consultant.”
“Yes,” Rainie seconded beside him. “Let him speak. This is finally getting to be good.”
“Thank you.” Mac shot Quincy and Rainie a grateful look, while carefully avoiding Kimberly’s gaze. How must she feel right about now? Hurt, confused, betrayed? He had honestly meant none of those things, and yet there was nothing he could do about that now.
“You can verify everything I’m about to say with my supervisor, Special Agent in Charge Lee Grogen from the Atlanta office. Yes, starting in ’ninety-eight, we had a string of murders similar to the one you discovered today. After the third incident, we formed a multi-jurisdictional task force in charge of the investigation. Unfortunately, seven murders later, the man we were seeking, the so-called Eco-Killer, simply vanished. No new crimes, nothing. The task force started out with over a thousand leads. Three years later, our work was down to a trickle. Until six months ago. When things went hot again.
“We got a letter in the mail. It contained a newspaper clipping of a letter to the editor similar to the ones our guy used to send the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Except this letter wasn’t sent to a Georgia paper. It was sent to the Virginian-Pilot. And then I started getting phone calls—”
“You?” Quincy interrupted. “Or the task force?”
“Me. On my cell phone. Hell if I know why, but lucky me has received six calls now. The caller’s voice is always distorted by some kind of electronic device and he/she/it always has the same message—the Eco-Killer is getting agitated again. He’s going to strike. Except this time, he’s picked Virginia as his favorite playground.”
“So your department sent you here,” Watson spoke up. “Why? To be a watchdog? To magically prevent another crime? You didn’t even make anyone aware of your concerns.”
Mac shot the man a look. “For the record, I told everybody who would listen about my goddamn concerns. But let’s face it, around here, cold cases are a dime a dozen; everybody comes bearing that one investigation that’s still keeping them up at night. Best I could do was get a preliminary meeting with a forensic linguist in the BSU—Dr. Ennunzio—and show him the letters to the editor. What he thinks, however, I don’t know ’cause he’s been dodging my calls ever since. And now here we are. I got a good lead a bad way, and you’re barking up the wrong tree, you paranoid