The 7th Victim - Alan Jacobson [27]
Laughter erupted just before the conference room door opened and a long male shadow spilled into the room. Thomas Gifford walked in and observed the levity; a few of the agents were still guffawing. Gifford then looked at Vail, whose stern face indicated she was not sharing the joke.
Vail locked eyes with Del Monaco. “I don’t want to miss anything, Frank. Thinking out of the box is supposed to be a strength here.”
Gifford marched to Vail’s side and stood in front of the screen. The room became silent. The blood mural covered his dark suit and face with a red pall as he spoke. “Just a heads-up. I got word late yesterday that Senator Eleanor Linwood has requested—or more like told—Fairfax PD’s Chief Thurston to add her lead security detail agent to the Dead Eyes Task Force. His name is Chase Hancock. Ring a bell to anyone?”
Frank Del Monaco spoke. “The asshole who sued the Bureau because he didn’t get one of our seats.”
“That’s the one,” Gifford said. “Now let me warn you people. This guy is trouble. But the police chief is doing the senator a favor. Some backroom political maneuvering. She wants to look tough on crime in an election year. That democrat, Redmond, is breathing down her throat in the early polls and she thinks she can use Dead Eyes to boost her approval rating.”
“So we get dragged into shoveling their political bullshit,” van Owen said.
“We’re thirty miles from DC,” Gifford said. “They’ve got a list of shit shovelers there dating back two hundred years.”
Rooney coughed a deep, raspy gurgling, then cleared his throat and asked, “Any chance we can do an end run around this? I’ve known assholes with more brains than this Hancock chump.”
“Easiest way to be rid of him is to draw up the best goddamn profile you’ve ever done. Give the dicks a write-up that’s right on the money, something they can run with. Otherwise, stay out of Hancock’s way. That’s how we play it. Do your jobs, and let him do his. If he gets to be a problem, let me know and I’ll handle it.”
“Let him hang himself,” Vail said.
“Exactly.” Gifford dipped his chin in her direction, handing the discussion back to Vail, and then took a seat in the back of the room.
Vail hit the next slide, a wide-angle view of the exterior of the house. “Bledsoe is checking into Melanie Hoffman’s past and present accounting firms. It’s possible whoever did her might have met her through the workplace. Co-workers, clients, support staff, everyone’s being looked at. There’s also an ex-husband. Marriage was annulled three years ago.”
She hit the remote a few more times, showing the photos of what was once a beautiful young woman. Again and again slides flicked across the screen, the latest one being a close-up of Melanie’s head and trunk.
“This is his fourth victim.” Vail said it as if they should feel shame for not having helped catch the offender before he’d taken another young life.
“You mean third. This is his third vic,” Del Monaco said. “That last one wasn’t the same guy.”
“You know my thoughts on that.” And indeed he did. Everyone knew her opinion, because a year ago, when Dead Eyes had last struck, she made her opinion well-known.
“What does Bledsoe think?”
Vail glared at Del Monaco. “He’s operating under the same assumption.”
“Uh huh.”
“What’s your problem, Frank?”
“All we have with that other vic is a very loose connection to Dead Eyes. Vic was killed and disemboweled. That’s it. No wrapping of the intestines around the thigh, no stabbing of the eyes, no severing of the hand, almost no other signature evidence. We’ve seen scenes like that a hundred times before. Nothing links the vic, or the offender, to Dead Eyes.”
Vail scanned the faces in the room. No one seemed to be disagreeing with Del Monaco. If anything, their expressions seemed to put the onus on her to prove his opinion wrong. But her brain was foggy from the rotten night’s sleep and she didn’t feel like