The interrogation room that Adams had decided to use was the same size as a janitor’s closet. The walls were grey. The floors were grey. The ceiling was white drop tile. There were three cameras mounted in three different corners. It was like the Marion County Sheriff’s department had taken interior decorating tips from the US Marshals.
They had given me a can of Coke and told me to hang tight while Adams got ready to talk to me. I wondered if he was doing his hair or something. This entire thing was preposterous. Luckily, I was full of righteous indignation about them searching my luggage. I wasn’t a common passenger on a commercial flight. I had been flying on a private jet owned by the US Marshals’ service for the sole use of the Serial Crimes Tracking Unit.
Adams finally came in. He wore a freshly pressed suit and his breath smelled minty. I scowled at him.
“Ok, so why do you have three Tasers in your luggage?”
“Because carrying around five Tasers screams ‘crazy.’”
“I thought that’s what four Tasers screamed,” Adams smirked.
“No, four says ‘prepared,’ like the Boy Scouts. Five screams ‘crazy,’ like Homeland Security is out to get you.”
“I guess the same goes for the knives?” Adams ignored my barb.
“No, I carry that many knives because I can’t figure out how to pack a sword and I’ve never learned the art of the throwing star.”
“Do you need a sword in your line of work as an US Marshal?”
“Unlikely, but it would look cool if a serial killer pulled a knife on me.”
“Would you use a sword on a serial killer that pulled out a knife on you?”
“I’m not stupid, I’d shoot him, of course. However, pulling out the sword first would make him rethink his decision to attack me.”
“Moving on,” Adams flipped a page on his clipboard. I didn’t know what the pages were, but I was convinced they were pointless. It was an intimidation tactic that failed. “You have six extra guns.”
“I carry three guns; two in a shoulder holster, one in an ankle holster. I pack replacements for all the holstered firearms, a shotgun, a backup shotgun and a rifle. I don’t know why you think that’s weird.”
“You have a suitcase that works as a small arsenal.”
“You’ve never been followed home by a serial killer. Actually, the scariest thing that probably ever followed you home was a cat. I attract serial killers like catnip, I like to be prepared.”
“Like a Boy Scout,” Adams sneered.
“Yep and I’m a little paranoid.”
“A little? I’d mark you up as batshit crazy.”
“How do you know batshit is crazy? Have you given it a psychological evaluation?”
“What?” Adams looked confused.
“You deal with what; fifteen or twenty terrorists a year?” I asked.
“Something like that, we are constantly monitoring...”
“Yeah, yeah,” I cut him off. “I deal with fifteen or twenty serial killers in three months. A terrorist has never followed you home, intent on blowing up your house. Serial killers have broken into my house and attempted to kill me. So, until you’ve had that experience, you can’t really consider us in the same league.”
“Terrorists are just...”
“Blah, blah, blah,” I said to him. “Terrorists are bad and scary. They are losing the battle. If it weren’t for people like the Serial Crimes Tracking Unit and the FBI’s Violent Crimes Unit, we wouldn’t need people like you, because we’d all be dead. VCU managed to catch a killer last month that had been killing for seventeen years. We know for sure that he killed seven hundred people. We suspect he’s killed three or four times that. SCTU’s last serial killer in Nevada had killed over a hundred. We haven’t even touched on the mass murderers. I will though if you want.”
“Are you saying you’re more important than me?”
“Is this personal? Are you on some sort of crusade to prove that Homeland Security is more important than the US Marshals? Or is it that a woman could be just as important in protecting this country from the inside as you? Is this really a witch hunt?”
“What?” Adams shook his head again. “I’m confused.”
“I’m not surprised,” I stood up. “If we’re done talking about my luggage, I’d like to talk about the case. Do we have anything?”
“No,” Adams said.
“Great,” I flopped back into the chair. “Stop watching and come here.”
I was sure my team would get the message.
“No, we’re not done yet. VCU is reporting bodies being left in your wake. There were three men stabbed in Anchorage, Alaska while you were there, another four in Vegas, and half a dozen others in towns you’ve had cases.”
“I’m not a serial killer. I did stab someone in Anchorage though, unfortunately he was a serial killer who was skinning women. However, if you talk to the guards where I live, they’ll give you all my ‘scary mail’ including the dead prairie dog I got for my birthday.”
“Do you get a lot of scary mail?” Adams asked.
“Tons. I can’t believe how many serial killers have letter writing privileges. Scanned or not, they get pretty graphic sometimes. Mass murderers don’t mail me as much. However, I did hear about a handful of squirrels testing positive for Bubonic Plague, so that might be relevant too.”
“Squirrels? Prairie dogs? Plague? What the hell are you talking about?”
“Plague happens, especially in the southwest. However, when Plague happens and someone sends me a dead prairie dog, it seems like the two might be connected. Add to it that someone has been killing people when I travel, that says serial killer to me. I haven’t yet slid off that cliff, but I’ll add a stun gun and a few more knives to my arsenal in case they get any funny ideas. Thanks for the heads up.”
“I missed something,” Adams shook his head.
It was a sign of defeat. I was used to seeing it. Law enforcement that didn’t see the world through my blood-covered glasses never understood it. Explaining it to them was like trying to explain how black holes worked. Eventually, they all just gave up.
Gabriel picked Adams’ moment of defeat to come into the room. It felt much smaller with Gabriel in it. Gabriel wasn’t stout like Lucas, but he was tall with lanky legs and broad shoulders. He handed me a folder.
It might as well have been empty. The bomb had ruined the cooler. There was no forensics on the minute amounts they could find. It was common and unexceptional.
The materials in the bomb were a little more interesting. The proper household chemicals mixed in the right proportions and set up in such a way that it would release at a later time was nearly brilliant. It was possible the bomber was getting as much as four hours between creation and detonation.
The glass was from a canning jar; same for the lid piece that was found. Nothing special there. The chemicals would have heated the jar until the pressure made the top explode. This would have caused a much larger secondary explosion as the chemicals boiled out of the jar and into the chemicals in the cooler. In my opinion, it would have worked better if the jar was lying down. However, since only a few fragments of glass and part of the lid had been found, we didn’t know how the bomber had put the jar into the cooler.
None of the survivors could single out a man with a cooler, despite the fact that coolers were allowed inside the grandstand. Everyone there probably had a cooler or two. It would have seemed odder if someone had been able to pick out a particular person.
A Winchester Model 70 had been used to pick off the fair queen. Another dead end, the file informed me that it was one of the most common hunting rifles in the US. Essentially I could walk into any sporting store in Missouri and buy one. The state did not require license or registration to buy or own a rifle.
The truck didn’t have any fingerprints on it. There were smudgy blobs in places that showed up through dirt that the lab considered to be prints from gloves, jeans, and other clothing items. A single brown hair had been found in the bed of the truck, but it was stuck under the lid of a bottle. DNA testing showed that the bottle belonged to the owner of the truck, who was deceased.
I closed the file. Adams and Gabriel were talking fast, in hushed tones. This meant the conversation wasn’t going well. I knew Gabriel pretty well. He didn’t scream and yell when he was mad, he growled and talked in a soft voice that required you to move closer. When he used that voice on me, I kept waiting for him to rip my throat out with his teeth. So far, so good in the throat ripping department.
My mind decided to dwell on the dead prairie dog and the infected squirrels. They had found a group of infected squirrels living in Redwood National Forest just two days ago. It was very plausible that a squirrel could get infected and infect other squirrels. However, Redwood National Forest wasn’t exactly a desert environment. If the squirrels had been found in Los Angeles or Las Vegas, my memory wouldn’t have tucked away the information. But they had been found in a lush, leafy, moist environment where forest fires happened and that just wasn’t a Plague friendly environment.
How one went about infecting squirrels was a problem. I couldn’t picture someone trapping squirrels, injecting them with Bubonic Plague and then releasing them back into the wild to possibly infect humans. It seemed like infection, let alone, epidemic, was unlikely. The fleas would be attracted to mammals other than humans. Plus, squirrels were not exactly great Plague hosts. They could be infected and carry it, but they also tended to become symptomatic and die.
I dismissed it as a one-off chance and hoped California’s Fish and Wildlife got on the problem along with the Centers for Disease Control. The last thing California needed was Plague, they had other things to worry about, like earthquakes.