By ten-thirty a.m., Cole was seated at the small round table in his office. Besides his desk and the two chairs facing it, the table with four matching chairs was the only furniture in the room. On the walls, he had a large whiteboard and a forty-inch flat-screen TV that had been installed by a predecessor, along with a framed autographed poster of Olympic wrestling champion Dan Gable. A pair of Cole’s old wrestling shoes hung from a peg behind his desk. He’d worn those shoes when he won his NCAA championship, and he’d had them autographed right after the meet with a borrowed black Sharpie. The guy who signed his name on them was Cael Sanderson, another U.S. Olympic wrestling champ and the only wrestler to win every one of his NCAA matches. A large, round, battery-powered clock ticked audibly as it kept time from its place above the door, its longest hand vibrating visibly as it ticked off every second. A huge, wildly colorful painting of Kurt Cobain took up most of another wall and captured the attention of everyone who entered Cole’s office for the first time.
A fresh cup of coffee sat in front of Cole. He reached for it as he looked around the table at Ty, Lane, and Li and shook his head. “Jesus. How pathetic is this? We’re trying to nail a serial killer and our entire team could fit in a damn closet.”
“I’m not completely sure,” Li said, “but I’m pretty sure you suggesting we all go into the closet is out of bounds HR-wise.”
“Yup,” Lane added. “ You suggesting it is creepy, and I’m feeling a little uncomfortable myself, here.”
Ty watched the interplay with amusement.
“Really,” Cole said. “If you want to talk about discomfort and the closet then I can go to said closet and grab the nine-iron I keep in there. Then we can talk about discomfort.” He tried to sound gruff, but it wasn’t working.
Lane turned to Ty. “He gets a bit testy at times when he’s close to breaking a big case.”
“So true,” Li nodded. “He gets like Joe Joe the Circus Boy…a little wacko.”
“Okay. Christ. Stop already. I’m your SAC, for God’s sake. Listen, I know you guys are trying to be cute, but there’s so much wrong with it. First, I’m not the least bit testy. If I start to feel that way, I make sure it’s hidden beneath my calm exterior. Picture the M&M and the chocolate underneath the hard candy shell. Only I’ve got the calm shell over the mostly calm genius inner layer. Second, we are nowhere near breaking this case. Instead, we’re spinning our wheels. Let’s try to get some traction here. Li, what do you have?”
She stood to point at the whiteboard behind her. Before she explained the diagram there, she looked at Cole over her reading glasses. “Don’t forget you started the conversation by talking about how dinky our team is that’s trying to solve such a big case. But you are forgetting that Jeffers has a veritable battalion of agents working this, including most of ours. And that’s not mentioning our DC colleagues. Most of the Bureau’s assets are being brought to bear on this case.”
She turned to the board again. “So, as I was beginning to say, while you were having your breakfast date with the reporter…Lane, Ty, and I pulled together what we have so far.”
“Stop! Stop!” Cole burst out, almost knocking over his coffee. “Breakfast date? We were waiting for the killer to reach out to her. Now, please, for Christ’s sake…focus!”
“Ah, Cole…” Ty said, keeping his voice flat. “In the ten minutes since we’ve sat down, you’ve used the names God, Jesus, and Christ multiple times. Does it help you figure out the bad guy by getting into character like that? I’m hoping to learn how you do this.” He was smiling now, too.
“Atta boy, Ty. Welcome to the team,” Li said.
Lane leaned close to Ty and added, “Well played, sir.”
“Li, please, let’s keep going,” Cole pleaded. “You’re killing me, pun intended.”
“Okay.” She turned to the board. “We’ve got enough geographic data points now to look at this spatially. I’ve drawn a crude map of the State of Wisconsin here and…”
“Crude doesn’t begin to do that monstrosity justice,” Cole interrupted. “Horrible would be a better descriptor. Or kindergartenish if that’s a word.”
“Which I’m pretty sure it’s not,” Li said.
“Pre-schoolish?” Ty offered.
“I hate to say it, Li, but Cole and Ty are right,” Lane said. “Crude doesn’t begin to describe how bad your map outline is.” He held up his left hand with his fingers splayed apart. “It looks like a toddler traced his hand to make a squiggly figure of a turkey for Thanksgiving.”
“Exactly what I was thinking. Good analysis, Lane. Way to earn that government paycheck,” Cole said, smiling.
Li raised her eyebrows and gave Ty and Lane a “Whose side are you on?” look.
Ty laughed out loud. “Tell him what we’ve got, Li.”
“Hmph. Okay,” she said, turning to the board yet again. “This blue dot is in Milwaukee, where the Smith murder took place. The second blue dot is outside Oshkosh, a two-hour drive, mostly due north of Milwaukee. That’s where Martin was killed. The gun used to kill Smith was purchased in Waukesha a couple weeks ago. I’ve marked that with a red dot. Waukesha is a thirty-minute drive west of Milwaukee, give or take, depending on traffic. We learned this morning that the gun used to kill Dr. Martin was purchased within five hours of the purchase of the first murder weapon. But this rifle was bought used at a VFW Post in La Crosse. I put another red dot on La Crosse, which is a little under a three-hour drive west from Oshkosh and a little over a three-hour drive mostly west from Milwaukee. I’ve connected all four dots and you can see we’ve got pretty much a triangle.”
“A crude triangle,” Cole interjected.
“Very crude,” Lane nodded.
“To continue,” Li said, “if you shade the inside of the triangle, you get a good sense that you can get from any one point to another in just over three hours. It’s a concentrated area. And outside Milwaukee and Madison, it’s not densely populated.”
“So, you’re saying we’ve narrowed our suspect list down to the three million or so people who live within that triangle?” Cole asked.
“Not funny,” she said. “Then you take out all the women and kids, the non-hunters, etc., and keep peeling away the layers of the onion until there’s one left.”
“That’s still a big onion,” Cole said.
Lane jumped in. “So far DC has focused the hunt on Wisconsin and the states surrounding it. Let’s be glad that Li didn’t try to draw Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, and Michigan. That would’ve been a disaster.”
“An unmitigated disaster,” Cole agreed.