Michele sat in her dim cubicle, returning emails. Most of the other reporters had gone home for the night and it was quiet, save for the soft hum of cars driving by outside. The big room was lit softly, with halos cast by scattered desk lamps.
Michele thought back to her visit with Cole that morning. She was pretty sure he had looked at her with more than simple professional interest. She thought maybe he was attracted to her and felt his admiration for her was real. But she didn’t know what to make of it. She was too busy right now to make time for a relationship, and she sure as hell wasn’t ready for any kind of romance. She started to wonder if she was imagining his feelings for her when she heard him coming down her aisle.
He held up a large brown bag as he came toward her. “I stopped at BelAir Cantina on the way. I got an order of guac and chips and six soft-shell tacos. I got half Zihuatanejo shrimp and half fresh avocado and bacon and was hoping we could share. I wish I could tell you I had a pitcher of margaritas with me, but you’ll have to settle for bottled water.”
She stepped out and took the bag from him, starting to unpack its contents. “The shrimp tacos are my favorite, but the avocado and bacon are right up there. Did you do some digging or was this your gut telling you what I might like?”
“It was definitely my gut,” Cole admitted with a broad smile. “I figured if my gut liked those tacos, then there was a decent chance your gut might like them, too. Sounds like I was right.”
“You were indeed, SAC Huebsch. And I’m starved. I haven’t eaten since grabbing a yogurt for breakfast.” She was laying the food out and grabbing napkins from her desk when her computer chimed, telling her a message had arrived in her inbox. She caught Cole’s eye before leaning forward. She hesitated before clicking okay to accept the message, knowing even before she did that it was likely from the killer.
The subject line read I Wish You Could Understand! Both she and Cole held their breath as they read the words that followed.
I read your story and your editor’s opinion piece on Dr. Martin’s death last night. You still don’t understand! Whatever happened to ‘fair and balanced’ reporting and the old ‘two sides to every story’ proposition? You and your paper described my actions last night as ‘harsh and brutal’. Those words should have been used to describe Dr. Martin’s life’s work, but not his death. Nature IS harsh and brutal at times. When a tornado scours a path through a small, close-knit town or a hurricane washes away the lives and the refuse of a large, impersonal city. Those things are as harsh as they are brutal. Not my act! You also bemoaned his death as tragic. What was REALLY tragic is that Dr. Martin callously murdered a thousand infants a year for more than a decade! It’s tragic or worse that nobody raised a voice or a hand before now to stop him. It’s also incredible that you wrote that his life was cut short. Martin was fifty one. He terminated lives in the womb. Those were lives cut short! Not every life is sacred, Ms. Fields, and the world is a safer, more beautiful place this morning than it was yesterday. I wish you could see my view of things.
Michele looked over at Cole. “Why does he reach out to me? Is he trying to get caught?”
Cole rubbed his eyes and lowered his head, shaking it as he stared down at the floor and talked to himself as much as Michele. “He reaches out to you because you caught his eye with that first story you wrote on Dr. Smith’s murder; you put the spotlight on him. You know we’ll likely have the location of where the email originated from, probably within the next five minutes. From his first email we could tell he wasn’t some techno-geek who knows how to encrypt his messages to throw us off his scent,” he said. “It’s more likely he walked into a public place, unnoticed, and sent off his message and left again. It’s easy enough to do. We’ll check for surveillance cameras, but a lot of places don’t have them. The ones that do usually have them aimed at the cash registers. Even when they’re pointing at the seating areas, it’s easy enough to avoid them if a perp wears a cap and keeps his head down or turned away from them.
“Some on our team believe he wants to get caught, but I don’t see it. He does come across as conflicted, like he knows killing these physicians is horribly wrong, but somehow better than the alternative of letting them continue on. I’m no profiler, but I think he wants you, and the hundreds of thousands of subscribers who read your stories, to believe he’s not a villain. He believes he’s following a call that’s larger than he is and larger than his personal needs are. That’s the best I can do with this right now,” he concluded, getting unsteadily up from the exercise ball to leave.
“Will he kill again?” Michele asked.
He looked into her eyes and held them. “It’s only a matter of when, unless we can stop him, of course. The killer is on a mission. He won’t stop until the abortions do or until he’s dead.
“One more thing, off the record,” Cole said, as he lingered beside Michele’s desk. “Again, I’m not a profiler, but I read through this last email again. It looks to me like the killer is from a small town, probably a rural area. I’m sure the eggheads at the Hoover Building in DC will have their own thoughts about it, but that much jumps out at me based on his description of the small versus big cities. I guess we’ll see.”
He noticed Michele’s lips move as she re-read the killer’s email. She looked up. “I see what you mean. The part where the killer writes, “‘When a tornado scours a path through a small, close-knit town or a hurricane washes away the lives and the refuse of a large, impersonal city.”’
“Yeah, the small town is close-knit and the big city is impersonal. I may be reaching though and he could be trying to throw us further off his scent.”