Savich stowed his briefcase beneath the seat in front of him and sat down. 'I upgraded us. You don't mind that I have the aisle?'
'You're the boss, sir.'
'Yeah, but now you can call me Dillon or Savich. I answer to either one. What do most people call you''
'Sherlock, sir. Just plain Sherlock.'
'I met your daddy once about five years ago, just after he was appointed to the bench. Everyone in law enforcement was tickled to have him named because he rarely cut a convicted criminal any slack. I remember his selection didn't go over too well with liberals in your home state.'
'No,' she said looking out the window as the 767 began to taxi down the runway. 'It didn't. There were two serious efforts to have him recalled-neither succeeded, of course. The first try was after he upheld the death penalty for a man who'd raped and tortured two little boys, then dumped their bodies in a Dumpster in Palo Alto. The second was when he wouldn't grant bail to an illegal Mexican alien who'd kidnapped and murdered a local businessman.'
'Hard to believe there are people who'd want to rally behind those kinds of killers.'
'Oh, there are. Their rationale in the first case was that my father showed no compassion. After all, the man's wife had died of cancer, his little boy had been killed by a drunk driver. He deserved another chance. He'd been pushed to torture those little boys. He had shown remorse, claimed grief had sent him out of his mind, but Dad said 'bullshit' and upheld the death penalty. As for the illegal Mexican, they claimed Dad was a racist, that there was no proof the man would flee the U.S. Also they claimed that the man had kidnapped the businessman because he had refused to give him a job, had threatened to call Immigration if the guy didn't leave the premises. They claimed the man hadn't been treated fairly, that he'd been discriminated against. It didn't matter that the businessman was an immigrant-a legal one. I also seriously doubt that he made that threat.'
'They didn't succeed in recalling him.'
'No, but it was close. You could say that the Bay Area is a fascinating place to grow up. If there's any other possible take on something, some group of locals will latch onto it.'
'What does your dad think of your joining the FBI?''
The flight attendant spoke over the PA system, telling them about their seat belts and the oxygen masks. He saw it in her eyes-the wariness, the relief that now she could concentrate on her flotation cushion instead of his questions. She was proving to be a puzzle. He very much appreciated puzzles. A good one fascinated him. He'd get her again with that question. Maybe when she was tired or distracted.
He sat back in his seat and said nothing more. Once in the air, he opened his briefcase and gave her a thick file. 'I hope you read quickly. This is everything on the three different crimes. I knew you didn't have a laptop, so I had it downloaded and printed out for you. Read everything and absorb as much as you can. If you have questions, write them down and ask me later.' He gently lifted his laptop onto the fold-down tray and got to work.
He waited until they were served dinner before he spoke again. 'Have you finished reading everything?'
'Yes.'
'You're fast. Questions? Ideas? Anything that doesn't seem kosher?'
'Yes.'
This time he didn't say anything. He just chewed and waited. He watched her cut a small piece of lettuce from her salad. She didn't eat it, just played with it.
'I already knew about this man from the papers. But there's so much more here.' She sounded elated, as if she'd made the insiders' club. He frowned at her. She suddenly cleared her throat, and her voice was nearly expressionless. 'I can understand that he has low self-esteem, that he probably isn't very bright, that he probably works at a low-paying job, that he's a loner and doesn't relate well to people-' He waited, something he was excellent at. 'I always wondered why it killed families. Families of four, exactly.'
'You called him 'it.' That's interesting.' She hadn't meant to. She forked down her lettuce and took her time chewing. She had to be more careful. 'It was just a slip of the tongue.'
'No, it wasn't, but we'll let that go for now, Sherlock. This family thing-the people in the ISU, as you've read in their profile, believe he lived on the same block as the first family he killed in Des Moines, knew them, hated them, wanted to obliterate them, which he did. However, they couldn't find anyone in the nearby area of the first murders in Des Moines to fit that description. Everyone just figured that the profile wasn't correct in this particular case. When he killed again in St. Louis, everyone was flummoxed. When I spoke to Captain Brady in Chicago, I asked him if the St. Louis police had canvassed the area for a possible suspect. They had, but they still didn't find anybody who looked promising.'
'But you had already talked to the police in St. Louis, hadn't you?' 'Oh yes.'
'You know a lot, don't you?'
'I've thought about this case, Sherlock, thought and thought and re-created it as best I could. Unlike the cops, I firmly believe the profile is right on target.'
'Even though they didn't find anyone in Des Moines or St. Louis to fit the profile?'' 'Yeah, that's right.'
'You're stringing me along, sir.'
'Yes, but I'd like to see what you come up with. Let's just see if you're as fast with your brain as with that Lady Colt of yours.'
She splayed her fingers, long slender fingers, short buffed nails. 'You still kicked it out of my hand. It didn't matter.'
'But you're a good catch. I wasn't expecting that move from Porter.'
She grinned at him then, momentarily disarmed. 'We practiced it. In another exercise, he got taken as a hostage. I threw a gun to him, but he missed it. The robber was so angry, he shot Porter. As you can imagine, we got yelled at by the instructors for winging it.' She said again, still grinning, 'Practice.'
He said slowly, shutting down his laptop, 'I got creamed once when I was a trainee at the Academy. I wish I'd learned that move. My partner, James Quinlan, was playing a bank robber in a Hogan's Alley exercise, and the FBI got the drop on him. I had to stand there and watch him get taken away. If I'd thrown him a gun, he might have had a chance. Although God knows what would have happened then.' He sighed. 'Quinlan turned me in under questioning. I think he expected me to break him out of lockup, and when I didn't, he sang. Although how he expected me to do it, I have no idea. Anyway, they caught me an hour later heading out of town in a stolen car, the mayor's blue Buick.'
'Quinlan?'
'Yes.' Nothing more, just the yes. Let her chew on nothing for a bit.
'Who is this Quinlan?'
'An agent and longtime friend. Now, Sherlock, what do you think we're going to find in Chicago?'
'You said the Chicago police believed they were close. How close?'
'You read it. A witness said he saw a man running from the victims' house. They've got a description. We'll see just how accurate it is.'
'What do you know, sir, that's not in the reports?'
'Most of it's surmise,' he said, 'and some excellent stuff from my computer program.' He nodded to the flight attendant to remove his cup of coffee. He gently closed his laptop and slipped it into its hard case. 'We're nearly at O'Hare,' he said, leaned back, and closed his eyes.
She leaned back as well. He hadn't shown her the computer analysis on the case. Maybe he'd thought she already had enough on her plate, and maybe she did. She hadn't wanted to look at the photos from the crime scenes, but she had. It had been difficult. There hadn't been any photos in the newspapers. The actual photos brought the horror of it right in her face. She couldn't help it; she spoke aloud: 'In all three cases, the father and mother were in their late thirties, their two children-always a boy and a girl-were ten and twelve. In each case, the father had been shot through the chest, then in his stomach, the second shot delivered after he was dead, the autopsy reports read. The mother was tied down on the kitchen table, her face beaten, then she was strangled with the cord of the toaster, thus the name the Toaster. The children were tied up, knocked out, their heads stuck in the oven. Like Hansel and Gretel. It's more than creepy. This guy is incredibly sick. I've wondered what he would do if the family didn't have a toaster.'
'Yeah, I wondered about that too, at first,' he said, not opening his eyes. 'Makes you think he must have visited each of the homes to make sure there was one right there in the kitchen before the murders.'
'That or he brought the toasters with him.'
