Abandoned

better punishment than to change places with them?” She looks at the whiteboard. “How much would you like to bet that current customers got an email, or a phone call, or a text message, telling them what’s happening to Douglas Hollister and to keep an eye on the news for confirmation? The risk is increased, certainly, but so is the reward.”

“It’s an interesting theory,” James says, his voice grudging.

“Brilliant is a better word, honey-love. Go ahead, say it: brilliant.”

“We haven’t talked about the biggest anomaly,” he says, ignoring her.

I raise an eyebrow. “Which is?”

“Why confirm his existence by sending a text message, leaving a note with Heather, and dropping off a card at your home? If he just wanted to harm Douglas, why reveal himself at all?”

It is an excellent question. Possibly the best question.

“Maybe we’ll get a better idea from finding out more about the prior victims,” I say. “Callie, I want you to take that. Call up the departments involved and see if you can get them to send us the case files.”

“It’ll be my pleasure.”

“The quickest way to a disorganized offender is through what drives him,” James says. “Victimology. The quickest path to this kind of offender is going to be method.”

“Good,” I agree. “So let’s examine the requisites for our boy.” I walk over to the whiteboard and find a clean section. METHOD/REQUIRED, I write. “Let’s stick with the financial motivation and look at the most basic factors. What does he need to do what he does? What’s the foundation?”

“A client,” James says.

“Good.” I write CLIENT on the whiteboard under METHOD/REQUIRED. “How does he find a client?”

Alan scratches his head. “He found Douglas Hollister in a chat room for dissatisfied men. He finds them on the Internet?”

“That’s the most logical route these days,” I say, writing it down. “The Internet’s a big place. How does he decide where to start?”

“All kinds of ways,” a voice says, interrupting us.

I glance over and grin when I see Leo Carnes. “Hey, Leo!” I walk over to him and give him a hug. It’s not big-boss professional, but Leo is a friend. He’s also one of the best computer-crimes agents we have.

“Got rid of the earring, I see,” Callie teases.

He gives his left earlobe a self-conscious tug. “They’re not really very cool anymore, unless you’re Tommy Lee or someone like that.”

“Suits you,” Alan says. “Welcome back.”

Leo helped on the case of Annie, Bonnie’s mother. He looked younger then than he does now. He’s only twenty-seven or twenty-eight, but he’s already getting that certain wariness. I showed him his first murders, helped him sidle up close with real evil. It changed him. Other things are different too. He’s wearing a tie now, and his dark hair is cut much shorter.

Leo’s gone FBI on me, I think, and I’m both amused and saddened.

“Anyway,” he says, embarrassed by the attention, “you wanted to know how he’d go about finding clients on the Internet. It’s not that hard if you’ve got time and patience.”

“He’s got that in spades,” Alan says.

“If I do a search on, let’s say …” He sits down at a workstation. His fingers fly over the keyboard, as comfortable with it as my hand used to be with a cigarette. He starts an Internet connection and opens a browser. “Let’s do a search on antifeminism forum.” He types it as soon as he says it, and the page loads. “See? Eighteen thousand four hundred possibles. Let’s scroll through these…. Here’s one: fightmisandry.com.”

“Misandry?” I ask.

“Hatred of men,” James says. “Or boys.”

“What’s that got to do with feminism?” I ask. I recall Douglas Hollister’s rant from yesterday. “Ah … I understand. Feminists hate men, right?”

“That’s an oversimplification,” James says. “The idea behind a site like fightmisandry.com is going to be based on the concept that feminism has ceased being about equal choice and has instead become a forum for being broadly ‘antiman.’”

“And you know about this how, my dear homosexual?” Callie asks.

James only recently came out to us, and if this were anyone other than Callie and James, I’d be terrified at the sexual-harassment suit possibilities. But Callie would never say it if she actually thought it would hurt James’s feelings.

“Unlike some people,” he replies, not looking at her, “I’m constantly working on my academics. Intellectual stagnation isn’t just slothful, it’s unattractive.”

Callie laughs. “Good one.”

“Look at this,” I murmur, reading the menu of the site Leo called up. “There are options for real-time chat, forums, social groups, buddy listings—wow.” I stand back up, rubbing my lower back. “Lot of passion on this subject.”

“I can understand it,” Alan says. “Equality is equality, and I’ve always been cool with that. But men as the villain? That’s not equality, it’s hate, and that seems to be the direction of radical feminism today.”

“With everything we see,” Callie says, “how can you say that? When’s the last time we were chasing a woman who rapes and kills men?”

Her back is up, and I see Alan ready to return the salvo.

Here it is, I realize, bemused. A version of the argument that led Douglas Hollister to our mystery man. Watch and learn.

Alan stabs a thick finger at her. “See, that’s exactly what I’m talking about! Serial murderers are not what I’d called a representative cross section of the male population. But, hey, since they’re usually men, men must be beasts at the core, right?”

“If it walks like a duck …” Callie says, shrugging.

I watch as Alan struggles to lower his blood pressure. The effort to do so is the essential difference between an Alan Washington and a Douglas Hollister.

“Look,” he says, his tone reasonable without being conciliatory, “I’ve never bought into the boys-club mentality of law enforcement. I’ve never cared who carries the gun, man or woman, black or red or white. I’m fine with a female president and women CEOs. What I’m not fine with is being categorized by my gender. That’s no different than me assigning traits to you because you’re a woman, right?”

“I suppose,” Callie allows.

“Well, that’s what radical feminism has skewed toward, in my opinion.” He emphasizes the last three words, with more than a little bit of irony.

“I love you, honey-love,” Callie says, reaching out to pat his cheek. “Always have, always will. And Lord knows I’m the last to ride the horse of political correctness. But—taking a cue from our current psycho, speaking pragmatically—a man criticizing feminism is always going to be suspect, just as a white man criticizing any black movement would be.”

“I can see that.” He gives her a sly grin. “So, really, what you’re saying is that we’re brothers and sisters under the skin. We’ve both been oppressed by the white man, right?”

Callie sniffs. “Speak for yourself.”

Their differences resolve easily, because the element of psychosis is missing. Callie and Alan can argue, even on a subject they feel passionately about, and walk away friends. Douglas and his pals could not.

“Thank you for the live case study,” I say to them. “Now let’s refocus. What you were saying, Leo, is that he could search for clients any number of ways.”

“Yep,” he says, bobbing his head. It makes him look young in spite of his suit and tie. “The Internet is about a limited number of things, at its core: information, communication, and community. You can find anything on the Internet if you know how and where to look and are patient. Anything,” he says.

“There’s a big difference between venting and taking action,” James says. “Most of the men in those forums are going to be talking, not doing. It seems very needle-in-a-haystack, even if he did narrow it down to a site like