“You are standing in my place of employment,” Tom said.
“Then,” Bandoni boomed, “get us a conference room.”
Five minutes later, we’d relocated to one of the Post’s meeting rooms. While Cohen and Evan laid out the pages, I blocked Tom at the door.
“We’ll cut you in later,” I said. “Right now, you have to sit on this.”
He put on his battle face. “It’s important information.”
I waved him into the hall and pulled the door closed behind me.
“Tom. No. It gives away details known only to the killer. You share it, you’ll eliminate a way for us to narrow our focus to the right person.”
“But the public—”
“And—” I held up a hand. “What about all the nutcases out there who will see this manifesto as a call to arms?”
Tom planted his feet. “The public has a right to know.”
“The public has a right to be safe.”
“Plus,” he went on, “the package came here. To me.”
“And you rightly called us. Let us handle it.”
We glared at each other.
I’d once been firmly on Tom’s side, believing it was the public’s right to be informed and the media’s duty to give them that information. But not in this case. Nothing superseded our hunt for the killers.
“You’ll have the inside scoop,” I said. “Have I ever let you down?”
His shoulders dropped, and I knew I’d won.
“Just swear you’ll keep me in the loop,” he said to me. “Quid pro quo.”
“Quid pro quo.”
Evan opened the door and peered out. “Say, do you have a footstool?”
In the flickering fluorescents of the conference room, we spread the twenty pages of the vendetta across the table. A story of five men—victims decried by society, laughed at by the beautiful people. Taunted by women and belittled by men.
Victims made into self-proclaimed losers by a cruel roll of the genetic dice. The five men were pudgy and plain, with bad skin and worse haircuts. In panel after panel they approached women in bars, at grocery stores, in offices and theaters.
And each time, the women laughed or sneered or fled.
Then, on the fifth page, one of the five was visited in a dream by a stern figure with dark-feathered wings and fiery eyes.
Cohen read out loud. “‘Raise up yourselves,’ commanded the angel. ‘Be not as God intended, but as you yourselves wish to be. When you are risen in my image, then you must smite your enemies and cast down the world. Our anger is righteous.’”
“Told what to do by an angel,” Bandoni said.
A crease appeared between Evan’s eyes. “Or by the devil.”
“Either way, these douchebags have a pretty high opinion of themselves.”
In the next panels, the men set about raising themselves up. Sessions at the gym, language classes, lessons in the art of conversation. They cut their hair and shrugged off their ratty T-shirts and appeared in clothes that looked straight from a GQ fashion shoot.
“Noah’s transformation,” I said. “His pickup artists.”
Bandoni smacked the table. “The fucking Superior Gentlemen.”
“They never quite show their faces,” Cohen said. “Never enough to identify them.”
Transformed, the men began fighting back. They came together to vow payback against their tormentors. They pledged to murder the men. And to seize the women, who were rightfully theirs. Beautiful, fair-haired women delivered casually to their doors with that night’s pizza.
Bandoni flattened his hands on the table, his gaze moving from one picture to the next. “The sex angle again.”
I rubbed my neck. “One of Noah’s students, Markey Byron, said that sex should be something you could buy in bulk at Costco.”
We looked at each other.
“That,” Bandoni said, “is just weird. Is there anything we know of that links Markey to the Superior Gentlemen?”
I shook my head.
And finally, the last panel. A final portrait of a single man, standing on the ice. It was similar to the men on the first page. Except a giant red X had been slashed across the image.
The elusive familiarity finally surfaced. “They’re like the creature from Frankenstein.”
“Ah,” Evan said. “You’re right.”
The furrows in Bandoni’s brow deepened to ditches. “Explain.”
“In Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein,” I said, “Victor Frankenstein sets out to create the perfect human. But instead, he creates a monstrosity. Horrified, he rejects his own creation and flees. The monster, who is described as sensitive and emotional, realizes it will always be denied love through no fault of its own. It retaliates by murdering everyone Victor loves.”
Cohen nodded. “I’m reaching all the way back to my English lit class, but yes.”
Bandoni growled. “Talk slow for us nondweebs. You’re saying that these guys are killing people based on some old book?”
“Frankenstein is a big part of popular culture,” I said. “And look at the first page of this manifesto. The artist, presumably Noah, portrayed the men as monsters, alone in the ice.”
“Yeah. So what?”
“Once Frankenstein’s monster had ruined his creator’s life, he promises to kill himself and flees into the ice near the North Pole.”
“It fits with much of what the killers wrote,” Evan said. “That God the creator is unjust. The righteous anger.”
“And the comment about payback being hell,” Cohen added.
A vein throbbed in Bandoni’s forehead. “You’re telling me that these drawings mean our dickwads are going to kill a bunch of people and then off themselves? You get all that from pen and ink?”
Evan held up a hand, David soothing Goliath. “It’s possible, Len. Mass murderers almost always take their own lives once they’ve committed their ultimate act.”
Bandoni glared at all of us, as if we were responsible. “What you’re saying with all this Frankenstein bullshit is that these guys are sensitive, emotional, sex-deprived monsters who are going to kill a bunch of people because they feel rejected. And then they’re going to kill themselves?” He aimed his gaze on Evan. “Is she right?”
“It’s possible that’s what we’re dealing with. Yes.”
“Then who’s this creator that they’re getting back at? Noah and Donovan aren’t creators. They’re kids. A software geek and a student.”
The overhead fluorescents hummed and flickered. We looked at each other. None of us, apparently, had
