Rose College, we need that warrant ASAP.”
“I’ll call the U.S. attorney myself,” Hooper said. Nora smiled. Hooper had connections that most FBI agents didn’t have.
“What else?” Duke said. “You look worried.”
“I’m very concerned. Look at the writing. She’s like a tightly wound clock ready to break. She’s impulsive and angry. She’s young, which is why she’s been able to get away with it. Parents and teachers tend to let young people get away with erratic behavior thinking they’ll grow out of it. I don’t think she’d be able to hold down a job for long. I doubt she has much control over her outbursts, though she is able to rein herself back in. Like a three-year-old who pushes down a kid and takes their toy. They’ll give it right back when they’re told to, but they were unable to control the impulse to take it in the first place. That’s learned behavior, to resist taking what we want when we want it. I don’t think our Maggie has control over that.”
Hooper said, “I’ll put out some feelers about that bear story. She mentions they ‘fixed’ it. Sounds like something that might be an unsolved crime.”
What would people like her mother do under those circumstances? She said, “If the identity of the driver who hit the bear was made public, that’s who they targeted.”
“You don’t think they killed him?” Hooper asked.
“Not Anya, if we’re to believe what Leif Cole said about her. If she was truly that upset when she thought that Jonah Payne had been killed by accident, then she couldn’t have participated in cold-blooded murder. But that doesn’t mean she wouldn’t destroy property he cares about. Like the offending SUV.”
“I’m on it.”
“Can I keep this?” She held up the letter.
“Sure, it’s a copy.”
She stared at it again and frowned. “There’s something familiar here. I’m wondering if we’ve seen similar letters come through our squad. The use of the word ‘Establishment’ stands out. That’s a clear anarchist statement. But ‘Industrial Complex’ sounds out of place, almost like she felt like she had to put it there to sound like she knew what she was talking about.”
“You don’t think she’s a true anarchist?”
“She is. She believes in her cause, but her cause is not solely extreme environmental activism. It’s more focused.”
“You can tell that by this letter?” Duke asked.
“Some,” she said. “And thirty-seven years of experience, on both sides of the law.”
“I’m going to have Jason work on finding out about that case and seeing if there was any retaliation,” Hooper said. “Duke.”
There was a silent exchange between them, and Hooper left.
“What was that about?” she asked.
“You aren’t blind to the fact that something’s going on here. You heard the profiler yesterday state that the last letter was focused on
“You and Hooper spoke to Dr. Vigo about my case? Without me?”
“You were at the morgue. Why is it so hard for you to accept help?”
Duke was challenging her. She was completely out of her element, psychopaths and revenge. “I don’t have any problem accepting help. I have my entire squad hunting down pieces of this puzzle, and I let you come on board as a consultant. So don’t tell me I don’t accept help.”
“Let me rephrase it. You don’t want anyone singling you out for special consideration. You don’t want personal protection. But you’ve got it. Hooper and I agree that this woman has some reason in her head for not liking you. Until we find her, we need to be cautious.”
Nora didn’t like the direction this conversation was going. “Let’s be logical about this. If someone had a vendetta against me, they’d come after me, right? Personally. I don’t know Maggie O’Dell, I’ve never met her. Why would she come after me?”
“Why would they go after the driver of an SUV because he accidentally hit a bear? He certainly didn’t do it on purpose, his car was probably totaled and he’s lucky to be alive if he hit the poor animal with any speed. And why would this woman kill Jonah Payne? There’s no logical reason. And her friends-she probably killed those three college students, kids she knew, a girl she said she loved like a sister. So don’t think for a minute that you’re not at risk!”
Nora was taken aback by Duke’s passionate anger in getting his point across. She pulled at her hair, never feeling so out of sorts. “It doesn’t make sense. It has to make sense!”
Duke firmly rubbed her arm. “I’m not a shrink, but I know people pretty well. Some of them just aren’t very nice. Maybe this game she’s playing is as much psychological as it is physical.”
“I don’t have any personal connection with the people she’s suspected of killing.”
“Maybe they’re not connected to one another, but connected to the killer,” Duke mused.
She looked at him. “I was thinking that earlier, but Jonah Payne is the odd man out. The only possible angle is to Leif Cole because of their public disagreements over biotechnology, but that’s really stretching it, don’t you think?”
“Let’s put Anya Ballard and her friends aside for a minute. And Russ-” Duke swallowed uneasily.
She said, “He had information that the killer needed.
But why not leave Dr. Payne’s body in Lake Tahoe? Why transport it to his lab?”
“I don’t know. The theatrics?”
Nora considered. “But it draws attention to BLF.”
“And they’re dead.”
“Maybe the killer worried about them saying something.”
“This Maggie O’Dell, we don’t know where she is. Maybe Dr. Vigo’s wrong about there being only four cell members,” Duke said. “Maybe Maggie and her partner are the two we need to be looking for. Maybe it’s Maggie and her sister.”
“She says she doesn’t talk to her,” Nora pointed out.
“Maybe a boyfriend? A mentor?”
Nora considered. “Scott Edwards was her boyfriend, according to Professor Cole. He probably knew more about her than anyone. If Scott Edwards’s truck was really in Tahoe, then that confirms there had to be two people-one to drive the truck with Payne’s body and one to drive Dr. Payne’s Jeep back to Butcher-Payne.”
“Why would they bring the Jeep back?”
“I don’t know. Theatrics, as you said. I don’t see how they could possibly think that we wouldn’t have been able to figure out that his death wasn’t an accident.”
“Our overcrowded prisons are a testament to the fact that criminals aren’t always smart.”
“This one killed five people that we know of,” Nora pointed out. She didn’t know what to think. Her head spun as she processed all the information she’d received in a short period of time. She called upon her classes in criminal psychology. “Females rarely use knives to kill.”
“But I haven’t heard of any other cases where the killer lets their victims bleed to death. Maybe you have. I remember a girlfriend of Sean’s in high school who used to cut herself. She had scars all up and down her arms. She never left the house wearing anything but long sleeves.”
Maybe … maybe Duke was on to something. Nora was well-versed in the psychology of “cutting” behavior. “O’Dell left around Christmas and there were no more BLF attacks. What was she doing during the nine months before she allegedly came back?”
“Good question. When we find out exactly who she is, maybe we’ll know.”
“So O’Dell leaves, everything is back to normal. She returns … why?”
“To finish her revenge.”
“Why leave at all? Just because her roommate was having an affair with her professor?”
“Maybe there was another reason we don’t know yet.”
“She was angry with Anya. Very angry. But it would be easy to manipulate her old anarchist cell into arson, especially when there were animals in jeopardy. So she’s mad, throws a tantrum, leaves, returns, everyone is
