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Narrowing his eyes, Mac stared at the screens on the computer, flipping between the statements, pictures, and vitals of the victims and their spouses. “Each husband or boyfriend was involved in the security field. A private investigator, two cops, a security analyst, two bodyguards, and a former investigator. ”
“He fixated on the men’s career fields,” Jethro pointed out.
Mac stared at the screen thoughtfully. “The three women he fixated on strongest were the private investigator’s and the two cops’ wives. Men he would consider better able to protect their women. Is it a sex crime? Or is he trying to prove to himself and to these men that he’s the better man? It’s a power trip that goes beyond sex. He’s striking at the men and punishing the women for what he considers their incompetence. ” Mac leaned forward as he typed in the commands that would pull up more information on the seven women. “The three who had no spouses had boyfriends, and they were the earliest occurrences. He was just stepping in here. ”
Mac wished he had had this information when he first started on the case three years ago. He had only started the investigation with the first victim who had been violently attacked.
“The last, fourth one he attacked just before I resigned. Her husband was a private investigator. It went on longer than the others, escalated in stages. First the missing items, then online attacks. Then the physical attack. Then he just drops out until the past six months. That’s two and a half years of silence. Why?”
“Where the hell did you get this program?” Jethro was leaning over his shoulder as Mac typed in commands. “This isn’t the standard one we’re using at the Bureau. ”
Mac’s smile was smug. “Keiley fiddled with it a time or two. I normally use it for the farm, but it’s applicable in damned near any field. All I have to do is give it the commands and search criteria and it pulls from the files I command. Or—” He hit another key. “We search the Internet with the same criteria that’s already been loaded in. That takes awhile, though. ”
Mac leaned back in his chair, frowning as Jethro moved back to the side of the desk and pulled a chair close. He could feel something niggling at the back of his mind, but couldn’t bring it into focus.
His gaze went over the files pulled up at present as he minimized the program to work in the background.
“Why haven’t there been any attacks from when I gave the case to Dell up until the last six months?” he questioned absently. “It’s been three years. ”
“Maybe he moved. The attacks could have gone on elsewhere without our being aware of it. ”
“Possibly,” he murmured. But it didn’t feel right. That was the problem with this investigation to begin with. Too many things just didn’t feel right once he began the investigation.
“Have you had another profile worked up on him?”
Jethro shook his head. “We only had the three instances to work on until I found the other four recently. The director wanted more information before we went back to the profiler. ”
“This isn’t a sex crime, Jethro. ” Mac could feel it. It was something else, something more dangerous. “And he wouldn’t just stop. He would go on, and the attacks would get worse. He wants to prove something. ”
“So we’re looking at someone who couldn’t get into the investigative field for whatever reason?”
Mac nodded. “Someone who managed to get in close to the victims. Close enough to gain access into their homes. Call Dell, have him interview these victims again. Get a list of close friends and family who could have had that access. Let’s see what we get when we run the names. ”
“That will take awhile, too,” Jethro pointed out.
There was a warning flaring in his gut that didn’t make sense.
“Have him get started on it. We could get a strike early. ”
“I only have a few days’ enforced vacation left. ” Jethro leaned back in his chair. “I’ve been considering a real vacation. I’ll put in for a few weeks’ leave if you can work this with me. It might give us an advantage if Dell’s working the information and we follow it from here. ”
Mac tapped his fingers against the arm of the chair. “Do it. ” He finally nodded, not certain why the tingling in the back of his neck was becoming an itch. “It’s going to take a couple of days for Kei’s program to finish running the Internet and then we’ll need a few days to clear out the extraneous junk it pulls in. When it’s finished, we’ll see what we have. ”
Mac stared at his computer, his eyes still narrowed, working through the information that had come up so far.
“I’ll work up a list of questions for Dell to take with him,” he told Jethro. “He’s a good field agent, but he’s not the best when it comes to questioning victims. ”
“No shit,” Jethro murmured. “I hadn’t had time to fully investigate all seven victims and their associations. ”
“You would have soon. ” Mac breathed out heavily. “What concerns me is the silence between my last case and six months ago. The four cases took place in the Alexandria-D. C. area within a period of four years. Then nothing after that until the last three. I wonder where he went?”
“With any luck, Keiley’s genius will pull that one out. ” Jethro nodded at Mac’s computer. “Too bad we can’t hook into the law enforcement databases with that baby. ”
“It would take years,” Mac sighed. “Keiley keeps threatening to fine-tune it, but she hasn’t figured out how to make it work through millions of cases amid dozens of agencies. We’ll be waiting days just on Web and newspaper hits in the Virginia-Maryland area. Reach out further and you’re waiting weeks and months. ”
“The more you narrow the criteria, the quicker it gets?” Jethro asked.
Mac nodded. “But at this point, there’s not enough information to find a single common denominator other than the spouses who are in the investigative field. The amount of key words I’ve had to use will fill the program with junk as well. But it could give us a clue. Something else to move on. ”
