Sterling didn’t say a thing about the professor. Dean didn’t say a word to any of us. Living in the house with the two of them—and a
vulnerable, seething Lia—was like trying to tap dance through a minefield. I felt like any second, everything would explode.
And then Director Sterling showed up.
The last time the FBI director had put in an appearance at our house, a senator’s daughter had just been kidnapped.
This did not bode well.
The director, Sterling, and Briggs locked themselves in Briggs’s office. From the kitchen, I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but every few minutes, voices were raised.
First Sterling’s. Then the director’s. Briggs’s.
Finally, there was silence. And then they came for us.
The past twenty-four hours hadn’t been kind to either Sterling or Briggs. Briggs looked like he’d slept in his clothes. Beside him, Agent Sterling’s jaw was clenched. Her shirt was buttoned all the way up. So was her suit jacket. Since she was the kind of person who used clothes as armor, the subtle changes told me that she’d gotten dressed today expecting a fight.
“Three hundred and seven,” the director said grimly, looking at each of us in turn. “That’s how many students are enrolled in Fogle’s serial killer class. One hundred and twenty-seven females, a hundred and eighty males.” Director Sterling paused. The first time I’d met him, he’d reminded me of a grandfather. Today, there was nothing grandfatherly about him. “That’s a lot of suspects, and I’m a man who believes in utilizing all of his resources.”
Director Sterling was whatever kind of man he had to be to stay on top. When confronted with a problem, he analyzed all possible solutions: costs versus benefits, risks balanced out against rewards. In this case, the risks and likelihood of compromising the investigation and exposing the Naturals program compared to the potential benefits of utilizing all of his “resources” to catch this killer.
I thought of Judd and his talk of slippery slopes.
“We were told to stay away from this case on pain of death.” Lia smiled like a predator toying with its prey. She didn’t like that we’d gotten caught, she didn’t like that she’d been told to back off, and she hated that Dean wouldn’t even look at her. “Am I to take it that certain parties have been overruled?”
Lia let her gaze roam to Briggs when she said certain parties, but my eyes were on Agent Sterling. There was a reason she had dressed for battle this morning. Whatever the director was about to ask us to do, his daughter had argued against it.
“The risks are minimal to nonexistent,” the director said firmly. “And given recent events, it’s my understanding that giving you something useful to do might actually keep you out of trouble.”
I took that to mean that the director knew about our little trip to Colonial. “The five of you won’t be interviewing witnesses.” Briggs stood with his
hands loose by his sides, eyeing us one by one. “You will not be going to
crime scenes.” Briggs’s gaze flicked over to Lia. “You won’t be analyzing any of our interviews with Daniel Redding.”
I wasn’t sure what that left.
“Your involvement on this case begins and ends with social media.” Briggs turned to Sterling and waited. For a moment, I thought she’d turn on her heels and march out the door, but she didn’t.
“Our preliminary profile says the UNSUB is male.” Sterling’s voice was perfectly even and perfectly calm in a way that told me that she was on the verge of snapping. The closer she was to losing it, the more viciously she reeled it in. “Redding suggested we might be dealing with a college student. I would have put the UNSUB’s age between twenty-three and twenty-eight. Above-average intelligence, but not necessarily educated. But what do I know?” An edge crept into her voice.
“Thank you, Agent Sterling,” the director cut in. He turned to the rest of us. “With the university’s cooperation, we’ve obtained copies of the class schedules and transcripts for every student in that class. What that doesn’t tell us is who they are, what they’re capable of. That’s where you come in.”
“Social media,” Sloane interjected, picking up on what Briggs had said earlier. “Upwards of three hundred million photos are uploaded to leading social media sites every day. Among smartphone owners in our UNSUB’s demographic, somewhere between sixty and eighty percent of time spent using that device will be spent on social networks, rather than direct communication.”
“Exactly,” Director Sterling told her. “We don’t have the manpower to search through every post, and even if we did, your eyes might catch something that Briggs’s team wouldn’t. We’re not asking you to do anything that adolescents all over the country don’t do every day.” Director Sterling wasn’t looking at us when he said those words. He was looking at his
daughter. “You’re teenagers. This internet stuff is practically your native language.”
“And you’re okay with this?” Michael asked Agent Sterling, arching one eyebrow. To me, there was no noticeable change in her expression, but Michael must have seen something. “Not okay with it,” Michael interpreted, “but also not as convinced that it’s a bad idea as you’d like to be.” He gave her his most beatific smile. “We’re growing on you.”
“Enough, Michael.” Briggs turned the focus away from Agent Sterling and back to the case. “If the UNSUB is enrolled in Fogle’s class, the profile predicts that he would be an older student—he may not have the credits to be a junior or senior, but he would be in that age range. He probably comes from a working-class family and may live at home and commute to campus.”
Agent Sterling threaded her fingers together in front of her. Her profile had put the younger end of the age range at twenty-three. Briggs had just expanded that downward by at least a year or two.
“Veronica?” the director prompted.
“We’re looking for someone who gets pleasure out of dominating others, but who may not be fully confident in his ability to do so,” Agent Sterling said after a sizable silence. “His father was present, but volatile, and likely left the family around the time our UNSUB entered puberty. His mother may have dated a string of men, but she did not remarry until the UNSUB was at least eighteen. This UNSUB is comfortable around firearms. He will not have a girlfriend or spouse. It’s likely that he drives a dark-colored truck or SUV, and if he has a dog, expect it to be a larger breed, such as a German shepherd.”
I was used to making profiles. Doing the reverse—trying to figure out the specific pieces of evidence that had led Sterling to those conclusions— was harder. A dark-colored SUV and a large-breed dog suggested a need for
power and domination. I wasn’t sure where firearms came in—unless the professor had been shot?—but there must have been something about Emerson’s murder that suggested both a need for control and a lack of confidence on the killer’s part. The presentation of the body and the methodical way Emerson had been killed were both characteristic of an organized killer. So where was Sterling getting the lack of confidence?
The fact that he’s copying another killer’s MO? Victim selection? Did the UNSUB’s initial attack come from behind? Did he drug her?
I tried to figure out how Sterling had arrived at her conclusions, but operating with a tiny subset of the relevant case details was like trying to swim with a cinder block tied to each knee and a squirrel stuffed in your pocket. I’d seen Emerson’s body on the news, but that wasn’t enough.
“How was the professor killed?” I asked.
The director, Sterling, and Briggs all turned to stare at me. So did Dean. I realized belatedly that no one had ever said that the professor was dead. That was information that we weren’t supposed to know. It was a guess.
Based on their reactions, I knew I’d guessed right.
“You don’t need to know the details,” Briggs replied curtly. “Consider this nothing more than another training exercise. Find whatever internet profiles you can for each of the students on the class list. Check out their status updates or likes or whatever it is college kids are doing online these days, and let us know if you run into anything suspicious.”
Lia narrowed her eyes at Briggs. “You don’t think we’ll find anything.” She punctuated her words by drumming her fingers, one by one, against the arm of the sofa. “Interesting.”
“You don’t think the UNSUB is a student.” Dean picked up where Lia left off. “But you can’t rule out the possibility, because that’s what my father does: he doles out tiny kernels of truth and dresses them up like lies.” Dean
looked at Sterling, then at Briggs. “He wants you questioning your instincts about everything.”
“I’m not questioning anything,” Briggs said, a muscle tensing in his jaw. “If there’s something to his comment about the students in that class, there will be red flags. If there are red flags, the five of you will find them.”
“And if there aren’t,” Dean said, filling in the blanks, “you won’t have wasted your time.”
Every hour we spent wading through social media sites was an hour Briggs’s team was free to hunt down other leads. That’s why you agreed to this, I thought, focusing in on Briggs. If Redding lied, you haven’t lost anything. If he’s telling the truth, we’ll see it. Either way, he’s not the one calling the shots. You are.
I thought about what Dean had said about Briggs’s competitive streak and what Judd had said about crossing lines. You were all for keeping us out of this, I thought, and then you found the professor’s body.
“Dean, if you’d rather sit this one out, that would be fine.” The director straightened the front of his suit as he gave Dean a tight, close-lipped smile.
“You mean that you would rather I sat this one out.” Dean stayed hunched over on the fireplace, but he lifted his eyes to meet the director’s. “Because I’m ‘too close to it,’ but really, because you don’t trust me.” Dean waited a bit, but the director didn’t contradict him. “Not on this case,” Dean continued. “Not with my father.” He stood. “Not with your daughter.”
