Abomination (8 page)

“I didn’t find any bugs on us or our gear,” said Dallas.
“I’ll check our cell phones before we leave. I can guarantee our safe house is
wired in every corner, but every FBI safe house is tapped. I should be able to
determine if the devices are ours or someone else’s.”

“Okay, before we go any further,” said Ryan. “We’ll have
to conduct our investigation as if we’re cut off from the resources of the Bureau.
That means I don’t intend to report our methods or findings. We have to dumb it
down and leave no trail for anyone to follow. And to make it more interesting,
we still have to make the deputy director believe we’re following his orders as
normal without question.

“What I just asked of you is grounds for your dismissal
from the FBI or even criminal charges. I’ll take full responsibility for anything
I ask of you, but know you may suffer consequences for sticking around.”

“Ryan, I’m in agreement with Dallas,” said Tom.
“Disclaimers aren’t necessary. I can’t speak for Michelle, but I’m pissed, too.
It could’ve easily been us that Arrington ripped apart. Not to mention we had
to stand by and watch him kill an innocent girl. If I had known more about what
we were dealing with, I never would’ve let him take her into the house.”

“Actually, Tom is speaking for me and quite well,” said
Michelle. “I don’t like being used. It feels like we were set up. If you’re
right about the other group shadowing us, it seems we’re taking all the risks
flushing out the target so they can kill it from a mile away. I wouldn’t mind
getting my hands on the assholes looking at me as expendable. Of course I’m
in.”

“Thank you, Michelle,” said Ryan. “I promise I’ll try to
give you that opportunity to put your hands on them. I feel sorry for the guy
making the mistake of looking at you as a defenseless girl.”

“Many have, but not one of them will again,” she added
with a slight smile. “What do you need me to do?”

“It’s actually what I need you and Tom to do,” said
Ryan. “I need you to start with a clean slate profiling the remaining three.
You can begin with the several photos I took with my phone of the Virginia crime scene. I had a feeling they’d come in handy. I also need you to look at the
files I’m not supposed to show you. I want you to work up a second profile
focusing on who created them. We all know Arrington’s file didn’t fit what we
saw, but I’m not sure it was completely fabricated. I suspect the Syracuse killing may not have been one of his. What it should do is give us another angle
to possibly identify the other group crashing our party.”

“Reverse engineering a serial killer’s profile,” said
Tom. “That’s an interesting approach. You basically want us to figure out the
artist who painted the fake picture of Arrington.”

“I do,” emphasized Ryan. “But even that takes a back
burner to working up an accurate profile on Richard Elliot. The second order
from Donaldson I’m going to ignore is not finding him before he has a chance to
take another victim. We’ll let the deputy director believe we’re following the
designed plan of allowing Elliot to abduct her and then assaulting his hideout
afterwards. I’m no longer a fan of waiting to take them down while they’re
preoccupied with killing.”

“That makes much more sense,” said Michelle. “I don’t
ever want to see that again. I can’t shake the feeling we used that poor girl
as bait.”

“I can’t either,” affirmed Ryan. “While you’re digging
for information, Dallas and I will be focusing on identifying the unknown
players. I’m hoping it’s just another FBI team Donaldson sent as our backup,
but my gut tells me we’re going to find something more sinister. I believe the
other players are military, or ex-military. And if I’m right, those may be the
real animals we’re hunting. Not only did they break the law by conducting a
mission within our borders, but they assassinated a U.S. citizen. It doesn’t
matter what Arrington did; the Constitution guarantees him the right to face
his accusers and stand trial. It’s impossible for me to ignore that.”

“This got complicated pretty fast, didn’t it, Boss?”
observed Dallas.

“Yes, it did,” confirmed Ryan. “And we’re going to try
and sort it out just as fast.”

The team ordered another round of drinks. Dallas
retrieved the bag containing their cell phones from the bartender. He scanned
each, and then took them apart to look for listening devices. He found nothing.

“These are clean,” said Dallas. “It doesn’t mean they
haven’t been listening to our conversations. They could’ve easily cloned them,
which would also give them our constant location using the embedded GPS chips.”

Ryan handed each member on his team a cell phone and USB
flash drive. “Not with these.”

“That would explain your little trip today,” said Tom.

“You don’t chase fugitives all over the country and not
learn a few things from the bad guys about how to evade the good guys,”
explained Ryan. “The cell phones are untraceable, and the GPS tracking chips
have been removed.

“The flash drives are for our laptops. They’ll give us
internet access anywhere without identifying our IP address or our location.
There are also several links to criminal databases, including NCIC. Phony
access codes and login information will automatically be populated when you
open the links. Again, all of it’s untraceable.”

“You have phony access codes and user data for
classified information the FBI maintains?” asked Michelle, somewhat perplexed.

“I have a guy,” responded Ryan with a smile.

The team finished their drinks and returned to the safe
house. Dallas scanned each room and found the standard number of cameras and
listening devices. All of them were hardwired to one room upstairs full of
video screens and tape recorders. Dallas didn’t find one active device either
transmitting or receiving data. Ryan recognized it as standard operating
procedure for an FBI safe house. There were no indications that another group
was listening in on the team. Ryan requested Dallas do a second sweep, and
again, the results were negative. The agents could speak freely in one room
upstairs. It was the only space without windows.

The lack of bugs in the safe house didn’t make Ryan less
suspicious. All it did was add weight to the suspicion that the Deputy Director
of the FBI was feeding information to the unknown group. There was no need for
them to risk being exposed by physically following Ryan’s team or attempting to
plant bugs in their path. All they had to do was wait for the deputy director
to tell them when and where to go to murder the fugitive Marines.

Ryan needed to create a plan that would expose the group
without their knowledge. He also couldn’t alert the deputy director of his
mistrust. Dallas was right. It was getting complicated fast.

Ryan woke early with renewed determination after some
much needed sleep. He hoped a morning run would set the tone for the day. An
hour later, he found himself pacing back and forth in the small windowless room
of the safe house. Dallas was the first to join him and handed him a cup of
coffee.

“Thank you.”

“Were you up all night?” asked Dallas.

“No, I wanted to get a jump on the day. The problem is
the day jumped on me with more questions I can’t seem to answer.”

“We’ll try to take care of some of that today, Boss. Now
that the cat’s out of the bag, you can utilize our world-class skills,” he said
with a smirk. “Well, at least Michelle and Tom’s skills. I’ll kick the shit out
of a door for you, though.”

Ryan smiled at Dallas, knowing he was kidding about his
lack of investigative skills. Dallas was responsible on numerous occasions for
putting puzzles together and putting very bad people behind bars. But he hit
the bull’s-eye about his door kicking ability. Ryan couldn’t think of anyone
else he would want beside him in a fight. As tenacious as Ryan was about
finding fugitives, Dallas was equally tenacious when it came time to put hands
on them.

In the freshman year of the IRAT team, the group was
hunting a militia leader in Utah. He was wanted for the murder of a U.S.
Marshal and the attempted murder of two others. The compound was located on the
edge of Wasatch Mountain State Park, which is one of the largest in the region.
The lifelong woodsman fugitive who grew up in the area slipped away from the
initial grasp of the assault team and disappeared into the Herber Valley. Dallas
didn’t hesitate to follow. For two days, he never stopped moving. Bad weather
grounded any air support, and no one was prepared with the gear normally carried
on a wilderness manhunt – no one except Dallas.

Ryan remembered the looks and chuckles other agency
officers gave Dallas when he showed up at the Sunday morning briefing wearing
forty pounds of equipment, including a pouch containing NVGs. Dallas’s core
philosophy was to be better prepared and equipped than the guys he was going
after. Everyone stopped laughing after Utah.

At the start of the pursuit into the woods, fourteen
agents went in with Dallas. It didn’t take long for the first officer to
collapse trying to keep up. One by one, he’d radio the position of another
exhausted officer that gave up the pursuit. A support group of marshals
carrying food, water, and medical supplies would scoop up the cold, dehydrated,
hungry, ankle sprained, and all around miserable professional man hunters. At
the end of the second day, the weather finally cleared. Thirty-two miles into
the dense heart of the state park, helicopters retrieved a smiling Dallas and
his not-so-happy prize from a river bank.

“Do you really think the deputy director is feeding
information to another group?” asked Dallas.

“I send all my reports as well as our movements only to
him,” said Ryan. “I know that doesn’t mean he’s intentionally leaking
information or even knows it’s happening. But until I know for sure it isn’t him,
I have to treat him like it is.”

“Any idea how we can find out?”

“I do, but before we set that plan in motion, you and I
have to go on a little trip.”

“I love trips,” said Dallas. “Where to?”

“Baltimore.”

“What’s in Baltimore?” asked Tom, joining them in secure
room.

“Kristina Anderson,” replied Ryan. “I need you and
Michelle to work up a quick and dirty background on her. According to Scott,
she’s on staff at Johns Hopkins University. I need as much information about
her daily routine as possible.”

“Consider it done,” replied Tom. “Will I be using our
new gadgets to gather the data?”

“What data?” asked Michelle, walking in the room and taking
Dallas’s coffee out of his hand. “What are you boys up to?”

“Those two boys are going to Baltimore to visit Kristina
Anderson,” explained Tom. “And you and I are going to stay behind and put her
life under a microscope.”

“Sweet,” said Michelle. “I love digging up dirt on
unsuspecting civilians.”

“Our trip and your digging will be under the radar,”
said Ryan. “Your profiling and hunting Elliot can be out in the open, but
Kristina needs to stay a ghost. Dallas and I will be leaving our company phones
behind so it looks like we never left New Orleans. My guy cloned my number into
my untraceable phone, so if the deputy director calls, the GPS will show me in
this room. But you guys are free to move around the city.”

“Okay,” replied Michelle. “When are you leaving?”

“This afternoon, so I’ll need a dash of speed on her
itinerary for the next few days. But for right now, I want you both to talk to
me about Peter Arrington. You know, the subjects I cut you off on earlier.”

“Sure,” said Tom, going first. “Back at the farmhouse, I
was making the point that the crime scene didn’t look anything like the others.
Arrington created a comfortable space to work on his victims in the basement.
It was meticulously cleaned, and the furniture was arranged to mimic a woman’s
bedroom. It seems to me he wanted them to have some comforts of home.

“In Syracuse, the scene resembled a sadistic torture
chamber. There was no attempt made by the killer for comfort. The degree of
brutality suggested an extremely elevated level of anger. The ritual was about
inflicting pain and prolonging suffering until the anger apparently subsided.
Like I said, I’d stake my reputation on Arrington not being responsible for Syracuse.

“As far as him killing the woman in front of us and our
two agents, I believe it was his reaction to being cornered. I’m not saying he
was going to let her live, but all indications were it was less about torture
and pain and more about being powerless to stop himself from hurting her. If
you remember, before he knew we were there, he apologized to her and told her
they made him that way. I’d sure like to figure out who
they
are.”

“I agree with Tom,” added Michelle. “The Syracuse killer left her body to decompose out in the open after he repeatedly raped and
then disemboweled her. Once he was finished with his ritual, he simply left
without even trying to hide his work. Arrington buried his victims and marked
the graves with their names on crosses. That would indicate he felt some sense
of remorse or even guilt for what he did to them. And like I said, no serial
killers on record have ever marked the graves of their victims in that way.”

“Unfortunately, we’re not going to know for sure how he
killed the other three he buried in the basement unless we get ahold of the
autopsy reports,” said Ryan.

“Those would speak volumes as to his method and frame of
mind during the killings,” said Tom. “If we could find a way to get our hands
on those reports, I’d know without a shadow of doubt if Arrington was
responsible for Syracuse. I’d also know a hell of a lot more about the killer
who actually is responsible.”

“I might have a way to get ahold of those findings,”
said Ryan.