Larchmont chuckled. “A loaded question. No one specifically, if that’s what you mean. Glendon Rusch is a very popular man. You saw what he did at the polls—”
“‘No one specifically’?” Uzi asked. “Does that mean you know of someone in general?”
A smile broke Larchmont’s leathery face. “That’s very good. Sitting on my every word. Kind of like the press. Never thought of that before. The FBI and the press both scour your words for hidden meaning.”
“There’s always hidden meaning with politicians, since they generally say a lot about nothing. Safer that way.”
Larchmont’s smile faded. “There are all sorts of nuts out there, no shortage of religious fanatics or rogue leaders. Look at Iran — which tried to assassinate an ambassador here in DC — or North Korea, or — hell, even Russia’s taken to killing officials and journalists they consider to be a threat. You want someone specific? No idea who’d want to kill Glendon Rusch. That better, Agent? Direct enough for you?” He shook his head, then resumed his stride toward the lobby.
Choosing not to follow Larchmont, Uzi stood at the edge of the hall with his hands shoved into his jacket pockets. “So you’re at a loss to explain what happened,” he called across the lobby. “No political motives, personal vendettas, nothing like that.”
Larchmont’s shoulders fell submissively. He turned slowly and said, “Explaining what happened is your job. Instead of bothering me, why don’t you go do something useful?”
Larchmont, now a few feet from the office building’s front door, motioned to one of the Secret Service agents. “Joseph, we’d better get going. My meeting.” The agent spoke into a microphone embedded in his sleeve. “Pluto is ready to move.”
Having walked to within a few yards of Larchmont, Uzi said, “We may need to talk again.”
Larchmont gave Uzi a disgusted once-over. “On top of everything that’s happened, we’ve got a cabinet to assemble. If anything significant comes up, you know where to find me.”
Uzi arrived at the Aquia Commerce Center with a mind full of questions. He parked and took the elevator up to the second floor and informed the receptionist seated behind the bulletproof glass he was there to see a profiler with the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit.
Moments later, the large wood door cracked open, Supervisory Special Agent Karen Vail’s lightly freckled face bunching a bit with a broad grin. She stepped forward and greeted him with a warm hug. “Let’s head back to my crypt, talk there.”
Vail led the way down various hallways and stopped at her office, a ten-by-ten room filled with files and reports, topic-related textbooks packed onto bookshelves, and FBI binders containing research articles on serial killers and rapists, sexual sadism and psychopathy. Dominating the shelf was an oversize manual of Bureau operational guidelines.
In the far corner of the room, a human skeleton stood beside a framed photo of a teenager and a tall man standing in front of the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial.
Uzi leaned back and appraised the office. “You really need an interior decorator. A bit morose in here, don’t you think?”
“I tangle with serial killers and walk knee deep in their victims’ blood and guts. Morose is my middle name.” She settled into her desk chair. An LCD screen above her left shoulder displayed photos of a crime scene. “So how’ve you been?”
Uzi shrugged. “Been busy, which is good. Well, I guess in a sense having lots to do when you head up the terrorism task force is bad. But for my sanity, staying busy helps. You?”
“My life’s been… very eventful the past several months. I complain, but no one seems to give a shit.”
“I called, you know, after… the thing with Dead Eyes.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t call you back. I— There was a lot of healing, mentally and physically. I tried to take a vacation in Napa, and that, well, let’s just say I’m still healing from that. Mentally and physically.” She grinned. “And don’t ask me about my time on Alcatraz.”
“Alcatraz, huh? Sounds positively arresting.”
“You have no idea. But the good news is that I met someone.”
“An inmate?”
“No, dipshit. A LEO,” she said, referring to a law enforcement officer. “Vienna dick who was on my Dead Eyes task force. He’s now a DEA agent.” She craned her neck back and indicated the framed wall photo.
Uzi sat down in the office chair in front of Vail’s desk. “He looks very… hunky.”
Vail smiled, a bit mischievously. “Something tells me you’re not here about Robby.”
“The chopper. I need some answers. And the identity of our UNSUB, too, if you can swing it.”
Vail grabbed an envelope off her desk and held it up to her forehead. “He’s forty-nine years old, works for the government, and his name is—”
“Okay, okay,” Uzi said, holding out a hand. “I guess I deserved that.”
“You know what I can and can’t do.”
“Karen, I thought you could do everything.” He grinned broadly.
“Like I told you at the crash site, it’s Frank Del Monaco’s case. I was just covering. You want me to call him?” She reached for the phone.
“No,” Uzi said. He leaned to his left and shut the door. “I’d rather work with you.”
Vail watched the door click closed, then said, “Frank and I have had our differences, but I think he can do up a decent profile on this.”
“I don’t know Frank Del Monaco. I know Karen Vail. Check that. I trust Karen Vail.”
“Frank and I are technically assigned to the West Coast. Normally, he and I wouldn’t come within ten yards of this.”
“Then I feel even more lucky to be sitting in your office discussing this case.”
Vail shook her head. “You realize if I help you, it’ll piss off Frank big time. Not that I mind doing that. That’s not the problem. It’s my unit chief and ASAC—”
“Off the record then. Between us, that’s all.”
Vail tossed the envelope back onto her desk and sighed. “This is going to come back to bite me in the ass, but what the hell. I’ve been bitten there before. What do you want to know?”
“Tell me about the bombers you profile.”
“That’s a pretty open-ended question, Uzi. You just want some generalities?”
“Let’s start with that, then we’ll see.”
Vail pushed her chair back a bit and leaned her elbows on her desk. “Douglas used to say that to know the artist, you had to study his art. How a bomb is made tells us a lot about the maker, or the artist, if you will. Just like there are differences in serial killers and how they handle their victims, bomb makers treat their bombs differently — and it all has to do with their personality. Did they spend a lot of time constructing the bomb, or is it haphazard and thrown together?
“If we have multiple bombs to examine, we can derive a signature from them. That means we can tie the devices to the same person, because he would’ve put his own artistic touches into the bomb when making it. The more unusual the construction, the more we can narrow it down to a particular individual. On its most basic level, there’s something we call ritual behavior, which refers to the things the UNSUB does that are unnecessary for the successful commission of his crime. So if the unknown subject’s objective is to kill someone when the bomb explodes, then using an exotic type of welding style is totally unnecessary. That becomes part of his ritualized behavior across multiple crimes.”
“Okay,” Uzi said. “Let me stop you there. I doubt we’ll get much from the bombs this guy used because we don’t have an intact device to examine. Looks like they all used C-4, but in different ways. Let’s assume for a second the same guy made them. How about the maker? Can you tell me anything about this guy?”