FIC: A Touch of the Wild, Part 03
Jan. 13th, 2009 02:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wiseheartTitle: A Touch of the Wild
Author: Soledad
Disclaimer: I don't own Criminal Minds or the White Wolfe characters and settings or any of the other shows from which I've borrowed characters for cameo appearances. All I own are a few OCs and a really twisted plot idea.
PART 03
Author’s note: For visuals: Four-Eyes is “played” by Michael Shanks.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
After making sure that he’d really got all the information there was about their newest victim, Joaquin Murietta went over to the morgue to take a look at the corpse. He was an old-fashioned cop who trusted his own eyes more than all those fancy instruments that filled the CSI labs.
Besides, he needed to see the wounds for real, to reassure – or reject, although that was a very small chance – his nagging suspicion about the true nature of the murderer. He wished with every fibre of his being to be proved wrong; but deep within, he knew with a paralyzing certainty that he would be prove right.
The morgue was all but abandoned during night, and that was fine with Murietta, because it meant that he could speak with Fujiyama undisturbed, without fearing that anyone else might eavesdropping on them. Sam Fujiyama, an elegant, silver-haired Japanese doctor well into his seventies, was one of Hawk’s people and a well-respected name in his field. He’d been the personal assistant of the famous Dr. Quincy in his younger years, the man who’d made forensics to what they were now, and had come to West Los Angeles some twenty-five years ago. Aside from Lieutenant Bronowski he was the one who’d worked the longest in this particular precinct.
“Detective!” he greeted Murietta with his usual cheerful manner, making the other man wonder once again why nearly all coroners seemed to have an almost perversely delightful nature. “Have you come to pay my newest patient a visit?”
Oh, yeah, and they also shared a somewhat morbid sense of humour, too.
“If you have no objections, Doctor,” Murietta replied patiently.
“Be my guest, then,” Fujiyama led him into the vaulted cellar where the corpse had already been prepared for the upcoming autopsy.
It was a disturbing sight, in reality even more so than on the photos. Not only the throat of the victim was torn open, his chest and his belly showed deep, slashed wounds, too, and some of his inner organs were either badly damaged or completely missing. Murietta briefly considered getting sick, then decided that from someone like him it would just be wrong… not to mention hypocritical.
“What can you tell me about the nature of the wounds?” he asked instead.
“You can see for yourself,” the coroner replied with a shrug. “I’m afraid it’s exactly the same case as all the others. The form and the location of the wounds, the blood loss… all the same, just the execution of the murder is even more savage than the ones before.”
“So… it is one of our people,” Murietta said slowly.
The coroner nodded, deadly serious now. “Afraid so, Detective. And that really complicates things.”
“Unless we find him before anyone else does,” Murietta said.
Dr. Fujiyama raised an eyebrow. “Him? Does it mean the CSI did find DNA in the wounds this time?”
“This time, and in the latest West-Hollywood victim, too,” Murietta answered. “The results just came in before I left to come here. Not that they’d be of any help – unless the culprit was some crazed newbie, he’d pre-date the DNA databanks.”
The coroner shook his head, slowly, thoughtfully.
“No, I don’t think it was an out-of-control neonate,” he said. “The killer is way too organized for that. He’s managed to murder fourteen people, without leaving any hard evidence. Nobody, not even one of us kills like that in a frenzy. The very nature of a frenzy would make such organized actions impossible. We must accept the fact that we have a serial killer among us.”
“Seems so, doesn’t it?” Murietta agreed darkly.
“You must speak with Hawk,” Fujiyama warned him. “This… this madness must end, or we’ll all suffer the consequences.”
“I can’t let Hawk run amok in the underbelly of the city,” Murietta replied tiredly. “Not before we know for certain who our killer is – and we must be fast. The captain has called in a group of highly qualified FBI profilers, directly from Quantico, to help us solve the case. They’ll be here tomorrow morning.”
The coroner became paler than his patient on the autopsy table.
“That could be fatal,” he said tonelessly. “They’re not easily fooled, not even by us. How do you hope to cover our track?”
Murietta sighed. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Our contacts within the FBI are very limited; we can’t endanger the position of our insiders. I need to speak with Four-Eyes first, I think. See if he can find out anything about these BAU-people who’re coming.”
“No matter what he my find out, we can’t simply eliminate an entire group of FBI-agents,” Fujiyama pointed out. “Not without drawing too much attention.”
“Yes, we can, if there’s no other way,” Murietta replied grimly. “Even you must understand what’s at stake here.”
“I might only be a newbie of the outer circle, but I’m not an idiot,” the coroner retorted indignantly. “I know very well what is at stake. You, however, must realize that the times when our people could do as they pleased, without fearing repercussions, are over. Thank to the internet and other technical achievements, this has become one very small planet. You should do well to catch up with the 21st century.”
Murietta rolled his eyes. “Don’t treat me like a fossil, Doc, I work with the same technology every day, have you forgotten? I’d like to deal with this problem without any… drastic measures myself. But the simple truth is that yes, if I have to choose between the lives of those profilers and our own safety, I will choose our safety. You know what the odds were when you joined us; now you’ll have to live with the consequences, whether you like it or not.”
With that parting shot, he stormed out of the morgue, leaving a deeply concerned Dr. Fujiyama behind.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The traffic was unusually heavy that night; he almost wished he’d brought his motorbike instead of the Sedan. It would be much faster, and time was of utmost importance right now. It was bad enough that some phone calls just couldn’t be made from the police station, not even via his own cell phone. The risk of being caught and getting others in trouble was simply too great. The traffic-related delay only served to make him even more nervous. He had so much to do and so little time to do it… but there were some things not even he could influence.
It took him almost twice the usual time to reach his destination. He parked his car in the underground garage of the old-fashioned industrial building and rode the ancient elevator to the ground floor. As always, it was a sore trial for him. Not that he was claustrophobic – he was not – but elevators had the tendency to get stuck between two levels, and getting trapped was not something he’d want for himself… or for anyone trapped with him.
Reaching the foyer of the building, he quickly scanned the plaques for any possibly changes. There shouldn’t be any – or if there were, he should have been informed well in advance – but one could never know. To his relief, everything looked the same as during his last visit. The plaques were that of the office of a private investigator, that of Nabbit Enterprises (one of the biggest computer firms in California, owned by young billionaire David Nabbit) and schrecknet.com.ca, the very place where he was planning to go.
He selected the beautiful stained glass door that led to both the detective bureau and the schrecknet portal, knocked and entered, without waiting for an invitation. He came into a large, shaded anteroom, separated from the actual offices by a huge window in the wall, furnitured with antique-looking, stylish desks and bookshelves that made an interesting contrast to the up-to-date, high-tech equipment the employees used. There were also lush potted plants, although Murietta always wondered how they could live with so little light in there, and a few Tiffany lamps of stained glass, just to make the whole room look more elegant.
One of the desks faced the door directly. A stereotypical valley-girl sat behind it, wearing hip clothes and a plastic smile. She looked like the cardboard secretaries in dumb TV-series: with her long, straight blonde hair, overdone make-up and the trademark bored expression on her smooth, oval face. According to her name tag, she was called Harmony Kendall. Murietta had met her a few times already – she was the secretary of the PI – and while she really wasn’t academic material, he knew there was more to her than what the surface was showing.
The other desk stood a little on the side, with a scholarly man seemingly in his mid-thirties sitting behind it. The man was completely bald, with distinctly long earlobes and old-fashioned eyeglasses pinned to the bridge of his nose. He was wearing a dark grey three-piece suit with a white shirt and a black tie, and looked like a college professor, down to the golden tie-pin and pocket watch chain. He wore no name tag; actually, Murietta didn’t know his name, and he hadn’t met anyone yet who’d have known. People jokingly called him Four-Eyes, because of his glasses, and that was the only name he ever used among his kind.
He glanced up from the computer screen, his eyes surprisingly large and blue behind the glasses of his pince-nez, recognizing the visitor from previous occasions.
“Detective Murietta,” he said in his pleasant tenor that always surprised people, coming from such a large body. He spoke with a very educated Boston accent. “Are you here to see Hawk? I’m afraid he’s not available at the moment.”
“That’s all right,” Murietta replied. “Actually, I’ve come to see you. We’ve got a… situation, and I need some… sensitive background info.”
Their resident scholar and computer wiz noticed the emphasis at once, of course, and his hairless brows furrowed.
“I see,” he said, rising from behind his desk. “We should go to the archives, then. Harmony, could you take my calls for a while?”
“Sure,” the blonde with the plastic smile replied. “There isn’t much going on at the moment anyway.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The “archive” was a simple office, with the same elegant furniture as the anteroom, and didn’t look much at first sight. Murietta knew from previous experience, though that it contained the most sophisticated computer equipment in the whole state; after all, Four-Eyes got his updates directly from Nabbit Enterprises, and that was the best of the best.
“Let’s see,” Four-Eyes said, sitting down to one of the antique-looking desks and produced a wireless keyboard with in-built mouse, seemingly out of nowhere. As he hit a key, the upper part of the desktop folded itself back, revealing a large LCD screen with the simple logo of schrecknet.com. “Give me the basics.”
Murietta told him about the case in a nutshell and about the immediate arrival of the BAU team, requiring all available data about the team members. Four-Eyes nodded and began typing away on his keyboard with such a speed that his long, slightly bent fingernails were clicking on the keys like the beak of a bird. A minute or so later, the required data started showing up on the screen. The files all had the original FBI emblem, which impressed the hell out of Murietta.
“You have access to the personnel database of the FBI?” he asked.
Four-Eyes grinned at him, flashing pointed teeth in the process.
“Not officially, no,” he admitted. “But I can sneak in from time to time, as long as I don’t get greedy. Do you want me to save for you the individual files of the team members?”
“I want everything you can give me,” Murietta answered.
“All right,” Four-Eyes started a program that would save and compress all the files while they were looking at them, and then called up the file of a handsome, dark-haired man. “Here we have the unit chief, SSA Aaron Hotchner, born in 1962, divorced, with a son of two. Prior to joining the BAU, he was a lawyer, a prosecutor and at one point, SWAT. He sometimes teaches hostage situations and negotiations.”
“With other words: excellent Ventrue material,” Murietta commented. “Navital & Waters could certainly put him to good use, if needs must be. Any other living family, aside from his son and ex-wife?”
“One brother, twenty-seven years old,” Four-Eyes raised a surprised eyebrow. “Apparently, he gave up his place at law school and chose to work in some restaurant in New York and become a gourmet chef eventually. Now that’s a strange choice.”
Murietta shrugged. “Not everyone is inclined to spend their entire lives among criminals,” he said. “His location could be a problem, though, should we have to… erm… draft Agent Hotchner, in the end.”
“Your euphemisms never cease to amaze me,” Four-Eyes replied dryly. “I don’t think you need to worry, though. The two don’t seem too close.”
“Let’s hope so,” Murietta still wasn’t happy about that particular detail – New York was hostile territory for his people, after all – but there was nothing he could do about it. “What about the other team members? Who’s the second-ranking agent?”
“That’s an interesting question,” Four-Eyes consulted his PC and opened several additional windows, each of them showing confidential information, for he viewing of which me most certainly didn’t have the necessary clearance – not that such technicalities had ever hindered Four-Eyes to get what he wanted.
“Well?” Murietta asked impatiently.
“It seems that the ranking agent – who, however, was not the unit chief – left the team a few weeks ago, due to severe emotional burn-out,” Four-Eyed replied. “Right now, they’re somewhat understaffed, as they haven’t taken anyone else in his stead so far. The other key figure seems to be Derek Morgan. Born on June 6, 7973, as the son of an African-American father and a Caucasian mother… you know, this political correctness is getting a little tiresome. What kind of term is ‘Caucasian’ anyway? As if all white people would hail from Siberia or whatnot…”
“Four-Eyes,” Murietta said with forced patience. “The details.”
“Details, right. Well, the man has a black belt in judo and runs FBI self-defence classes, which is pretty impressive if you ask me.”
“I don’t…” Murietta said through gritted teeth, but if he thought he could intimidate Four-Eyes, he was mistaken.
“Never mind,” their resident geek said with a shrug. “The man specializes in crimes pertaining to obsession. Previously, he served in a bomb squad unit and in the Marine Corps. This is a tough guy if you’d ever need one.”
“What about his family background?”
“Well, he has two sisters, Sara and Desiree. His father died in an attempt to stop a robbery when he was ten, and he even go to watch it. Lovely. He had a somewhat troubled time after what – small wonder – earning a juvenile criminal record.”
“What for?”
“Small offences, mostly: fighting and some vandalism. He grew up in a tough urban Chicago neighbourhood, after all.”
“Well, he managed to get out of that milieu somehow, didn’t he? Or else he wouldn’t have ended up with the FBI.”
“He got a college football scholarship, with the help of a local youth center coordinator… oh, dammit!”
“What is it?” Murietta asked impatiently. The fact that Four-Eyes had used to be a college professor in Boston once not only resulted in a somewhat stilted vocabulary at times, but also in the unnerving tendency to trail off in the middle of a sentence and follow his own thoughts, regardless what he was doing at the given moment.
“Some frigging mentor that was,” Four-Eyes said, rather to himself than to the detective; his blue eyes turned silver with rage. “Taking vulnerable young boys under his wings, just to abuse them for his own sick pleasure! And they call us monsters! I wish the scum wasn’t dead yet – I’d have so much fun eviscerating him…”
“Get a grip, Four-Eyes, this is not the time for one of your moral outrages,” Murietta said sharply. “Yes, it sucks, and such bastards ought to be castrated without painkillers, but this Morgan character has survived it and will be here in a few hours, so what else can you tell me about him?”
“Not much,” Four-Eyes pulled himself together with considerable effort. “He’s single, rides a motorbike and has a dog named Clooney.”
“Where do you find details like that?” Murietta was impressed against his will.
“Trust the government to spy on its own employees,” Four-Eyes said cynically. “I couldn’t gather a tenth of my data if they didn’t have extensive files on their own people. And I mean extensive. The fact that Morgan was molested as a kid is nowhere officially recorded; apparently, it came out during a case and already found its way into his… confidential file.”
“Which you just happened to hack,” Murietta said with a grin.
Four-Eyes shrugged. “It wasn’t as easy as it looks. Whoever encrypted that file was good… very good. I’ve just been a lot longer in this business.”
“Useful, that,” Murietta commented, giving Derek Morgan’s secret file another glance. “He sounds like someone Salvador would love to have among his people.”
“Mm-hm,” Four-Eyes agreed. “Born to be Brujah. He has the strength, he has the anger – and he has the intelligence so many Brujah still lack in these times.”
“I’ll inform Salvador,” Murietta said. “If we have to make drastic steps, let’s make the best of it. So, who else is there? This woman, the one with the dark hair – who is she?”
“Someone you’d want to be extra careful around,” Four-Eyes warned him. “She’s a celebrity… well, almost. The daughter of Ambassador Elizabeth Prentiss who used to work in the Ukrainian Embassy. Agent Prentiss is fluent in Arabic and Spanish, and even knows some Russian, so think twice about what you say to Moralez when she’s with you.”
“She speaks Arabic?”
“She lived in the Middle-East during her childhood, when her mother was assigned there.”
“How long as she been with the BAU?”
“A little less than a year. She was accepted due to some manipulation from the side of Section Chief Erin Strauss. Before that, she worked for ten years for the FBI, primarily in the Midwest. Oh, and she graduated from Yale! That’s impressive.”
“Less cultural snobbery and more details, Four-Eyes!”
“There aren’t any there. Unless you’re interested in her references and earlier cases.”
“Just the references. I don’t have time for the cases, although they could be an interesting read, I think.”
“I’ll send you everything to your home PC in an encrypted message,” Four-Eyes promised.
Murietta nodded. “Thanks. Now, who’s the blonde there?”
“SSA Jennifer Jareau, their media liaison. She’s the one who picks the cases the team works on. She also has the best test results on the shooting range. There are very few personal data, save that she grew up in East Allegheny, Pennsylvania.”
“That’s not much,” Murietta said, concerned. Unknown factors could prove dangerous; which was while he didn’t like them.”
“Well, she either leads a fairly boring life or is excellent at covering her tracks,” Four-Eyes replied. “Not even her own agency has more about her.”
“That’s a shame. We’ll have to keep a close eye on her, then. She’s a dark horse, and those are always the highest risk factors. Is there anyone else?”
“Yes, a certain Doctor Reid.”
“Doctor? They’ve got a civilian on the team?”
“No, he’s an agent all right, but people seem to be utterly impressed by the fact that he has three doctorates already.”
“Three? How can one have three doctorates in criminology?”
“Theoretically, it would be possible, as there are many different disciplines,” Four-Eyes corrected in his best pedantic manner. “However, Dr. Reid has his doctorates in mathematics, chemistry and engineering.” He opened up another window. “Apparently, he also holds BAs in psychology and sociology, which have a little more in common with his current occupation.”
“Five different degrees?” Murietta was flabbergasted. “How old is that guy? Ninety?”
“Twenty-six,” Four-Eyes replied matter-of-factly.
“That’s an awful lot of different degrees for someone barely out of his diapers,” Murietta said with an accusatory undertone in his voice.
Four-Eyes shrugged. “He has an IQ of 187, an eidetic memory and can read twenty thousand words per minute. I wish I had such students in my time as a college professor.”
“And I wish this Reid person were beyond sixty, fat and balding,” Murietta replied, studying he photo of the slender, dark-haired young man with steadily growing dread. “Because based on who he is and what he looks like, he’ll be the ideal target of our killer.”
Four-Eyes blinked a few times. He rarely paid attention to the news, but the series of murders hadn’t gone by him unnoticed. Not that it would have gotten particularly close to him. He was a fairly stoic individual.
“I see your point,” he said. “An unfortunate aspect indeed. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
“Yes,” Murietta said. “I have reason to believe that even the homeless victims exceeded in something – or at least used to exceed once. I need to know what that is. And I need every detail, every report to each of those murder cases.”
“I thought you’d get those on the official way, now that it has become a shared problem,” Four-Eyes remarked.
“I will, but the official way is too frigging slow,” Murietta answered. “We need to move forward fast; especially as the BAU is about to bring us the ultimate bait. Can you imagine what it would mean for us if one of the FBI’s star profilers got slaughtered and the traces would lead to us?”
“Yes,” Four-Eyes said dryly. “When it comes to such possibilities, I do have a vivid imagination indeed.”
“Can you get me the data?” Murietta urged.
“Of course,” Four-Eyes was starting several search programs already, none of which was entirely legal. “This will take some time. I’ll send you everything as a compressed file, hopefully within two hours.”
“Thanks, Four-Eyes.”
“De nada. I’ll make you the same price as always, plus ten per cent hazard pay. I had to reach into some really hot wasp’s nests this time. But if there’s a chance that one of us is involved, I must inform Hawk. You know that.”
“Tell him everything you think he needs to know,” Murietta said. “But ask him not to act before we had the chance to speak. This beast must be neutralized; but it can’t happen so that it would endanger the rest of us.”
“Hawk is not a fool, detective,” Four-Eyes sounded a little insulted. “He’s been doing this job for decades and never made a mistake. Not one that would make him get caught, anyway.”
Murietta nodded. “I know. But he’s very… enthusiastic about his duties, and this is not the time when we could afford to be carried away.”
Four-Eyes promised to do his best to hold the ex-Enforcer back for as long as he could. He was a resourceful man, and not just where information gathering was considered, so Murietta left the building somewhat reassured. Once on the street, he switched on his cell phone.
“Here is Joaquin,” he said in Spanish to the woman who picked up on the other end of the connection. “Tell Carlyle that we’re going to need the safe house.”
Part 04
Author: Soledad
Disclaimer: I don't own Criminal Minds or the White Wolfe characters and settings or any of the other shows from which I've borrowed characters for cameo appearances. All I own are a few OCs and a really twisted plot idea.
PART 03
Author’s note: For visuals: Four-Eyes is “played” by Michael Shanks.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
After making sure that he’d really got all the information there was about their newest victim, Joaquin Murietta went over to the morgue to take a look at the corpse. He was an old-fashioned cop who trusted his own eyes more than all those fancy instruments that filled the CSI labs.
Besides, he needed to see the wounds for real, to reassure – or reject, although that was a very small chance – his nagging suspicion about the true nature of the murderer. He wished with every fibre of his being to be proved wrong; but deep within, he knew with a paralyzing certainty that he would be prove right.
The morgue was all but abandoned during night, and that was fine with Murietta, because it meant that he could speak with Fujiyama undisturbed, without fearing that anyone else might eavesdropping on them. Sam Fujiyama, an elegant, silver-haired Japanese doctor well into his seventies, was one of Hawk’s people and a well-respected name in his field. He’d been the personal assistant of the famous Dr. Quincy in his younger years, the man who’d made forensics to what they were now, and had come to West Los Angeles some twenty-five years ago. Aside from Lieutenant Bronowski he was the one who’d worked the longest in this particular precinct.
“Detective!” he greeted Murietta with his usual cheerful manner, making the other man wonder once again why nearly all coroners seemed to have an almost perversely delightful nature. “Have you come to pay my newest patient a visit?”
Oh, yeah, and they also shared a somewhat morbid sense of humour, too.
“If you have no objections, Doctor,” Murietta replied patiently.
“Be my guest, then,” Fujiyama led him into the vaulted cellar where the corpse had already been prepared for the upcoming autopsy.
It was a disturbing sight, in reality even more so than on the photos. Not only the throat of the victim was torn open, his chest and his belly showed deep, slashed wounds, too, and some of his inner organs were either badly damaged or completely missing. Murietta briefly considered getting sick, then decided that from someone like him it would just be wrong… not to mention hypocritical.
“What can you tell me about the nature of the wounds?” he asked instead.
“You can see for yourself,” the coroner replied with a shrug. “I’m afraid it’s exactly the same case as all the others. The form and the location of the wounds, the blood loss… all the same, just the execution of the murder is even more savage than the ones before.”
“So… it is one of our people,” Murietta said slowly.
The coroner nodded, deadly serious now. “Afraid so, Detective. And that really complicates things.”
“Unless we find him before anyone else does,” Murietta said.
Dr. Fujiyama raised an eyebrow. “Him? Does it mean the CSI did find DNA in the wounds this time?”
“This time, and in the latest West-Hollywood victim, too,” Murietta answered. “The results just came in before I left to come here. Not that they’d be of any help – unless the culprit was some crazed newbie, he’d pre-date the DNA databanks.”
The coroner shook his head, slowly, thoughtfully.
“No, I don’t think it was an out-of-control neonate,” he said. “The killer is way too organized for that. He’s managed to murder fourteen people, without leaving any hard evidence. Nobody, not even one of us kills like that in a frenzy. The very nature of a frenzy would make such organized actions impossible. We must accept the fact that we have a serial killer among us.”
“Seems so, doesn’t it?” Murietta agreed darkly.
“You must speak with Hawk,” Fujiyama warned him. “This… this madness must end, or we’ll all suffer the consequences.”
“I can’t let Hawk run amok in the underbelly of the city,” Murietta replied tiredly. “Not before we know for certain who our killer is – and we must be fast. The captain has called in a group of highly qualified FBI profilers, directly from Quantico, to help us solve the case. They’ll be here tomorrow morning.”
The coroner became paler than his patient on the autopsy table.
“That could be fatal,” he said tonelessly. “They’re not easily fooled, not even by us. How do you hope to cover our track?”
Murietta sighed. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Our contacts within the FBI are very limited; we can’t endanger the position of our insiders. I need to speak with Four-Eyes first, I think. See if he can find out anything about these BAU-people who’re coming.”
“No matter what he my find out, we can’t simply eliminate an entire group of FBI-agents,” Fujiyama pointed out. “Not without drawing too much attention.”
“Yes, we can, if there’s no other way,” Murietta replied grimly. “Even you must understand what’s at stake here.”
“I might only be a newbie of the outer circle, but I’m not an idiot,” the coroner retorted indignantly. “I know very well what is at stake. You, however, must realize that the times when our people could do as they pleased, without fearing repercussions, are over. Thank to the internet and other technical achievements, this has become one very small planet. You should do well to catch up with the 21st century.”
Murietta rolled his eyes. “Don’t treat me like a fossil, Doc, I work with the same technology every day, have you forgotten? I’d like to deal with this problem without any… drastic measures myself. But the simple truth is that yes, if I have to choose between the lives of those profilers and our own safety, I will choose our safety. You know what the odds were when you joined us; now you’ll have to live with the consequences, whether you like it or not.”
With that parting shot, he stormed out of the morgue, leaving a deeply concerned Dr. Fujiyama behind.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The traffic was unusually heavy that night; he almost wished he’d brought his motorbike instead of the Sedan. It would be much faster, and time was of utmost importance right now. It was bad enough that some phone calls just couldn’t be made from the police station, not even via his own cell phone. The risk of being caught and getting others in trouble was simply too great. The traffic-related delay only served to make him even more nervous. He had so much to do and so little time to do it… but there were some things not even he could influence.
It took him almost twice the usual time to reach his destination. He parked his car in the underground garage of the old-fashioned industrial building and rode the ancient elevator to the ground floor. As always, it was a sore trial for him. Not that he was claustrophobic – he was not – but elevators had the tendency to get stuck between two levels, and getting trapped was not something he’d want for himself… or for anyone trapped with him.
Reaching the foyer of the building, he quickly scanned the plaques for any possibly changes. There shouldn’t be any – or if there were, he should have been informed well in advance – but one could never know. To his relief, everything looked the same as during his last visit. The plaques were that of the office of a private investigator, that of Nabbit Enterprises (one of the biggest computer firms in California, owned by young billionaire David Nabbit) and schrecknet.com.ca, the very place where he was planning to go.
He selected the beautiful stained glass door that led to both the detective bureau and the schrecknet portal, knocked and entered, without waiting for an invitation. He came into a large, shaded anteroom, separated from the actual offices by a huge window in the wall, furnitured with antique-looking, stylish desks and bookshelves that made an interesting contrast to the up-to-date, high-tech equipment the employees used. There were also lush potted plants, although Murietta always wondered how they could live with so little light in there, and a few Tiffany lamps of stained glass, just to make the whole room look more elegant.
One of the desks faced the door directly. A stereotypical valley-girl sat behind it, wearing hip clothes and a plastic smile. She looked like the cardboard secretaries in dumb TV-series: with her long, straight blonde hair, overdone make-up and the trademark bored expression on her smooth, oval face. According to her name tag, she was called Harmony Kendall. Murietta had met her a few times already – she was the secretary of the PI – and while she really wasn’t academic material, he knew there was more to her than what the surface was showing.
The other desk stood a little on the side, with a scholarly man seemingly in his mid-thirties sitting behind it. The man was completely bald, with distinctly long earlobes and old-fashioned eyeglasses pinned to the bridge of his nose. He was wearing a dark grey three-piece suit with a white shirt and a black tie, and looked like a college professor, down to the golden tie-pin and pocket watch chain. He wore no name tag; actually, Murietta didn’t know his name, and he hadn’t met anyone yet who’d have known. People jokingly called him Four-Eyes, because of his glasses, and that was the only name he ever used among his kind.
He glanced up from the computer screen, his eyes surprisingly large and blue behind the glasses of his pince-nez, recognizing the visitor from previous occasions.
“Detective Murietta,” he said in his pleasant tenor that always surprised people, coming from such a large body. He spoke with a very educated Boston accent. “Are you here to see Hawk? I’m afraid he’s not available at the moment.”
“That’s all right,” Murietta replied. “Actually, I’ve come to see you. We’ve got a… situation, and I need some… sensitive background info.”
Their resident scholar and computer wiz noticed the emphasis at once, of course, and his hairless brows furrowed.
“I see,” he said, rising from behind his desk. “We should go to the archives, then. Harmony, could you take my calls for a while?”
“Sure,” the blonde with the plastic smile replied. “There isn’t much going on at the moment anyway.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The “archive” was a simple office, with the same elegant furniture as the anteroom, and didn’t look much at first sight. Murietta knew from previous experience, though that it contained the most sophisticated computer equipment in the whole state; after all, Four-Eyes got his updates directly from Nabbit Enterprises, and that was the best of the best.
“Let’s see,” Four-Eyes said, sitting down to one of the antique-looking desks and produced a wireless keyboard with in-built mouse, seemingly out of nowhere. As he hit a key, the upper part of the desktop folded itself back, revealing a large LCD screen with the simple logo of schrecknet.com. “Give me the basics.”
Murietta told him about the case in a nutshell and about the immediate arrival of the BAU team, requiring all available data about the team members. Four-Eyes nodded and began typing away on his keyboard with such a speed that his long, slightly bent fingernails were clicking on the keys like the beak of a bird. A minute or so later, the required data started showing up on the screen. The files all had the original FBI emblem, which impressed the hell out of Murietta.
“You have access to the personnel database of the FBI?” he asked.
Four-Eyes grinned at him, flashing pointed teeth in the process.
“Not officially, no,” he admitted. “But I can sneak in from time to time, as long as I don’t get greedy. Do you want me to save for you the individual files of the team members?”
“I want everything you can give me,” Murietta answered.
“All right,” Four-Eyes started a program that would save and compress all the files while they were looking at them, and then called up the file of a handsome, dark-haired man. “Here we have the unit chief, SSA Aaron Hotchner, born in 1962, divorced, with a son of two. Prior to joining the BAU, he was a lawyer, a prosecutor and at one point, SWAT. He sometimes teaches hostage situations and negotiations.”
“With other words: excellent Ventrue material,” Murietta commented. “Navital & Waters could certainly put him to good use, if needs must be. Any other living family, aside from his son and ex-wife?”
“One brother, twenty-seven years old,” Four-Eyes raised a surprised eyebrow. “Apparently, he gave up his place at law school and chose to work in some restaurant in New York and become a gourmet chef eventually. Now that’s a strange choice.”
Murietta shrugged. “Not everyone is inclined to spend their entire lives among criminals,” he said. “His location could be a problem, though, should we have to… erm… draft Agent Hotchner, in the end.”
“Your euphemisms never cease to amaze me,” Four-Eyes replied dryly. “I don’t think you need to worry, though. The two don’t seem too close.”
“Let’s hope so,” Murietta still wasn’t happy about that particular detail – New York was hostile territory for his people, after all – but there was nothing he could do about it. “What about the other team members? Who’s the second-ranking agent?”
“That’s an interesting question,” Four-Eyes consulted his PC and opened several additional windows, each of them showing confidential information, for he viewing of which me most certainly didn’t have the necessary clearance – not that such technicalities had ever hindered Four-Eyes to get what he wanted.
“Well?” Murietta asked impatiently.
“It seems that the ranking agent – who, however, was not the unit chief – left the team a few weeks ago, due to severe emotional burn-out,” Four-Eyed replied. “Right now, they’re somewhat understaffed, as they haven’t taken anyone else in his stead so far. The other key figure seems to be Derek Morgan. Born on June 6, 7973, as the son of an African-American father and a Caucasian mother… you know, this political correctness is getting a little tiresome. What kind of term is ‘Caucasian’ anyway? As if all white people would hail from Siberia or whatnot…”
“Four-Eyes,” Murietta said with forced patience. “The details.”
“Details, right. Well, the man has a black belt in judo and runs FBI self-defence classes, which is pretty impressive if you ask me.”
“I don’t…” Murietta said through gritted teeth, but if he thought he could intimidate Four-Eyes, he was mistaken.
“Never mind,” their resident geek said with a shrug. “The man specializes in crimes pertaining to obsession. Previously, he served in a bomb squad unit and in the Marine Corps. This is a tough guy if you’d ever need one.”
“What about his family background?”
“Well, he has two sisters, Sara and Desiree. His father died in an attempt to stop a robbery when he was ten, and he even go to watch it. Lovely. He had a somewhat troubled time after what – small wonder – earning a juvenile criminal record.”
“What for?”
“Small offences, mostly: fighting and some vandalism. He grew up in a tough urban Chicago neighbourhood, after all.”
“Well, he managed to get out of that milieu somehow, didn’t he? Or else he wouldn’t have ended up with the FBI.”
“He got a college football scholarship, with the help of a local youth center coordinator… oh, dammit!”
“What is it?” Murietta asked impatiently. The fact that Four-Eyes had used to be a college professor in Boston once not only resulted in a somewhat stilted vocabulary at times, but also in the unnerving tendency to trail off in the middle of a sentence and follow his own thoughts, regardless what he was doing at the given moment.
“Some frigging mentor that was,” Four-Eyes said, rather to himself than to the detective; his blue eyes turned silver with rage. “Taking vulnerable young boys under his wings, just to abuse them for his own sick pleasure! And they call us monsters! I wish the scum wasn’t dead yet – I’d have so much fun eviscerating him…”
“Get a grip, Four-Eyes, this is not the time for one of your moral outrages,” Murietta said sharply. “Yes, it sucks, and such bastards ought to be castrated without painkillers, but this Morgan character has survived it and will be here in a few hours, so what else can you tell me about him?”
“Not much,” Four-Eyes pulled himself together with considerable effort. “He’s single, rides a motorbike and has a dog named Clooney.”
“Where do you find details like that?” Murietta was impressed against his will.
“Trust the government to spy on its own employees,” Four-Eyes said cynically. “I couldn’t gather a tenth of my data if they didn’t have extensive files on their own people. And I mean extensive. The fact that Morgan was molested as a kid is nowhere officially recorded; apparently, it came out during a case and already found its way into his… confidential file.”
“Which you just happened to hack,” Murietta said with a grin.
Four-Eyes shrugged. “It wasn’t as easy as it looks. Whoever encrypted that file was good… very good. I’ve just been a lot longer in this business.”
“Useful, that,” Murietta commented, giving Derek Morgan’s secret file another glance. “He sounds like someone Salvador would love to have among his people.”
“Mm-hm,” Four-Eyes agreed. “Born to be Brujah. He has the strength, he has the anger – and he has the intelligence so many Brujah still lack in these times.”
“I’ll inform Salvador,” Murietta said. “If we have to make drastic steps, let’s make the best of it. So, who else is there? This woman, the one with the dark hair – who is she?”
“Someone you’d want to be extra careful around,” Four-Eyes warned him. “She’s a celebrity… well, almost. The daughter of Ambassador Elizabeth Prentiss who used to work in the Ukrainian Embassy. Agent Prentiss is fluent in Arabic and Spanish, and even knows some Russian, so think twice about what you say to Moralez when she’s with you.”
“She speaks Arabic?”
“She lived in the Middle-East during her childhood, when her mother was assigned there.”
“How long as she been with the BAU?”
“A little less than a year. She was accepted due to some manipulation from the side of Section Chief Erin Strauss. Before that, she worked for ten years for the FBI, primarily in the Midwest. Oh, and she graduated from Yale! That’s impressive.”
“Less cultural snobbery and more details, Four-Eyes!”
“There aren’t any there. Unless you’re interested in her references and earlier cases.”
“Just the references. I don’t have time for the cases, although they could be an interesting read, I think.”
“I’ll send you everything to your home PC in an encrypted message,” Four-Eyes promised.
Murietta nodded. “Thanks. Now, who’s the blonde there?”
“SSA Jennifer Jareau, their media liaison. She’s the one who picks the cases the team works on. She also has the best test results on the shooting range. There are very few personal data, save that she grew up in East Allegheny, Pennsylvania.”
“That’s not much,” Murietta said, concerned. Unknown factors could prove dangerous; which was while he didn’t like them.”
“Well, she either leads a fairly boring life or is excellent at covering her tracks,” Four-Eyes replied. “Not even her own agency has more about her.”
“That’s a shame. We’ll have to keep a close eye on her, then. She’s a dark horse, and those are always the highest risk factors. Is there anyone else?”
“Yes, a certain Doctor Reid.”
“Doctor? They’ve got a civilian on the team?”
“No, he’s an agent all right, but people seem to be utterly impressed by the fact that he has three doctorates already.”
“Three? How can one have three doctorates in criminology?”
“Theoretically, it would be possible, as there are many different disciplines,” Four-Eyes corrected in his best pedantic manner. “However, Dr. Reid has his doctorates in mathematics, chemistry and engineering.” He opened up another window. “Apparently, he also holds BAs in psychology and sociology, which have a little more in common with his current occupation.”
“Five different degrees?” Murietta was flabbergasted. “How old is that guy? Ninety?”
“Twenty-six,” Four-Eyes replied matter-of-factly.
“That’s an awful lot of different degrees for someone barely out of his diapers,” Murietta said with an accusatory undertone in his voice.
Four-Eyes shrugged. “He has an IQ of 187, an eidetic memory and can read twenty thousand words per minute. I wish I had such students in my time as a college professor.”
“And I wish this Reid person were beyond sixty, fat and balding,” Murietta replied, studying he photo of the slender, dark-haired young man with steadily growing dread. “Because based on who he is and what he looks like, he’ll be the ideal target of our killer.”
Four-Eyes blinked a few times. He rarely paid attention to the news, but the series of murders hadn’t gone by him unnoticed. Not that it would have gotten particularly close to him. He was a fairly stoic individual.
“I see your point,” he said. “An unfortunate aspect indeed. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
“Yes,” Murietta said. “I have reason to believe that even the homeless victims exceeded in something – or at least used to exceed once. I need to know what that is. And I need every detail, every report to each of those murder cases.”
“I thought you’d get those on the official way, now that it has become a shared problem,” Four-Eyes remarked.
“I will, but the official way is too frigging slow,” Murietta answered. “We need to move forward fast; especially as the BAU is about to bring us the ultimate bait. Can you imagine what it would mean for us if one of the FBI’s star profilers got slaughtered and the traces would lead to us?”
“Yes,” Four-Eyes said dryly. “When it comes to such possibilities, I do have a vivid imagination indeed.”
“Can you get me the data?” Murietta urged.
“Of course,” Four-Eyes was starting several search programs already, none of which was entirely legal. “This will take some time. I’ll send you everything as a compressed file, hopefully within two hours.”
“Thanks, Four-Eyes.”
“De nada. I’ll make you the same price as always, plus ten per cent hazard pay. I had to reach into some really hot wasp’s nests this time. But if there’s a chance that one of us is involved, I must inform Hawk. You know that.”
“Tell him everything you think he needs to know,” Murietta said. “But ask him not to act before we had the chance to speak. This beast must be neutralized; but it can’t happen so that it would endanger the rest of us.”
“Hawk is not a fool, detective,” Four-Eyes sounded a little insulted. “He’s been doing this job for decades and never made a mistake. Not one that would make him get caught, anyway.”
Murietta nodded. “I know. But he’s very… enthusiastic about his duties, and this is not the time when we could afford to be carried away.”
Four-Eyes promised to do his best to hold the ex-Enforcer back for as long as he could. He was a resourceful man, and not just where information gathering was considered, so Murietta left the building somewhat reassured. Once on the street, he switched on his cell phone.
“Here is Joaquin,” he said in Spanish to the woman who picked up on the other end of the connection. “Tell Carlyle that we’re going to need the safe house.”
Part 04
