Catch Me If You Can (The Mancini Way) (3 page)

I took my time and studied the subject again; couldn't be too rash here, a mistake now could mean the difference between life and death.

Frank Connell had already murdered eleven people or so it appeared; the profile suggested our perp was a loner between the ages of thirty and forty-five who probably still lived at home with his mother, had poor social skills and an intense hatred of women. Profiling had been in existence for decades now and anyone with a grain of sense knew that there was always room for human error or they should. I guess one of the reasons I was being hailed as the next best thing to pass through these vaunted halls is because I’d turned profiling on its ear. Instead of going with the textbook I went outside the box and worked my way back in.

I've studied plenty cases where the profiler had been wrong; I'd even been the catalyst that led to the freeing of two men who had been wrongfully convicted and sitting on death row. This was all while I was still in school and working as a volunteer for an organization that specialized in reviewing questionable convictions. That's why I'm here well one of the reasons anyway; it was passing strange that on my quest to imprison the guilty I started out by freeing the innocent. The fact that I'd gone on to correctly profile and bring about the capture of both actual guilty parties is what had fast-tracked me to Quantico.  I’d caught the attention of my intended target; it’d just been a few years earlier than I’d anticipated.

Now I studied the man on the screen as he’d sat in interview being grilled by two of our best. I watched body language, eye movement, perspiration levels I looked for any nervous twitches and listened to the intonations in his voice and how he responded to certain questions. I wasn't feeling it; the others had already passed judgment; my fellow profilers were sure that this was our guy but something just wasn't ringing true for me; there was just something missing I guess and I’ve learned to follow my instincts no matter what was the most popular opinion. We’ve been working on this particular case for a few weeks already and everyone wanted to be done with it, but not at the expense of a human life, a man’s freedom was at stake, a rash decision by the ones who were supposed to be the keepers of justice’s gates would not only be unjust it would be criminal in the extreme.

Not every middle-aged man who lived at home with mom was a maniacal murderer and what our guy had done to those women took not only time and planning but a heavy dose of hate; that kind of hate was not as easy to hide as the perpetrators thought. When in close proximity you could almost smell it coming off of them; in observation I saw it in the eyes, the eyes became almost feral after shedding that much blood, at least that’s what I saw. I had no way of knowing what my colleagues saw or how they went about drawing the conclusions they did, so I just focused on what my brain was telling me and shut out all the white noise around me.

Like any wild animal that hunted once they tasted of human flesh they craved it and actively sought it out henceforth, it was the same with the human predator, once he or she had gotten a taste for murder or whatever their crime of choice happened to be it was hard for them to stop. With the animal you could tell the difference by the change in their behavior it was the same with man; this was my secret a little kernel of truth that had come to me during the darkness of night one long ago night. I'd still been a young impressionable girl, still the lost child who was alone in the world. I stayed up nights afraid to close my eyes, afraid of what the darkness would hold. Not because of the boogeyman no, my nightmare had been of a different nature. It was at night that I realized I couldn’t remember their faces, gradually they were fading away from my memory. I’d had no mementos left, no keepsakes. In the chaos of being spirited away in the dead of night from the home of the friend I’d been staying over with that night no one had thought to even ask. Then as the weeks went by when it wasn’t certain who had been the target of the massacre and if I was still in danger all thought of such things got lost in the shuffle. So it was that while others my age were out having fun and doing the growing pains thing, going to parties with friends enjoying the normal teenage proclivities, I’d been studying human behaviors. I taught myself to look beyond the expected, to push my mind harder. It was as though I went to a different plane of existence where everything became clearer, it was almost like pieces to a puzzle that had been scattered about haphazardly and I had to painstakingly put it all back together. When I first noticed that nine times out of ten I’d been on point I decided to use that as my passport into the bureau. From that first compulsion I made it my mission to hone my skills. I ate slept and lived anything to do with crime solving, I had no idea then what a profiler was, had no idea where I would fit; I just knew I needed to be here where I had access to the information that might come in handy and so I’d pushed myself in every way. That’s why today I'm being touted as the best new brain to hit the farm in decades. Some were even saying I was the best ever and I guess there was some truth to it since I was offered a position that usually took years of hard work to achieve. I didn't let accolades go to my head though, that’s not why I was here my purpose had never changed, not once in all these years.

So I’ve stayed true to myself and focused on my goals, I’m not in this for praise and recognition; truth be known if I could be left alone to do what I do with no one looking over my shoulder or critiquing I would be happy; but that's not the way it works. I've been vetted, studied, interrogated, all but put under hypnosis to extract my secrets. One enterprising scientist even joked that he'd like to get a look inside my brain; too bad I'd have to be dead for that happy occurrence to take place.

The others were getting restless waiting for my answer, they’d learned by now that I wasn’t one to be rushed but that didn’t stop them moaning and groaning. I looked up and around the table at the faces gathered there, a sea of male faces; some of them I knew resented my presence here, some saw it as unfair that I’d been moved ahead there’d even been rumors of me sleeping my way here which had all been quelled when my skills were made evident in exercise after exercise.

"It's not him." I’d known the answer for quite some time now, I’d gone over the case relentlessly and every time I came back to the same thing. Yes he fit the profile, too perfectly and as I’ve said before profiles can be wrong; they’re compiled by human beings after all and contrary to what the movies portray no one is right a hundred percent of the time, not unless he’s also capable of walking on water.

"Aww come on Stone; we got the guy dead to rights. He fits the profile to a T. All roads point to him. We even found his DNA at the last scene."

"Stodgy DNA at best and we know he knew the victim so even that could’ve been explained; but what of the others? He had no known association with any of the other women that we could find, not a scrap of evidence puts him anywhere in their vicinity either at the time the crimes were carried out or at any other time."

"Come on stone we all know you're supposed to have a superhuman brain or some shit but you're wrong this time; this is our guy I feel it in my gut." Thompson one of my staunchest adversaries was quick to shoot down my answer, nothing new there, there was no love lost between us. He was a chauvinistic asshole who’d thought it would be easy getting me into his bed because apparently the women back in his hometown of bum fuck USA thought he was hot shit. I’d been brutally honest in my rejection, he hadn’t been too appreciative of my candidness and has been a pain in my ass ever since.

I didn't let the slur bother me. Though it was a well-known tactic some used to throw people off their guard. I'm not that easily led and what others thought didn't necessarily have the desired effect on me; that's probably why I'd gained the reputation of a stone cold bitch. Whatever; nothing deterred me from my purpose, nothing, not even the brief affair I'd had in college. When things had become too serious with Paul, and it had looked like I might be taken off track, I dropped the guy like a hot coal. That was my one and only foray into the shark infested waters called relationships. Somehow the other person always seemed to expect you to give up who you were to please them. With Paul things had started out well enough, the physical side of things were ok, nothing earth shattering like I’d heard bragged about, but then he’d started to become controlling and wanting more and more of my time. Instead I’d given him his walking papers and severed all ties. Some considered me heartless in the way I did things, the way I was so completely focused on getting ahead in my chosen field to the point that nothing else mattered in the least; that may be true. I do know a part of my heart died with my family that long ago day and if I had to be a heartless loner to find the one who ended them and brought this sorrow into my life then so be it. It has been my only reason for living all these years later and I won’t quit until I found him.

I gathered my thoughts collectively once more pulling everything in, Frank Connell was a little odd yes with his quiet unassuming manner, the way he seemed to always be trying desperately to disappear into himself, I'm sure many people found this strange; but being strange did not make you a mass murderer it just meant you were weary of your fellow man and knowing some of the shit I did who could blame him?

"This is our guy." I pointed to the second screen at the man who stood out for me; I knew there would be an outcry, my choice is an upstanding citizen, the CEO of a leading brokerage firm; everything about him looks great on paper, well his professional and public files anyway but in interview I'd seen the taint on the shine. Though he'd been there not as a suspect but as a character witness for his nephew something about him had just jumped out at me. It wasn’t anything I could put into words as always with me, it came from a place beyond my control; that was partially problematic because my superiors dealt in logistics and data, two things I couldn’t always readily provide with my theories but thankfully my record has been stellar so far so my decisions garnered me at least an unbiased look instead of being shoved aside.

"You've got to be kidding me right, the uncle seriously?"

"Yes that's my guy." There was a lot of grumbling among the other occupants of the room but I wouldn't back down just because no one else agreed. I didn’t look to any of them for support, that’s not my style, I’m a loner through and through and maybe that’s why the bureau had decided to send me out alone on my first field assignment. Now was not the time to think about that though, for more reasons than one.

"Mind telling me how you arrived at that agent Stone?"

I looked at my boss the director and took a deep breath. I might be gruff with everyone else but this man held my future in his hands and I never forgot that; so even though I might think some of his decisions were crap I still showed him the respect he was due. Director Durant is a very no nonsense military type in his late fifties early sixties. His salt and pepper hair was still worn shorn close to the scalp as a throwback to his days in the army. His light blue eyes could be in turn compassionate and stern and his gruff manner left no room for fuck ups. In all my dealings with him I’ve always been reminded of the strict disciplinarian type who would scold you bitterly one moment and feed you candy in the next.

"Okay Frank just seems too obvious to me like a red herring someone's dangling in our faces. Nothing was ever left behind at the first ten scenes; the news leaked that we were closing in on our doer and suddenly he decides to get sloppy and leave transferable DNA? I don't think so; so I backtracked from there, yes Frank knows this victim but not in the way that would call for him to be leaving DNA on her body in the way it was found. So how did it get there? Obviously by someone who knew both the victim and the accused, in order to have that access they had to be very close to both. Now the rapes eliminate a female UnSub so we're left with a male. Let's just say for the sake of argument that it isn't the obvious Frank Connell who decided to leave parts of himself all over his last victim when he hasn't done it before. So who do we have that's a close male relative or friend who could have access to his DNA and also knew the victim? We've already ascertained that Frank has no friends; he's a stay-at-home body who hangs around with his elderly mother and putters around in the basement with his woodwork. Okay so no male friends; as for relatives the only one we have is the uncle that's in state and has any kind of contact, so with the elimination of friends and other family members due to time constraints we're left with Samuel Connell." Short and precise.

“Come on director, you’re not buying this are you? The guy’s the CEO of a fortune 500 company.” Thompson was to say the least furious with my assertions, he’d been on the same path for weeks now as well as the others who seemed okay with following along, me I’m not the following behind type. Yes I probably could’ve given them a heads up about my theory but I wasn’t here to hold their hands, and what would happen the next time when I wasn’t there? How would they find the right thread on their own and pull?

"Who was brought up on charges of rape at the age of nineteen while attending his Ivy League university; said charges were then dropped under very questionable circumstances." I informed him.

"What, where did you get that information?"

My colleagues scrambled to find the information in their files.

"You're not going to find it in there boys; I did the digging myself, you guys were so focused on Frank you dropped the ball and left all the little extras untouched. I turned every stone and that's where I found Samuel Connell; your CEO was also suspected of beating an ex-girlfriend almost to death back in his early twenties. Again the charges were dropped under very obscure circumstances. Over the years there've been little bumps along the way but he's had enough money and clout to keep them out of the public eye; and one last thing, Veronica Sharp our last victim told friends a couple weeks before her demise that she suspected him of criminal behavior; she never said what but intimated that she was giving serious thought to contacting the authorities."