dangerous.”
“Why did you say Alaska like that?” Commander Neilsen asked.
“Because this is Alaska,” Lucas looked at him. “Tell me that each town, each city doesn’t have its own way of working things. Tell me that each individual isn’t adapted to deal with the way things work. This isn’t Chicago or Kansas City or New York City, this is Anchorage. A serial killer here has to understand what he is working with. The city has three-hundred thousand people. Its own FBI and US Marshal Headquarters. And it serves as a jumping off point for most of the rest of the state. Yet, he isn’t picking transients or people destined for areas north, he is picking locals. That says something about him.”
“What does it say?” Arons pressed.
“It says he is comfortable here. If he wasn’t born here, I would be surprised. If he is a transplant, it happened at an early age. He knows the parks as well as the city. And he knows that things get done a little different here than in the continental US,” Lucas answered.
“It also says he knew you’d be resistant to call us in until it was absolutely necessary,” Gabriel added. “There’s a reason the FBI Agents and the US Marshals get traded out up here, it’s so they don’t go native.”
“Are you implying that we don’t do things the right way around here? Like we’re breaking the law?” Sheriff Rybolt asked, eyes narrowed, lips pursed together, holding back his anger as best he could.
“Not at all,” Lucas informed him. “What we are implying is that due to the harsh realities of your environment and your lack of cohesion with the rest of the states, you guys do things differently.”
This seemed to diffuse the situation, at least for now. The men at the table all went back to sipping coffee and throwing out ideas. I gave up on the rest of my breakfast and waited on them. I didn’t drink coffee, even in the frozen regions of Alaska. I contented myself with a second hot chocolate and ordered a soda to get my caffeine boost going.
“You eat terrible,” Commander Neilsen said.
“Thanks,” I replied, looking at my plate.
“No bacon, no eggs, no sausage?” Neilsen pressed.
“I have migraines, I don’t eat pork for that reason, and I limit my intake of beef for the same. I don’t eat eggs just because I don’t like the texture. That leaves breakfast foods a little barren. So, French Toast, regular toast and biscuits it was. It would have been better to have Karo Syrup, but I understand this is an odd request everywhere. One day, I will remember to start carrying my own.”
“What’s wrong with maple?” Sheriff Rybolt asked.
“Migraines,” I nodded once and pushed my plate away. It was easier to tell them it triggered migraines than explain that I hated maple syrup. That statement seemed to offend people as much as saying I hated baseball or cute little ducks.
A few minutes later, we loaded up into the SUV, heading for parts unknown. Gabriel got to drive because he had taken courses in evasive driving maneuvers. Since these courses were not standard for the rest of us, he drove while we sat and watched the world go past the windows.
With the engine running, Gabriel turned in his seat to look at Lucas and me, “stop baiting the locals, both of you.”
“How did I bait them? All I did was defend my eating habits,” I protested.
“And suggest that we were the reason he changed his timetable,” Gabriel reminded me.
“That wasn’t baiting, that was pointing out the flaws of their logic.”
“To you, maybe, to them, it was insulting that our appearance should be so special,” Gabriel said.
“We are like US Marshal rock stars, our arrival is important,” Xavier said with a smile, mimicking putting on sunglasses.
“A uniformed highway patrolman referred to us as the ‘Marshals Death Squad,’” Lucas said.
“Huh, I wasn’t sure you had heard him.” I said.
“Oh yes, yes I did,” Lucas gave me a look. The look was filled with anger and malice. It was one of his few scary looks. I was glad it wasn’t directed at me. Lucas took each case somewhat personally. He did not like being referred to in a derogatory manner.
“Your personal feelings aside, we do not want to piss them off, we all have the same goal and we can’t do that if there is fighting between us and them, so stop baiting them,” Gabriel told us as he pulled into a parking lot.
It had been a very short drive, only three blocks. We were now staring at a large federal building that had a Marshals crest on the top of it. I didn’t know if Alaska had a lot of crime, but they seemed to have a lot of Marshals.
We seemed to flash our badges to everyone in the building as we made our way to a conference room. It was so bad, that we didn’t bother to put them up, instead holding them at the ready to be flipped open and shown off. Everyone else seemed to have a badge on a chain or cord. I was pretty sure I was going to ask for one.
“We’ll be working out of here,” Gabriel said as he led us into the conference room.
“Can we get those badges on chains so we can stop flashing ours?” I asked.
“No,” Gabriel said as he turned a whiteboard around.
“Ok, can we get cords to hang our badges from?” I pressed.
“Ace, do you even care that we have a serial killer in Anchorage?” Gabriel turned on me.
“Yes, I do. I also care that my gun arm is going to get tired flashing my badge every time I enter or exit this building, which would be bad for all of us if a gun battle ensued. If you want to talk turkey on the killer without the pissing match that went on in the diner, that’s fine, but I think that is going to be a hard order to fill since I see Agent Arons coming our way. Which means I’d rather discuss the cords for badges,” I answered.
“I’ll get you a cord,” Gabriel huffed.
“Thanks,” I smiled at him as Arons walked into the room. He took a seat as far from me as he could and stared at the board.
“We think there is something different about these three,” Gabriel pointed to photos on the board. They were gruesome and disturbing. Three faces without skin or hair. I frowned at them.
“Different how?” Arons asked.
“The killer doesn’t have the same steady hand,” Xavier got up and started putting up more pictures. “Occasionally he goes too deep or becomes too shallow and a few times, he comes out before the section of skin is cleanly removed. We don’t know what happened between these three and the next thirty-eight, but our killer perfected his technique.”
“That’s when there was a four week delay, correct?” I asked.
“Yes,” Gabriel answered.
“You don’t perfect your technique without practice,” Lucas said.
“I’m searching for similar kills in other places during that time, I’m of the mindset that Ace might be right, he might have been somewhere else for the holidays,” Michael answered.
“Why not back me up when we were talking at the diner?” I asked him.
“Because the locals want it to be a monster,” Arons answered. “No, they need it to be a monster, not a local. If you had pressed harder on your theories, they would have stone-walled you.”
“So you are on our side?” I frowned at him.
“Well, I haven’t gone native,” Arons gave me a grin. “Dr. McMichaels is right, things get done differently around here. Even in a city as large as this. They are all sharing information among themselves, but not all of it is coming to me. That’s why I requested your team. I knew that all the coroner reports, all the crime scene stuff, everything would start to flow into a workable area. I’m limited as an FBI agent here. The Marshals are limited because they are also federal agents, but your lot, well...”
He spread his hands wide and I understood perfectly. When we came in, we took over, literally. The US Marshals and the FBI began processing all evidence and then feeding it back to the locals, not the other way around. And we were not bound by the same codes of conduct as most f
ederal agents. We had a special status that usurped the chain of command. If we wanted DNA, it would take three days, max, not six months or a year. The tools of the forensic world were at our disposal in minutes.
“Do you have any theories then?” Lucas asked Special Agent Arons.
“He’s local and I think he’s involved in law enforcement. He always seems to know what we are doing,” he looked at me. “I think he is the one that leaked the signature to the press and I think he is inside the local investigation because we had evidence on victim number three that went missing.”
“What kind of evidence?” I asked, leaning forward.
“A cigarette butt, we were going to DNA test it, but when I went to pick it up, it couldn’t be located. The sheriff sent me to the city police, the city sent me to the coroner, the coroner sent me to the state police and they said they had never seen it, but their techs did the crime scene analysis. There are about five of us that remembered it being at the scene, but no one remembers picking it up.”
“That could be problematic,” Gabriel looked at me.
“And you want me to stop baiting the locals?” I raised my eyebrow at him.
“Nope, go ahead and bait away,” Gabriel said.
“Did I miss something?” Agent Arons asked.
“What do we know about the victims?” I asked.
“They are petite, dark haired, and from what we’ve found out from friends and family, meticulous in their appearance and dress,” Arons asked.
“That almost describes me,” I pulled off