Federal Discipline Read Online Free PDF Page B

especially so.”
    “Only sometimes. There are smart criminals.”
    “Criminals are usually stupid,” he said. “Smart people have the brains to make it legally. A bad confi dence trickster is a criminal, a con man. But a good one? He's an investment banker. There aren't many criminal masterminds in real life. Perhaps a few of the cartels, but it's the same there too. A cartel leader is a criminal seconds away from a body bag at all times. A pharmaceutical executive is a billionaire.”
    “That analogy doesn't work with, say, serial killers,” Jamie pointed out. “There's no legal form of serial killing.”
    “Not really, no,” Jack agreed. “Serial killers are a rare form of smart criminal. Because they have to be smart enough at killing to get away with it more than once.”
    Jamie put the nub of a pen in her mouth and chewed. “Is it hard?”
    “What do you mean, is it hard?”
    “I mean is it hard to get away with murder?”
    “Well,” Jack sat down behind his desk, looking thoughtful. “I suppose it depends how you do it and why. Most murders are crimes of passion, so they're hard to cover up. A planned one... serial killer style, that can be easier to get away with. It also depends on the victim. Are they someone who will be missed? The sort of killer who targets the indigent can get away with it for a very long time, unfortunately.”
    “Who was our victim, in this case? I mean, he was male. Obviously.”
    “You've seen what his innards look like, but you don't so much as know his name. Details, agent. Details,” Jack said. He was teasing, she knew because both his usually hard cheeks were dimpled in a way that made her heart skip a beat. “Here...” he pushed the file toward the edge of his desk. “Skip past the gore and educate yourself.”
    Jamie retrieved the file and did a little reading. The unfortunate victim had been in his forties. A divorced Iraq vet. He had a few minor convictions for petty theft and illicit substances. He'd done a short stretch for cocaine possession the year before, but had kept his nose clean enough to stay out of trouble since then.
    “Almost indigent,” she said, feeling sad for the man whose life had ended most unpleasantly. “And I suppose, as we're on this case, he's not the only one.”
    “He's not,” Jack confirmed. “He's the sixth in five months.”
    “All similarly dispatched?”
    “A certain type of frenzy typifies the murders, yes,” Jack confirmed. “Though some of the victims and MO's seem incoherent. The previous five victims were all male. A librarian, a couple of other Iraq vets, a shopkeeper and a tennis coach. Nothing much to connect them besides the fact that they all live in the city and they all ended up dead.”
    “There's three vets so far, that could be a connection?”
    “There are a lot of vets in the city,” Jack said. “Only thing that tends to connect them is that they end up in trouble a little more than your average guy. At this stage, it's something of a mystery precisely who we're dealing with. If there's a single who at all.”
    “There could be several people going about sticking people down garbage disposal units?”
    “That's a new development.”
    “Hmm.” Jamie returned to the file, pouring over the officially held details of the deceased. They were frighteningly complete. Email records, including copies of some actual emails, mundane communications included. There were queries about shoe specials and a complaint about the cable guy coming three days late. The emails didn't read like the communications of someone living so close to the edge he was in any serious danger of being murdered. The day before his death, his internet history revealed searches for casserole.
    As her mind wandered, Jamie found herself gazing across at Jack Harley. Obviously the deceased, in spite of having lived an apparently normal life, had crossed paths with the wrong kind of people. Maybe it was just bad luck, but Jamie didn't