Good Day to Die Read Online Free PDF

killers. They have to learn, and our man started at the top.”
    “You think he read a book or something?” I maintained my half-smile, nodding idiotically.
    “That’s exactly what I think.” By this time, she was out of the chair and pacing. Her hands, palms up, fingers splayed, were moving in excited half-circles. “There are thousand of books on serial killers. Everybody wants a piece of the action. Psychologists, criminologists, cops, lawyers, reporters. There’s no reason why our boy couldn’t have studied the subject for a few months before he made his move. What surprises me is that the FBI, with all its experience, hasn’t been expecting this.”
    I raised my hand. “Excuse me, Captain, but aren’t you overlooking something. Maybe he took his show on the road before he came here. I seem to remember hearing that serial killers tend to drift from place to place.”
    She stopped pacing and jammed her fists into her hips. Broad-shouldered and solid, she presented a formidable image. Even in that uniform with the two gold bars on the shoulders.
    “Don’t you think I thought of that? Are you making me for stupid, Means? Black people don’t care to be taken for stupid. If I was you, I’d keep that in mind as we go along.”
    I suppose I could have come back with the “dumb injun” bit. Moaned about how all minorities have suffered from the same accusation. But I didn’t. I held my ground and waited for her to get to the point.
    “The first thing I did, after I became suspicious, was tap into VICAP You have any idea what VICAP is?”
    “Not the faintest.”
    “Why am I not surprised?” She was pacing again, her hands moving as rapidly as her mouth. “VICAP is run by the FBI out of Quantico. The letters stand for Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. Theoretically, all unsolved murders are reported to the FBI and entered into VICAP’s database. The programmers designed the system to track killers who move from one jurisdiction to another. If Thong was out there killing before he came to the Big Apple, he wasn’t doing it anything like the way he does it now.”
    “No disrespect, Captain, but you used the word ‘theoretically’ to …”
    “Yes, yes.” She waved me off impatiently. “Reporting is voluntary and there’s no shortage of cops, like you, who don’t even know what VICAP is. But we’re talking about mutilated male prostitutes tied up with strips of leather. It’s not the kind of thing you can file away and forget about.”
    I could picture her making this same pitch to whatever chief was running the task force. I could also picture said chief looking down his nose at this upstart black woman who, in his opinion, like all women officers, could best serve the department by resigning forthwith. Vanessa Bouton couldn’t have been more than thirty-five years old. She’d already passed the sergeant’s, lieutenant’s, and captain’s exams. Half the brass at the top of the NYPD would hate her for that alone.
    “Consider this,” she continued, pausing for a moment to fix me with a penetrating look. “The victims were taken from various locations around Manhattan: the ‘strip’ on Fifty-third Street, the West Street piers, Queens Plaza under the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge, Hunts Point in the Bronx; Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights. He got them off the street without anyone knowing, then murdered them, mutilated them, and cleaned up the bodies. Why would he dump them where they were sure to be found? Why would he take the risk of being discovered as he dumped the bodies?”
    “Maybe he’s stupid.” It was exactly what she wanted to hear.
    “Stupid? Face it, Means, he’s crafty as hell. By the time he was ready to take his fourth victim, half the homosexual population in the city was looking for him. Not to mention every cop on patrol and the largest task force ever assembled by the NYPD. Yet he managed to kill four more people and leave their bodies on street corners without