“This isn’t a sex crime, Jethro.” Mac could feel it. It was something else, something more dangerous. “And he wouldn’t just stop. He would go on, and the attacks would get worse. He wants to prove something.”
“So we’re looking at someone who couldn’t get into the investigative field for whatever reason?”
Mac nodded. “Someone who managed to get in close to the victims. Close enough to gain access into their homes. Call Dell, have him interview these victims again. Get a list of close friends and family who could have had that access. Let’s see what we get when we run the names.”
“That will take awhile, too,” Jethro pointed out.
There was a warning flaring in his gut that didn’t make sense.
“Have him get started on it. We could get a strike early.”
“I only have a few days’ enforced vacation left.” Jethro leaned back in his chair. “I’ve been considering a real vacation. I’ll put in for a few weeks’ leave if you can work this with me. It might give us an advantage if Dell’s working the information and we follow it from here.”
Mac tapped his fingers against the arm of the chair. “Do it.” He finally nodded, not certain why the tingling in the back of his neck was becoming an itch. “It’s going to take a couple of days for Kei’s program to finish running the Internet and then we’ll need a few days to clear out the extraneous junk it pulls in. When it’s finished, we’ll see what we have.”
Mac stared at his computer, his eyes still narrowed, working through the information that had come up so far.
“I’ll work up a list of questions for Dell to take with him,” he told Jethro. “He’s a good field agent, but he’s not the best when it comes to questioning victims.”
“No shit,” Jethro murmured. “I hadn’t had time to fully investigate all seven victims and their associations.”
“You would have soon.” Mac breathed out heavily. “What concerns me is the silence between my last case and six months ago. The four cases took place in the Alexandria-D.C. area within a period of four years. Then nothing after that until the last three. I wonder where he went?”
“With any luck, Keiley’s genius will pull that one out.” Jethro nodded at Mac’s computer. “Too bad we can’t hook into the law enforcement databases with that baby.”
“It would take years,” Mac sighed. “Keiley keeps threatening to fine-tune it, but she hasn’t figured out how to make it work through millions of cases amid dozens of agencies. We’ll be waiting days just on Web and newspaper hits in the Virginia-Maryland area. Reach out further and you’re waiting weeks and months.”
“The more you narrow the criteria, the quicker it gets?” Jethro asked.
Mac nodded. “But at this point, there’s not enough information to find a single common denominator other than the spouses who are in the investigative field. The amount of key words I’ve had to use will fill the program with junk as well. But it could give us a clue. Something else to move on.”
“At this point, anything would help.” Jethro shrugged. “I’ll contact Dell and get him to work on the additional information. And pray he doesn’t go to the director.”
Mac grinned. “Dell won’t go to the director. He’ll just demand credit.”
“He can have the credit.”
Mac glanced at Jethro sharply. The edge of frustration in Jethro’s voice was telling.
“You’ve about had it, haven’t you?” he asked his friend, seeing the signs clearly.
“I stay suspended more often than I’m at my desk. It’s becoming a pain in the ass.”
“So stop beating the shit out of the perps,” Mac suggested.
“Might as well tell me to stop breathing. Sons of bitches. We spend months, years, working to catch them and the next thing you know some wing-tipped fancy-pants lawyer has them out on a technicality. That or a witness disappears and turns up dead or suddenly information is corrupted and the bastards are back on the streets destroying lives again. It pisses me off, Mac.”
Yeah, it pissed Mac off, too. It was one of the reasons he had resigned and come back to the farm. Keiley and the temptation Sinclair’s Club afforded hadn’t been the only reasons. They had been prevailing reasons, but there had been others.
“Cameron’s firm is doing well,” Mac pointed out, referring to Jethro’s cousin, the investigator for Sinclair. “He’s been after you for years to join him.”
“I’m thinking about it.” Jethro propped his feet on the desktop as he leaned back further into the chair. “The new director doesn’t appreciate my unique abilities,” he grunted sarcastically. “Resigning beats being fired any day of the week.”
Mac shook his head. Jethro was the bad boy of the Bureau, there had never been any doubt about that.
“I saw Keiley this afternoon before she left.” Jethro said, changing the subject yet again. “She was nervous as hell.”
Mac felt his body clench in sudden arousal.