Leaving the men’s room, he went to his desk. As was his habit since the Marine Corps, it was neat and orderly, and he could have laid his hand on any piece of paper he needed without having to make a mess. An orderly environment spoke of an orderly brain—except for the shards of brass in the middle of his.

After chewing down a handful of antacid tablets from his desk drawer, he made his phone call, got some information, and went back to the meeting where he handed Ken a piece of paper with a phone number on it.

The discussion had moved on to a series of sexual homicides in New Mexico near the Mexican border. The investigation was involving the Mexican authorities who were asking to send two of their detectives to Quantico for a crash course in profiling.

The morning wore on. Vince bided his time, letting the agents with active cases take their turns. As the meeting wound down, his friend at the head of the table made eye contact again.

“You didn’t come in because you missed looking at all these ugly mugs,” he said.

“No.” Vince cracked a lopsided smile and chuckled. “Where’s Russo? I came to look at her.”

Rosanne Russo was the only woman in the unit and more than used to taking a rash of shit for it.

“She’s at a conference in Seattle.”

“Damn. My luck.”

“What have you got, Vince?”

He rose to his feet slowly, so as not to touch off a bout of vertigo. “I’ve got a possible serial killer in Southern California. The guy abducts women, tortures them, and glues their eyes and mouths shut with superglue.”

“Pre- or postmortem?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“What’s the victim profile?”

“One of the vics had an old record of arrests for prostitution. No ID yet on the latest one.”

“How many vics?”

“Three in two years.”

His friend frowned. “That barely meets criteria.”

“Tell that to the dead woman they found yesterday. She was buried in a public park with her head aboveground.”

Eyebrows went up. Now it was interesting. This was a jaded bunch. There wasn’t much in the way of human depravity they hadn’t seen. It took something pretty out there to impress them.

“Photos?”

“They just found her late yesterday. No photos yet.”

“What about from the other two cases?”

“Were the other bodies buried in the same manner?” another agent asked.

“No and no.”

“You don’t have any paper on this,” his friend said. “I haven’t seen any paper on this.”

“Nope. I was just wondering if anyone had come across this See-No-Evil, Speak-No-Evil thing with the superglue before. Roy?”

Roy was the resident expert on sexual assault and sexual homicide, although they all had dealt with their share of it. Roy shook his head.