“Any distribution angle, stores, factory variables, ways of tracing that particular set?”

“Dead end. Very popular toy. A Walmart staple. They sold like seventy-eight thousand of them. All identical, all made in one factory in Hung Dick.”

“Where?”

“China. Who the fuck knows? It doesn’t matter. The sets are all the same.”

“Any theories regarding the significance of those individual animals?”

“Lots of them. All bullshit.”

Gurney made a mental note to readdress that issue later.

When later? What the hell was he thinking? The plan was to look over Kim’s shoulder. Not volunteer for a job no one had asked him to do.

“Interesting,” said Gurney. “Any other little oddities that weren’t released for public consumption?”

“I suppose you could call the gun an oddity.”

“My recollection is that the news reports just referred to a large-caliber handgun.”

“It was a Desert Eagle.”

“The .50-caliber monster?”

“The very one.”

“The profilers must have zeroed in on that.”

“Oh, yeah, big-time. But the oddity wasn’t just the size of the weapon. Out of the six shootings, we retrieved two bullets in good enough shape for reliable ballistics and a third that would be marginal for courtroom use but definitely suggestive.”

“Suggestive of what?”

“The three bullets came from three different Desert Eagles.”

“What?”

“That was the reaction everyone had.”

“Did that ever lead to a multiple-shooter hypothesis?”

“For about ten minutes. Arlo Blatt came up with one of his dumber-than-dumb ideas: that the shootings might be some kind of gang-initiation ritual and every gang member had his own Desert Eagle. Of course, that left the little problem of the manifesto, which read like it was written by a college professor, and your average gang member can barely spell the word ‘gang.’ Some other people had less stupid ideas, but ultimately the single-shooter concept won out. Especially after it was blessed by the Behavioral Unit geniuses at the FBI. The attack scenes were essentially identical. The approach, shooting, and escape reconstructions were identical. And after a little psychological tweaking of their model, it made as much sense to the profilers for this guy to be using six Desert Eagles as it made for him to be using one.”

Gurney responded only with a pained expression. He’d had mixed experiences with profilers over the years and tended to regard their achievements as no more than the achievements of common sense and their failures as proof of the vacuity of their profession. The problem with most profilers, especially those with a streak of FBI arrogance in their DNA, was that they thought they actually knew something and that their speculations were scientific.

“In other words,” said Gurney, “using six outrageous guns is no more outrageous than using one outrageous gun, because outrageous is outrageous.”

Hardwick grinned. “There’s one final oddity. All of the victims’ cars were black.”

“A popular Mercedes color, isn’t it?”