30

Spokane
8:30 p.m.

The killer followed the federal agent—Special Agent in Charge Mathias Costa according to the news reports—from the Spokane Police Department. He had been waiting for his target to leave at his usual time, but he didn’t. Maybe he wasn’t even there.

Which bothered him. He made a point of keeping his targets under tight watch in the days leading up to the kill.

He told himself it didn’t matter. He’d seen him yesterday; he’d see him tonight. Maybe drive by his house, watch him turn off the lights.

But when he saw the head federal agent, the killer was compelled to follow him. Learn everything about him. Where was he staying? How many people did he have with him? Did he have a bad habit or two? Drink too much like his old man? Pick up a prostitute because he was in a town far from home?

The newspaper itself didn’t have as much information as the online blog the newspaper ran. They’d done a big article on Costa and his team and interviewed the Assistant Director of the FBI. One of the very top, most important people in the FBI.

All thinking about him. They called him the Triple Killer. He didn’t care much for the name, but he had a name, a special FBI code name.

It was kind of scary and kind of exciting, all at the same time.

According to the blog, Mathias Costa was in charge of the Mobile Response Team, a new squad of the FBI that traveled to areas that had minimal law enforcement presence.

“Our goal,” Assistant Director Anthony Greer said, “is to provide support and assistance to local law enforcement in rural and underserved communities. We have some of the sharpest minds attached to the Mobile Response Team with advanced training in forensics, investigations, interrogation, and psychology.”

One interesting note, he saw, was that the MRT unit wasn’t fully staffed yet. But he read the article three times and it was clear that the team had been sent here half-staffed because of him, because he was that important, because his case was crucial.

How exciting!

Still, the killer couldn’t afford to get sloppy. After seeing the cops at his target last night, and going to Plan B and the bitch not even being there, he had to be smart. He shouldn’t have gone into her house when he realized she had run away. That had been a mistake, though he wore gloves and his hair was under a cap and he had been careful. Now? He had to be smarter than he’d ever been. So what if they had figured out his pattern. They didn’t know what these people had done to him. They didn’t know who was really important.

He couldn’t be stopped now. The best for last. The most guilty would die, and then he had a new plan. A new, perfect finale that would atone for all that had been stolen from him.

He followed Special Agent in Charge Mathias Costa to a hotel off the interstate, just outside of the downtown area. It was neither a fancy hotel or a dive.