CHAPTER NINE
Vic pushed through the heavy glass doors of the FBI's San Francisco field office and immediately felt the familiar weight of institutional bureaucracy crash down on her.
The building's lobby stretched out before them with all the warmth and personality of a corporate law firm.
The freshly cleaned marble floors reflecting the harsh fluorescent lighting made everyone look slightly sickly.
Gray walls displayed the standard collection of official portraits and FBI mission statements, while security checkpoints and metal detectors created bottlenecks that slowed movement to a crawl.
God, she hated coming to field offices. Every single one of them felt exactly the same to her—sterile environments where momentum went to die and cases got bogged down in procedure and jurisdictional politics.
The moment she stepped through those doors, she could feel her investigative energy draining away, replaced by the grinding machinery of federal bureaucracy.
But after their interview with Marcus Holloway, she had to admit that traditional office work was probably their only option at this point.
She was aware of Miles Sterling beside her, though, and didn’t want to allow her grumpiness to sway his opinion of her, or the field office. Hell, for all she knew, the San Francisco field office might be much better than the dozens of others she had visited.
She approached the industrial looking receptionist’s desk and was greeted by a mousy woman who looked just about as happy to be there as Vic was.
Vic showed her badge and said, "Special Agent Victoria Stone, Violent Crime Unit out of Quantico.
I'm working the gold murders case and need workspace for myself and Dr. Sterling here.
" She gestured toward Miles, who was looking around the lobby with the slightly overwhelmed expression of someone who didn't spend much time in field offices.
The receptionist's fingers moved across her keyboard as she accessed the scheduling system. "I can get you a conference room on the third floor. How long will you need it?"
"Indefinitely," Vic replied. "This is an active investigation and I don't know how long we'll be in the city."
"Conference Room 312 is available now. I'll set you up with temporary access cards and get you connected to our network."
The process of getting visitor badges and security clearances took another fifteen minutes, during which Vic found herself growing increasingly impatient with the slow pace of institutional procedures.
She watched Miles navigate the bureaucratic requirements with more grace than she felt, answering questions about his security clearance and departmental affiliation with the patience of someone who understood that systems had to be followed regardless of urgency.
Finally armed with temporary ID badges and network access codes, they made their way to the elevators and up to the third floor.
Conference Room 312 turned out to be a windowless space with beige walls, a large oval table surrounded by ergonomic chairs, and a whiteboard that showed traces of previous meetings that hadn't been completely erased.
A wall-mounted television provided access to federal databases and video conferencing, while power outlets and ethernet connections offered the basic infrastructure they'd need to set up their temporary operations.
It smelled of coffee, the scent emanating from the Keurig that was set up on a small table in the back, along with a few snack staples.
"Well, this is depressing," Miles observed, setting his laptop bag on the table and looking around the sterile environment.
"Every field office conference room looks exactly like this," Vic said, claiming a chair that faced the door and pulling out her laptop. "I swear they use the same interior decorator for all of them."
“So it’s not all car chases and gunfights?” Miles asked with a bit of humor injected into his voice.
“God, no. Not by a longshot.”
Miles opened his laptop and began connecting to the network while Vic arranged her case files across the table.
But even as she went through the motions of setting up their workspace, she could feel her frustration building with their current investigative position.
Here she was, all comfortable and inside, sorting out pictures, while a deranged killer was on the loose.
"So what's our next move?" Miles asked, settling into a chair across from her.
Vic leaned back and studied the whiteboard, trying to organize her thoughts. "That's the problem. I'm not sure we have a clear next move."
"What do you mean?"
"Think about what we learned from Holloway," she said, her voice carrying the weight of someone who had worked enough dead end cases to recognize the pattern.
"All three victims were connected to that development deal, but so were dozens of other people.
Displaced families, community activists, other attorneys, city officials, construction workers, financial advisors—the list goes on and on. "
Miles nodded slowly. "Sounds like too many variables to narrow down effectively."
"Exactly. And even if we focus on the displaced families first, we're talking about interviewing potentially hundreds of people.
Elderly residents, single mothers, disabled tenants.
Pretty much anyone who was genuinely harmed by this development but who probably doesn't have the resources or technical knowledge to pull off these murders. "
Vic stood up and began pacing the small conference room, her investigative instincts telling her that they were missing something fundamental about the case. "Plus, I'm starting to doubt whether the development deal is even the real motive here."
"How so?"
"Patricia Vance is dead, but from everything I saw, it seems that her company is still moving forward with the project. The other investors are stepping up to fill the gap, and the displaced families are still being evicted. The schedule was a bit screwed up, but that’s about it.
If someone was trying to stop the development by killing the people involved, they've failed completely. "
Miles considered this while typing notes on his laptop. "So you're thinking the development connection might be coincidental?"
"Or it's part of a larger pattern that we're not seeing yet.
" Vic returned to her seat and looked at the crime scene photographs.
"These murders are too sophisticated and too elaborate to be simple revenge killings by displaced tenants. The gold leaf application alone requires specialized knowledge and expensive materials. There’s something else going on there. "
"Which brings us back to my periodic table theory," Miles said.
"Right. Maybe. If these killings are part of a larger pattern targeting people for symbolic reasons rather than personal grievances, then the development deal might just be how the killer identified these particular victims. What we were thinking of as motive might be some sort of shopping list for the killer. "
Vic studied the photographs of the three crime scenes, looking for details she might have missed during her initial investigation.
The careful positioning of the bodies, the professional quality of the gold application, the theatrical staging—all of it suggested someone with both technical expertise and a flair for dramatic presentation.
And maybe, she supposed, someone with a warped and twisted appreciation of art.
Miles looked up from his laptop. "So what are we looking at in terms of approach?"
"I don't know yet," Vic admitted, feeling the frustration that came with cases that defied conventional investigative approaches.
The fact that Sterling had been sent to join her spoke to just how unconventional this case was.
"But sitting in this conference room running background checks on hundreds of people doesn't feel like the right path. "
She could see Miles processing this information, a deep look of concentration coming over his face.
The development deal had seemed like a promising lead when they'd discovered it, but the more they examined its implications, the more it felt like a dead end that would consume enormous amounts of time without producing actionable results.
After several more minutes of hunting in silence, Miles slowly got to his feet. "Give me a few minutes, would you? I need to make a call."
"Sure," Vic said.
Miles stepped out of the conference room, and she turned her attention back to the case files, trying to find some angle they hadn't yet explored. She didn’t even stop to wonder what sort of call Miles was making.
If he wanted privacy, she could only assume it was personal.
That was the good thing about working with a stranger, she supposed; she didn’t really need to care.
But after a few minutes, she found herself distracted by the sound of Miles's voice. It was low and muffled by the door, but she could hear just enough of it—like a whisper from out of a cave. If he wanted privacy, he hadn’t stepped far enough away to get it.
"I know, Elena, I know you're worried," she heard him say, his voice carrying the gentle patience of someone who had clearly had this conversation before.
"But I'm working with an experienced agent, and we're being careful.
Most of what we've done so far is research and interviews, not anything dangerous. "
Vic felt an unexpected stab of something that might have been envy as she listened to Miles reassure Elena—a girlfriend she assumed, because she’d not seen a wedding ring on his finger—about his safety.
It had been far too long since she'd had anyone in her life who worried about her well-being, anyone who expected phone calls and updates about dangerous cases.
Her last serious relationship had ended nearly two years ago, destroyed by the combination of her unpredictable schedule and her partner's inability to understand the emotional demands of her work.
"I promise I'll be careful," Miles continued. "And I'll call you later tonight to let you know how everything went. Yes, I love you, too."
The tenderness in his voice made Vic acutely aware of her own isolation, of the price she'd paid for building a career that consumed most of her emotional energy.
She'd told herself for years that the work was enough, that the satisfaction of solving cases and bringing killers to justice filled the void left by failed relationships and sacrificed personal connections.
But hearing Miles's quiet conversation with Elena reminded her of what she'd given up in pursuit of professional success. She envied him.
She shook off the unwelcome emotional intrusion and forced her attention back to the case files.
There was work to be done, and personal feelings had no place in an active investigation.
She'd learned long ago to compartmentalize her emotional responses, to focus on the task at hand regardless of whatever personal issues might be troubling her.
Miles returned to the conference room a few minutes later, his expression apologetic. "Sorry about that. My fiancée gets worried when I'm working active cases. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does…" He shrugged as if that said it all.
"It’s understandable," Vic said, keeping her voice neutral. "This kind of work isn't easy on relationships."
"We're getting married in six months, assuming this case doesn't completely derail our wedding plans."
The casual mention of his upcoming marriage drove home the contrast between their personal situations, but Vic pushed the thought aside and focused on the professional aspects of their partnership.
They’d only been working together for about five hours now; she didn’t see the point of opening those sort of personal doors.
Plus, Miles was proving to be a valuable investigative partner despite his limited field experience, and his analytical skills were complementing her street-level investigative instincts in ways that were helping them see the case from new angles.
"So," she said, opening another case file. "Back to our problem. We've got three dead people, a development deal connection that might be meaningless, and no clear path forward."
"What if we approach it differently?" Miles suggested. "Instead of trying to work backward from the victims to find the killer, what if we try to predict who the next victim might be?"
Vic looked up from the photographs, intrigued by the suggestion. "Based on what criteria?"
"If your killer is really following some kind of pattern related to wealth and corruption, there might be other people in San Francisco who fit the same profile as our three victims. Like you said…maybe he’s using people involved in that deal as a list. I think you referred to it as a shopping list. Which, well, was sort of morbid. "
Vic considered this approach, recognizing both its potential and its limitations.
It was a more proactive strategy than their current dead end investigation, but it also required them to make assumptions about the killer's methodology that they couldn't yet prove.
Still, it was better than spending weeks interviewing displaced tenants who probably had nothing to do with the murders.
"All right," she said, pulling her laptop closer. "Let's see if we can build a profile of potential victims and figure out who else in this city might be at risk." She grinned and said, “I’d start thinking about what sort of take-out you want because we’re going to probably be here a while.”