Cut & Run (Cut & Run #1)(58)
Author: Abigail Roux

Ty chuckled darkly, the sound almost disturbing as he sat in the shadowed corner of the hotel room and rocked back in his chair. He watched Zane, tracking him like a predator tracks its prey as the bigger man moved.

Zane dialed room service and ordered a couple dinners and a dessert—very aware of Ty’s eyes following him. Murmuring a curt goodbye, he hung up the phone and sat back down at the table, pushing folders around and taking the opportunity to look at more autopsy photos before the food arrived. He studiously avoided looking at Ty. It was better for his mental health that way.

Ty cocked his head, idly wondering why Zane was so diligently ignoring him now. Finally he shrugged it off and pulled out a thick file from the package a courier had delivered from Washington earlier that day.

Ty had called on a buddy in the main office to search up any unexplained murders in the past ten years, and then had him fax a list. He had picked and chosen from the list of murders, requesting files that could possibly fit their case to try and track the man responsible.

He also had a stack of files on every agent that had worked in the New York office in the past ten years, including one on himself. He would go through them all after he finished with the old files, and he would make a list of the locations every agent had worked before being assigned to New York.

All he had to do was find a murder that fit their serial, which was more easily said than done, considering the guy had no MO to speak of, and then match up locations.

“This shit is easier with a computer nerd doing the work,” he grumbled around the pencil in his teeth.

Zane glanced up at him and snorted softly, then went back to his notes.

Ty looked up at him, frowning unconsciously, then back to the file he had in his hand. It was an unsolved murder in Baltimore from roughly five years ago. As he read he began to frown harder and harder. “I know this,” he murmured as he flipped through the pages. “Jesus, I remember this,” he muttered to himself. “January nineteenth,” he continued, not caring if Zane was paying attention to him or not.

The victim had been found on the campus of the University of Maryland’s School of Law. He had died—after being dragged through the streets behind what appeared to have been a small, slow-moving vehicle of some sort—of alcohol poisoning. The really interesting thing that Ty had remembered from this case was the identity of the victim. He had been rumored to be Baltimore’s infamous Poe Toaster, the man who had, since 1949, visited the grave of the author Edgar Allan Poe and toasted him with cognac. The visits, which had actually been observed by many in the city, had stopped after that year.

“Find anything interesting?” Zane asked as he watched.

Ty answered with a grunt. A piece of paper had joined the pencil in his mouth, the file spread on his knees, and each hand was holding several sheets of paper as he read over what he remembered. He waved at Zane and pointed down.

Zane smiled almost fondly before forcing it back, and he pulled the paper and pencil from between Ty’s lips when he stopped at his side. He looked down at the file. “Maryland School of Law, huh?”

“I remember this,” Ty said to him. “It has all the earmarks.

Unfortunately it’s just as random as all the new ones. But there was a token left,” he said almost excitedly as he pointed at the notes in the original file. “A quill. We know he was in Baltimore,” he declared in a voice that was almost surprised.

“If he was in Baltimore at the university, he could very well have applied to the Bureau straight out of school,” Zane murmured. “Or he went into forensics or law enforcement and got familiar with the Bureau just because of proximity.”

“We should cross-check all agents who were in Baltimore in ’01,” Ty suggested.

Zane nodded in agreement. “Sounds like it might be a break.”

“Here,” Ty grunted as he handed the file over. “Take a gander.”

Zane took the file and moved back to his seat as he began to read over it.

“I remember that one happening,” Ty told him as he stood up and began to pace. “It was labeled a hate crime kind of thing,” he went on. “You see, the victim was this guy called the Poe Toaster. He was actually the grandson of the original Toaster, the man who would sneak into a graveyard every year on Edgar Allan Poe’s birthday and toast him with cognac.

Sometimes he left notes. Well, in ninety-nine this new guy started it after his father died, and he left more elaborate notes. One year he said that French cognac wasn’t good enough for Poe; that was right after 9/11, I think, and the French had refused to join the terrorist hunt. Then in two thousand four he left a note saying the Ravens were going to lose the Super Bowl. It pissed a lot of people off.”

“God, anything but NFL rivalries,” Zane muttered. “So, alcohol poisoning—that takes a hell of a lot if it’s a one-time thing, especially if he wasn’t an alcoholic. It’d be more like drowning.” He flipped through the pages, looking for the autopsy report.

“He was also dragged through the streets,” Ty pointed out. “Left in the snow. But if it didn’t matter who the victim was, like they initially thought, then the death itself is even more important.”

“Odd combination of methods,” Zane murmured, reading the report.

“He wasn’t an alcoholic. His liver was fine.”

Ty watched Zane without responding. There were things about this case that were flitting at his mind, like bats around the mouth of a cave. They were driving him crazy, and he couldn’t catch a single one. “Thoughts?” he asked softly.

“Either someone got him to drink a huge amount or he was injected,”

Zane said with certainty. He read over the report again. “But no tracks found.”

“You think he knew his attacker?” Ty questioned softly.

Zane’s brow furrowed. “No signs of struggle, except the marks from the ropes used to drag him. No scrapings under fingernails. He was already unconscious when he was dragged.” Shaking his head, he let his eyes go out of focus. “I bet he did. I bet he knew him. Even trusted him. A friend or colleague. Someone to celebrate with, to drink more than usual with. Slip him a drug to make him pliable and apt to drink even more.”

Ty was nodding in agreement. “It’s the epicenter,” he murmured. “I’ll call Burns, tell him to have someone get on it.”

“Tell him about the flagging we want done. Require Baltimore—