Cut and Run 1 - Cut and Run

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.