Cut and Run 4 - Divide and Conquer

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    smudge on one cheek, the appropriate amount of dirt to make him look
    rugged instead of a wreck. Zane sort of wanted to hate him.
    “You ever been buried under several metric tons of stone, Mac?
    Well, I have. Three times now!” Ty snapped as he eased himself into
    one of the chairs in front of McCoy‟s desk.
    McCoy frowned but didn‟t take the bait, for which Zane was
    grateful. If they could get through this, he and Ty could get out of here.
    “All right, Garrett, you sit too. You did your debriefs, so you
    know we found your truck intact. We‟ll get it back to you in a few
    days. Go ahead and check out a car for the rest of the week. You can
    drive your partner around, since his truck is toast.”
    “About that—”
    “It‟s being filed with Bureau insurance as a work-related personal
    property casualty,” McCoy said, talking right over Ty. “I‟m sure there
    will be all kinds of paperwork for you.”
    Ty grimaced but didn‟t say anything. Zane figured he was still
    grieving for the valiant Bronco.
    “I‟ll be reviewing all the intel later this week as we deconstruct
    the case,” McCoy announced as he handed each of them a file folder.
    “But in the meantime, I thought you‟d at least like a few answers.
    “His name was Walter Pierson Sutton, son of Clarence and Mitzi
    Sutton,” McCoy began. “Father‟s a doctor; mother‟s in interior design.”
    “Upper crust, huh?” Ty muttered distractedly as he licked his
    thumb and scrubbed at a spot on his arm, checking to see if it was a
    bruise or dirt.
    “The Suttons live in Roland Park, lots of money flowing. Pierce
    attended the Gilman School.” He paused to check for comprehension.
    Zane was still new to Baltimore and shrugged.
    “More-money-than-sense type of place, patches on the uniform,
    schoolgirl socks,” Ty said tiredly.
    “It‟s a boys-only school,” McCoy specified.
    Ty shrugged as if that didn‟t matter.
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    “That‟s where Sutton met Ross Tanger and, through Gilman‟s
    elective program, Hannah Myles at Bryn Mawr School and Graham
    Lewis at Mount Saint Joseph,” McCoy explained.
    “So they basically all went to school together. White-bread kids
    with access to money and nothing to do,” Zane concluded.
    “On the nose,” McCoy said with a nod. “The Suttons gave that
    kid anything and everything he wanted. The other kids had reasons for
    wanting money that didn‟t come from Mommy and Daddy. Not good
    ones, but reasons nonetheless: oppressive stepmother, forced
    responsibilities, boredom.”
    “So what went wrong?” Zane asked, turning the pages in the file
    as he skimmed.
    “There‟s no way to really know what set him off,” McCoy said,
    sounding frustrated as he leaned back in his chair and dragged both
    hands through his thinning hair. “What we‟ve been able to discover so
    far is he had a recent fascination with anti-authoritarianism, anarchy,
    and misplaced social rebellion. The principal at Gilman said he had a
    terrible attitude with authority figures. And although he didn‟t have to
    work, Pierce drifted through several jobs at places in the Inner
    Harbor—including the aquarium—over the course of the past two
    years.”
    “Doing recon,” Ty said, almost under his breath. The false alarm
    at the aquarium suddenly made sense.
    McCoy nodded soberly. “Now we can see it as groundwork laid.
    We‟ve got a warrant to get at his personal effects, computer, and phone,
    but now that he‟s out of the picture….” He shrugged. The case was
    closed. More research would be academic.
    “He was an angry kid who just… decided to kill people,” Zane
    said, having a hard time believing it could happen even though it had
    come within mere seconds of killing him .
    “The banks weren‟t the goal. They were the diversion,” Ty
    murmured sadly.
    “This was one pissed-off young man,” McCoy said. His
    exhaustion was clear in the deep lines and shadows on his face. “Initial
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    profile says that by Sutton‟s reckoning, the world needed to crash and
    burn and be rebuilt. And the other kids have told interrogators that he
    zeroed in on Grady after the aquarium. Called you his white whale.”
    “That… makes no sense,” Ty muttered.
    “He‟s talking about Moby Dick,” Zane said.
    “I know what it means, Garrett!” Ty snapped.
    Zane shrugged and looked at his partner askance, but he didn‟t
    pick up the looming argument. He closed the