The Devils Teardrop

he’ll be safer.”
    “Well, we can’t get him out of town. He’s not one of our priorities at the moment.”
    “I just thought I’d tell you,” Timothy responded.
    She looked around and seemed to debate. She said to Len Hardy, “Detective, you mind holding his hand for a while.”
    “Me?”
    “Would you?”
    Hardy didn’t look happy. This was yet another subtle slap in the face. Parker recalled that the hardest part of his job when he was running the division was dealing not with elusive documents but with the delicate egos of his employees.
    “I guess,” Hardy said.
    “Thanks.” Lukas gave him a smile. Then she said to Timothy, “You said there was something else?”
    “Primary Security wanted me to tell you. There’s a guy downstairs? A walk-in.”
    “And?”
    “He says he knows something about the Metro shooter.”
    Whenever there was a major crime like this, Parker recalled, the wackos crawled out of the woodwork—sometimes to confess to the crimes, sometimes to help. There were several “reception” rooms near the main entrance in headquarters for people like this. When anyone with knowledge of a crime dropped into the FBI the good citizen was taken into one of these visitor rooms and pumped for information by an expert interrogator.
    “Credentials?” Lukas asked.
    “Claims he’s a journalist, writing about a series of unsolved murders. License and Social Security check out. No warrants. They didn’t take it past a stage-two check.”
    “What’s he say about the Digger?”
    “All he said is that this guy’s done it before—in other cities.”
    “In other cities?” C. P. Ardell asked.
    “What he says.”
    Lukas looked at Parker, who said, “I think we better talk to him.”

II
The Changeling
    The first step in narrowing the field of suspects of a questioned writing is the identification of the national, class, and group characteristics. Further elimination of suspects is made when obvious individual characteristics are identified, tabulated and evaluated.
    –E DNA W. R OBERTSON , F UNDAMENTALS OF D OCUMENT E XAMINATION

12
    “So he’s in D.C. now, is he?” the man asked.
    They were downstairs in Reception Area B. Which is what the sign on the door reported in pleasant scripty type. Within the Bureau, however, it was called Interrogation Room Blue, after the shade of the pastel decor inside.
    Parker, Lukas and Cage sat across the battered table from him—a large man with wild, gray hair. From the linguistics of his sentence Parker knew the man wasn’t from the area. Locals always call the city “the District,” never “D.C.”
    “Who would that be?” Lukas asked.
    “You know who,” answered the man coyly. “I call him the Butcher. What do you call him?”
    “Who?”
    “The killer with a man’s mind and the devil’s heart,” he said dramatically.
    This fellow might have been a nut but Parker decided that his words described the Digger pretty well.
    Henry Czisman was in clean but well-worn clothes. A white shirt, straining against his large belly, a striped tie. His jacket wasn’t a sports coat but was the top of a gray pinstripe suit. Parker smelled the bitter scent of cigarettes in the clothes. A battered briefcase sat on the table. He cupped a mug of ice water on the table in front of him.
    “You’re saying the man involved in the subway and theater shootings is called the Butcher?”
    “The one who actually did the shootings, yes. I don’t know his accomplice’s name.”
    Lukas and Cage were silent for a moment. She was scrutinizing the man closely and would be wondering how Czisman knew the Digger had a partner. The news about the dead unsub had not been released to the press.
    “What’s your interest in all this?” Parker asked.
    Czisman opened the briefcase and took out several old newspapers. The Hartford News-Times. They were dated last year. He pointed out articles that he’d written. He was—or had been—a crime reporter.
    “I’m on a leave of absence, writing a true-crime book about the Butcher.” He added somberly, “I’m following the trail of destruction.”
    “True crime?” Cage asked. “People like those books, huh?”
    “Oh, they love ’em. Best-sellers. Ann Rule. That Ted Bundy book . . . You ever read it?”
    “Might have,” Cage said.
    “People just eat up real-life crime. Says something about society, doesn’t it? Maybe somebody ought to do a book about that. Why people like it so much.”
    Lukas prompted,