of behavioral sciences, in addition to a man from behavioral analysis and a few other people I don’t recognize. It’s a large room with about thirty seats around the table. Another thirty people are sitting and standing around us. When Ailes sees me, he pulls me from a chair by the wall and sits me next to him at the table.
I’m sitting still, trying not to call attention to myself. I don’t belong here. Everyone else has piles of folders in front of them, like they’re showing off their homework. I just have a folder with the notes I wrote on the plane, which I already typed up and e-mailed to the newly appointed supervisor of the investigation, a squat bald man named Joseph Knoll. He has a face like a prizefighter, the calculating kind that knows where to hit.
After getting a nod from the assistant director, Knoll calls the meeting to a start and begins with a PowerPoint presentation of what happened between the hacking and yesterday. He plays a video of the body in flames, taken by a sheriff’s deputy. This is a much closer view than the one on the news taken from atop a news truck.
“One week ago, the FBI’s public information website was hacked into and a number was placed there and an invitation for us to decode it. Almost seven days to the hour later, our cryptanalysts using our best number cruncher found the hidden code. It was the GPS coordinates of a cemetery in Michigan. That’s where we found the body of a girl that resembles, in every detail we could check, a murder victim from almost two years prior. However, a preliminary investigation showed that she had died just hours before. Apparently from asphyxiation and exhaustion from trying to crawl out of her own grave.
“When we proceeded to move the body from the grave, it erupted into flames caused by some chemical reaction we’re still trying to determine. It’s been suggested this was done as a means to conceal the true identity of the girl. Despite what the Warlock wants us to believe, the dead do not come back to life.” He ends the recap by freezing on the face of the girl we’re still calling Chloe, fire erupting out of her mouth.
It’s a hellish sight, much higher resolution than anything on the news. She looks like a demon screaming fire in a medieval painting, almost biblical.
Knoll points to Danielle. “Our forensic team brought back what we could to look at in our labs. We’ll probably know within a few hours if we can get a tissue match between this and the preserved samples from the first murder victim nineteen months ago. As you can imagine, it’s a bit of a challenge. We still haven’t identified the particular incendiary device used to cause the combustion. Field tests show high levels of potassium, indicating that it was some kind of autocatalytic reaction. This still leaves two questions: who and how. Danielle?”
A tech pulls up the 3-D image of the coffin in the ground as Danielle walks over to the screen. Her voice is clipped. I can tell she hasn’t slept since she got back. I feel guilty for my nap. “Density tests and soil oxidization levels indicate this casket has been in this position for at least six months, likely much longer, which implies that this was planned at least that far back. The real Chloe, or original victim, was probably removed at that time. The whereabouts of her body are still unknown. It would seem evident that the original Chloe was murdered by the same individual who staged this. He drew her blood, saved it and injects it into the second victim to confuse a preliminary forensic examination. Or at least that’s the prevailing theory.”
As she says this I begin to have doubts. I don’t know why. Something is out of place. The long burn . . .
A blond woman with glasses stops taking notes and raises her pen. “Would a more thorough examination have revealed the transfusion?”
“I think so. Given the extreme circumstances, we would have done skin scraping as well and compared them
I’m sitting still, trying not to call attention to myself. I don’t belong here. Everyone else has piles of folders in front of them, like they’re showing off their homework. I just have a folder with the notes I wrote on the plane, which I already typed up and e-mailed to the newly appointed supervisor of the investigation, a squat bald man named Joseph Knoll. He has a face like a prizefighter, the calculating kind that knows where to hit.
After getting a nod from the assistant director, Knoll calls the meeting to a start and begins with a PowerPoint presentation of what happened between the hacking and yesterday. He plays a video of the body in flames, taken by a sheriff’s deputy. This is a much closer view than the one on the news taken from atop a news truck.
“One week ago, the FBI’s public information website was hacked into and a number was placed there and an invitation for us to decode it. Almost seven days to the hour later, our cryptanalysts using our best number cruncher found the hidden code. It was the GPS coordinates of a cemetery in Michigan. That’s where we found the body of a girl that resembles, in every detail we could check, a murder victim from almost two years prior. However, a preliminary investigation showed that she had died just hours before. Apparently from asphyxiation and exhaustion from trying to crawl out of her own grave.
“When we proceeded to move the body from the grave, it erupted into flames caused by some chemical reaction we’re still trying to determine. It’s been suggested this was done as a means to conceal the true identity of the girl. Despite what the Warlock wants us to believe, the dead do not come back to life.” He ends the recap by freezing on the face of the girl we’re still calling Chloe, fire erupting out of her mouth.
It’s a hellish sight, much higher resolution than anything on the news. She looks like a demon screaming fire in a medieval painting, almost biblical.
Knoll points to Danielle. “Our forensic team brought back what we could to look at in our labs. We’ll probably know within a few hours if we can get a tissue match between this and the preserved samples from the first murder victim nineteen months ago. As you can imagine, it’s a bit of a challenge. We still haven’t identified the particular incendiary device used to cause the combustion. Field tests show high levels of potassium, indicating that it was some kind of autocatalytic reaction. This still leaves two questions: who and how. Danielle?”
A tech pulls up the 3-D image of the coffin in the ground as Danielle walks over to the screen. Her voice is clipped. I can tell she hasn’t slept since she got back. I feel guilty for my nap. “Density tests and soil oxidization levels indicate this casket has been in this position for at least six months, likely much longer, which implies that this was planned at least that far back. The real Chloe, or original victim, was probably removed at that time. The whereabouts of her body are still unknown. It would seem evident that the original Chloe was murdered by the same individual who staged this. He drew her blood, saved it and injects it into the second victim to confuse a preliminary forensic examination. Or at least that’s the prevailing theory.”
As she says this I begin to have doubts. I don’t know why. Something is out of place. The long burn . . .
A blond woman with glasses stops taking notes and raises her pen. “Would a more thorough examination have revealed the transfusion?”
“I think so. Given the extreme circumstances, we would have done skin scraping as well and compared them
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