Read Online Swastika by Michael Slade - Free Book Online

stroll has generated in the past, as well as the ‘survival rate’ for a missing person—how long before he or she is usually found. From that, we’ve derived a mathematical formula that tells us what to expect in the future. The statistical graph for boy’s town looks like this.”
    A graph hit the screen.
    “The formula is built into ViCLAS, the Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System, the Mounties’ equivalent to the FBI’s VICAP. As each missing-person report is fed into the system, it is analytically compared to the past. In other words, ViCLAS is a front-end system programmed to routinely scan crime data and missing-person reports to identify unusual levels of activity or abnormal clusters. If, based on historical crime patterns, too many things start happening, in too short a time and too small an area, the alarm goes off. In short, your so-called disposable people are watched over by an early warning system designed to detect stealth predators.”
    Bang. The cyber cop hit a button that caused the graph onscreen to spike abnormally.
    “That’s boy’s town. See the mark of the stealth predator?”
    “Wow,” said Bess. “Where’d you get the idea?”
    “It’s a redesign of models created by epidemiologists to track outbreaks of virulent disease.”
    *    *    *
     
    There is a natural tendency among hyper-conservative cops to deny that a serial killer might be preying on their patch. This springs not only from a desire to avoid having to commit limited resources to the bottomless pit of a major investigation, but also from the irrational feeling that such an admission is tacit acknowledgment that past policing has failed.
    DeClercq saw matters differently. Foolish and negligent would be the cop who dismissed a Rossmo warning, he believed, for what sort of dimwit blinds himself to the laws of mathematical probability? The chief knew of one force that had done just that. The dinosaurs in the path of the comet thought they knew better than some egghead who could use a computer. They said that they had no bodies, so there was no proof. That’s tantamount to a fire station refusing to roll its trucks because reports of smoke aren’t proof of fire. They snubbed the cyber cop’s warning that it was time to swing into action, and ended up with several more victims on the ground.
    Talk about fumbled footballs.
    “Your series on disposable people reflects bygone attitudes,” DeClercq told the staff of The Vancouver Times . “At least at Special X, we’ve studied and learned from the successes and failures of past serial-killer manhunts. We don’t suffer linkage blindness. We don’t ignore the ‘less dead.’ We know how to organize overwhelming information. We coordinate with other police jurisdictions. And we don’t see ourselves as adversaries of the media. History shows that it is usually some member of the public who provides the key to solving any serial killings, and you are our link to the community.
    “It’s probable that a stealth predator has been stalking boy’s town for some time. To take him down, we need your help. First, we ask that you publish an alert in tomorrow’s paper, advising the public that we have the area and those prostitutes whom the killer is targeting under blanket surveillance. Second, we’re asking that anyone who saw, knows, or suspects something contact Special X. There may be someone out there who knows something without realizing its significance. To stop this killer, we need that person to get in touch. Ted Bundy was caught because he was seen backing out of a middle-class driveway in the dead of the night. Peter Sutcliffe—the Yorkshire Ripper—was overheard dropping a hammer and ice pick onto the concrete in an effort to hide them.”
    *    *    *
     
    Cort Jantzen and Bess McQueen crossed paths at the boardroom door as the briefing let out for a coffee break. From the gloating expression on her face, you’d think the queen bitch had just