A nudge on her arm brought Alex out of her dismal thoughts. She turned to David to see him handing her a coffee mug. She reached for it on reflex, surprised when she felt cold rather than heat. Then she noticed Cliff silently hiding a red bottle under the table in front of him. She smiled, and took a sip. Ice cold Coke. Maybe David was right; maybe they had done okay.

After downing half her cup of soda, Alex tried to concentrate on the presentations of the other teams. Pulling out her notes, she compared them to the details the speakers were relating to the group.

The first man killed was Steven Fletcher, National Director of the Rights of Humanity Campaign. After leaving a meeting at a New York gay community center, Fletcher was walking with four other people to a rented car in the parking lot. Several shots rang out, and Fletcher was dead, just yards from the safety of his car. The assassin had used a high powered, semi-automatic rifle, from the roof of a nearby building. When the police investigated, they found a couple of shells on the rooftop, but nothing else. The building itself was a condemned apartment house, three stories tall. On the back side of the building, facing away from the shooting location, there was an intact fire escape. It was suspected that the killer went down it, then either drove away, or met his getaway ride. There, the police investigation had stalled. Unfortunately, the FBI inquiry was similarly mired down. The only thing they’d been able to add was that the bullets used had been 7.62X39 mm, and had most likely been manufactured outside of the United States. Nothing else had been found.

The second death was that of Max Rhodes, director of the Regional African-American Caucus. He had been shaking hands in the middle of a political rally near Baltimore when two shots had struck the side of his head, killing him instantly. Once again, the killer had been in a near by building. This time, however, the police responded quickly, as did the security guards in the office building. Even though the shooter was not apprehended, he had been glimpsed as he exited the rear of the building, jumping into a blue sedan. The license plate had been noted, but was discovered to be stolen plates belonging to another car. The only other clue was the rifle, a Colt carbine semi-automatic, which had been left behind in the empty office. It wasn’t really a lead though, since the gun held no prints. The serial number on the rifle identified it as being one of five rifles to have disappeared from a sporting goods store in a robbery six months earlier. The description of the shooter had been vague; approximately five-foot, six-inches, with sandy blond hair, wearing a brown suit and sun glasses. It was estimated that the time between the first shot, and when the shooter jumped into the car, had been less than four minutes. Once again, the investigation stalled.

Victim number three was a Hispanic male in downtown Los Angeles. This murder had confused the task force. Instead of following the set pattern, a semi-automatic rifle shot from a building, the killer had borrowed the tactics of gang bangers from the inner city. As Mr. Mario Arturo, candidate for representative in the state of California, walked from his front door to his car, a sedan, this time black, had driven past, with a shotgun firing out the window. Arturo, who’d been expected to win the Congressional seat, had died before he hit the ground. There had been only one witness, who described the car, but had been too close to get a license plate. This killing had left hard feelings between law enforcement and the Hispanic community in California, feelings that increased as neither the police department, nor the FBI offered any hope of catching the killer.

The last victim, before Dabir, had been killed in Atlanta, Georgia. Doug Wilson had run a community center in a black neighborhood. A white man, he was initially mistrusted by the people he was interested in helping. Slowly, though, he had managed to prove himself, and the neighborhood had rallied around him when he fought against the drug dealers who openly plied their trade. For six years he had worked to create a community among the people, finding ways to keep kids off the streets, and help many stay in school. He had denounced many officials in the Atlanta area when they cut funding for many social programs. His intention, he announced, was to run for the city council in order to reverse those funding decisions. When the list of potential victims had been handed to the task force, Wilson’s name had been number four on the list. He had been the second on the list to die when his car blew up in the parking lot of his apartment complex. The FBI investigation team, which had originally included Ken Thomas, had determined that the bomb was triggered by the vehicle ignition. When parts of the bomb were found and examined, it had fit no known bomber profile. Once again, there were few clues. A couple of people remembered a blue sedan that they had never seen before in the area, one with tinted windows. One woman said it had been in the parking lot the night before the bombing, and that she had seen a young white man with brown hair climb into the car. Sketches had been made, and compared to the very vague description of the individual seen in Baltimore. They had not matched.

Realizing that there was little, if any, new information on the other four investigation fronts, Alex began to relax. She leaned back in her seat, finishing her soda, and wondering why the deputy director had really wanted to sit in on their meeting. This was certainly not anywhere near how the task force usually conducted itself. In another room, down the hall from this one, they had set up a contol center, where they met at least twice a week. The walls in the room were covered with sheets of paper. The paper was in turn covered in names, dates, places, and other facts pertaining to the murders. The names of all the potential victims were on one long list next to the door. There were several computers in the room, along with other office equipment. During their meetings, the agents would find seats somewhere in the room. If it was a full crew of sixteen, there would always be a few people on the floor, or leaning against the wall. They’d review what they knew, and look at what they needed to know. After that, there would be brainstorming on what roads the investigation should take.

Background checks on the victims had yielded few results. Fingerprints on the rifle found in Baltimore had been negative, as had all fingerprint tests in Atlanta. There were no footprints found, and no tire tracks. Ken had traced a few of the Atlanta bomb components, but they had been sold at several discount hardware stores in the city. Cash had been paid, and no one had any memory of who bought them, or when.

The most productive line of inquiry, surprisingly, had been the list itself, but even that had given the agents little in the way of clues. While the letter attached to it had been delivered to the Washington Post, and the people who had handled it had left many fingerprints on it, they had also found several fingerprints that had not matched any of those known to have touched the letter, nor did they match any civil service employee. Also, the fingerprints had been found on both the letter and envelope, which ruled out the letter carrier. Other than that, however, there wasn’t much. The post mark was from Georgetown, an exclusive area of D.C. The return address had turned out to be a closed gas station earmarked for demolition.

Alex’s thoughts were dragged back to the present when she realized Cliff and Deputy Director Bishop had stopped the meeting. Bishop was thanking everyone for their time, and said that he’d present what he’d heard to his superiors. He left, and the room was silent for a moment.

“Asshole.”

The muttered word from Cliff broke the tension in the room, and many of the agents chuckled.