Angel Killer Read Free Page A

card thieves. Three of them worked in the same restaurant chain. I had been tasked with going through miles of credit card receipts to look for other possible accomplices by cross-referencing other fraud cases. The kind of humdrum police work you’ll never see on television.
    I reply in a flat tone, “I found fourteen suspicious charges and flagged them. Miller ignored them.”
    “So you went over his head?” Ailes raises an eyebrow.
    I’ve never been very good at being political. “I think of it as around him. We were on a time crunch.”
    “But he’s your supervisor. The FBI put him in charge of the case so he could decide what was important and what was not. Do you think you’re smarter than him?” Ailes emphasizes the word “smarter.”
    I shake my head. “He’s got a dozen open cases to supervise. I think if he’d had time to read my memo and look at the data, he would have reached the same conclusion. Nothing more.”
    “Why did you suspect Hashimi was the Greenville Killer?”
    I don’t know what to say. When I went through a list of flagged charges, I noticed some odd purchases. Rope, bleach and a few other items that would seem innocuous in other situations but not on a credit card fraud case. I got curious and placed them in locations where the Greenville Killer had murdered three people. Part of the reason I went over Miller’s head was it was only a suspicion. I never told anyone. It was a total potential wild-goose hunt. If I’d told my boss I thought one of these low-level credit card thieves was also a potential FBI most-wanted killer, I would have been laughed out of his office and maybe a job.
    Hashimi just smelled wrong. Sometimes you can’t put that on paper. We’d never have gotten a search warrant based on the Greenville case. There was plenty of cause with the credit card fraud case. The problem was the bureau could take a year before knocking in his door and following that lead.
    I had to nudge things a little . . .
    It was simple enough. Miller was sending a group of cases to his supervisor to be expedited. Hashimi wasn’t on that list. All it took was a hastily written note that looked a lot like Miller’s handwriting, but no actual signature (so I couldn’t be accused of outright forgery), taped to the file. How it ended up on a desk in the supervisor’s locked office is beside the point. The supervisor’s secretary only saw Miller go in and out . . .
    When they got the search warrant on Hashimi’s house they found IDs and documents tying him to the murders. Miller got the credit for the catch. I was just happy they got him.
    No one has ever asked me this before. Ailes is the first one to realize I suspected Hashimi of being the killer in the Greenville case. When they busted him, I kept my mouth shut and congratulated Miller when he got his commendation.
    Ailes is waiting for me to respond. I say nothing.
    “I see . . .” he replies.
    What does he see? That I went around my supervisor? Miller never told anyone I’d gone around him. He never mentioned it to me either. He knows that file came from somewhere. He suspects who, but doesn’t want to admit it.
    Ailes drops the matter. “Why do you think you are here, Agent Blackwood?”
    I don’t understand the question. “The dispatcher asked me to meet you here.”
    He looks at my hoodie and jeans. “Didn’t expect to get called in on a Saturday?”
    “No, sir. I did not,” I reply.
    “Any idea why you’re here?”
    I think about the magazine. The only obvious physical piece of evidence in the entire building. It’s embarrassing, but it’s not the kind of thing to cause this much fuss. Is it? Maybe the Miller thing blew up. “I’m not sure I know.”
    His eyes squint for a moment, then he remembers his glasses. The glasses seem like a prop he uses to stretch moments of time and make me keep talking. He can tell I’m not giving anything up. “What have you heard about what goes on here?”
    “Just the