Free The Bubble Gum Thief by Jeff Miller Page B

criminal—
at trial
. But when you’re in the field, you’re not worried about reasonable doubt, are you? Your job is to prevent crimes. Aren’t niceties like state of mind better left to juries?”
    “Sure, Professor, but aren’t we just playing a definitional game? Regardless of whether a criminal meets our definition of a terrorist, we want to catch him. His motive is irrelevant.”
    “Right,
in part
,” the Professor barked. “We want to catch him, regardless of his motive. But obviously, his motive is not irrelevant to us. And why is that, Agent Gray? Why do we care about his motive?”
    The Socratic game reminded Dagny of law school. “Motive only matters if it can help us catch him. If we know his motive, we can anticipate his next move.”
    The Professor grabbed a marker and began writing on the dry-erase board, saying the words as he wrote them. “The WHAT. The WHO. The WHERE. The WHY.” He threw the marker to the ground and smacked the word WHAT with his hand. “You show up at a crime scene and do your work, and you’ve got the WHAT. A dead body. Missing money. Whatever. From that point on, everything is about the WHO and the WHERE,” he said, hitting the words with his hand again for emphasis. “If you figure out who did it and where he is, then your case is closed. The WHY only matters if it helps you get the WHO or WHERE. And that’s the only reason that motive matters. Agent Davis made a decent case for the BTK killer being a terrorist. But the question isirrelevant. You might not even know if an act is intended to create terror until you’re well into the investigation. So why are we even talking about this? Agent Walton?”
    “Ummm...”
    “No ummms!”
    “Because you want us to remember that crime is crime—and that the FBI may be making a mistake by segregating counterterrorism from other investigative units. Because we need to approach each crime without preconceived notions.”
    “More or less, Mr. Walton. In any event, I’m hungry, so let’s break for lunch.”
    The Professor gathered his books and hobbled to the door. “Agent Gray, if you would care to join me, I’d like to discuss a matter.”
    He’d never before extended such an invitation to anyone in the class. “Of course, Professor.” Dagny returned the puzzled looks of her classmates with a shrug and followed the Professor down the hallway. He moved slowly, and Dagny found it difficult to match her pace to his.
    They took the stairs to an even lower level, wandering under dim, flickering lights, past clanking pipes and boilers, to a thick metal door with a yellow Post-it note affixed to it. It read “McDougal.”
    “My office,” he sneered, pushing the door open.
    “This feels like a Terry Gilliam movie,” Dagny said.
    “I don’t know who that is.”
    Inside, the concrete walls of the ten-by-ten cell were bare. The Professor’s metal desk was covered by stacks of books, as was much of the floor. The shelves behind the desk were filled with brown Redwelds, overflowing with file folders and papers. Two framed photographs stood on the top shelf. Dagny guessed that the woman standing against the rail of a ship in the picture on the left was Mrs. McDougal. The picture on the right showed J. EdgarHoover presenting a medal to a young, strong, tall agent. Was it the Professor? Dagny didn’t believe it was possible. Sure, people shrink, but that much?
    “Have a seat,” McDougal said.
    Dagny removed a stack of books from the chair opposite the desk and sat down. The Professor opened a small refrigerator next to the bookshelf and withdrew two brown paper sacks. He tossed one to Dagny.
    “I brought you lunch.”
    “Oh, thanks, but actually—”
    “Don’t be rude.”
    The bag contained a turkey sandwich on rye bread and a bag of baked Lay’s potato chips. She took a bite of the sandwich. “Thank you.”
    The Professor opened a desk drawer and pulled out a bag of Cheetos. “Our program ends in two weeks, and Frank