Free The Ultimatum: A Jeremy Fisk Novel by Dick Wolf

inches above the right ventricle, exiting the left pectorals major three inches below the clavicle, leaving a wound of 1.6 centimeters by 0.9, with no abrasions, soot, or stippling.”
    It seemed like he would read the bulk of the report—ten single-spaced pages was a medical examiner’s norm—before getting to the most critical piece of information.
    Fisk cut in. “Quick question: Was the projectile recovered?”
    Weir looked up, annoyed. He reached onto the conference table for the ceramic mug imprinted with COFFEE FIRST, THEN MAYBE YOUR TEDIOUS BULLSH * T WON ’ T SEEM SO BAD and took a swallow. “Answer’s yes, same Makarov nine-mil, same gun. So we told Norman at the Times to go ahead and roll the dice with the comment thing. We just all need to be able to access that Hotmail account you opened.”
    Fisk’s inclination was to take point. With hearts and minds affected by a killer on the loose, tactics were deliberated for too long (the FBI’s industrial-strength brand of red tape aside). At this juncture, however, the committee managing to field an e-mail from Yodeler would be progress.
    “Sure thing,” Fisk said.
    “Good,” Weir said. “Not to waste any more time, I want to turn things over to Supervisory Special Agents Flynn and Morgan, who are up here from the NCAVC.” Weir indicated the middle-aged white professorial types across the table, National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime agents who performed the task known in common parlance as “profiling.” Unlike Hollywood profilers, they didn’t do so by walking around crime scenes and picking up vibes. Instead theirs was a world of criminal behavioral data and statistical likelihood.
    The focus of the meeting shifted to the application of NCAVC intel to Yodeler. “The tactical choice, sniping, is rooted in fastidiousness,” said the bespectacled Special Advisory Agent Flynn. “Now, here’s a nifty stat for you all. In Vietnam, the United States expended fifty thousand rounds of ammunition for each enemy killed. Snipers expend less than two rounds per kill.”
    Fisk had never thought about it that way. But, yes, the snipers he’d known shared that trait. Interesting . . .
    “There are a number of characteristics shared by criminal snipers that can help us whittle down the list of suspects,” said the other Quantico man, Morgan. He spun his laptop so that the others aroundthe conference table could see its monitor, then he clicked open a PowerPoint slide show and began to read the captions aloud. “Ritualistic behavior, compulsivity—often at obsessive levels, suicidal tendencies, history of serious assaults, hypersexuality, history of drug and/or alcohol abuse, parental history of drug and/or alcohol abuse, arsonist tendencies . . .”
    Fisk was unsure how these symptoms differentiated the criminal sniper from the garden-variety serial killer.
    Morgan continued, “Many also suffer from chronic depression, feelings of powerlessness or inadequacy, and feelings of interrupted bliss during childhood—in fact, many have stated that they were the result of an unwanted pregnancy.”
    Fisk’s attention drifted toward the special advisory agents’ shoes, shiny black wing tips, laces tied in near-perfect symmetry, no blemishes. The case would be better served, he thought, if the special advisory agents walked around crime scenes.
    S hortly thereafter, after making an excuse about an important phone call and five minutes on the 1 train, Fisk climbed out of the Bowling Green subway station and took in a busy Battery Park on a sunny day suitable for a Visitors and Convention Bureau commercial.
    Behind the Castle Clinton, the two policemen guarding the crime scene were lost in the crowd, or at least their presence had no ill effect on the passersby. Fisk doubted that the couple dozen yoga practitioners on the adjacent lawn would continue their meditative recline if they had any inkling of the nature of the crime.
    Entering the park, he had the