Into the Fire by Rick Mofina

Author:Rick Mofina
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: thriller, suspense, abduction, fbi thriller, crime thriller, fbi agent, crime series, award winning author, investigative reporter, investigative journalism
Publisher: Rick Mofina

CHAPTER 25

Quantico, Virginia

Far from Ethan Nelson’s hospital, Clea Bissell, an examiner with the FBI’s Questioned Documents Unit in Quantico, Virginia, studied the large photo of the glowing blue letters of the message found at the site of the murders in upstate New York.

You can’t…

Is this the work of the Hydra Killer?

The new message, written in the blood of the victims, was similar to the others found with victims in the Hydra Killer case. In this most recent incident, the message reflected distorted writing, but was incomplete.

You can’t what? Bissell thought.

And messages in the other cases?

Bissell typed commands into her laptop, and the message from the first case, the one from the Meadowlands in New Jersey, appeared next to the newest one on the projection screen near her work station at the lab.

In that first case, the message was also written in the victims’ blood, was also characteristic of writing that was not naturally prepared. The slant and size were incongruous; there was no thickening and thinning; the strokes lacked tapering at the beginning and end.

But it was a complete sentence, unlike the new one.

She displayed the message from the second case, originating from a Boston suburb. Again, the same features. Next, the sentence found with the victims just outside of Philadelphia.

The same.

Next, she pulled up the one from the case on Long Island, New York. All the same characteristics. And so it went with the other previous murders.

This case was challenging—only two words, seven characters.

The writing was from an unknown origin, and Bissell adhered to the principles of her field of expertise—that no two people write exactly alike, and that certain traits can be found in every person’s writing.

Experts also agree that no one writes exactly the same way every time, but there are features and qualities in every person’s writing that can be pinpointed and analyzed.

It was within that context that Bissell’s examination of the new message, to determine if it was written by the same author of the previous Hydra messages, followed the standard analytical process.

As had been done by her predecessors with the previous messages, Bissell had submitted the new specimen to all available databases storing collected writing samples, including the U.S. Secret Service’s Forensic Information System for Handwriting.

Nothing came up, as was the case earlier in the Hydra investigation.

Time swept by as Bissell scrutinized the new message for markers of individuality and variations. She took into account baseline size, height relationships, connection strokes, and repetitions.

The problem was the sample was severely limited.

After reaching her conclusion, Bissell began typing her report.

She wrote that after her examination and based on the prevalence of characteristics in common between the specimens she’d compared, there were indications that the new message was produced by the same individual who’d produced the messages found in the earlier Hydra cases.

“However, some doubt or lack of agreement in detail is observed in some of the baseline and height relationships of the newest lettering. The incompleteness and limited scope of the message are also factors. The

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