Disclaimer: Profiler and all characters belongs to NBC, Sanders/Moses Productions, Cynthia Saunders, Stephen Kronish ... Not to me. No copyright infringement intended.

Part XII : Truce ?

Two consecutive nights and two murders. Each of the members of the VCTF was a little bit anxious when arriving at office. But nothing. No body discovered in Atlanta that night. They started to work early, willing to profit by any time Jack would let them before the next victim ... They all knew there would be another one.

They all regrouped in the command center. For each of the names on the list, George was locating the person, printing the basic information about him or her without even reading it, and handing the case to either John or Grace for further research. The two agents were in charge of classifying people and making a short summary on each of them. Finally, each interesting case was passed to Sam, who refined the profiles and had the tricky task of questionning Bailey for more personal information.

George got lucky. He was progressing much faster than the day before. At 11 am, he had identified and traced 212 names out of 264. What was left was the toughest part, false ids, homeless, ... He printed a list and went to Bailey with it.

" These seem to have disappeared from the surface of the earth." he started. "Maybe you can have a look and give me a clue where to look for ?". Bailey took the sheet of paper and had a glance at it. "I need to give a few phone calls." he said. "I'll get back to you. Meantime, concentrate on the ones you have found. It's a good job George.". He stood up and they saw him climb to his office.

They all went back to their boring tasks. Bailey reappeared about one hour later. He handed back his list of names to George. "You'll get an e-mail in the afternoon." he simply said. "I guess we all need a break." he went on. "Somebody's interested by a lunch at Gianni's ?". The four agents stood up immediately with a smile.

The morale of the team was much higher when they came back from the restaurant. They started with a little de-briefing on the status of their respective investigations. Sam had managed defining a first set of 38 possible targets, which profile was matching one way or another with Johnson and Atkins, of which 12 were living in Atlanta.

They decided Bailey and John would start visiting those people, while the rest of the team would go on investigating the file. The two men took six names each and left the building. Sam kept watching the door of the command center long after Bailey had passed it. She was interrupted by Grace : "He'll be allright." she said. George nodded silently. "I know." Sam replied. The three of them went back to work.

After each of their visit, John and Bailey were reporting to George. They actually did not expect much of this tour. They knew they didn't have the resources to put everybody under protection. The main purpose was to warn these men of a possible danger. Obviously, they also asked each of them if they, or their family had noticed anything strange recently, but had not got anything really conclusive so far.

It was a quarter past four when Bailey arrived in front of the 9th Oak Road, in a pleasant suburb of Atlanta. The sun was hot and he was feeling tired. Darryl Turner was his fourth visit of the afternoon. Sergeant Turner had been his first instructor when he had joined the US Marine Corp. But he had been more than that. Bailey had lost his father when he was a kid, and despite the efforts of his mother, he had gone in a lot of trouble as a teen. Turner had put him back on the right tracks.
They had go on seeing each other for a while after the war, but then Bailey had moved to Baltimore and they had lost contact. Bailey was not exactly the sentimental kind, but he had to admit he was a little moved when he rang the door bell.

He waited for a few seconds, and rang again. No answer. He was about to leave, a little bit disappointed, when he heard a dog bark behind the door. Actually, the dog was more howling than barking. It was nothing unusual and it shouldn't have alerted him, but he had that funny irrational hinch he sometimes had that something was wrong.

He tried the door but it was locked. He went down the stoop and walked around the little house to the garden. One of the windows was wide opened. He turned the knob of the little portal, but it was locked too. The dog heard him and came to the fence. He barked a little at him. He was obviously thirsty.

Bailey knelt and started patting the dog. When he felt the animal was calm enough, he started climbing the fence and in a few seconds was in the garden. No sound came from inside. More as a reflex than because he was feeling danger, Bailey pulled out his gun and walked to the window. From where he stood, he could not see any movement in the house, but he saw there was some light on in another room. "Anybody in ?" he called loud enough; but got no answer.

Bailey stepped across the window and found himself in the living room. He had a look around and headed to the door from which a ray of light was gliding. He opened it slowly, his gun still in his hand.

He smelled the body before he even could see it. The scene he saw when he turned back was more than what any normal human being could stand. Darryl Turner was sitting in a pool of dried blood, leaning against a cupboard. His stomach had been cut from side to side and his guts had been pulled out. He probably had been left like this days ago and a cloud of flies was surrounding his wounds. But there were also traces of teeth on his chest. The dog, Bailey thought ...

On Turner's forehead, Jack had carved his now well-known signature in three blood letters : SBR. When he turned his face in disgust, Bailey saw the message written with blood on the door of the refrigerator : "He won't help you this time, Malone !".

Bailey ran out of the kitchen and through the window. He just had time to bend over the fence and threw up. It took him ten minutes to regroup. He was cold and yet sweating. His hands were still shaking when he pulled out his cell phone. He didn't dial the VCTF number, but John's one. He just told him he had found another body, but gave him no details on the phone.

What he did after was driven more by automatisms he had acquired than from real reasoning. He went back to the house and entered the kitchen. He pulled out his handkerchief in order not to ruin potential clues. He opened a few drawers and finally found some rope. He pulled the dog out of the house and tied him to the fence.
Then he left the garden and went back to his car to wait for John.



To be continued ... R&R, Thanks.
Absolut.