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couldn’t have been more different, but the jab to the victim’s carotid that killed him and her father’s relationship with a psychopath diminishing her urge to date had one thing in common that she associated the color with: Cause and effect.
    She cocked her head, staring at the neck of the victim from this side. The carotid jab made no sense.
    The killer had not gotten bored and decided to end it quickly. The victim would have suffocated from the cut trachea shortly anyway. It wasn’t because he’d met a particularly vicious killer who wanted to stab him three times instead of two.
    It would seem a different killer with a different style had come by and ended it a lot quicker. Different blades, styles. Lots of bloodshed … different people from all walks of life …
    Jenna jumped up, surged back toward the team. ‘Using blades had to be deliberate. But they clearly all had different blades, some of which had to be hard to obtain, so it wasn’t a convenience choice. Maybe the leadership chose blades because people hear about bombings and shootings on the news every single day now,’ Jenna said.
    Porter tilted his head, considering. ‘Blades are definitely unusual in a mass killing.’
    â€˜And, in a way, scarier to imagine. You’re right. Explosions. Gunfire. They’re on TV every day,’ Teva added.
    â€˜On cable,’ Saleda said, reaching to her back pocket to grab her phone. She glanced at its face. ‘Got to take this.’
    She stepped away, and Jenna glanced back toward the white-collared victim. ‘And usually, they’re visible, important targets. The World Trade Center collapsing is imagery burned into America’s collective psyche, but the mental picture of people dismembered while still alive in a bank is statement-making scary, too. The goal is to get people to listen. We need to know what they want us to hear. We need to know their cause. We profile every single individual, every single victim, we try to profile their leadership, like always. But I think what might tell us most about the statement they’re making is that damned Oscar Wilde quote.’
    â€˜Yes, but we already went through this, Doc. We’ll all old, amnesiacs, or stoners,’ Dodd said.
    â€˜Well, we need someone who isn’t. Linguistics expert at Quantico?’ Porter said.
    â€˜Not going to work. We need linguistics, but we also need
literature
,’ Jenna replied.
    Teva chuckled. ‘I left all my college professors in my other pants pockets today.’
    Jenna closed her eyes, hung her head as her teammates threw out names of contacts, suggestions that might work. She rubbed her temple slowly.
Not this.
    They had plenty of ideas, but none were as good as hers. And she wasn’t going to be able to ignore it even if she
would
rather hack off her own foot with her car key than call her.
Riddles, word games. Mind games.
Between Isaac Keaton and Claudia, surely she’d met her lifetime quota for this particular brand of bullshit.
    â€˜I know someone,’ she said, soft but sure. ‘It’ll take me a day or so to track her down, even with Irv to help, but I’ll get him on it. She’s who we need. I’m sure.’
    The rest of her teammates stared at her, faces blank. Geez.
    She raised her eyebrows, nodded to them as if to prod
any
of them into saying something. Anything.
    â€˜Right. So, Jenna’s on the lit angle then, so we should …’
    Porter had tried valiantly, but his trailing voice said it all. They didn’t know how to move forward with this efficiently because it
wasn’t
as easy as profiling the killer and moving from there. They’d try to go about usual routine, examining bodies, attempting to profile killers. That was, if they had any chance of matching up bodies to killers when, so far, all they had was the goriest room she’d ever seen and the knowledge that their terrorists all had