The past twenty-four hours hadn’t been kind to either Sterling or Briggs. Briggs looked like he’d slept in his clothes. Beside him, Agent Sterling’s jaw was clenched. Her shirt was buttoned all the way up. So was her suit jacket. Since she was the kind of person who used clothes as armor, the subtle changes told me that she’d gotten dressed today expecting a fight.
“Three hundred and seven,” the director said grimly, looking at each of us in turn. “That’s how many students are enrolled in Fogle’s serial killer class. One hundred and twenty-seven females, a hundred and eighty males.” Director Sterling paused. The first time I’d met him, he’d reminded me of a grandfather. Today, there was nothing grandfatherly about him. “That’s a lot of suspects, and I’m a man who believes in utilizing all of his resources.”
Director Sterling was whatever kind of man he had to be to stay on top. When confronted with a problem, he analyzed all possible solutions: costs versus benefits, risks balanced out against rewards. In this case, the risks and likelihood of compromising the investigation and exposing the Naturals program compared to the potential benefits of utilizing all of his “resources” to catch this killer.
I thought of Judd and his talk of slippery slopes.
“We were told to stay away from this case on pain of death.” Lia smiled like a predator toying with its prey. She didn’t like that we’d gotten caught, she didn’t like that she’d been told to back off, and she hated that Dean wouldn’t even look at her. “Am I to take it that certain parties have been overruled?”
Lia let her gaze roam to Briggs when she said certain parties, but my eyes were on Agent Sterling. There was a reason she had dressed for battle this morning. Whatever the director was about to ask us to do, his daughter had argued against it.
“The risks are minimal to nonexistent,” the director said firmly. “And given recent events, it’s my understanding that giving you something useful to do might actually keep you out of trouble.”
I took that to mean that the director knew about our little trip to Colonial.
“The five of you won’t be interviewing witnesses.” Briggs stood with his hands loose by his sides, eyeing us one by one. “You will not be going to crime scenes.” Briggs’s gaze flicked over to Lia. “You won’t be analyzing any of our interviews with Daniel Redding.”
I wasn’t sure what that left.
“Your involvement on this case begins and ends with social media.” Briggs turned to Sterling and waited. For a moment, I thought she’d turn on her heels and march out the door, but she didn’t.
“Our preliminary profile says the UNSUB is male.” Sterling’s voice was perfectly even and perfectly calm in a way that told me that she was on the verge of snapping. The closer she was to losing it, the more viciously she reeled it in. “Redding suggested we might be dealing with a college student. I would have put the UNSUB’s age between twenty-three and twenty-eight. Above-average intelligence, but not necessarily educated. But what do I know?” An edge crept into her voice.
“Thank you, Agent Sterling,” the director cut in. He turned to the rest of us. “With the university’s cooperation, we’ve obtained copies of the class schedules and transcripts for every student in that class. What that doesn’t tell us is who they are, what they’re capable of. That’s where you come in.”
“Social media,” Sloane interjected, picking up on what Briggs had said earlier. “Upwards of three hundred million photos are uploaded to leading social media sites every day. Among smartphone owners in our UNSUB’s demographic, somewhere between sixty and eighty percent of time spent using that device will be spent on social networks, rather than direct communication.”
“Exactly,” Director Sterling told her. “We don’t have the manpower to search through every post, and even if we did, your eyes might catch something that Briggs’s team wouldn’t. We’re not asking you to do anything that adolescents all over the country don’t do every day.” Director Sterling wasn’t looking at us when he said those words. He was looking at his daughter. “You’re teenagers. This internet stuff is practically your native language.”