Wallingford, Connecticut

Artie enjoyed this part. He liked road trips even if they didn’t take him to exotic places. He liked driving on interstates, being on the open road, lots of time with his thoughts. Some of his best ideas had come to him during his “drop-off” runs. He had even acquired a taste for truck-stop coffee and day-old doughnuts.

Today his mentor was letting him borrow his government-licensed SUV again. Artie had cleaned it, inside and out. He liked things a certain way. Worked hard to make sure everything was done with a plan, a routine and a dose of self-discipline. Probably the reasons he had been chosen.

Like his mentor he considered himself an encyclopedia of criminal behavior. Sort of an aficionado of true crime. He could appreciate the perfection, the thought process, the creative thinking and skills it took to get away with murder. That he cataloged a history of criminal cases and put them into his internal memory bank didn’t seem odd at all. It just made him special. It made him perfect for this mission. And not knowing everything was part of the fun, part of the lesson to see how quickly he could put the puzzle pieces together. How else would he perfect his trade?

No, Artie didn’t expect to have anything handed to him. He had never had much. Early on he learned to get by on patience, charm and an uncanny ability to remember details. And he was a quick study. Though he guessed even his mentor would be pleasantly surprised to find Artie joining in so quickly. He probably didn’t think Artie would be this good.

Artie’s instructions were simply to mail the packages as far away and as discreetly as possible. Artie chose carefully. He knew a lot of thought had gone into choosing the recipients and the senders, why not the drop-offs, as well? So Artie played his own game of tag with the FBI by having some fun, giving meaning to each cancellation on each package.

At first he had kept all his drop-offs closer to home. There were, after all, hundreds of mailboxes to choose from. Before this trip the farthest he had driven had been Murphy, North Carolina, several weeks ago. The package had been addressed to Rick Ragazzi in Pensacola, Florida, with the return address from a Victor Ragazzi in Atlanta. So why choose Murphy, North Carolina?

That one was a no-brainer for Artie. He thought he’d throw the feds an easy one. There weren’t that many “true-crime” connections to someplace like Murphy, North Carolina. Certainly the FBI would peg Murphy, especially since it was one of those cases they’d completely botched for years. They’d have to realize that Murphy was chosen because that’s where Eric Rudolph had lived before going on the run. Rumor was the townsfolk had even protected him, misguided the feds and withheld information. But would the FBI get the joke? Would they appreciate his satirical twist? His goading? His subtle “catch me if you can”?

All Artie had to do was drop the package in a mailbox at the local post office so that it would have a cancellation from Murphy, North Carolina. As much as he had wanted to, he couldn’t risk eating at the one restaurant in town that had infamously and blatantly advertised on their marquee, “Rudolph eats here.” Instead, Artie had settled for a McDonald’s quarter pounder once he got back on Interstate 95. Not a sacrifice at all. Artie loved McDonald’s quarter pounders.

The trip to Murphy had been an eight-hour drive, one way, 460 miles. Wallingford would be twenty-nine miles less. However, Wallingford, as a chosen drop-off, had been tougher for Artie to put together and he knew it wouldn’t be as obvious to his FBI adversaries, although it had been another case they’d botched for months.

He congratulated himself on this particular data retrieval in choosing this drop-off site. It was an ingenious and poignant example of random innocents getting caught in the cross fire. What the FBI or the military would call collateral damage. What Artie liked to call a “bonus kill.” But would the feds even recognize it?

So why Wallingford, Connecticut? In the fall of 2001 there was a ninetysomething-year-old widow—okay, so he couldn’t be expected to retrieve every detail like her exact age—who had been one of the anthrax killer’s victims. Ottilie W. Lundgren lived in Oxford, Connecticut. She rarely left her home, and as far as anyone could determine, she hadn’t been a direct target of the anthrax killer. Somehow her mail had unfortunately come in contact with anthrax-laced mail that had gone through the Southern Connecticut Processing and Distribution Center in Wallingford.

The FBI didn’t find anthrax anywhere in her little house. But anthrax did show up in Seymour, Connecticut, about three miles away. Cross-contamination had been the final explanation. Authorities considered it a random and unfortunate incident. Family members called it “senseless.” Artie thought that random and senseless were two things he didn’t mind.

Now as Artie steered the SUV around a second reservoir he glanced at the Google map on the passenger seat. He must have gone the wrong direction. He had taken the Center Street exit off of Interstate 91. Certainly there was no post office out here.

He found a place to pull over. He didn’t have time to sightsee, though the winding roads were inviting and the turning foliage sorta cool. What interested Artie even more was the fact that not far from here was a deserted rock quarry where bodies had been found in fifty-five-gallon drums. Bodies with missing pieces. Yes, it was difficult being a crime buff, being so close to a crime scene and not able to visit. He imagined it was no different than a Civil War buff being close to Gettysburg and wanting to just take a step onto those hollowed grounds.

Another time, perhaps. Artie turned the SUV around and headed in the other direction, this time easily finding where East Center became Center and then making his way to Main Street where he could see the post office. He turned into the driveway for the drop-off mailboxes. The SUV’s tinted windows would obscure any cameras, if there were any. He grabbed the two packages off the floor.

Then he dropped them into the mailbox slot, one addressed to Benjamin Tasker Middle School in Bowie, Maryland, and the other addressed to Caroline Tully in Cleveland, Ohio.