Splintered Read Online Free Page B

them, and both he and Hutch stared at the computer screen showing a geometric map with various intersecting lines, formulas, and dots that made absolutely no sense.
    “What are we looking at?” Hutch asked quizzically.
    “It’s a map of Chicago with a grid overlaying it. Each one of these little boxes is a sector. A sector, say this one”—Granite pointed to the screen—“is the square on row I and column J , located at coordinates—”
    “Dude, you mind speaking English?” Byte interrupted.
    Granite arched a brow. “You’re a fine one to be bitching about speaking English, Mr. Computer Geek.”
    “Okay, okay. Just tell us what we’re looking at.” Hutch grunted wearily and rubbed at his tired and burning eyes.
    “Sorry. I’m basically using taxicab geometry, in which the distance between two points is the sum of the absolute differences—”
    “Granite,” Hutch growled warningly.
    Granite glared at Hutch and then rolled his eyes. “Fine,” he huffed in irritation. “These dots are where the vics were last seen, these ones are where the bodies were dumped. See how the colors get closer and closer to the red, or hot zone here in the center?”
    Hutch nodded.
    “The red is the highest probability of where the guy lives.”
    Hutch rolled his shoulders and rubbed at the back of his neck as he studied the map. It was still a hell of a big area to check out, but considering what they were working with before, it seemed at least somewhat manageable.
    “Great job,” Hutch praised and patted Granite on the shoulder. “Byte, can you get me a list of remote homes within that area as well as all companies who sell soundproofing material.”
    “Sure,” Byte responded, returning to his seat. “But if he’s ordering his supplies online, I don’t know that I’d be able to track that.”
    “See what you can come up with. It seems like a long shot anyway, but what’s a few more thousand bits of data,” Hutch said dejectedly. He dumped the rest of his fries and his half-eaten burger in the trash.
    “Now the only thing we’re missing is his name and the why of it.”
    “Only?” Hutch snorted. “That’s a hell of a thing to be missing. While he’s out cruising his next victim, we’re sitting here with our thumbs up our asses waiting for the next body.”
    Byte blinked at Hutch a couple of times without saying a word before grabbing his laptop and tapping on the keys.
    Yeah, it was a shitty thing to say, they were all working as hard as they could, but unfortunately it was also true. They didn’t have so much as a hair—literally—of evidence to help them find their killer. Hutch turned back to the map taped to the wall and rolled his shoulders, trying to release some of the tension that had settled in. He hadn’t slept more than a couple of hours at a stretch since getting off the plane at O’Hare five days ago, and it was catching up with him. It felt as if his lids were made of sandpaper, but he couldn’t sleep. Every time he tried, dead eyes stared at him accusingly, and he’d guiltily reach for another file.
    “What’s the timeline again?” he asked Byte as he pulled the cap off a marker. “First victim to second?”
    Byte sighed heavily. “We’ve already been over this.”
    Hutch waited without turning back to Byte. After a few seconds, Hutch heard the distinctive sound of a laptop closing as he poised his marker against the map. When Byte still didn’t say anything further, Hutch said, “C’mon, Byte, work with me here.”
    “Jared Martin, March third, 2007. Three months later, Steven Croft, June fifth.”
    Hutch added the dates and circled the dump zones of each victim. “Next.”
    “Edward Thompson, September first.”
    He continued to mark the map as Byte called off each of the seventeen known victims and the dates they were found. Once he was finished adding the date of the latest victim, he took a step back and narrowed his eyes. He continued to study the map intently as