It was one o’clock on the afternoon of Thursday, February 28, a cold, gray, bitter day with too much wind, and Gregor had just come from four solid hours of listening to a lecture on VICAP. VICAP was the Violent Criminals Apprehension Something, Gregor couldn’t remember what. It was also a computer program, devised and implemented to help the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences Department help state and local police forces find wandering serial killers. Before his retirement, Gregor had been head of the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences Department. In fact, he had been the man who set it up. He had also been the man who had argued, time and time again, for a computer system like VICAP. Standing by the long wall of plate glass windows that looked out on a curving drive that connected to a street whose name he couldn’t remember, Gregor tried counting all the bureaucratic reasons he had been given for why he couldn’t have one. It was amazing, really, what bureaucrats would tell you when they knew you wanted something from them.
