The Primal Connection by Alexander Dregon

Now, all he could do was brace for the worst and hope that out of the massive influx of theories from agencies all over the state, one of them proved to be more than the ink on the paper.
    One of those theories was so preposterous that it had given one of the agents that had read it laughing fits. He thought that it had been a joke and said so to the mayor. It probably wouldn’t have gone any further except that one of the mayor’s top aides, Alvin Crane, was familiar with the man offering the theory, at least well enough to know that he had no sense of humor left.
    Talbot Smyth was a British agent that had transferred to the FBI years ago. Before that, he had been an inspector at Scotland Yard. He’d transferred over when his wife, an American citizen, had developed a tumor and needed a specialist. The follow–up treatment required several months, and when it was done, his finances were tapped out. A last-minute plan allowed him to stay in the States as a consultant, which led him finally to a job that had enough clout to let him get his wife, Sonya, the help she needed. Now, he was rated pretty much indispensable by anyone he had worked with.
    He’d come in on this case nearly at the beginning, at the second murder. He had run through a dozen different ideas on how this was being done before settling on the one he had presented to the mayor through his chief aide. The one that had caused such amusement when he sent it down through channels. To everyone, that is, other than Crane. There was little these days that gave him cause to laugh.
    Still, even he had to admit it was a bit much. But then, how else would one explain something like this, killing cabbies in the middle of the night for no reason other than to kill them. No robbery, money still in pouches, wallets untouched. Why else would someone be doing this?
    He hated the thought, but it was a plausible answer if nothing else. And it did fit the facts they had, scant though they were.
    He had to make sure that his idea didn’t get out into the public. The idea that a Jack-the-Ripper type had invaded Chicago these days was not as farfetched as it once may have been, but it was no less terrifying than it could have ever been. And if the papers got wind of it even being on the table, assuming, of course, it never panned out, the mayor would be a laughing stock for entertaining the idea in the first place.
    Of course, that would only be the tip of the iceberg if it turned out to be true and he had done nothing. And in either case, there were more murders coming in his opinion. Despite the possible delusion of Smyth’s ideas on the culprit, his solution of enlisting the aid of a former San Francisco private eye by the name of Terry Bridger was intriguing.
    Smyth had met, and been suitably impressed by, the man in a case in Sykesville, Iowa. A man butchered a family there and went on a rampage, hiding during the day and coming out at night to find new victims all over the Midwest. That maniac slaughtered half a dozen families. He was the worst kind of serial killer. He was on a spree he knew would end with him either dead or captured, but he either didn’t care or was so arrogant, he thought he could elude the police forever.
    If it hadn’t been for Bridger, according to Smyth, there was at least a chance that he would have done just that. Somehow, Smyth said, Bridger had managed to figure out where the man was going and been there, waiting. As a consultant, he was, of course, not supposed to engage the perpetrator, but he had had no choice as the man had already chosen his entertainment for the evening. In the ensuing fight, Bridger had taken a bullet through the leg and still managed to subdue him. When the police had finally arrived at the call of one of the proposed victims, the man, not knowing Bridger was working for the police, had even tried to say he was stopping him from attacking the family.
    Crane laughed at that. Until he realized that until Smyth and his