By ED SHANAHAN AND ANDY NEWMAN NYTimes News Service
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NEW YORK — Security-camera images of a man wearing a hooded jacket and an easy smile. A fake ID. A cellphone found on a Manhattan sidewalk. Bullets marked with the words “deny” and “delay.”

Investigators chased those and other leads Thursday as the search for the person who fatally shot Brian Thompson, the CEO of the huge insurer UnitedHealthcare, stretched into a second day.

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By late Thursday, the shooter’s travels before the brazen slaying were coming into focus, a senior law enforcement official said. He arrived in New York on a bus from somewhere south of the city on Nov. 24, checked into an Upper West Side hostel sometime after that, left on Nov. 29 and checked back in the next day, the official said.

As the search for the suspect continued, law enforcement authorities also appeared to be focused on a gun bought in Connecticut that resembled the one used in what police say was a targeted attack.

The shooting stunned a city heading into a festive holiday season, shocked an industry that regarded the victim highly and prompted an ugly outpouring online among those who view health insurers as villains.

More than 24 hours after the killing and despite an avalanche of tips, authorities were still uncertain of the man’s name, according to two law-enforcement officials familiar with the investigation.

Police were offering a $10,000 reward for information about the crime, and said they were digging into Thompson’s background and exploring social media for clues.

On Thursday, police released two photos of the man who they believe to be the shooter with his mask down. The images appeared to be from the hostel, the HI New York City Hostel. It was unclear when they were taken.

Although the killer’s motive, like the killer himself, remained elusive, the marked bullets suggested that Thompson might have been gunned down by someone simmering with murderous rage over the company’s practices. But no other evidence to support that theory had emerged by Thursday evening.

The words on casings found at the shooting site could describe tactics used by health insurance companies seeking to avoid paying patients’ claims.

The terms “delay” and “deny” are so linked to such practices that they were part of the title of the 2010 book “Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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