J. Robb - Delusion in Death

“You were a child.”

“Not the point. It’s not,” she insisted. “He controlled Stella, too, again in his way. Convincing her to get pregnant, give birth, deal with me. If Mira were to profile him, he’d fit this pretty well. Except there’s no payday here—not that I can see, and that was the driving force with him.”

“He’s on your mind,” Roarke stated. “Him, McQueen, Stella.”

“Not up front. They destroyed lives, and these are a lot of lives destroyed. So … I thought of Cassandra, too, how that group targeted New York landmarks, taking out innocent lives in the bargain. That was obsession as much as terrorism. And this doesn’t strike me the same.”

Understanding how she worked, Roarke gave her a springboard. “How is it different?”

“He wants blood, but he doesn’t want to get bloody. He wants death, but doesn’t want to kill—not directly. He doesn’t need to watch the lights go out, to smell the fear, to taste the pain. Playing God, yeah, but playing God with science.”

“The two aren’t mutually exclusive.”

“No, but some insist they are. Like God’s all, zip, pow, and creates an orangutan out of thin air.”

“I simply adore your mind.”

“Well, that’s the nutshell from one side, and the other far end’s all, no, uh-uh. No higher power out there. What happened was basically a giant fart in space, and boom.”

“Absolutely adore it,” Roarke repeated. “A space fart to orangutans?”

“Eventually. But there’s a big middle ground who mostly figure God and science can coexist just fine. Like maybe he even created it. So it’s fun to play God with science. That’s what a formula is, right? Science. That’s how they came up with stuff like LSD. Science. So …”

She did another circle around the board. “Does he have some background in science, or some connection to someone who does? And what’s the trigger? Why that place at that time? Why now? It’s a big statement. So there’s a reason he made it now, made it there.”

“If it’s connected to the Urban incidents, he may be military, or have been. Or works, has worked, for whatever agencies have the files.”

“Yeah, I’ve got that, but it doesn’t feel military. Cassandra, that felt military—or para. Big target, threats, taking credit, issuing warnings. This is personal. It’s people, not things. Not symbols. There’s something personal about this, and that’s what I have to find.”

She rocked on her heels. “One step—rule out money as motive, or don’t. We check financials, see if any of the vics had a big, fat insurance policy, or bank account. And if so, who gets it? Another kind of gain. Power or position. A lot of the vics had high-end careers, and were climbing the corporate ladder or worked for those who do and are. So who goes up a rung or two if their associate or competitor falls off the ladder?”

She turned to him. “You can start with money, power, and position since that’s your deal.”

“All right.”

“I’ll take jealousy, personal gripes, and the rest.”

“Because that’s your deal?”

She shrugged. “If you cheated on me, I wouldn’t kill a bar full of people. Just you,” she said with a big smile. “And I’d do it myself because that’s how much I care.”

“I’m touched.” He moved to her, cupped her face. “Don’t work yourself into a stupor. You have to take your own power and position at your eight o’clock briefing.”

“I’m good.”

“Stay that way.” He kissed her lightly before returning to his office.

Pumped with more coffee, she dug for spouses, cohabs, lovers—former and current. She pored over family members. She scanned for official complaints or civil suits, picked through for criminal records, cross-referenced with any education, experience or employment within the military or that had connections to drugs, labs, added in medical, practice or research.

Like slogging through knee-deep mud, she thought, aligning, realigning bytes of data.

Because she wanted the visual, she hauled in another board, filled it with her possible suspects, connected them with the specific victim or victims.

She had a contentious divorce with an equally contentious child custody battle. A former cohab charged with assault who’d done time. A vic who’d worked in corporate medicine, another whose brother was an internist, a mother who was a retired army colonel. Six civil suits filed for a variety of reasons, and a number of family members, cohabs, spouses, exes, and coworkers with criminal records.

Not as many as she’d feared, she thought, but still numerous. She sat again, put her feet up again, and studied the faces of her possibles. Lives to explore, questions to ask. Lines to tug.

Some may—should—connect to whoever Roarke found. Those she’d bounce to the head of the class. Two motives were better than one.

It would give the investigation, at least an arm of the investigation, a direction. If the direction was correct, one of those faces hid a calculating, psychotic nature.

Most people, however clever, however controlled, never hid it completely. There were chinks, clues, habits. At some point, the real person showed through the facade.

Most tended to live alone, live quietly, keep to themselves—as neighbors and coworkers routinely claimed after the killer among them was revealed.

But not this one, no, she didn’t think this one stayed huddled in his space.

He frequented or worked in that bar. He knew how to socialize, how to make himself part of the fabric. He thought far too much of himself to live the quiet, unassuming life.

That’s what her father had done, though he’d traveled from place to place, never staying too long. But he’d socialized while leaving her locked away. He’d made his deals, run his cons, played his games.

As Stella had. Morphing, absorbing herself into the role she played. But there’d been chinks, other than the ones the child had seen long before the worst of the nightmare began. Weaknesses for illegals, for sex, for money, and a pure love of destroying others on the way to the goal.

Annoyed, she pushed herself up straight. Why was she thinking about them? They had nothing to do with the case, no connection or correlation to it. Yet her thoughts kept drifting back to both of them, to Dallas, to all that pain.

Push it down, push it away, she ordered herself.

Though she understood it was likely a waste of time she ran fresh probabilities, and picked three possibles at random. She did deeper runs now, shifting through layers, looking for triggers, abnormalities, odd affiliations.

To switch her focus and keep sharp, she brought up a split screen of crime scene images and the promotion image of the bar, before it was washed in blood.

She tried to imagine the killer. Had he served drinks or ordered them? Had he walked in that day with a smile on his face, alone, in company, or to take his shift?

Sat at the bar, or worked behind it?

Ventilation system was on, circulating the air. That’s what carried the substance throughout.

The bar, she thought again, or near it. The bar’s the hub. Not a big place, and everyone’s moving or talking—grabbing food, ordering drinks while they’re still on special.

Sit at the bar, your back’s to the room, she thought. But you could angle your stool, or use the mirror behind the bar to keep an eye on things.

She put her feet up again, thinking position. And tried to put herself inside that noise, that movement—the smells, the sounds.

As the long day took its toll, and she began to drift, she imagined too well.

Voices bounced off the walls, cutlery clattered at tables while people dug into the nachos, potato skins, rice balls, and drank away the dregs of the workday.