Jo Robertson - The Avenger

Now the Avenger had a dilemma. He wanted to destroy the woman, but the man was learning too much about him. They both were clever enough in their own way. The woman was a corruptible vessel. The man possessed knowledge that could damn the Avenger.

Because panic was alien to his nature, psychiatrists would claim he was incapable of normal, human empathy, but they were wrong. The first bubble of alarm wormed its way into his mind. He ignored it. Fear of being trapped belonged to the lower species. He had no intention of being caught. This time, however, he'd be required to draw on the full force of his foresight and intelligence to extricate himself from this tangle.

To eliminate his two primary concerns.

The Avenger pulled his car off the highway and onto the winding, dirt road that led to his refuge – the only place where he could gather his wits about him, refresh his soul, and rejuvenate himself. He turned off the ignition of his McLaren F1 sports car, pulled the side hatch, and jumped out. He wouldn't use the driver this time.

Before he walked up the short steps to the wide double doors etched with stained glass windows on either side, his butler swung open the doors and ushered him into the Penteli marble-floored entry. He tossed his coat to the man and stormed up the circular staircase to the main suite on the second floor. Then he made his way through the passage hidden at the end of the master suite's walk-in closet and upward to the third-level gable-fronted dormer room.

The secret chamber – his Holy of Holies.

He lit seven white candles, one for each day of the week. Seven was the perfect Biblical number. The venerable number of ancient creation. His mother had taught him well.

Mounted on heavy pewter candlesticks, each candle varied in height from votive to a twenty-inch taper. The other relics lay scattered on a velvet cloth of a rich, blood-red hue. He fingered the items one by one and then gently repositioned them in their exact individual places.

One of his favorite artifacts was the watch that had belonged to the lawyer. An old-fashioned pocket watch with a 14k gold chain and tiny diamonds to mark the hours of the clock face, it was a fitting memento for one who made his living by inflating the billable hours in a case. He scrutinized the item religiously before putting it down.

Henry Walker, the first male sacrifice, was an attorney by profession. The Avenger hated lawyers. What was it Shakespeare had said about killing all the lawyers first? The man chortled and continued his work. He'd certainly fulfilled the Bard's suggestion.

He pulled the thick, white, leather-bound album from a free-standing closet under the alcove and sat in a wing chair positioned by the dormer window. Maintaining the scrapbook was a worrisome burden, but a record was the heart of religiosity and common sense told him he couldn't continue his work forever. No one could sustain this frenetic pace. Pulled so many directions with work and special work. He carefully pasted in the latest entry. This would, in fact, be the final entry: Olivia Grace Morse Gant.

He thumbed through the pages of the album. An attorney, a waitress, a student. Was his nemesis putting the fragments together even as he sat here in the comfort of his father's old recliner, book on his lap, additional photographs ready to insert into the black photo corners? He touched the pictures of his sacrifices, traced his fingertips over each one as he removed and reinserted it in the book. As he did, he relived the grittiness of the real-life scenes. The splintery boards and cement floors, the drip, drip gooiness that puddled steadily on abandoned fields and the earthiness of fresh-turned dirt.

The lawyer had begun life with such bright promise, but his destiny changed the moment he manipulated the law for his own purposes. "Henry," he whispered aloud in the still room. "You didn't perform to the best of your ability." What if Beethoven had allowed deafness to stifle his music, or Michelangelo had been content to paint landscapes in his backyard?

Fingering the artifacts stirred him to ferocious heights.

Several hours later, calmed and centered once more, he exited the consecrated, sacrosanct place. He cast a final look around, his gaze lingering on the photos pinned at various angles around the room, their smoky colors dancing in the flicker of the candles.

Excellent.

He extinguished the candles one at a time. Then he secured the double locks, replaced the false panel and art deco print of Cassandre's Normandie , and entered the bedroom.

The next morning Slater set up an incident room for them to work in. Jack asked Waylon Harris and Isabella Torres to join them and had commandeered Deeds and Coleman, two federal agents from the Sacramento office.

Jack stood at the head of a long conference table, leaning forward on his hands, elbows rigid, and explained to the newcomers what they'd figured out last night. "The killer thinks he's a messenger or prophet of God and the notes are warnings."

"He's deeply steeped in religious iconoclasty," Olivia added, "but he's warning his victims after the fact."

"Punishing them for the bad behavior he thinks they've already engaged in," Jack said. "He's a sociopath with a god-like sense of omnipotence, and he believes he can't be touched by the authorities."

"Religion – that why he crucified two of the victims?" Harris asked.

Jack nodded. "This is the way I see it." Using the white board at his back, he reviewed each of the cases, along with the notes and their translations. "Any questions?" he asked the newcomers.

After a moment's silence, Olivia spoke, appearing to choose her words carefully. "I thought about this last night." She flashed a quick glance at Jack, and he knew she was thinking it wasn't all she'd done last night. He'd kept her quite busy after Slater left.

"I think we've been looking at the notes from the wrong angle," she said.

"What do you mean?" Slater asked.

"We've been looking at the meaning of the note in relation to the victim." She shook her head. "But we also need to look at the notes as a whole. The first notes are simple, but the later notes, the ones that are connected to California victims are much more sophisticated."

"I don't understand how," Agent Coleman said, speaking for the first time, his fresh young face turning pink when all eyes turned toward him.

"The latter notes are actually constructed," Olivia explained, "and that requires more than a cursory knowledge of Latin grammar."

"So the second notes are… smarter?" Deeds asked.

"That's one way to put it." Olivia smiled and looked around the room right before she dropped the bombshell. "I don't believe all the notes were written by the same person."

"Are you saying we have two killers?" Slater asked.

Olivia bit her bottom lip. "I'm not positive, but I think so."

Jack straightened from where he leaned against the wall. Two killers?

Coleman peered from behind bottle-glassed eyewear. "But according to guidelines this is clearly the work of one serial killer."

"How can you be sure if there's no physical evidence?" Slater argued.

"Psychopaths rarely work in pairs," Coleman answered. "Two killers working in tandem is very unusual."

"But it can happen," Harris interjected.

"How about if the original killer hooked up somehow with another person," Jack suggested, "and the other person is involved only in the California murders?"

"Serial killers who work in pairs," Deeds said slowly, "usually start out together."

"I don't know about any of that, but it's a linguistic certainty that these notes were not composed by the same person," Olivia insisted. "I'd stake my reputation on it."