“Rather a lot.”
“One hundred and two plus one hundred and three plus one hundred and ten. Know what that is?”
“Sorry, I’ve never been good with numbers.”
Darcy’s head tilted. “But I thought you said you were an accountant.”
“I… I rely heavily on my calculator.”
“Accountants are good adders. I read that in a book. My dad took me to an accountant once and he could add five-digit numbers in his head. So can I but he was the only other person I ever saw who could. Why can’t you add three-digit numbers?”
“Well… of course… I wasn’t really listening.”
“Are short accountants not as good at adding as tall ones?”
He stepped onto the sidewalk. “I really must be going.”
“Goodbye,” Darcy said. “You might think about seeing if you could become a jockey. ’Cause I’m not sure how good you’re going to be as an accountant.”
He hurried back to his car, wrapping his jacket tightly around himself. That had been an unforgivably stupid mistake. He’d relaxed his guard, thinking this mental deficient could pose no danger to him, and as a result, he’d made a foolish error. If the boy were not so pitifully without guile, he would’ve become suspicious, perhaps conveyed his suspicions to Susan. And that could be disastrous.
At least he’d ascertained that there was no romantic affiliation between the two. Now that he knew he had a clear field, he would contact Susan again. Soon.
What bothered him was his inability to read the young man. The connections this Darcy’s brain made were unpredictable. Illogical. There was no way of anticipating him.
If it became necessary, the young man would have to be removed. For Susan’s sake. And his own. And that of the world to come.
By the end of the day, several more FBI agents had made the scene. In addition to our rent-a-behaviorist, we now had agents from CIU-the Critical Incident Unit. From the shadowed basement of the J. Edgar Hoover Building to the sunny Vegas strip. We also had some liaisons with VICAP-the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program-some of them pretty famous, names I recognized from the Law Enforcement Bulletin. They were cataloging and analyzing data, comparing these crimes with others the feds had encountered. Patrick had them all gathered in a back room and was bringing them up to date on the case.
I saw a thick stack of paper on the corner of my desk-summary reports on all the confessions that had arrived in the last few days. We’d been getting them since murder number one, but they were skyrocketing now that a TV celeb was involved. If I worked this job till doomsday, I would never understand what it was about high-profile media cases that made perfectly harmless people crawl down to the station to give false confessions. Unless they were obviously bogus, they had to be checked out, at least a little, which diverted our already strained time and manpower.
I scooped up a stapled document that someone had dropped on my chair. Looked like the Feebs had been busy.
SECONDARY VICTIMOLOGY REPORT, BSS04-67
SUBJECT: EDGAR
I had to grin a little. I knew the feds always gave their serial killers a pet name. So this one was Edgar. Cute. I scanned the report.
VICT1-Helen Collier, Clark County Police Dept, homicide
WF, DOB 1-9-87, DOD 10-4-04
DEATH: Asphyxiation
WEAPON: Coffin
POD: Transylvania Hotel ballroom
BODY FOUND: Transylvania Hotel
No witnesses. Forced entry. No trace evidence attributable to assailant.
VICT2-Annabel Spencer, Clark County Police Dept, homicide
WF, DOB 8-15-86, DOD 10-8-04
DEATH: Exsanguination
WEAPON: Dental tools
POD: Unknown
BODY FOUND: McCarran Airport, retired aircraft field
No witnesses. No forced entry necessary. Only trace evidence attributable to assailant is a tire track and a partial palm print.
VICT3-Lenore Johnson, Clark County Police Dept, homicide
WF, DOB 7-13-85, DOD 10-13-04
DEATH: Decapitation
WEAPON: Axe
POD: Unknown
BODY FOUND: Neon sign graveyard
No witnesses. No forced entry. No evidence attributable to assailant.
VICT4-Harvey Bradford
WM, DOB: 01-04-60 DOD: 10-17-04
DEATH: Massive bodily trauma
WEAPON: Automobile
POD: Hotel parking lot
BODY FOUND: Hotel parking lot
Security guard at Transylvania Hotel. Killed by impact of his own car. Died instantly.
VICT5-Fara Spencer
WF, DOB: 10-16-61 DOA: 10-17-04
STATUS: Unknown
Mother of Vict2. Abducted after car incident with Vict4. No witnesses. Unidentified partial forefinger print possibly attributable to assailant.
Pretty damn thin, when you got right down to it. I thumbed through the additional material attached to the cover report. Not much there. Was it any wonder we hadn’t caught this clown yet? About the only thing this report didn’t cover was the phone call I’d gotten from Edgar-great, now they had me calling him that-and his present. And I received a detailed analysis on those barely an hour later.
“The lab found nothing useful on the box, the wrapper, or the teeth,” Tony Crenshaw explained. “Neither did Latent Prints.”
“Voiceprints?”
“Nothing. We have a pattern now we can compare against any future communications. But even maximum volume magnification failed to turn up any useful background noises. There were few clues in his language other than the obvious one-neon. No distinctive patterns. Southern accent, to be sure, but the experts think he was affecting that.”
“Because he wants to be like Poe. But he isn’t really from Virginia.”
“That’s our guess. Other than that, no real clues. He chose his words carefully. Probably rehearsed what he was going to say before he called.”
That would be consistent with the organized sociopath I had in my head. “I’d like a copy of the tape of the phone call.”
“Sure.” Tony seemed hesitant. “You know he was trying to rattle your cage, right? Talking about your bad habits and all. Doesn’t mean he knows anything. It was an easy shot. Everyone has some secret. He wants to scare you. Chase you off the case.”
Did he? Maybe. But to me, it seemed more like he was trying to impress me. To win me over.
“But you’re not going to let him get to you, right?”
My eyes lifted. “What’s this? A trace of concern? For moi?”
His eyes darted to the carpet. “Granger doesn’t speak for the whole department, Susan. You still have friends around here. Lots of them.”
Well, that was cheering. “Thanks, Tony. I appreciate it.”
“All the guys loved David. You know that. And we think what happened… wasn’t right. The way you were treated.”
“Tony, I really don’t care to-”
“Just wanted you to know.” He gave me a mock salute. “Back to the trenches.”
I thrust my nose into my paperwork, trying not to be resentful. Of course, that was what it would be about. David, not me. Everyone had loved David. Everyone.
I’d loved David, too, damn it. But that wouldn’t bring him back.
I was on the phone with my lawyer, which is about as unpleasant as life gets.
“If the judge isn’t going to decide anything, why do I have to be there? I’m in the middle of a major investigation.”
“Do you want custody of Rachel or not?”
“That’s why I got this job! On your advice.”
“Then you must be there. Dressed conservatively. Sparing makeup. You need to sit next to me and be untempermental, cool, and well mannered.”