Jen’s smile was sharp. “Good. Let’s see if we can get some decent prints.”
Katherine slapped her phone shut, then turned to the group, her eyes bright again. “That silicone lubricant you found with Claire’s things?”
“The lubricant for her prosthetic leg,” Vito said warily. “What about it?”
“It matches the sample I took from the wire on Brittany’s hands.”
Vito pounded his hand on the table. “Excellent.”
“But,” Katherine nearly sang, “it doesn’t match the sample we took from Warren. The lubricant found on Warren’s hands was close in formula, but not exact. The lab called the manufacturer, and they said they had two main formulas but often create custom blends for clients with allergies.”
Vito looked at the table, processing. “So the sample found on Warren’s hands is a custom blend.” He looked up. “Did Claire buy a custom blend, too?”
Katherine lifted her brows. “Not in the manufacturer’s records.”
“So it belonged to somebody else?” Beverly asked.
“She could have bought it somewhere else, or somebody may have bought it for her,” Liz cautioned. “Don’t assume until you know.”
Katherine nodded. “True. The manufacturer said her orders came through a Dr. Pfeiffer. You can ask him if she bought anything special. But if she didn’t, either she got it from somebody else or the killer did.”
Vito rubbed his hands together. “We’re starting to get somewhere. Thomas, after all you’ve heard, what are your thoughts on this killer?”
“And are we talking just one?” Nick added.
“Very good point.” Thomas leaned back in his chair, arms folded across his chest. “But my gut says he works alone. He’s younger, almost certainly male. Intelligent. He has a dispassionate capacity for cruelty. It’s… mechanical. He is obsessive, obviously. This would spill into other areas of his life-occupation, relationships. His knack with creating computer viruses is consistent. He’d be more comfortable with a machine than with people. I’d bet he lives alone. He will have some record of violence in his adolescence, anything from being a schoolyard bully to abusing animals. He’s… process oriented. And he’s efficient. He could have just killed two people to use for his effigies, but he combined them with whatever torture experiments he needed to do first.”
“So an anal, obsessed, cold loner who measures twice and cuts once,” Jen said sourly and Thomas chuckled.
“Nicely summarized, Sergeant. Add dramatic to it and you’ve got it covered.”
Vito stood up. “Well, Nick and I and Bev and Tim have things to do. Thomas, can we bring you in as needed?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then we reconvene tomorrow at eight,” Vito said. “Be careful and stay safe.”
Tuesday, January 16, 5:45
P.M.
Nick sank into his chair and propped his feet on his desk. “I swear, waiting outside court makes me more ragged-out than if I’d worked a whole damn day.”
“Did you make any progress finding Kyle Lombard?”
“No. I must’ve called seventy-five Kyle Lombards while I was waiting outside the courtroom today. I got nothin’ but a dead cell phone battery. No dice.”
“You can try again tomorrow.” Vito picked a note on his desk. “Tino was here. He went to the morgue to sketch the old couple from the second row.”
“Hopefully he can work another miracle,” Nick said.
“He sure hit the nail on the head with Brittany Bellamy.” Vito sat down at his computer and pulled up the UCanModel website and found Bill Melville’s résumé and photo. “Come over here and meet Mr. Melville.”
Nick came around their desks to stand behind him. “Big, brawny guy like Warren.”
“But other than size, no resemblance.” Warren had been fair, while Bill was dark and forbidding looking. “He has martial arts experience.” Vito looked up at Nick. “Why the hell would the killer purposely choose a victim that could beat the shit out him?”
“Doesn’t seem too smart,” Nick agreed. “Unless he thought he’d need those skills. Warren searched fencing sites and was posed with a sword. Bill was killed with a flail.” Nick sat on the edge of Vito’s desk. “I didn’t get lunch. Let’s grab some chow before we check out Melville’s last known address.”
Vito checked his watch. “I have dinner plans.” I hope.
Nick face broke into a slow grin. “Dinner plans?”
He felt his cheeks heat. “Shut up, Nick.”
Nick’s grin just broadened. “No way. I want details.”
Vito glared up at him. “There are no details.” Not yet, anyway.
“This is even better than I thought.” He snorted a laugh when Vito rolled his eyes. “You’re no fun, Chick. Okay then, what did you find out from that Brewster guy?”
“That he’s an asshole who likes tall blonde girls and cheats on his wife.”
“Oh. Well, now Sophie’s reactions to the flowers make sense. You said he gave you some names of potential collectors.”
“All pillars of society and every one of them over sixty years old. Hardly able to dig sixteen graves and move around big men like Keyes and Melville. I checked financials as much as I could without a warrant and came up with nothing suspicious.”
“What about Brewster himself?”
“Young enough, I guess. His office looks like a museum, but it’s all out in the open.”
“He could have a stash.”
“He could, but he was out of the country the week Warren went missing.” Vito shot Nick a rueful look. “I Googled him when I got back from the Bellamys’. The first thing that popped up was a conference he’d spoken at in Amsterdam on January 4. Airline records show Dr. and Mrs. Alan Brewster flew first class from Philly to Amsterdam.”
“First class is pricey. Professors don’t make that much. He could be dealing.”
“Wife’s loaded,” Vito grumbled. “Gramps was a coal baron. I checked that, too.”
Nick’s lips twitched in sympathy. “You really wanted it to be him.”
“A whole hell of a lot. But unless he’s an accomplice, Brewster’s only guilty of being an asshole.” Vito brought up the DMV database on his computer. “Melville was twenty-two years old, last known address was up in North Philly. I’ll drive.”
Tuesday, January 16, 5:30
P.M.
Sophie was up to her butt in sawdust in the old warehouse that sat at the back of the factory area they’d converted to the museum’s main hall. Ted was right, the warehouse wasn’t perfect, but Sophie could see the potential. And, there were still some places she could smell chocolate if she sniffed hard enough. It had to be fate.
She looked around the future site of her hands-on “dig.” She hadn’t been so content in a long time. Well, maybe content was the wrong word. She was energized and aware, thinking of all the wonderful things she could do with this huge empty space with its thirty-foot ceilings. Her brain was firing like a machine gun.
And her nerve endings were firing, too. She was meeting Vito Ciccotelli tonight. She was keyed. Needy. And feeling the edge of her self-imposed sexual suppression all too keenly. She’d never allowed another relationship with a colleague, which meant finding a man outside the dig, in the city. By nature those relationships were surface only, really no more than a way to scratch her itch when it got too hard to handle. But “one night stand” always came to her mind afterward and she hated herself. Vito would be different. She just had a feeling. Maybe the drought would soon end.
All in good time. For now, she was anxious to explore the contents of the crates she’d dragged from her office. She’d already uncovered some incredible treasures.
Working in her dark little office, she’d been surrounded by medieval reliquaries and hadn’t even known it. Using a crowbar, she opened a crate and scooped more sawdust onto the floor until she got down to the smaller box inside.