“I’ve had all kinds of problems this morning, Jen. What seems to be yours?”
“No crullers. What kind of meeting are you trying to run anyway?’
“Yeah, Vito,” Liz said. “What kind of meeting starts out without crullers?”
“You never brought food,” Vito said to Liz and she grinned.
“Yeah, but you did, on the first day. First rule of team leadership-never set a precedent you don’t intend to keep.”
Vito looked around the table. “Anybody else have nuisance demands?”
Liz looked amused, Katherine impatient. Bev and Tim looked tired. Jen just scowled at him. “Cheapskate,” she muttered, and Vito rolled his eyes.
“We now have one more victim ID confirmed. Bill Melville is victim three-one. I’ve noted him on the chart. We also have a name. E. Munch. Nick came back from Melville’s apartment last night and ran it through the system, but came up with nothing.”
“It’s not like he’d use his real name anyway,” Jen said. “But I’ll bet you dollars to donuts”-she glared at him meaningfully-“that the name means something.”
“You could be right. Any ideas, besides the obvious Munch connection to food?”
Jen’s lips twitched. “Very funny, Chick. I’ll give it some thought.”
“Thank you.” He turned to Katherine. “What’s new on your end?”
“We autopsied the old couple from the second row last night. We didn’t find anything new that would help you ID them. But Tino did some sketches. My assistant said he didn’t leave the morgue until after midnight.”
Vito felt a sharp spear of gratitude for his brother who’d jumped in with both feet to help. When this was all over he’d find a way to thank him. “Yes, and we’ll compare his sketches to missing-persons files.” From his folder Vito pulled copies of the sketches he’d found on his desk that morning. He passed them to Liz. “This is what Tino came up with. He made a few of the woman with different hairstyles. It’s hard to picture what she might have looked like without seeing some hair.”
“Me next,” Jen said. “We got two new pieces of news last night. First, an ID on the tire tread print we took from the scene that first day. Our boy drives a Ford F150, just like yours, Vito.”
“Terrific,” Vito muttered. “So nice to have something in common with a psycho killer. Let’s get the description out there. It’s a long shot, but at least we can be keeping our eyes open. Did you get any footprints with that tire tread?”
“None that were usable. Sorry. Now the second thing is the grenade we took out of the gut of the last victim on the first row. It’s a vintage MK2 pineapple grenade, made sometime before 1945. Tracing it would be nearly impossible, but it’s one more piece of the puzzle. This guy uses the real thing.”
“And speaking of the real thing.” Vito told them about Sophie’s inquiries the day before. “So we have one possible source for his medieval weapons. I was going to call Interpol before I checked out Claire Reynolds’s doctor and the library where she worked. And I still need to locate Bill Melville’s parents. They don’t know he’s dead.”
“Give me Interpol,” Liz said. “You take the doctor and the parents.”
“Thanks.” Vito looked over at Bev and Tim. “You guys are quiet.”
“We’re tired,” Tim said. “We were up most of the night going through records with the owners of UCanModel. Then the attorneys got involved.”
“Shit,” Vito murmured.
“Yeah.” Tim scraped his palms down his unshaven cheeks. “The owners want to cooperate, but their attorneys are telling them they have a privacy notice for all subscribers. So it’s slow going. We broke at three
A.M.
and went home to sleep.”
“The owner has to contact all the models who were sent e-mails before we can talk to them.” Bev sighed. “We’re supposed to get on a call with them in an hour.”
Vito hadn’t gotten to sleep until three
A.M.
himself, but the reason was very different and he was pretty sure he’d get no sympathy. “Katherine, what will you do next?”
“Autopsies on the final four. You have a preference on where I start? Old, young, bullet, or grenade?”
“Start with Claire Reynolds. I’ll get with you as soon as I talk to her doctor. Then work on the old lady. She’s the one body that doesn’t fit with any of the others.” Vito stood up. “We’re done for this morning. Let’s meet again at five tonight. Stay safe.”
Wednesday, January 17, 9:05
A.M.
She’d died. The old Winchester woman had died. He sat back, frowning at his computer. She’d died and left her property to her nephew who’d been nearly as old as she was. Who knew who’d found the bodies? But knowing she was dead made more sense. If her nephew planned to sell the property someone might be inspecting it, or perhaps they’d already sold it and somebody was building on it.
The bodies could have turned up that way. He assumed the cops had found them all. Only one person could have been identified by his prints, and those prints he’d erased. All the others… it would take the cops weeks to find their own asses with a flashlight. That they could identify the other bodies more quickly was ludicrous.
He felt better now. But still he had loose ends. One of the bodies in that field was the Webber kid and somehow Derek had obtained the kid’s photo. He’d deal with Derek today. He needed to-
His cell phone rang and he reflexively checked the caller ID. It was his… antiques dealer, for lack of a better description. “Yeah,” he said. “What do you have for me?”
“What the fuck have you done?” came the furious reply.
His own temper began to sizzle. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about an inquisition chair. And the fucking cops.”
He opened his mouth, but for a moment no words formed. Quickly he regained his composure. “I truly have no idea of what you’re talking about.”
“The cops have a chair.” Each word was spaced deliberately. “In their possession.”
“Well, it’s not mine. My chair is with my collection. I saw it just this morning.”
There was a pause on the other end. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. What is this all about?”
“A cop asked questions yesterday. He was researching stolen artifacts and black market sales. Said he had a chair with spikes. Lots of spikes. He was a homicide cop.”
His heart began racing for the second time that day, but he kept his cool. He knew they’d found his graves. That the police would connect Brittany’s body to an inquisitional chair was not a leap he’d expected them to make. He injected enough confusion in his voice to be believable. “I’m telling you I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You don’t know anything about a massive graveyard in a field north of town? Because the same cop who made the visit is the one leading that case.”
Fuck. He laughed, incredulously. “I don’t know anything about a graveyard either. All I know is that my artifacts are in my possession. If the cops have a chair, it’s probably handmade by one of those idiots from the reenactment group. But I must admit to a certain curiosity. How did the police know where to go to ask questions?”
“They have a source. An archeologist.”
That made sense. That was, after all, how he’d located his dealer in the beginning. “What’s his name, this archeologist?”
“Her name is Sophie Johannsen.”
His heart skipped a beat, then fury roared, sending his pulse skyrocketing. “I see.”