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“We just can’t find that one link,” I said. “That one person who crossed paths with all four of them.”

“I think you’re drowning in the details, Alex. You’re not the one who’s gonna find it, remember. Maven’s the one with the memories, and the FBI agents have all the raw data.”

“So I’m useless. Yeah, thanks, I feel better now.”

“You’re the neutral party here,” he said. “You’re the one who can sorta stand above everything and see it all from a thousand feet.”

“I don’t know how to do that.”

“Think about it. Do your own little profile here.”

“That sounds like something the FBI would do.”

“It’s all common sense, Alex. Just think, okay? Think like him, whoever’s doing this. Why are you doing all this?”

“Well, let’s see…”

“Think, but don’t overthink. Just say the first thing that comes to you. Right from the gut. That’s usually pretty close to the truth. Why are you committing these crimes against these people?”

“Revenge.”

“Okay. For what?”

“For what they did to me.”

“What did they do?”

I hesitated. “They arrested me. They took me away.”

“Why are you killing their children first?”

“Because I want them to suffer before they die.”

“So you really must hate them.”

“Yes.”

“So why are you making these deaths look like suicides?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I really don’t. At first, I thought it was because that would make it worse somehow. But if I just took them away and then killed them-”

I stopped.

“What is it?” he said.

“Because it happened to me. That’s why I’m doing this, Leon. Because the exact same thing happened to me.”

His eyes lit up. “That’s good. Because you suffered the same loss. So put it all together now. What’s the whole story?”

“I was arrested and put in prison. My son killed himself. Or my daughter. While I was in prison.”

“Is that really enough of a reason?”

“They died alone, from their own hand. They killed themselves while I was rotting away in a concrete box.”

“So now you’re having your revenge,” he said. “All these years later, right? Why have you waited so long?”

“Because I just got out of prison.”

“Maybe.” I could see Leon thinking that one over. “Or there might be some other reason why now is the right time.”

“Yeah, maybe I had other reasons to wait. Other things in my life that I didn’t want to lose. But maybe now there’s nothing stopping me.”

“Exactly. So how old are you?”

“Well, if I was arrested what, like ten, eleven years ago…”

“And you already had a son or daughter at the time.”

“I’m guessing this suicide probably happened fairly close to the time of the arrest,” I said. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t necessarily connect the two in your mind.”

“Okay, so your son or daughter must be of age already. Old enough to commit suicide, anyway.”

“If you add it all up, you’re talking about somebody who’s at least in his midforties?”

“Or older, right.”

“But hold on.” I flashed back to what Maven and I had already talked about. “We’re talking about taking my revenge against the cops who arrested me. What about the judge and the DA and hell, for that matter, even the defense attorney who obviously didn’t defend me too well?”

“From everything you’ve seen, would you say this guy is smart?”

“Smart, yes. Ingenious even, if you think about what he did to Haggerty’s daughter with that bag full of helium.”

“Would you call him methodical? Is that a word you’d use?”

I thought about it. “Yes. Methodical.”

“So who’s to say those other people, the judge and the DA and the defense attorney, aren’t further down on the list?”

“What, are you saying…”

“He’s starting at the beginning. And the beginning is what?”

“The cops who arrested him.”

Leon didn’t say anything else. He leaned back in his chair and looked at me.

“This guy is a smart, patient killer,” I said. “And he may only be getting started. That’s what we’ve got here.”

“It would seem so.”

“But Maven can’t even remember him.”

“Doesn’t matter who remembers him. He remembers them, that’s all that matters.”

Some kid in his twenties, wearing the same uniform as Leon’s, came up to us right about then and asked him to get back to work.

“Hey, give us a break,” I told him. “This is important.”

“Not as important as changing the syrup in the Coke machine,” the kid said. “Not when he’s on the clock, anyway.”

I could have put him right through the window, but Leon put up his hand and told me to take it easy.

“We’re about done here,” he said to the kid. “I’ll go change that syrup.”

“Leon, you don’t belong here.”

“It’s only temporary. Don’t worry about it. Go help catch that guy and then come back and tell me all about it.”

“I can’t thank you enough, Leon. Yet again.”

“Just be careful, all right? My wife is right, this is no job for a middle-aged man with too much to lose.”

“Tell her hello,” I said. I thanked him again and left. As I went back out the cold air hit me in the face and I couldn’t help thinking to myself, Leon’s got something to lose, all right. A wife and two kids. Me, I’ve got nothing left. So maybe I’m the right man to go chase this killer after all.

***

When I got to the state police post the next day, Maven’s old friend Sergeant Coleman was waiting for me with a cup of coffee.

“I heard you guys weren’t exactly the most welcome guests yesterday afternoon,” he said. “I hope you can understand why it might have seemed that way.”

“It’s okay. I know this is a tough situation for everybody.”

“We’ve got everyone in the state on notice. We’re all trying to figure out who this guy could be.”

“You know I was a Detroit cop myself, right?”

“So I heard.”

“I had the chance to interact with a few state cops along the way, and as far as I’m concerned, there’s no better police force in the world.”

I was leaving out a few personality issues I might have run into, but yeah, overall it was the truth. He thanked me for the compliment and I thanked him for the coffee. Then I joined Chief Maven and the two FBI agents in the interview room.

Agent Fleury was talking to somebody on the house phone while Agent Long and Chief Maven sat on the other end of the table, going over a fresh pile of papers. Maven looked a little better today. Maybe he’d actually gotten a few hours of sleep. Agent Long gave me a quick smile.

“Good morning,” she said. I thought I heard a little extra something in the way she spoke to me today. Either that or I was just imagining things.

“Looks like you guys have already gotten started,” I said. “Did I misunderstand the schedule?”

“We wanted to get an early jump, because we’ve actually got something to work with today.”

“Oh yeah?”

I sat down next to her.

“Our team in Detroit has been looking at this overnight, and they’ve identified three men who were all arrested by Steele and Haggerty, right around the time when Chief Maven and Razniewski were still on the force. As you know, we’ve established that Chief Maven has at least a partial memory of being up at the St. Ignace post at some point. Although we still don’t see anything reflected in the official records.”

“Sometimes cops assist on arrests but don’t show up on the official reports,” Maven said. “You know how it is with paperwork. Some days you just don’t get it all done the right way.”

“I do remember that much,” I said. “I used to hate that part of the job.”

“We’re trying to cross-reference arrests that resulted in significant jail time, and beyond that we’ve got a general profile that would suggest a suicide in the family right around that same time.”