“This has the pattern too,” she said. “They’d probably use it for making sleeping quarters, getting a little privacy. It’s just a coincidence, of course. The webbing’s got that shape because that’s how it’s made. Maybe it makes it strong, I don’t know. But, what with the walls and the webbing, I imagine that’s all he saw when they came for him, when he watched the rest of his team getting taken, killed, all around him. On the walls. In the quarters they’d made for themselves. Can you imagine what that must have been like?”
The floor, the low, curving ceiling, reminded Nic of what he’d seen painted in blood in the tiny apartment that stank of meat, just a few hours ago.
“I imagine it wouldn’t leave you. Ever.”
“Right,” she agreed. “So what do you do? You live that nightmare over and over again until you understand what caused it. You get free. You hunt people down in the same kind of sacred places and see if that same pattern gives you any answers.”
She looked into his eyes, not flinching. “Do you think he’s found some answers? Do you think he’s even close?”
He thought of the single word written in blood in the dead woman’s apartment. “Not close enough. When he killed that woman he wrote something, over and over, underneath the pattern. A question. ”Who?“ ”
It didn’t seem to make any sense to her either.
“He’s been killing people he knew,” she said. “Why would he ask that?”
“I don’t know. You said they’d all been strangled with a cord?”
“That’s right,” she agreed.
“No, it’s not. He didn’t use cord. At least not in the Pantheon. It was this stuff. Webbing, wrapped up into a ligature. Teresa held that information back. Leapman is going wild. It was the same with the woman we found today. Teresa got positive ID back from forensic on the first sample. This is US military issue webbing. You can’t buy it retail. And it’s not from years ago either. This particular type wasn’t manufactured until last year. As far as we can work out, the only place it’s been used in the field is Iraq.”
“Whoa.” She sighed. “Now you’re the one who’s going too fast.”
He had to ask. “If this man is that consistent, surely he would have used it on the others? Did he?”
“I don’t know.”
Costa said nothing.
She squinted at him, then pointed at the computer. “You think I’m holding out on you? After this?”
“No.” He laughed. “Not at all.”
Her fingers flew on the keyboard. “Let’s see. I’ve got the standard reports on here anyway. The ones we sent round to you.”
Carefully, one by one, they went through each of the case file summaries. All were brief, reduced to just a few pages.
“This is ridiculous,” Emily snapped. “Why the hell didn’t I see this in the first place? Why didn’t your people?”
“You’re not a detective. And we didn’t have the time. Remember?”
“Sorry.”
She’d left the last document on the screen open. It was the report on her own father’s death. Now that he thought about it, the omission almost screamed at them from the screen. The summary gave a cause of death-strangulation-but contained no forensic data on the material used by the murderer.
“That can’t be normal.” Emily pointed at the screen. “Just a cause of death. Nothing about the actual ligature itself. Forensic would have information there, wouldn’t they? Something that could be useful?”
“Absolutely. A couple of years ago Teresa Lupo coaxed some skin samples out of forensic when they were about to give up on a domestic we had. When they took a good look again they had proof the husband was responsible. He’d pulled the cord so tightly he’d left material there himself.”
Emily glowered at the screen. “Watch this. I still have some clearance.”
She hit the keys. The modem inside the machine cracked and whistled. Costa watched her thrash her way through more security screens than he’d ever seen in his life. Finally she got to where she wanted: a report topped by the FBI logo. The full file, of which until then he’d only seen the summary.
“Forensic, forensic, forensic…” she whispered. “Shit!”
She’d scrolled down until she found the section. It contained just four words: PENDING. REFER TO HIGHER AUTHORITY.
“You could…” he began to say.
“… try the others? You bet.”
She bent down over the computer, head in hands, furious. Costa gingerly put a hand on her shoulder, then removed it.
“Emily?”
“Say something useful. Say something I want to hear.”
“You just made a discovery. You’ve just worked out what those people were really killed with. Not just ”cord.“ The same thing we found here. US military webbing. Maybe he brought it with him. Maybe he acquired it here. Either way, we know. Why else?”
She took her head out of her hands and smiled brightly at him. “Christ, you’re right, too. It’s the dog that didn’t bark.”
Costa looked baffled.
“I’ll explain later, Nic. Now what do we do?”
The last thing she wanted, he thought. “We leave this till the morning. We continue this conversation with other people around.”
“Is that what you want?” At least she didn’t argue. There weren’t many options open to them.
“You mean, am I scared?” he asked.
“Kind of.”
“No.”
“Don’t you ever get scared?”
He looked around the living room. It felt good with another person there. The fires were doing their job at last. The place finally seemed warm, human.
“Not here,” he answered. “Not now. But I have to tell you, another fifteen minutes and I fall fast asleep, Agent Deacon. You’d better have something else to amaze me.”
“Oh, I have,” she said with a grin, and went back to stabbing the keys of the machine.
PERONI HAD NEVER DONE well on the weapons range, never paid much attention to the smart-ass firearms monkeys who thought you could run the world through the sights of a gun. He was a vice cop. He didn’t mind frontline work. When he was a senior officer he’d made damn sure he didn’t let his men take risks he’d never face himself. All the same, vice was nothing like this. It was pimps and hookers, turf wars and stupid, cheated johns. Black and white in the corners sometimes, but more often a difficult, indeterminate shade of grey. Not something shapeless moving through the dark, unknown, unseen, looking to kill for no real reason at all.
Peroni did what seemed natural, put his big arms out and covered the girl with his body. A futile gesture, one designed more for reassurance than anything else. The huge door opposite was completely shut. The side exit was doubtless locked too. This killer made no mistakes. They couldn’t flee. They couldn’t do much but wait and face whatever lay out there.
And think…
Even a stupid old vice cop could do that.
“What do you want?” he yelled into the darkness.
Someone moved, feet tapping on the ancient stone floor, a menacing presence shifting around the echoing interior like a ghost. He could be anywhere. The sound of his shoes on the hard floor bounced around the upturned stone eyelid, came at them from every direction.
“What do you want?” Peroni yelled again.
The footsteps stopped. The hall was silent except for the faint rumble of a lone car making it through the night in the distant world beyond.
“What’s mine.”
It was an American voice. Flat, middle-aged, monotonous. A voice that sounded as if most of the life had been squeezed out of it somewhere along the line. Peroni wondered if he could guess where it came from. If he could just point the service pistol in that direction, loose off a few shots and hope something-good luck, God, the remnants of a benevolent spirit still lurking here-would send one piece of metal spinning in the right direction.
But he didn’t believe in God or ghosts. You had to make your own way.
Peroni turned, still doing his best to cover the kid behind him, peered into her face and held out his hand. She was clutching the wallet, thin fingers tight on the leather, as if it were the most precious thing in the world.