The Maze ft-2

by Catherine Coulter

  Now Budnack would tell the other cops who she was and what she'd done, and no one would trust her as far as the corner.

  "I hope we'll find out something about this seven-year thing," Savich said. "It also occurred to me that he knows how to build sets and props. Not just build them, but he has to transport them to the buildings where he intends to commit the murders. They must be constructed to fold pretty small to fit in a car trunk or in a van. That means he has to be proficient at least at minimal construction.

  "Also, surely a truck would have been remarked upon. And he must do it in the middle of the night to cut way down on the chance of being seen. It's possible that the seven business will correlate to building things. Who knows?"

  "Like a propman in the theater," Lacey said slowly, hope soaring.

  "Could be," Savich said. "Let's get the rest of the goodies in the program, then see what we come up with. He stood. "Gentlemen, anything else?"

  "Yes," Ralph Budnack said. "I want to help you input into this magic program of yours."

  "You got it," Savich said and shook his hand.

  The three of them took turns until late in the afternoon. Savich said, "There, that about takes care of it. Now let me tell MAX to stretch his brain and see what he can find for us. I inputted every instance of the number seven I could find. For example, two of the murders were committed on the seventh day of the week. Another murder was committed in the seventh month of the year. Sounds pretty far-out, but we'll see. The real key is the seven-year cycle and the fact that he killed seven women. MAX has more to work with here than he's ever had before. Also I gave MAX another bone-the construction angle." His fingers moved quickly over the keys. Then he grinned up at Lacey, and pressed ENTER.

  "That computer your kid?" Ralph Budnack asked.

  "You'd think so," Savich said. "But no, MAX is a partner, and by no means a silent one." He patted the keyboard very lightly. "Nope, I'll have some real kids one of these days."

  "You married?"

  "No. Ah, here we go. MAX's first effort. Let me print it out."

  There were only two pages.

  Savich grinned at them. "Take a look, guys."

  13

  THE PLEIADES?" Ralph Budnack looked ready to cry. "We spent four hours inputting stuff and we get the Pleiades? What the hell are the Pleiades?"

  "The seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione," Lacey read. "They're a group of stars, put in the sky by Zeus. Orion is behind them, chasing them."

  "This is nuts," Ralph said.

  "Keep reading," Savich said. "Just keep reading."

  Lacey looked up, her face shining. "He's an astronomer, he's got to be. That or he's an astrologer or into numerology, with astronomy as a hobby."

  Ralph Budnack said, "Maybe he's a college professor, teaching mythology. He builds furniture on the side, as a hobby."

  "At least there appears to be something in the seven scenario," Savich said, laying down page two. "We've got some leads. I've got a couple of other ideas, but Ralph, you and your guys can start checking this all out. Chances are, according to the Profilers, that the guy has been here at least six months, but less than a year. Enough time, in other words, for him to scout out all the places he's going to take his victims."

  "Good point," Budnack said, rubbing his hands together. "My other team members are interviewing everyone they can scrape up from the Congress Street area. I'll pull them off to do this."

  When Lacey and Savich were alone, she said, "You're having a problem with all this, aren't you?"

  "This whole business with the seven sisters of the Pleiades, it just seems too easy, too obvious."

  "Why? It took MAX to come up with it. The SFPD didn't come up with it. The Profilers didn't either. Also, it's a seven-year interval between killings. He kills seven women at each cycle. Two sevens is a goodly number of sevens."

  Savich stood up and stretched, then he scratched his stomach. "You're probably right. I'm just dragged down because MAX got it and we didn't. But you know, I've got this itch in my belly. Whenever I've gotten this itch in the past, there's been something I've missed.

  "I need to go to the gym. Working out clears my brain. You want to come along? I won't tromp you this time. In fact, I'll start work on your deltoids."

  "I didn't bring any workout stuff. Besides, I plan to protect my deltoids with my life."

  The cops tracked down four possible suspects within the next twenty-four hours-two of them astrologers who'd come to Boston during the past year, two of them numerologists. Both the numerologists had come during the past year from southern California. They didn't arrest any of them. Budnack, Savich, and Lacey met later that day in Captain Dougherty's office.

  "No big deal about that," Ralph Budnack said, frowning. "All the nuts come from southern California."

  "So does Julia Roberts," Savich said.

  "Point taken," Budnack said and grinned. "So what do you think, Savich? It just doesn't feel right with any of these guys. Plus two of them have pretty good alibis. We found a homeless guy, Mr. Rick, he's called, who said he saw a guy going in and out of the warehouse on Congress. He said he was all bundled up and he wondered about that since it was really warm that night, said it was so warm he didn't even have to sleep in his box. Said he hadn't seen him before."

  "Any more specifics about the man?" Lacey asked. "Anything about what he looked like?"

  "Just that he looked kind of scrawny, a direct quote from Mr. Rick. Whatever that means. Mr. Rick is pretty big. Scrawny just might mean anything smaller than six foot. I might add that only one of the four guys we picked up could

  be called scrawny, and he's got the strongest alibi."

  Savich had wandered away. He was pacing, head down, seemingly staring at the linoleum floor.

  "He's thinking," she said in answer to Captain Dougherty's unasked question.

  "Your sister was really offed by this guy?"

  "Yes. It's been seven years. But you never forget."

  "Is that why you got into the FBI?"

  "I didn't know what else to do. I went to school and learned a bit about all the areas in forensics, then I focused on how the criminal mind works. Actually I'd planned to be a Profiler, but I couldn't live what they do every day. So here I am. Thank God for Savich's new unit."

  "You even learn about blood-spattering patterns?"

  "Yeah, some of the examples of that were pretty gruesome. I'm not an expert, but at least I learned enough so that I'd know what to do, where to find out more, who to contact."

  Captain Dougherty said, "Everyone thinks profiling is so sexy. Remember that show on TV about a Profiler?"

  "Yeah, the one with ESP. Now that was something, wasn't it? Why bother with profiling? A waste of time. Just tune in to the guy and you've got him."

  He grinned and she distracted him with another question about one of the men they'd hauled in for questioning.

  It was at midnight when Savich sat up in bed, drew a very deep breath, and said softly, "I've got you, you son of a bitch."

  He worked at the computer until three o'clock in the morning. He called Ralph Budnack at seven A.M. and told him what he needed.

  "You got something, Savich?"

  "I just might," he said slowly. "I just might. On the other hand, I might be off plucking daisies in that big flower market in the sky. Keep doing what you're doing." He then called Lacey's room.

  "I need you," he said. "Come to my room and we'll order room service."

  The fax was humming out page after page from Budnack. "Yeah," Savich was saying, "this will help."

  "You won't tell me what you're homing in on?"

  "Nope, not until I know there's a slight chance I'm on the right track."

  "I was thinking far into the night," she said, and although it wasn't at all cold in the room, she was rubbing her hands over her arms. She looked tired, pinched. "I couldn't get this seven business out of my mind." She drew a deep breath. "We banked everything on seven, and so we got the Pleiade
s and all that numerology stuff. But what if it doesn't have anything to do with seven at all? What if there was just the one instance of seven and that was merely the time lag before he started killing again? What if he killed more than seven women? Eight women or even nine?" She looked nearly desperate, standing there, rubbing her arms. "Not much of a big lead there. I think you're right, it's just too pat, and too confining. But if there's nothing there, then what else is there?"

  "You're perfectly right. You've got a good brain, Sherlock. My brain was working in tandem with yours-"

  She laughed, some of the tension easing out of her. "'Which means that you've got a good brain too."

  "Me and MAX together have a top-drawer brain. All right, let me tell you where I'm heading and if you think I'm off the wall, then you can haul me back. I've been thinking that we've gotten too fancy here, exactly what you said-it's too complicated out there. It assumes our killer is a really deep profound fellow with lots of esoteric literary or astrological underpinnings. That he probably builds designer furniture on the side. I woke up at midnight and thought: Give me a break. This is nothing but a headache theory. It's time to get back to basics.

  "I knew then that our guy isn't any of those things. I think the answer just might lie with the obvious. I've been asking MAX to come up with other alternatives or new options based on new factoring data I've put in." He drew a deep breath. "Remember, Sherlock, this still might not lead anywhere."

  "What's obvious?"

  "A psychopath who knows how to build props, make them fold up small, and make them portable. I know that they checked into this in San Francisco-they went to all the theaters, interviewed a dozen prop designers and builders. I went back in to see exactly what they did find-and where they'd looked, what kind of suspects they'd turned up.

  "Not much, as it turns out. So, I'm having MAX look where they didn't look. I've inputted just about everything I can think of into the program so we've got a prayer of turning up something helpful."

  She didn't say anything, just looked at him. She felt hope well up, but she was afraid to nourish it. She saw that he was rubbing his neck.

  "What's wrong with you?"

  "I worked out too hard last night after you left and then spent too much time hunched over MAX. No big deal."

  "If you're not too macho, you might consider some aspirin. On the other hand, I hesitate to say anything at all now, given that you and MAX together are such a great team and MAX has got the bit between his teeth."

  "Yeah, he's got a great byte."

  "That was funny, Dillon, if you spelled it right."

  "Trust me. I did."

  "You look like you're ready to burst out of your skin and you can still be funny."

  "You're not laughing."

  "I'm too scared." And it was the truth. She was terrified he would kill again, terrified that he would escape and there would never be justice.

  He watched her walk away from him across to the far windows that looked down eight floors to the street below.

  "You want to tell me what else happened seven years ago?"

  She actually flinched as if he'd struck her. He rose slowly and walked to her. He reached out his hand, looked at it, then dropped his arm back to his side. He said only, "Sherlock."

  She didn't turn, just shook her head.

  MAX beeped. Savich pressed the PRINT button. After a moment, he picked out one sheet of paper from the printer. He began to laugh. "MAX says our person may be in building supplies."

  She whipped around so fast she nearly fell. "As in a lumberyard?"

  "Yes. He says that odds are good that with all the building materials the killer left behind, the type of hardware the killer used, the type of nails, the wood, the kinds of corkboard, the brackets, etcetera, that our guy works in lumber. Of course, the cops in the SFPD looked at every prop he left behind at every murder. It turns out that the wood wasn't traceable, that all the brackets, hinges, and screws were common and sold everywhere. They came up dry. Now, they never specifically went after men who worked in lumberyards. MAX thinks we should look again."

  Her eyes were sparkling. "MAX is the greatest. It's brilliant."

  "We'll see. Now in addition to a guy who works in lumber, we've also got a psychopath who hates women and cuts out their tongues. Why? Because he himself has taken grief from them or seen other men take the grief?"

  She said slowly, not meeting his eyes, "Just maybe he cuts out their tongues because he knows they bad-mouth their husbands and curse a whole lot. Maybe he doesn't believe women should curse. Maybe that's how he picks out the women to kill."

  She'd known that all along, he thought, but how? It was driving him crazy, but he let it go for now. He knew she was right on the money. It felt right to his gut-no, perfect. He said easily, "That sounds really possible. Weren't there some profiles drawing that conclusion?"

  "Yes, certainly there were. The guy's not in the theater or anything sexy like that?"

  "Nope. I'll called Ralph. He can check to see who's arrived during the past year in Boston who works for a lumberyard." Now that he thought about it, perhaps he had seen some speculation about that in some of the reports and profiles he'd read. Still, there was a whole lot more to all this. He looked at her. She looked away. Trust was a funny thing. It took time.

  Marlin Jones was the assistant manager at the Appletree Home Supplies and Mill Yard in Newton Center. He was in conversation with his manager, Dude Crosby, when a pretty young woman with thick, curly auburn hair came up to him, a piece of plywood in her hand. There was something familiar about her.

  He smiled at her, his eyes on that foot-long piece of plywood. He said before she could explain, "The problem is that the plywood's too cheap. You tried to put a nail through it and it shredded the plywood. If you'll come over here, I'll show you some better pieces that won't fall apart on you. Have we met before?"

  "Thank you, er, Mr. Jones," she said, looking at his name tag. "No, we haven't met before."

  "I'm not very good at remembering faces, but well, you're so pretty, maybe that's why I thought I'd met you before." She followed him out into the lumberyard. "What are you doing with the plywood, ma'am?"

  "I'm building props for my son's school play, and that's why I need to use plywood, not hardwood. They're doing Oklahoma! and I've got to put together a couple of rooms that can be easily disassembled then put back up. So I'll need some brackets and some screws too."

  "Then why'd you pound a nail through it?"

  "That was just experimentation. My husband, that fucking son of a bitch, won't help me, drinks all the time, won't take part in raising our son, won't show me any affection at all, well, so I've got to do it all myself."

  Marlin Jones stared at her, as if mesmerized. He cleared his throat. "I can help you with this, Mrs.-?"

  "Marry Bramfort." She shook his hand. "I live on Commonwealth. I had to take a bus out here because that bastard husband of mine won't fix the car. Next thing I know, that damned car will be sitting on blocks in the front yard and the neighbors will call the cops."

  "Mrs. Bramfort, if you could maybe draw what you need to build, then I could gather all the stuff together for you."

  "I don't suppose you'll help me put it all together?"

  "Well, ma'am, I'm awfully busy."

  "No, never mind. That's my jerk husband's job, or it should be. It's not yours. But I would appreciate your advice. I already made some drawings. Here they are."

  She laid them out on top of a large sheet of plywood. Marlin Jones leaned over to study them. "Not bad," he said after a

  few minutes. "You won't have much trouble doing this. I'll cut all the wood for you and show you how to use the brackets. You want to be able to break all the stuff down quickly, though. I know just how to do that."

  She left the Appletree Home Supplies and Mill Yard an hour later. Marlin Jones would deliver the twelve cut pieces of plywood to the grade school gymnasium, along with brackets and screws, hinges, gallons of
paint, and whatever else he thought she'd need.

  Before she left him, she placed her hand lightly on his forearm. "Thank you, Mr. Jones." She looked at him looking at her hand on his forearm. "I bet you're not a lazy son of a bitch like my husband is. I bet you do stuff for your wife without her begging you."

  "I'm not married, Mrs. Bramfort."

  "Too bad," she said, and grinned up at him. "But hey, I bet lots of ladies would like to have you around, no matter if they're married or not." When she walked away from him, she was swinging her hips outrageously. "Who knows what building props can lead to?" she called out over her shoulder, and winked at him.

  She was whistling to herself as she walked from where she'd parked her car toward the Josephine Bentley Grade School gymnasium. It was Ralph Budnack's car, a 1992 Honda Accord that drove like a Sherman tank. Toby, the temporary school janitor and a black cop for the Sixth Division, opened the door for her.

  His voice carried as he said, "Jest about done, Mrs. Bramfort?"

  "Oh yes, very nearly done now. You going home, Toby?"

  "Yep, just waiting to let you in. Don't forget to lock up now, Mrs. Bramfort."

  "I won't."

  She was alone in the gymnasium, a vast room that resounded with her breathing, with every step she took, filling the empty air with echoes. All the nearly built props were neatly stacked in the corner. She'd been doing this a good five evenings in a row now. She unstacked all of them, laying them out side by side. Not much more to do.

  She began work, her right hand turning the screwdriver again and again, digging in new holes through the plywood. Some of them were L shaped, most flat. The brackets were just to support the two pieces of plywood. She didn't have all the lights on; just the corner where she worked had lighting. It wasn't much. There were deepening shadows all around her, growing blacker as the minutes passed. Soon it would be nine o'clock. Dark outside. Darker inside.

  It was the fifth night.

  There wasn't much more to do now except paint. Everything he'd sent over she'd used. She rose and dusted her hands on her jeans. She'd been to see Marlin Jones several times. He was always polite, always eager to help her, seemed to like it when she flirted with him. He had dark, dark eyes, almost opaque, as if no light ever shined behind them. He had dark brows, a thin nose, and full lips. He was good-looking, built well, if a bit on the thin side. He wasn't all that tall, so perhaps then he could be called scrawny. After each time she saw him, she thought that he was just a plain man who earned his living cutting wood.