Lynne Connolly

by The Chemistry Of Evil (Triskelion) (lit)

  “Hmm.” Cristos stroked his chin in thought. “Where does that leave us?”

  Sofie watched the operative with the laptop. He was busy inputting the information into a model; probably something concocted by Cristos. She saw Evan look in the same direction, then he moved across the room and took an open interest.

  “We can look into people who have that kind of interest.” Bent strolled across the room, towards the men at the computer. Without looking around the operative minimized the screen. Cristos watched, no emotion at all on his face. Bent turned back to them, equally impassive, but Sofie caught a glow of irritation in his eyes before he killed it. “Are we talking Wicca, magic, that kind of thing?”

  “Probably.” Cristos sighed. “Look, Bent, you and the rest of the Bureau despise our department, but we’re useful for something. I’ll have the obvious inquiries made.”

  “Sure.” Bent didn’t sound enthusiastic. He took a turn around the room, ending up facing Cristos. “Ok, since we’re here. This is an FBI case. If I find you’re holding out on me, I’ll have Sofie moved to a safe house tomorrow. And you won’t be able to find her.”

  “Don’t I have a say in this?” Sofie took a step forward, indignant at the way she was overlooked.

  Bent shot a heated glance at her. “No. These murders are coming too close to you. I don’t like you and Howell together, because he’s shaping up to be a target. One hit’ll get you both.”

  “He’s right.” Sofie was startled when Cristos agreed. Instinctively she moved closer to Evan.

  “I don’t want that.”

  “If Howell’s loft weren’t so well secured I’d insist on it,” Cristos said. “As it is– “he exchanged a speaking glance with Bent, allies for once.

  “Now we’re here,” Bent began, “can we have this straight? We want to get this bastard before he gets any more. Now the NYPD, in their exalted wisdom, has decided to put things in the public eye, we’re in danger of copycatting. I want this sealed down tight.”

  “You’re right.” Cristos moved to pick up the TV remote. He flicked on the set and muted the sound, switching to the news channel. “We’ll have all the nuts in the city coming out to play.”

  “So– do you think this perp is a nut?”

  “I wish.” Cristos turned to Bent. “Profiling’s your thing – what do you think about the British murder?”

  Bent frowned, and drew his pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. As if by rote he pulled out a cigarette and tapped it on the pack. “I wouldn’t,” Evan said. “We’ll have the hotel security in the mix.” He motioned to where a smoke detector was screwed to the ceiling. “That’ll be set to detect a hot breath.”

  Bent’s sigh might have set it off. He replaced the pack in his pocket. “Can’t smoke anywhere these days. People would rather have the Black Death than a pack of cigarettes.” He turned to face them. “I’m sorry about your friend, Sofie.” Sofie nodded and felt Evan close to her. She didn’t have to look. “We’ll need to question you. Both of you. It seems you were in England at that time, Howell, though you didn’t exactly make it public. It’s got to be done.” Sofie nodded. “In this room I can say we suspect neither of you. You both have alibis for at least one of the murders, and the British girl apart, they have the same signature.” He dipped his hand in his pocket again and this time came up with a notebook. He opened it and consulted his notes. “From the profiling we’ve done, the sex of the killer is indeterminate. Do I have to go through the procedures we took?”

  Cristos shook his head. “You’re one of the best, Bent.” He paused. “Since nobody’s here to hear me say it.”

  “Ok.” Sofie thought Harry’s lip trembled very slightly as he returned to his notes. She knew from past experience that he had a sense of humor, though he usually chose not to show it. “Statistically a serial killer a man, but none of the victims were sexually assaulted, so we didn’t know for sure. Except your friend.” He closed the book. “Sofie, you don’t have to prove anything. This woman was a friend of yours. Do you need to hear this?”

  Sofie felt Evan’s arm go around her shoulders. “Don’t stay, Sofie.”

  She knew that to hear this would haunt her dreams, and she knew they were right. “I’ll go and view the murder scene.”

  “Do you want me to come with you?”

  She shot Evan a withering glance. “No.” She wasn’t that feeble.

  Sofie left the room and went to the next room, where the victim still lay. She went through the chronology in her mind. The first victim, an out of state student, killed in her mother’s apartment while her mother was out for the night, then Meghan, in her own apartment, then Elaine, and now this man. If Gwyneth was part of the pattern, she would come next to last. Five altogether.

  She showed her security tag to the detective at the door of the room, reflecting ruefully that she owed this level of clearance to Cristos and not to her job with the FBI. As a British citizen she was severely restricted in her security status. She had never known how to handle that. She loved her life here, and she loved New York. The life, the vitality, all filled her with excitement, the quality of life was more than she needed, and to add cream to the coffee, she was only six hours away from visiting her mother. Now she had found Evan, and that superseded everything else.

  Entering the room Sofie smelled blood, and automatically went through her usual procedure, steeling her nerves and stomach. Taking a pair of latex gloves from the box by the door was automatic. From the beginning of her professional career, she’d used them, from handling fragile, ancient objects, to now, where the emphasis was on preserving the scene.

  This was not her area of expertise. Sofie was used to skeletons, dust and dirt. There was nothing like that on display here.

  The man lay on the bed, naked. Sofie thought back to the descriptions from the other scenes. Not all were found naked, though all were in a state of undress. From what she’d heard Gwyneth had been sexually molested. The others had not. She moved forward, to the stares of the six people in the room. “I’m a forensic archaeologist,” she explained to anyone who was interested. “Assistant Director Bent asked me to take a look at the symbol. It was my specialty at university.” She reflected ruefully that she was beginning to use the American phrases, like ‘specialty’ naturally. The people nodded and returned to their work. To the accompaniment of regular flashes from the photographer taking pictures of every part of the room, she bent over the body.

  The victim lay spread-eagled on the bed, the symbol carved deeply into a chest which must have once been attractive, but was now only a canvas for the gory design.

  Summoning up a mental picture of the Fool card, she traced the shape. The proportions were almost exact. Two circles, not the one shown on the TV, no doubt as a way of recognizing the murderer when he finally showed up, overlaid the stick figure used to delineate the Fool. Flaps of loose skin spoiled the design, but it was cut deeply and with care. “What was used for this?” she murmured.

  The pathologist, a woman Sofie knew from the office, came up to stand next to her. “It’s very precise, isn’t it?” Dark hair tied severely back, covered by an elasticated cap did nothing for her beauty, but her face was pure, the bones clearly outlined. An angel come to minister to the dead. “Not a knife. Too exact for that. My guess is some kind of scalpel, but with a broader end. The cuts form a kind of groove, and there’s some specks of flesh on the floor, as though the murderer shook the instrument free.”

  “So a surgical scalpel.”

  “Or a specialist model-maker’s tool.” Sofie nodded. When reconstructing a face from a skull, the artists used specialized instruments. She’d built up the clay on the pins herself, though she couldn’t add the finishing touches that made the reconstruction come to life. Someone else had always done that for her. The instruments were precise and specifically made.

  Something stirred in her head. “My job involves using those kinds of tools. Is this the first time it’s been used?”

&
nbsp; “Yes.” The pathologist consulted her notes, clipped to a board in her hand. “Previously the lines weren’t so precise or were cut with an ordinary scalpel or sharp pointed knife.”

  “So the murderer has only just discovered the tool.”

  “It’s a significant difference.”

  “What is?” Harry Bent’s voice came from behind them. Sofie had been so concentrated in her thoughts that she hadn’t noticed anyone else coming in. Now she knew without turning round that Evan had come in, too. Her senses flared and relaxed in his presence, her sensitivity reached out as though she already felt his touch.

  She explained her theory. “The murderer has used a new tool. A modeling tool, a scalpel with a shallow groove cut in the tip. I know the kind of thing. I use them in reconstruction.”

  She glanced up at her boss. He put his thumb to his mouth as though to bite it, then moved it away again as the latex came into contact with his lips. “Interesting. A significant change, but designed to improve the quality of the design. The carving is just as careful.”

  Sofie felt her bile rise, and swallowed it down. If she vomited here she’d be banned from future scenes of crime. She didn’t often feel squeamish, but considering the way the murderer had taken time and care over the design made her want to vomit. It spoke of cold calculation. “New York has its own Ripper,” she murmured.

  “No. The murderer doesn’t mutilate like the Ripper did. This isn’t a sexual murder. There’s no sexual frenzy here, no secretions anywhere in the room, if it follows the pattern. It’s cold. The killer could be separated from reality in some way, most likely a psychopath.” Bent didn’t mean that in the casual, conversational way. He meant a real psychopath, the most terrifying kind of killer, one who worked on his own system of values, which clashed with what society and ordinary morality dictated.

  “What about a multiple personality?” she ventured.

  “If it is, I’ll be able to make a career out of it. I can’t think of one other serial killer that was truly suffering from that disorder. There have been schizophrenics, but there’s usually more emotion there. I’ll get back to the office and see how it all stacks up.”

  “Can you send me a copy?”

  Bent frowned. “Not over the net. Not secure enough. I’ll get a CD off to you by courier.” He glanced over his shoulder in the direction of the door. “But don’t forget who you’re working for, Dr. Adams. You’re mine.”

  “I won’t forget.”

  “You shouldn’t be on this case at all, now. It came too close to you. Do you think Elaine was mistaken for you?”

  Sofie felt a hand touch her shoulder. Evan. “It could be. But her body type wasn’t mine. It would have to be someone who didn’t know what I looked like.”

  “Perhaps the same person killed Gwyneth. Mistaking her for you, knowing your name but not what you look like. I’ll get on that, too.” He turned to face Sofie. She was glad to have an excuse not to stare at that pale figure on the bed, streaks of clotted blood marring the sheets and the body. But the carving had been after death. It would have made a horrible mess had it been done while the victim was still alive. Sofie shuddered, not something the onlookers would have observed because it was slight and quickly repressed, but Evan, in contact with her body, would have felt it. “Did you know Meghan Leroux?”

  Sofie shook her head.

  “But you know her brother.”

  “Yes, but I didn’t meet him until – after her death.”

  Bent’s chin lifted to confront Evan, standing just behind Sofie, his hand now resting lightly on her waist. “You went to England.”

  “I wanted to know the details you wouldn’t tell us. It might have been wrong, but nobody told me not to and I thought Sofie might tell me something.”

  “Did she?” The question came sharply, barked out.

  “No.”

  Sofie wouldn’t have cared if Evan had told her boss, but she warmed to him. He risked a reprimand or worse for lying to a superior, even one from a different agency. It could be called obstruction, or worse.

  Bent stared at Evan suspiciously through narrowed eyes. “So you went all the way to England.”

  “Meghan was my sister, and I wanted to know more. I was upset, and I had some compassionate leave so I went. I’m glad I did.” He squeezed Sofie’s waist. “After we hooked up and came home, Assistant Director Cristos learned more about the case.”

  Bent opened his mouth and closed it again without speaking. Abruptly he turned to Cristos. “Is this any of your doing?”

  Cristos stared at the body on the bed. “Mine?”

  “No, dammit, not that! Your operative linking with mine.”

  “No. I followed them over to England because I wanted to tell Dr. Adams about her roommate. You know I wanted in on this case, and you know why.”

  “The symbols.”

  “That and – other things.” There was a significant pause. The other people in the room were ostensibly going about their work, but there was a brief pause in activities. There had been gossip, then. “There are elements of this case that impinge on my area of expertise.” Cristos was picking his words extremely carefully. “The nightshade that was used to drug the victims. Was it used here?”

  Bent shrugged. “Too early to be certain, but we’re taking the assumption that it was. A used coffee cup was recently washed out, so it seems probable.”

  “Not atropine?”

  “Not in the other cases, no. Surgical atropine is pretty readily available. It’s controlled, but it’s used in eye operations, so it’s not too difficult to get some. But this was the plant. Probably crushed and made into a tea, and the tea used as an elixir.”

  “Doesn’t it flavor other liquids?” Sofie asked. She seemed to remember this from her studies.

  Bent glanced at her. “Yes. It has a bitter taste. That’s why we’re thinking coffee.”

  “There’s another way.” Sofie had his attention now. “Medieval witches used to make an ointment from it, and rub it on the base of their spines. That’s why they thought they were flying. The hallucinogenic properties of the plant are very strong.”

  Bent whistled through his teeth. “Jesus!” He spun around and addressed everyone in the room. “Hear that? Why didn’t one of you pick that one up?” His glare settled on the pathologist. “See to it as a matter of priority.”

  The pathologist shot a disgruntled look at Sofie. “Yes, sir. I’ll re-examine all the bodies. There were remains of nightshade in their stomachs, though. Not enough to kill. The victims were killed by a stab in the back, up through the ribs to the heart.”

  “It didn’t spoil the design on the chest that way,” Evan remarked.

  Sofie found tears breaking their way through the hard shell she’d imposed on herself. Evan’s comment made in deliberately emotionless tones reminded her. They were talking about his sister here. She knew he felt the loss deeply, and she knew him well enough now to realize how much he hid from the world at large. He had originally come all the way to England to discover something about Meghan’s death. The rest had followed from that.

  “Why was it done so carefully?” Bent mused. “Why was it so important to get the design right?”

  Cristos suggested an answer. “Because it’s a rune of power.” The occupants of the room gave up all attempts at activity, and turned to stare at him. Only Sofie was fully aware of the meaning. With a smile Cristos indicated with one elegant gesture of his manicured fingers that she was to continue.

  “In the old days they used to believe that certain symbols held power,” she explained. “Certain alphabets were developed just to exercise that power. You’ve all seen a pentagram, from movies and jewelry. You know what a cross is. In the Second World War the French Underground used the Cross of Lorraine as an identification sign. They are all runes of power in a way.”

  “And they’re magic,” the photographer said, sneering.

  “It doesn’t matter what we think,” Sofie said calmly. �
��Not in this case, anyway. Whoever did this believes that this symbol holds power of some kind. Which is why Assistant Director Cristos is interested in the case. He doesn’t swallow all this stuff whole, he merely researches it, and the people who do believe it.”

  “The way I heard it,” the photographer continued, “Assistant Director Cristos takes part.”

  “Only in certain studies,” Cristos put in. “The ones that have some basis in provable fact. This stuff is only interesting in an academic sense. Only someone, somewhere, takes it seriously. I have contacts in that world, which I intend to make available to Assistant Director Bent. They have no love for murderers any more than we do. I’m sure they’ll be only too eager to help.”

  The photographer grudgingly accepted the explanation and turned back to his work. Soon bright flashes came from the bathroom as he completed his survey of the hotel room.

  “If you could send me some detailed photos of the symbol, I’d be grateful,” Cristos said to Bent. The atmosphere had settled from rivalry to a kind of peace, and then it changed again.

  Sofie turned towards the door. She’d been standing by the window with Evan, out of the way of the scientists. A stranger entered, dressed tidily in off the peg shirt and trousers, jacket slung over his shoulder, one finger hooked through the label. Sofie didn’t need to be told this man was neither FBI nor CIA. “I see you’ve made yourself at home,” he growled at Bent.

  “Doing the job in hand,” Bent said.

  “I’m to make an office available to you at the Precinct.” It didn’t sound as if the officer liked it much.

  “Thank you, Captain. I don’t think it will be necessary. We’ll work this one out of my office.”

  “It’ll be there if you want it. Sir.” The last word came reluctantly. With one contemptuous glance around the room the NYPD man left.

  “We have history,” Bent explained briefly. He walked across to Sofie. “This is getting too close to you. By rights I should take you off the case, but I need your expertise.”