his minister. The lines were straight and perfectly spaced. The graphologists tell us he was completely calm when he wrote it. You know the rest.
“Not a single one of Martin Lenx’s actions was unconsidered, impulsive, or taken on the spur of the moment. Nothing in the man was hasty or spontaneous. And in each of the six mass murders over the last eight months, he repeated that pattern down to the tiniest detail.”
Maybe you think I’m crazy? Rosario’s voice echoed in Amaia’s mind. She closed her eyes for a moment and concentrated on blocking out the image of her mother bending close above her. “One night is not the same as another.”
She immediately regretted saying that but couldn’t take it back.
Dupree had hunkered down into that pensive posture of his, studying her. He knew she was speaking of her own experience. “What are you talking about, Salazar? Lenx murdered his family in the daytime.”
She shut her eyes. “I meant to say that no day is the same as another. And no moment. The chosen moment is what counts. Not one of those six mass murders, scrupulously compared with that of his original family, can be seen as a separate action. They were rehearsals for the real thing. Every time he kills, he confirms death sentences he’s already passed on his true intended victims, his current family.”
Dupree prompted her calmly, as if he already knew the answer. “And why hasn’t he carried them out?”
Amaia again had a vision of her mother leaning close, night after night, throughout her childhood. She looked around. “Because one night isn’t the same as another. He was waiting for a sign. The sign is essential. It constituted part of the ritual.”
“‘Was waiting’?” Tucker sounded confused on the other end of the line. “‘Constituted’?”
“I meant to say ‘constitutes,’” Amaia corrected herself, coming back to the subject, momentarily squeezing her eyes to push the image away. “The sword of Damocles he has hanging over his victims makes him feel powerful, but it requires him to wait for just the right moment to let it drop. That gives us a clear picture of his mental state. He’s not tormented or enraged. Not a single piece of evidence suggests he’s capable of the kind of fury that drove Brad Nelson to smash up his house during the argument with his wife.”
“Are you saying that the destruction in every one of those crime scenes isn’t an expression of uncontrolled rage? I thought that’s exactly what we concluded from Lenx’s referencing destruction in the Bible,” Tucker asserted across the line. Static and the poor connection gave her tone a malevolent edge.
“Destruction, yes,” Amaia asserted, “but the Composer left the destruction in God’s hands. Divine retribution rendered via natural disaster, a judgment Lenx didn’t dictate but did accept. Moreover, Johnson and I both find it hard to believe that a man with Lenx’s fervent moral and religious convictions would manifest no sign of them in his new identity.”
“Don’t forget that the Galveston police chief saw him sneaking into a church,” Dupree reminded her. “Maybe he decided to hide his religious zeal in his new life.”
Amaia didn’t accept that. “I do find that strange, but I think it really unlikely a fervent Lutheran like Lenx would switch to Catholicism. He relies on faith to justify the killings. That’s a profoundly Lutheran view, in stark contrast to the Catholic doctrine that good works offer redemption even for those who lack faith. Martin Lenx wasn’t going to pardon anyone’s trespasses. His victims were offending God, and Martin saw himself as God’s appointed avenger.”
She motioned to Johnson, who took up the thread. “And then there’s the grandmother. We’ve confirmed there was a grandmother, or at least a surrogate, in each case. He considers that important. But Nelson’s parents died a long time ago. His wife was still a child when her mother died. His children are older, and the Nelsons have never had a servant or nanny who could be considered a grandmother stand-in.”
Emerson spoke up for the first time. “Okay, I understand the assistant inspector’s reasoning, but it’s possible that this time he couldn’t exactly match all the patterns of his previous life. If, as Salazar suggests, he sees his current existence as a new, improved version, he could have modified some things. Changing religion could have been a deliberate tactic to make sure he’d never come face to face with anyone from his former parish, even by chance.”
Amaia snorted. “Of course I don’t believe he