do.”
My body trembles, but I don’t speak. Focus on the positive—he’s not firing you. You’re still in the game. That’s all that matters. You can deal with Dwight Ross later.
“I’m sure I’ll come up with more as we go along,” he says. “Now go back to your cubicle and get to work like a good little numbers girl.”
31
THE MAN who calls himself Charlie reads the data and notes on Emmy’s wall, his emotions going from admiration to envy to horror. Useless feelings, all of them, but he can’t help it as he reads on and on.
The list of homeless people in Los Angeles from a year ago, all of them declared dead of natural causes.
Next, a list of senior citizens in Scottsdale, again all deaths attributed to natural or accidental causes.
He thinks back to the timing of those murders. This would have been while she was still recovering, probably while she was still in the hospital.
What no other law enforcement agency was able to do, Emmy had done from her hospital bed.
He hadn’t heard a word of it in the media. He’d had no idea that anyone had connected these deaths in LA and Scottsdale and saw them as murders.
But you did, Emmy. Did no one believe you?
Apparently not. Still, it burns inside him. She has followed everything he’s done.
He checks his GPS tracker to confirm that Emmy isn’t on her way back home. Then he keeps reading.
The next group of victims is listed on a series of papers descending to the carpet. At the top of the list is the most recent—Nora Connolley in New Orleans. It’s been all over the news this weekend, Emmy’s visit to New Orleans, her theory that Nora Connolley’s death is part of a larger murder spree.
Below her, Laura Berg from Vienna, Virginia, and next to her, Detective Joe Halsted, whom Emmy had coaxed into investigating Laura’s death as a homicide and whom Charlie had killed as well. Then heading vertically downward again to victims in Indianapolis, Atlanta, Charleston, Dallas. Every victim accompanied by articles on his or her death, police reports, profiles of the victims, Emmy’s handwritten notes.
She missed a couple of victims, but how could she not miss one or two? He can’t believe she found these victims. How many stories of death did she have to sift through on a daily basis to find these people?
And even if she missed the occasional victim, she has seen more than enough. Enough to construct a pattern and a possible profile of the killer.
The victim profile:
Lives alone
Single-story home
House up for sale or recently purchased—video/photos of home online
Attached garage or detached but private access
Within two blocks of public transportation
Nonprofit/volunteer/advocacy work for disabled, homeless, elderly, terminally ill
The offender’s methodology:
Subdues individuals away from home—why?
Subdues them by injecting something with needle (puncture wounds on torsos)
Drives victims to their homes (why?) in their cars, not his (why?)
Takes public transportation back to his car at abduction site
The offender profile, less fact-based and more theoretical:
Skilled and disciplined
Medical training? Military special-ops background?
Doesn’t like people in need or the people who care for them
Doesn’t like stairs
Doesn’t like his vehicle being seen
Either (1) he’s frail and infirm and so self-loathing that he lashes out at those like him or their caregivers, or (2) he’s taken Darwinism to the extreme and wants to eradicate the weak in our society
Or both
He feels ripped open, exposed, burned.
He slams his fists down on the arms of the wheelchair over and over like a spoiled child, sweat pouring into his eyes, his body on fire, the useless anger consuming him. All of this work, all of the care I put into it, all the discipline, the methodology, was foolproof if properly executed, and I did properly execute it, I left behind no trace, I did everything right, but she figured it out anyway, my motives, my design, even a partial profile—
Then everything goes dark. Utter silence, a complete vacuum, no space or time, pure nothingness.
Blackness. Everything seeping out, his body still, the distracting emotions dissolving into mist.
And then clarity.
Only the worst of fools will fool themselves. There is no getting around it. Emmy won this battle. No, she didn’t pin it all the way down, and she never, ever would have pinned it on him. But she got close, and close is close enough to stop his work.
“Congratulations, my lady,” he whispers. “Round one goes to you.”
He wheels himself over and removes his equipment from her computers. Everything in them has been downloaded; all his spyware has been uploaded.
He