All In (The Naturals, #3)(50)
“The numbers were always there.” Sloane’s voice was insistent. “Even if he didn’t write them on someone’s wrist, or kill in the right locations, they were there.”
In the dates, I finished silently. Maybe the signature, the deep-seated psychological need being manifested in the UNSUB’s behavior, was that the kills needed to be driven by the numbers. Viewed from that perspective, the additional elements of the Vegas crimes weren’t a departure in signature.
They were an escalation. More numbers, more rules.
“I’m older now,” Dean said, testing out the possibility. “Wiser, better. I’ve waited for so long, planned so long….” His voice was lower when he profiled, deeper. “Once upon a time, I was an amateur. Now, I’m an artist. Invincible. Unstoppable.”
“And this time,” I said slowly, “you want credit.”
That’s why you wrote the numbers on your victims’ wrists, I thought. You wanted us to crack the code. You wanted us to see the full extent of what you’d done.
“We’ll have a hard enough time convincing the local PD that Beau Donovan isn’t our serial killer without bringing up a decade-old case that, on the surface, looks completely unrelated.” Briggs’s voice broke into my thoughts. “The powers that be in this city want this case solved. Now. If we push the theory that this last attack isn’t the work of our UNSUB, we can expect the cooperation we’ve seen up to this point to dry up pretty quickly.”
“Meaning,” Lia said, “that you might lose your complimentary suite at the Desert Rose. I hear there are some lovely establishments just off the Strip.”
“Meaning,” Agent Briggs countered, “that if we want a list of hotel guests to compare to witnesses and persons of interest in the New York case, those same powers that be are probably going to refuse to hand anything over without a warrant.”
“And,” Agent Sterling added soberly, “Grayson Shaw will almost certainly insist on opening back up the Grand Ballroom at the Majesty.”
My fingers curled themselves inward, my nails lightly scratching the surface of my palms. Three days. That was how long we had until the next murder. That was how long we had to convince Sloane’s father that reopening the ballroom was a mistake.
“What do you want us to do?” Dean was nothing if not focused.
“For now,” Agent Briggs said, “we just need you to stay put. Stay in the room and stay out of trouble. We’re on it.”
Whether or not Sterling and Briggs were “on it,” none of us had any intention of sitting around and twiddling our thumbs until they came up with our next assignment.
I grabbed a pen and the Majesty notepad by the phone and wrote down the names of everyone we’d talked to so far on this case, then crossed off two: the head of security and Camille Holt. He was in a coma; she was dead. Neither were suspects.
“The New York murders were committed eleven years ago,” I said. “By virtue of their ages, that rules out not just Beau Donovan, but also Aaron Shaw and Tory Howard.”
Children could be made to do horrible things—Dean was proof enough of that. But slitting someone’s throat from behind? That wasn’t the MO of a child with limited reach.
I went through the rest of the names on my list. Thomas Wesley was thirty-nine, which put him at twenty-seven and serving as the CEO of his first company at the time of the New York murders. The professor was thirty-two, and a quick internet search informed me that he’d done his undergraduate degree at NYU. I hesitated slightly, then added a final name to the list.
Grayson Shaw.
Sloane’s father was in his early fifties. He was clearly a man who thrived on power and being in control. The way he’d treated Sloane told me that he had tendencies toward seeing people as possessions and behaving callously and unemotionally toward them.
I would have bet Michael’s car that, as the owner of the Majesty corporation, Grayson Shaw made frequent trips to New York.
“Far be it from me to suggest that Sloane hack the FBI again,” Michael said, preventing Sloane from dwelling on her father’s name, “but I think Sloane should hack the FBI again.”
Judd appeared in the doorway a moment later. He eyed Michael, eyed the rest of us, and then went to make himself some coffee.
“You missed out on a lot of action this morning,” Lia called after him.
He didn’t so much as turn around. “I don’t miss out on much.”
In other words: Judd knew quite well what we’d spent our morning doing. He just hadn’t interfered—and he wasn’t going to interfere now. Judd’s priority wasn’t solving cases, or making sure the FBI didn’t get hacked. His job was keeping us safe and fed.
No matter what.
As far as he was concerned, most everything else came out in the wash.
“If tertium doesn’t just mean that our killer has a fixation on the number three, if it really does mean that this is the third time our killer has pulled this routine,” Lia was saying beside me, warming up to Michael’s suggestion, “it only makes sense to see if we can dig up the case we’re missing.”
Only Lia could make hacking the FBI sound reasonable.
“I can set up a program,” Sloane volunteered. “Not just for the FBI, but for Interpol, local police databases, anything I already have a back door into. I’ll have it search any available records that fit our parameters. Last time, I did a manual search for a single Fibonacci date. This will take a little more time up front, but the results will be more comprehensive.”