A Profiler's Case for Seduction(72)

The fact that she didn’t lock her door affirmed the profile of her that had begun to emerge. He found it ironic that she was teaching a class about sociopaths in society, especially given the fact that he believed Melinda was the truest form of a sociopath.

He eased the door open and slid inside, then quietly closed the door behind him. The corner office was large, with windows on two sides. The furnishings were sleek, black and chrome, cold and impersonal. A large desk faced the door, with a leather chair behind it. Two uncomfortable-looking straight-back chairs faced the desk, set at a distance so as not to invade in any way the professor’s personal space.

The walls held her degrees and awards she had received in her field of study. There was nothing personal anywhere in the room. A bookcase held only books, no knickknacks or souvenirs that might hint of the person who occupied this space.

He moved around the desk and looked down at the papers that were strewn across the top. A psychology journal was open to an article on treatment plans for the sociopath; student papers were in a stack, the top one sporting thick red slashes where corrections had been made.

Sticky notes littered the bare space, detailing the minutia in a life. Pick up dry cleaning. Check with B about pit. Get lettuce and eggs. Pink and yellow notes pinned to the top of the desk by a strip of adhesive. There was nothing here that clenched Mark’s gut or that raised any alarm at all in his head.

He slid open the top desk drawer to see an array of paperclips and pens. A red pair of scissors was nestled next to a black stapler. He closed the drawer and opened the second one.

Where the first had held the tools of a teacher, the second contained the tools of a beautiful and vain woman. The drawer held a hand mirror, makeup, a tube of red lipstick and a hairbrush, certainly nothing that would prove or disprove his belief.

He opened the third drawer, which was deep enough to hang files. Inside were files neatly labeled with colorful plastic tabs. He riffled through them, finding them to contain research on a variety of psychological subjects.

Aware of the ticking of time, knowing that he only had a total of about forty minutes to search and then get out of the office and away from the building, he was about to close the file drawer when something caught his eye at the very bottom.

The stack of small cards like those that had been found on the victims was nearly hidden by the files. He quickly yanked on his gloves, his heart beating a rapid response.

As he picked up the stack held together by a rubber band, he noticed that the first one had writing on it. He straightened and stared at the top card.

“Failu.” He frowned, his brain working overtime to make sense of the letters. Failu? His heart chilled as he realized he might possibly be looking at the card that had been meant to be left on his dead body.

Failu...an interruption of the word that had been meant. Failure. Had that been her intention? If that note card had been found on him after his death, it certainly would have been true. It would have meant he’d failed to capture her. He’d failed to avoid his own death.

Failure.

The word shuddered through him as he clasped the stack of cards in his gloved fingers. Failure as a profiler, failure as a father...and failure to make his case.... How she must have delighted at finding the perfect word to describe him.

With trembling hands he quickly removed the rubber band and plucked the card off the top. He riffled through the rest of the cards but saw no more that contained any writing.

Aware of the passage of time, he quickly placed the “Failu” card into one of his evidence envelopes and then checked his watch again and decided it was time to boogie out of there.

The card in his pocket legally proved nothing, at least not yet. The team had already asserted that these particular note cards were a popular item for sale in the bookstore. The fact that Melinda had the cards proved nothing. But he was eager to get back to the war room and compare the handwriting to the notes that had been found on the dead men.

It was possible Melinda’s card would have to be seen by a handwriting analysis.

It might be nothing, or it might be something that would explode the case wide-open. There was no question in Mark’s mind that the card had been meant for him, that Melinda and her partner had been plotting Mark’s death and this “Failu” card would label him what they believed him to be. However, believing and proving legally were two very different animals.

While Mark hurried out of the building, he realized that as far as he was concerned there were only two people he believed could be Melinda’s partner. The first was Ben Craig, the assistant who was devoted to her, and the second was Andrew Peterson, who had been besotted with her. Either man could have been manipulated into helping her commit murder.