Vengeful (Villains #2)(55)
The page loaded, and Eli’s heart quickened as he stared at the word across the top of the screen.
ExtraOrdinary.
XXIII
ONE AND A HALF YEARS AGO
EON
ELI knelt on the cell floor, a dozen pages spread before him. He’d narrowed the massive stack of killings to thirty. And then twenty. And now, at last, to six.
Malcolm Jones. Theodore Goslin. Ian Hausbender. Amy Tao. Alice Clayton. Ethan Barrymore.
Three drug dealers, two doctors, and a pharmacist.
He slipped the first three pages through the slot. “Run the ballistics in these against your executed EOs.”
Stell turned through the papers. “There are a hundred gang and cartel killings in this pile. Why these three?”
“A magician doesn’t reveal his secrets,” said Eli blandly.
“And you’re not a magician—you’re a murderer.”
Eli sighed. “How could I forget?” He nodded at the massive stack from which he’d culled the six names. “There are a hundred and seven gang and cartel killings in there, to be exact. Eighty-three of which we can rule out because they don’t fit the clean point-blank execution model I requested. Of the remaining twenty-four, fourteen had records for specializing in illegal weapons, ten in pharmaceuticals. Given the fact that your target has used the same gun for each and every execution, I decided to assume this wasn’t about acquiring weapons. We can narrow the list down even further because Jones’s, Goslin’s, and Hausbender’s executions all involved other victims, which, in addition to furthering my theory that the man you’re looking for is using a supernatural method of compulsion on his victims, negates the need for multiple samples from each scene, rendering three out of the original ten.”
“You’re sure it’s a man?”
“I’m not sure of anything,” said Eli, “but the odds favor a male killer. Female killers are rarer, and they tend to prefer more hands-on methods.”
“And you think he’s after drug dealers?” asked Stell.
Eli shook his head. “I think he’s after drugs.” He retrieved the other three profiles from the floor. “My theory is that your killer is either an addict, or very sick. Which brings me to these. Amy Tao, Alice Clayton, and Ethan Barrymore. The first two are doctors, the third is a pharmacist.”
Stell paced beyond the fiberglass wall. “And the dead EOs? How do they factor in?”
“I stand by my theory that our hunter was—and probably still is—targeting specific abilities. Andreas’s was destructive, but also restorative. Connelly’s regenerative.”
“Which supports your theory that he’s sick.”
There was, thought Eli, a grudging respect in Stell’s voice.
“It’s still only a theory,” he demurred. “Let’s start by confirming the ballistics.”
*
THE results came back two days later.
Alice Clayton and Malcolm Jones.
A doctor and a drug dealer, added to the tally of three dead EOs.
Eli’s picture was growing. But it was still missing something.
He kept coming back to the gun.
Their hunter was methodical, precise—he had to know that varying the style of execution would have helped cover the trail. And yet he’d chosen to maintain a single technique. There were reasons people adhered to such a pattern—sometimes it was a signature, other times a matter of comfort, or precision, but in this case Eli had a feeling that the killer didn’t want to get their hands dirty. Shooting was cold, efficient, and distant. But it was also clean. Sterile. It could be done at a distance, with no risk of biological data at the scene. The killer’s choice of weapon, despite the drawbacks of pattern, suggested they cared more about maintaining their own anonymity than hiding the trail of bodies. Which in turn suggested that the killer’s DNA was already in the system.
An EO who was known to authorities.
Eli’s pulse quickened as pieces clicked together in the back of his mind.
It was madness. Irrational. Impulsive. But Eli felt again that gentle pressure at his back, guiding him forward as he booted the computer and started searching for strange or sudden deaths in the practicing medical field.
Eli spent the next forty-eight sleepless hours skimming every database and obit and news story. He knew he was making leaps instead of strides, but the ground was smooth and sloped beneath his feet. So instead of catching himself, Eli let gravity do the work.
And then, finally, he found an obituary for Dr. Adam Porter. A leading neurologist, discovered dead after hours at a private practice. It had been a heart attack, according to the coroner’s report, but not at his desk, or on the way to his car, or safely at home. No, the body had been found on the hospital linoleum floor, next to a smoking MRI, its power blown.
A freak accident.
A massive current.
The patient records from that night were missing, a neat hole carved out in a busy schedule, but Eli could read the outline by the edges it left behind.
He knew the shape.
He’d seen it before.
Angie’s body, twisted on the floor of the lab at Lockland, her back arched, mouth open, the last seconds of her life immortalized by pain.
A heart attack, they’d said.
A freak accident.