The Black Wolf (In the Company of Killers, #5)(60)
“In the meantime,” Connors speaks up, “we have another job we hope you’re interested in assisting us with.”
Kenneth Ware, Gustavsson’s fan, smiles suddenly as if he is delighted to finally be getting to this point.
“Is that so?” I say to Connors, admittedly curious.
Connors nods and then looks to Ware, giving him the floor. Ware’s close-lipped smile stretches as he eagerly opens his laptop on the table, bends over in his chair and sifts through his leather satchel on the floor, and then produces a file folder much thicker than the one they had on me, at least two inches thick, stuffed with what appears to be a stack of eight-and-a-half-by-eleven sized photographs; a few of them slide off the top and halfway out of the folder when he sets it on the table. He shuffles them back into a neat stack, but not before I glimpse the blood and dead flesh; bodies in haphazard positions, strapped to furniture—photographs of crime scenes, no doubt.
“I take a special interest in serial killers, Mr. Faust,” says Ware—(and there it is: his not-so-hidden obsession with blood and those who crave it enough to kill for it on a regular basis). He opens the file folder. He’s still smiling, and I find it quite entertaining how he looks at Gustavsson more than me as he explains. “I’ve been tracking one for ten years and I’m very interested in your insight.” He looks only at me now and adds carefully, “Though, if possible of course”—he glances at Fredrik—“I would like it if Mr. Gustavsson could work with me on this case personally.”
“We do not do cases, Mr. Ware,” I point out. “We work jobs, missions. And we work alone. Vonnegut is different because we all want the same thing and need each other’s resources to get it, but as far as anyone else, you give us the information you have on a target, pay us to carry out the hit and we will do just that. It is about money, Mr. Ware, not justice, or the fundamental need to take out bad guys.”
Mark Masters glares at me across the table, but says nothing.
“Yes, I understand that,” Mr. Ware rambles on, fumbling through the stack of crime scene photos, “but this particular case is a lot like finding Vonnegut; we don’t have an identity on this serial killer—just an M.O.—and I think we have a much better shot unravelling the identity with your insights. And there’s something about the M.O. that Mr. Gustavsson”—he looks at Fredrik again, this time with an excited gleam in his eyes—“might find…familiar, for a lack of a less invasive word.”
“Familiar?” Fredrik speaks up—clearly Mr. Ware has gained Gustavsson’s attention.
Ware nods three times, his smile ever-growing, but before Ware can answer, Fredrik adds, “Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s interesting, but I get the feeling you’re putting me on the same level as the one you’re hunting—I’m no serial killer, Mr. Ware; now a serial torturer, I don’t like the way it sounds, but I admit it’s safe to say at least that much is true, but there’s a big difference between me and a serial killer.”
“Yes,” Ware agrees, excitedly, “there’s a difference between you and serial killers, but this particular serial killer, Mr. Gustavsson, forgive me for saying it like this, has enough in common with you that…well…” Ware swallows and glances at Connors and Barrett, clearly apprehensive about spitting the rest of his words out.
Fredrik folds his hands on the table and leans forward, cocking his dark head to one side inquisitively, intimidatingly, as only Gustavsson can do—he is quite good at making a man speak with just a look, sometimes even without his tools of the trade sitting on a tray next to him. Kenneth Ware swallows again and his eyes stray toward the crime scene photos.
“In common with me that what, Mr. Ware?”
Ware looks up, smiles squeamishly and says, “Well…that for a while I was sure you were the serial killer I was hunting. When Mr. Flynn came back with his information on Mr. Faust’s newly organized Order, and I read the file on you, it was like a goddamned light from the sky opened up above my head—I was sure you were my killer, convinced of it because your M.O. and the killer’s M.O. are so similar that I thought it couldn’t be disputed.”
I look over at Fredrik; his left eyebrow shifts upward.
Then he smiles darkly and leans back in his chair again, his hands unfolding and sliding away from the table.
“I’m the one who got him off your back,” Dorian Flynn reveals, proudly. “You may do some sick shit, but I knew you weren’t a damn serial killer.”
Are you still trying to save yourself, Flynn?
“So then what is this similarity, then?” Fredrik asks; he crosses his arms over his chest. “And how can you be so sure that I’m not the one you’re hunting—just because Dorian says I’m not the one, doesn’t make it true.”
Shedding the uneasiness, Ware smiles animatedly again, and plucks a few of the photographs from the stack, sliding them across the table into my and Fredrik’s view.
“The victims,” Ware says, “are missing all of their teeth, though they’re not pulled from the victim’s mouths, they’re cut out; the gums are always gaping and butchered, not indicative of a clean extraction.” He holds up his index finger to indicate that he has more. “And as if the missing teeth weren’t similar enough, all of the victims are found strapped to chairs—all different kinds of chairs, unlike your…well that chair you often use to do interrogations, but chairs nonetheless.”