CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Gabe Levine answered on the third ring, his usual joviality mellowed by a kindly empathy. He had seen her number and known right away that she was in a tough spot. How he could know that was another one of his impressive talents that Kate might never fully understand.
But she appreciated it. “Hey, Gabe. Got a minute?”
“For you, Kate, always. What’s on your mind?”
"So many things, but I'll limit this call to the case I'm working on.
I've translated the cipher. It's Aramaic encrypted in a four-parter.
Couple of different substitutions, and… well, I'll go over the fun details later.
The not-fun part is that there doesn't seem to be anything that points to the killer here. "
“That’s not true,” Gabe said. “It’s never been true.”
“Well, whoever it’s pointing to, I can’t see it,” Kate said. “It’s just a very long way of saying something that could have been said in five sentences.”
“Well, go ahead and give me what you have, and we’ll work through it together.”
He spoke with the soothing calm of a teacher talking down a distraught student.
She’d seen him use that tone to great effect on many graduate students encountering a hurdle in their master’s or doctoral theses and confronting the possibility of their academic and career dreams going up in smoke.
She wondered how many thirty-seven-year-olds were among that number.
She walked him through everything she had translated, starting with the long cipher at the Carlton’s house and emphasizing the fact that facilitating adultery featured strongly in the first two ciphers but was strangely absent from the third.
While she explained, he listened, interrupting only briefly to clarify minor points. When she finished, he said, “Forgive me, Kate, but I fail to see the difficulty here. This seems clear to me. Your killer is intent on punishing those they believe to be facilitating adultery.”
“That’s just it,” Kate replied. “The last victim was a wedding planner. I don’t know how she could have facilitated adultery.
We followed up on her, and she’s clean as a whistle.
Faithful to her husband and apparently responsible for an unbroken string of perfect weddings. She doesn’t fit the profile.”
“Sure, she does. You just haven’t figured out how yet.”
Kate took a breath and tried to stifle her frustration.
It wasn’t Gabe’s fault that she didn’t have answers yet.
“Well, when her husband gets back, we can talk to him, but he’s stuck in the Ukraine on a Doctors Without Borders mission, and Russia’s been too aggressive for him to leave.
This killer’s moving fast, and there’s no telling how long it will be before Mr. Walker gets here or even has reliable phone coverage so we can talk to him.
And frankly, we’ve been relying on our victims to give us our leads this whole time and gotten nowhere with it.
I was hoping… Well, that maybe you could tell me if there’s something in this cipher that might give us another strategy. ”
“I can’t perform miracles, Kate,” Gabe explained, still using that kindly professor’s tone.
“And neither can you. All I can say with certainty is that the killer murdered Diane Walker because they believe her to have facilitated the violation of the seventh commandment. You say she was a wedding planner. Perhaps she planned a wedding between a man and his mistress. Or a woman and her mister. Or a woman and her mistress. You get the point.”
Kate’s eyes popped open as the answer came to her. “That’s it. Gabe, you’re a genius!”
“Of course I am,” he replied cheerfully.
“And you are nearing a dangerous level of emotional stress. Good luck with this case, Kate, and equally good luck taking care of yourself after and allowing yourself a chance to heal. I know you don’t want to hear me lecture about self-care right now, so I’ll let you go, but for God’s sake—no, for your sake—stop acting as though the fate of the entire world rests on your shoulders. ”
Not the entire world. Just my world. Aloud, she said, “Thanks, Gabe. Once again, you’ve pulled my head out of the weeds and helped me see what should have been obvious.”
“You want to hear me correct that statement no more than you want my lecture on self-care,” Gabe replied. “So, I’ll just say thank you and good luck.”
She hung up and took a deep breath. This was good.
This was a big step in the right direction.
By which she meant it was an actual direction.
She’d been trying to find a skeleton in Diane Walker’s closet, but maybe her closet was pristine.
Maybe she was just an innocent bystander to the marriage of a real skeleton.
The ghost of an idea began to form in her mind. She was too cautious after so much disappointment to say it was a good one yet, but she felt good about it. That alone made it worth following up on.
She picked up her phone and called Marcus. He answered on the second ring. “Hey, partner.”
He sounded listless and dejected, but Kate couldn't take the time to comfort him now. They'd both have to suck up their emotions until this killer was caught. "Marcus, come back here. I think I know where to look next."
***
Kate looked so beautiful when she was excited. Marcus really wished he could turn off the part of his brain that noticed that, at least for ten minutes, but the flush in her cheeks and the light in her eyes made a part of him stir that really needed to be asleep.
“I think the murders are telling a story,” Kate said. “I think the victims are being killed in a particular order. I think the killer is trying to spin their tale of woe.”
“A tale of woe,” Marcus said. “Nice.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Kate said, waving her hand. “Tease me for my use of the English language later and just listen to what I’m saying.”
She turned to him, hands clasped behind her back. That moved the front of her shirt in unfair ways, but Marcus kept his eyes fixed firmly on hers.
“I think you’re right. I think it’s personal for the killer.”
Marcus raised an eyebrow. “Oh yeah?”
Kate looked at him, eyes flashing. “I’m not saying Cox isn’t involved or that this isn’t a commandment killer. I just think it’s also personal.”
“Also, personal. Got it. So, this tale of woe inspired the killer to murder these victims after brutally cutting out their genitals while they were still living.”
“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”
Marcus thought of the anger in Cheryl’s face when she confronted them in the field office and shivered. Thank God Cheryl wasn’t that kind of crazy.
He remembered that she got her information from one of Cox’s disciples and shivered again. He didn’t believe in murder, but sometimes he wondered if it would be that evil for him to take justice in his own hands when it came to Cox.
“Marcus? Are you listening?”
He blinked. “Yeah, sorry. Woman scorned. Go ahead.”
She glared at him. “I was saying, let me float an idea for you. The Carltons host a party. At that party is a certain person. We don’t know if it’s a man or a woman, so we’ll say Person A.”
“Person A. Got it.”
“Person A is married to Person B. Person B is not at this party. Person B would never sully their marriage vows by attending such a den of vice and sin.”
“Of course not.” Kate frowned, and Marcus said, “Not being sarcastic. Sorry, I’ll shut up.”
“Anyway,” Kate continued, “Person A meets Person C at this party, probably at the Carltons’ behest. A and C hit it off. A goes to Dr. Hammond with a problem. A loves B but really wants to screw C. How can he deal with this?”
“Dr. Hammond offers her famous solution of just screw C and B can deal with it.”
Marcus broke his commitment to silence by saying that, but Kate didn't scold him.
"Yep. So, A screws C. Discovers they like C better than B.
Decides to divorce B. B doesn't want a divorce, but since Florida is a no-fault state, it doesn't matter.
A gets a divorce and keeps boffing C, but now with a clean conscience. "
Marcus put the pieces together. “Then A decides that they and C would make a better couple than them and B.”
“And who plans their wedding?” Kate asked.
“Diane Walker.”
“Exactly.” She beamed.
“So that’s how we find our killer,” Marcus said. “We go through the list of every wedding Diane Walker planned and find the names that shows up in all three places: the Carltons’ list, Dr. Hammond’s medical files, and Diane Walker’s client history.”
“Double exactly.”
Marcus surprised himself by grinning. Apparently, he wasn’t completely immune to excitement at finding a good lead. “All right. Let’s call Rivera and start looking for a name.”
“Hell yes!”
Kate threw herself into Marcus’s arms and kissed him hard. The kiss was brief and despite being on the lips, almost chaste. There was no lasciviousness in it. She was just excited and wanted to share that excitement with Marcus.
Still, they both flinched away an instant later as though they’d kissed a live wire and not a human being. Kate flamed red and blurted, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Marcus said. Then, before the embarrassment could set in, “Come on. Let’s get to the office and get this done. We’ve still got half the day. We could have the killer in custody by nightfall.”
“From your mouth to God’s ears,” Kate said. “The real God, not the wolf in sheep’s clothing Cox prays to.”
Marcus drove them to the field office. They remained silent on the ride, but despite the uncertainty of their personal future, Marcus’s mind remained focused on the summit of the hill right in front of them.
The latest commandment killer had been found out. All that remained was finding the author of the brutal story they were telling and robbing them of their pen before they could ink the next chapter in the blood of another innocent.