samples of handwriting Becca gave me aren’t Krimakov’s.”
Thomas looked like someone had slapped him. He said slowly,
“No, that’s not possible. Admittedly I just looked at the ones from
Riptide briefly, but they looked the same to me. You’re sure about
this, Sherlock? Absolutely?”
“Oh, yes, completely sure. We’re dealing with a very different
person here, and this person’s mind isn’t like yours or mine.”
“You mean he’s not sane,” Thomas said.
“It’s difficult to say with absolute certainty, but it’s possible he’s
so far over the edge he’s holding on by his fingernails. We could
throw around labels–psychopath comes readily to mind–but
that’s just a start. The only thing we’re completely certain about–
he’s obsessed with you, Thomas. He wants to prove to you that
you’re nowhere near his league, that he’s a god and you’re dirt. He
sees himself as an avenger, the man who will balance the scales of
justice, the man who will be your executioner.
“It’s been his goal for a very long time; it could at this point even
be his only reason for living. He’s rather like a missile that’s been
programmed for one thing and one thing only. He won’t stop, ever,
until either he’s killed you or you’ve killed him.”
“So it was never Krimakov,” Adam said slowly. “He really was
killed in that auto accident in Crete.”
“Probably so. Now, not all of this is from our experts’ analysis.
Profiling had a hand in it, as well.” Sherlock turned back to
Thomas. “Like you said, the two different sets of handwriting look
close to a layman’s eye, which probably means that this guy knew
Krimakov, or at least he’d seen his handwriting a goodly number of
times. A friend, a former or present colleague, someone like that.”
“We’re sorry, guys,” Savich said. “I know that Krimakov’s former
associates have been checked backwards and forwards, but I guess
we’re going to have to try to do more. I’ve already got MAX doing
more sniffing around Krimakov’s neighbors, business associates,
friends in Crete and on mainland Greece, as well. We already know
that he had a couple of side businesses in Athens. We’ll see where
that leads.”
“No, all that has already been checked,” Thomas said.
Savich just shook his head. “We’ll have to do more, try anything.”
Sherlock said, “We’ve also inputted everything we know into
the PAP to see what comes out. Remember, the computer can analyze
more alternatives more quickly than we can. We’ll see.”
Thomas said, “All right. What exactly did the profilers have to
say, Sherlock?”
“Back to a label. He is psychotic. He has absolutely no remorse,
no empathy for any of the people he’s killed. None of them mean
anything to him. They were detritus to be swept out of his way.”
“I wonder why he didn’t kill Sam,” Becca said.
“We don’t know,” Savich said. “That’s a good question.”
“It just doesn’t seem possible,” Adam said. “Just not possible.
Why would a colleague or some bloody friend–no matter how
close to Krimakov–go on this rampage? Even if he is a psychopath,
always has been a psychopath, why wait more than twenty
years after the fact? Why take over Krimakov’s mission as his own?”
No one had an answer to that.
Adam said, “Now we’ve got to find out who would follow up
on Krimakov’s vendetta once Krimakov himself was dead. What’s
his motivation, for God’s sake?”
“We don’t know,” Sherlock said, and she began rubbing Sean’s
back with her palm. He was cooing against his father’s shoulder,
the graham cracker very wet but still clutched tightly in his hand.
“There are graham cracker crumbs all over the house,” Savich
said absently.
Becca didn’t say anything. There were few things she’d ever been
absolutely sure were true in her life. This was one of them. It simply
had to be Krimakov. No matter how infallible the handwriting
experts usually were, they were wrong on this one.
But what if they weren’t wrong? A psychopath obsessed with
finding and killing her father? He’d called himself her boyfriend.
He’d blown up that poor old bag lady in front of the Metropolitan
Museum. He’d dug up Linda Cartwright and bashed in her face.