THE MAZE by Catherine Counlter

He said slowly, shutting down his laptop, “I got creamed once when I was a trainee at the Academy. I wish I’d learned that move. My partner, James Quinlan, was playing a bank robber in a Hogan’s Alley exercise, and the FBI got the drop on him. I had to stand there and watch him get taken away. If I’d thrown him a gun, he might have had a chance. Although God knows what would have happened then.” He sighed. “Quinlan turned me in under questioning. I think he expected me to break him out of lockup, and when I didn’t, he sang. Although how he expected me to do it, I have no idea. Anyway, they caught me an hour later heading out of town in a stolen car, the mayor’s blue Buick.”

“Quinlan?”

“Yes.” Nothing more, just the yes. Let her chew on nothing for a bit.

“Who is this Quinlan?”

“An agent and longtime friend. Now, Sherlock, what do you think we’re going to find in Chicago?”

“You said the Chicago police believed they were close. How close?”

“You read it. A witness said he saw a man running from the victims’ house. They’ve got a description. We’ll see just how accurate it is.”

“What do you know, sir, that’s not in the reports?”

“Most of it’s surmise,” he said, “and some excellent stuff from my computer program.” He nodded to the flight attendant to remove his cup of coffee. He gently closed his laptop and slipped it into its hard case. “We’re nearly at O’Hare,” he said, leaned back, and closed his eyes.

She leaned back as well. He hadn’t shown her the computer analysis on the case. Maybe he’d thought she already had enough on her plate, and maybe she did. She hadn’t wanted to look at the photos from the crime scenes, but she had. It had been difficult. There hadn’t been any photos in the newspapers. The actual photos brought the horror of it right in her face. She couldn’t help it; she spoke aloud: “In all three cases, the father and mother were in their late thirties, their two children-always a boy and a girl-were ten and twelve. In each case, the father had been shot through the chest, then in his stomach, the second shot delivered after he was dead, the autopsy reports read. The mother was tied down on the kitchen table, her face beaten, then she was strangled with the cord of the toaster, thus the name the Toaster. The children were tied up, knocked out, their heads stuck in the oven. Like Hansel and Gretel. It’s more than creepy. This guy is incredibly sick. I’ve wondered what he would do if the family didn’t have a toaster.”

“Yeah, I wondered about that too, at first,” he said, not opening his eyes. “Makes you think he must have visited each of the homes to make sure there was one right there in the kitchen before the murders.”

“That or he brought the toasters with him.”

“That’s possible, but I doubt it. Too conspicuous.” He brought his seat back into its upright position. “Someone could have seen him carrying something. Another thing, in a lot of houses, kitchen ovens are set up high and built in. In a situation like that, how would he kill the children? In the photos, all of these are the big old-fashioned ovens.”

“He had a lot of checking out to do when he visited the families, didn’t he?”

She looked at his profile. He didn’t say anything. She slowly slid all the photos back into the envelope, each of them marked. She slowly lined up all the pages and carefully placed them back into their folders. He’d given this a whole lot of thought. On the other hand, so had she. She still wanted to see the computer analysis. Then again, she hadn’t demanded to see it either.

The flight attendant announced that they were beginning their descent into Chicago and for everyone to put away any electronic equipment. Savich fastened his seat belt. “Oh yes, our guy did a lot of checking.”

“How did you even remember my question? It’s been five minutes since I asked it.”

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *