THE MAZE by Catherine Counlter

“You married?”

“No. Ah, here we go. MAX’s first effort. Let me print it out.”

There were only two pages.

Savich grinned at them. “Take a look, guys.”

13

THE PLEIADES?” Ralph Budnack looked ready to cry. “We spent four hours inputting stuff and we get the Pleiades? What the hell are the Pleiades?”

“The seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione,” Lacey read. “They’re a group of stars, put in the sky by Zeus. Orion is behind them, chasing them.”

“This is nuts,” Ralph said.

“Keep reading,” Savich said. “Just keep reading.”

Lacey looked up, her face shining. “He’s an astronomer, he’s got to be. That or he’s an astrologer or into numerology, with astronomy as a hobby.”

Ralph Budnack said, “Maybe he’s a college professor, teaching mythology. He builds furniture on the side, as a hobby.”

“At least there appears to be something in the seven scenario,” Savich said, laying down page two. “We’ve got some leads. I’ve got a couple of other ideas, but Ralph, you and your guys can start checking this all out. Chances are, according to the Profilers, that the guy has been here at least six months, but less than a year. Enough time, in other words, for him to scout out all the places he’s going to take his victims.”

“Good point,” Budnack said, rubbing his hands together. “My other team members are interviewing everyone they can scrape up from the Congress Street area. I’ll pull them off to do this.”

When Lacey and Savich were alone, she said, “You’re having a problem with all this, aren’t you?”

“This whole business with the seven sisters of the Pleiades, it just seems too easy, too obvious.”

“Why? It took MAX to come up with it. The SFPD didn’t come up with it. The Profilers didn’t either. Also, it’s a seven-year interval between killings. He kills seven women at each cycle. Two sevens is a goodly number of sevens.”

Savich stood up and stretched, then he scratched his stomach. “You’re probably right. I’m just dragged down because MAX got it and we didn’t. But you know, I’ve got this itch in my belly. Whenever I’ve gotten this itch in the past, there’s been something I’ve missed.

“I need to go to the gym. Working out clears my brain. You want to come along? I won’t tromp you this time. In fact, I’ll start work on your deltoids.”

“I didn’t bring any workout stuff. Besides, I plan to protect my deltoids with my life.”

The cops tracked down four possible suspects within the next twenty-four hours-two of them astrologers who’d come to Boston during the past year, two of them numerologists. Both the numerologists had come during the past year from southern California. They didn’t arrest any of them. Budnack, Savich, and Lacey met later that day in Captain Dougherty’s office.

“No big deal about that,” Ralph Budnack said, frowning. “All the nuts come from southern California.”

“So does Julia Roberts,” Savich said.

“Point taken,” Budnack said and grinned. “So what do you think, Savich? It just doesn’t feel right with any of these guys. Plus two of them have pretty good alibis. We found a homeless guy, Mr. Rick, he’s called, who said he saw a guy going in and out of the warehouse on Congress. He said he was all bundled up and he wondered about that since it was really warm that night, said it was so warm he didn’t even have to sleep in his box. Said he hadn’t seen him before.”

“Any more specifics about the man?” Lacey asked. “Anything about what he looked like?”

“Just that he looked kind of scrawny, a direct quote from Mr. Rick. Whatever that means. Mr. Rick is pretty big. Scrawny just might mean anything smaller than six foot. I might add that only one of the four guys we picked up could

be called scrawny, and he’s got the strongest alibi.”

Savich had wandered away. He was pacing, head down, seemingly staring at the linoleum floor.

“He’s thinking,” she said in answer to Captain Dougherty’s unasked question.

“Your sister was really offed by this guy?”

“Yes. It’s been seven years. But you never forget.”

“Is that why you got into the FBI?”

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 *