“I didn’t know what else to do. I went to school and learned a bit about all the areas in forensics, then I focused on how the criminal mind works. Actually I’d planned to be a Profiler, but I couldn’t live what they do every day. So here I am. Thank God for Savich’s new unit.”
“You even learn about blood-spattering patterns?”
“Yeah, some of the examples of that were pretty gruesome. I’m not an expert, but at least I learned enough so that I’d know what to do, where to find out more, who to contact.”
Captain Dougherty said, “Everyone thinks profiling is so sexy. Remember that show on TV about a Profiler?”
“Yeah, the one with ESP. Now that was something, wasn’t it? Why bother with profiling? A waste of time. Just tune in to the guy and you’ve got him.”
He grinned and she distracted him with another question about one of the men they’d hauled in for questioning.
It was at midnight when Savich sat up in bed, drew a very deep breath, and said softly, “I’ve got you, you son of a bitch.”
He worked at the computer until three o’clock in the morning. He called Ralph Budnack at seven A.M. and told him what he needed.
“You got something, Savich?”
“I just might,” he said slowly. “I just might. On the other hand, I might be off plucking daisies in that big flower market in the sky. Keep doing what you’re doing.” He then called Lacey’s room.
“I need you,” he said. “Come to my room and we’ll order room service.”
The fax was humming out page after page from Budnack. “Yeah,” Savich was saying, “this will help.”
“You won’t tell me what you’re homing in on?”
“Nope, not until I know there’s a slight chance I’m on the right track.”
“I was thinking far into the night,” she said, and although it wasn’t at all cold in the room, she was rubbing her hands over her arms. She looked tired, pinched. “I couldn’t get this seven business out of my mind.” She drew a deep breath. “We banked everything on seven, and so we got the Pleiades and all that numerology stuff. But what if it doesn’t have anything to do with seven at all? What if there was just the one instance of seven and that was merely the time lag before he started killing again? What if he killed more than seven women? Eight women or even nine?” She looked nearly desperate, standing there, rubbing her arms. “Not much of a big lead there. I think you’re right, it’s just too pat, and too confining. But if there’s nothing there, then what else is there?”
“You’re perfectly right. You’ve got a good brain, Sherlock. My brain was working in tandem with yours-”
She laughed, some of the tension easing out of her. “‘Which means that you’ve got a good brain too.”
“Me and MAX together have a top-drawer brain. All right, let me tell you where I’m heading and if you think I’m off the wall, then you can haul me back. I’ve been thinking that we’ve gotten too fancy here, exactly what you said-it’s too complicated out there. It assumes our killer is a really deep profound fellow with lots of esoteric literary or astrological underpinnings. That he probably builds designer furniture on the side. I woke up at midnight and thought: Give me a break. This is nothing but a headache theory. It’s time to get back to basics.
“I knew then that our guy isn’t any of those things. I think the answer just might lie with the obvious. I’ve been asking MAX to come up with other alternatives or new options based on new factoring data I’ve put in.” He drew a deep breath. “Remember, Sherlock, this still might not lead anywhere.”
“What’s obvious?”
“A psychopath who knows how to build props, make them fold up small, and make them portable. I know that they checked into this in San Francisco-they went to all the theaters, interviewed a dozen prop designers and builders. I went back in to see exactly what they did find-and where they’d looked, what kind of suspects they’d turned up.