His lips compressed and he frowned at the floor.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” she asked on a note of discovery. “I think that’s great! But you don’t have to sneak around, for God’s sake.”
He reached out suddenly, one hand circling her wrist. “Remember when I told you things aren’t always what they seem?” he asked, then, as if he realized what he was doing, released her. “Well, this is one of those times. Yes, there’s another woman, but it’s not what you think.” He rubbed a hand around his neck. “Maybe it’s time I leveled with you.”
“Past time. You’re the one man I thought I could really and truly rely on in this world. Even more than my brothers.”
A tic had started to develop under one eye.
“Let’s go inside,” he said, his gaze skipping from her to the floor to the open doorway where sunlight blazed and the horses grazed.
The morning had seemed calm and safe. But a sense of foreboding came over her and she knew that feeling was going to change.
He started for the open door. “Settler should hear this, too.”
Paterno sat at his desk. He’d studied the crime scene at the church and was convinced by the scuff marks that Oliver had been caught in the nave, probably praying, and dragged to the basement. His fingers were raw from struggling with the rope at his neck. His wrists had been slit at impossible angles for him to have done it himself. No doubt he was murdered by the same perp who seemingly had made a half-assed attempt to have the death appear like a suicide. But no, Paterno wasn’t buying that. The killer was smart enough to know that no one would be fooled, he was just reminding everyone that his victim had once tried to kill himself by slitting his wrists.
At least that was Paterno’s take on what had happened. “Nutcase,” he muttered, then turned his eyes back to his cluttered desk. He’d been studying the information they’d collected on the recent murders as well as Ryan Carlyle’s death. He went back to it, sifting through the damned information again while he waited for the lab reports, ducked calls from the press and doodled on a notepad. He wrote down whatever thoughts came into his head
about the case, drawing stars, one after the other.
Rossi walked into the room with two paper cups of coffee. It was late morning, Paterno had slept only three hours the night before, and even the sludge that passed as Java down here smelled good. He’d already downed three cups, two at home and one here. “The son of a bitch is trying to give us a clue,” Paterno muttered, pointing at the figures that had been found at each of the fires, including the most recent one, where the number four had replaced the long triangular point of the star.
Rossi nodded. He handed Paterno one of the paper cups. “But what?”
“Beats me,” he said, taking a sip and staring at the images. “But it means something and it has to do with birth order, according to Shannon Flannery.”
“Looks more like the spokes are protecting the center piece. Birth order…Do the numbers represent the brothers by birth order?”
“It’s possible.”
“That’s a weird thing, though, isn’t it?” Rossi shook his bald head. “The guy’s just fuckin’ with us.”
“Why go to all the trouble?”
“He’s a friggin’ psycho. Got time on his hands.”
Paterno’s head snapped up. “Good point. Whoever did Oliver took a lot of time at it. He had to have been waiting for a while. If this guy’s got a regular job, or a family, he must be dead on his feet by now.” He drank a long swallow, then frowned. “And where the hell is Travis Settler’s daughter?”
“Wish I knew,” Rossi said.
“I wish anyone but the killer knew.” Paterno looked at a map of the area he had mounted on his wall. With blue pushpins he’d marked all the residences of the Flannery and Carlyle families. Using red, he’d indicated where fires had been set, black where a murder had been committed. In Shannon Flannery’s case, she had two red pins and two blue—for the two fires and for being a member of both the Flannery clan and the Carlyle family. At Robert and Mary Beth Flannery’s residence, he’d inserted a red, two blue and a black pin on the map.
So far the system hadn’t told him much. He’d done a similar thing on the computer, hoping that some fancy program would help him locate the kid, or the killer or some damn thing. So far, nada.
“So what do we know?” he thought aloud, sipping from the cup. “We’ve been figuring that the guy has to have the kid nearby, so he can get back and forth to the crime scenes, but that might not be true. Dani Settler might not be alive. The tape he left in Shannon Flannery’s truck could have been made at the time of the abduction or any time thereafter. It doesn’t prove she’s still alive, just that he abducted her and she was alive when the tape was made. We know he didn’t leave her in Idaho at the farm, so we assume he brought her to California, but that’s still just an assumption.”
“But he has to live nearby,” Rossi ventured. “And know the victims pretty well. He’s figured out their schedules, knows where they live, or where they go, like in Oliver’s case. He anticipates where they’ll be and finds a way to get inside.”
“In each case, there’s a fire involved. So it’s someone who has a fascination with fire.”
“We’re checking the database for all known arsonists who aren’t locked up, looking at those who have recently been released. Haven’t come up with anyone yet.”
“It’s a long shot anyway, this is more personal. As for anyone fascinated with fire, you’ve got the whole damned Flannery family,” Paterno said. “Shamus, the grandfather, when the department was all volunteer, then Patrick, his son, and later all of Patrick’s boys signed up.”
“Until they dropped out.”
Paterno nodded. “Now we’re down to Robert. He’s the only one still in the department. How about that?” He raised an eyebrow as he leaned back in his chair. “The Flannerys—They’re not exactly retiring as heroes. The old man, Patrick, he didn’t retire unblemished. He was pretty much forced into it.”