"You got something else in mind?"
"Just testing my supervisor's accomplice theory."
Kessler shook his head, smirking. "Look, I'm the last guy to cross a potential suspect off the list willy-nilly. But Beth Wheatley is no serial killer's sidekick."
"That's the same reaction I had. At first. But we have to look at the evidence. One scenario suggests that whatever con or ruse the killer used to gain access the second time didn't work with the first victim. He had to force his way in?, "Maybe the first victim was more careful than the second, more savvy."
"Possibly," said Andie.
"Or maybe practice makes perfect. He had a little more polish on his ruse the second time. He was more persuasive with victim number two."
"Or maybe he had help the second time."
He nodded slowly, seeming to pick up her drift. "Like an attractive thirty-five-yearold woman. Someone who could knock on the front door, say her car broke down, and ask to use the phone. A fifty-one-yearold man would be more willing to open the door for an attractive woman in distress."
"For that matter, so would another woman."
Again, he read her mind. "As in the next three victims, all female."
They exchanged a long look, as if each were waiting for the other to say it was ridiculous. Neither one did.
Kessler raised an eyebrow, intrigued. "So, where does that leave us?"
Andie watched as he turned the key and opened the door. It was like unsealing a tomb. Dark and silent. The residual odor of death wafted from the living room.
"Confused," she said as she stepped inside.
Gus didn't leave the house all day. The prospect of a phone call kept him there. Beth. Her kidnapper. Someone responding to his ad.
The ad had run again in this morning's Post-Intelligencer, identical to yesterday afternoon's ad in the Times. A smaller version would run again tomorrow in Seattle and in the Portland Oregoner. After all, Beth's fingerprints had been found on an Oregon pay phone. Agent Henning had told him to run everything by her, but she had also told him the FBI considered his wife a possible accomplice. That had changed the whole ball game in Gus's eyes, heightening the need for self-help. To that end, he borrowed one of the computer experts from his law firm to help load pictures and information about Beth in all the right places on the World Wide Web, along with the offer of the reward. He even purchased an ad from America Online and other major Internet services. For the next twenty-four hours his would be one of a half dozen advertisement icons that popped on the screen when subscribers logged on. People wouldn't have to read the actual ad unless they clicked on the icon and opened it, so he had to be creative. "Win $250,000!" was what he came up with. It was a little slick perhaps, but the idea was to get people to click and read. "Have you seen this person?" wasn't exactly catchy.
Less than an hour of his day had actually felt wasted. That was how long it took to return phone messages from the office. It was something he had to do, so in that sense it was productive. But when he had finished, it hardly felt like an accomplishment. He had voluntarily reassigned his case load to other partners so that he could focus on finding Beth. That left little in the way of legal responsibilities. And last week's bloodless coup had shifted all his managerial responsibilities to Martha Goldstein. For the first time in his life he wasn't the point man at the office.
It was liberating in a sense, knowing how easily he could divest himself of responsibility and chuck it all, if he wanted. No one would be hurt, not the firm or his clients. On the other hand, such freedom didn't exactly stroke his sense of self-worth. It reminded him of the so-called Preston & Coolidge revolt some years ago. Gus had ruffled a few feathers by deciding to run for managing partner at the relatively young age of thirty-eight. He challenged his own mentor, a senior partner with twenty years more experience. Eleven other senior partners threatened to resign if Gus were elected. Gus ran. And he won. The old guard made good on their threat. They left in a huff to open a competing firm right across the street. They did everything they could to hurt what was left of Preston & Coolidge. They reviled Gus in the newspapers. They made job offers to the firm's top young associates. They tried to lure away clients. Their actions created chaos and panic throughout the firm. For about two days. Then . The reporters moved on to stories more newsworthy. The lawyers went back to practicing law. The clients stayed put. It took about a week for the buzz around the watercooler to switch from "Do you think we're going to make it?" to "Do you think those crazy old fools are going to land on their feet?" In a month it was as though the infamous "Geriatric Dozen" had never worked at the firm, their influence as remote as the very dead Mssrs. Preston and Coolidge who had founded the firm a hundred years earlier. That was the beauty of the institution. No one was indispensable.