She’d given the Krewe carte blanche with her house; she noted that they’d apparently recognized this room as hers and chosen other ones.
She looked around. She’d rented it furnished and during her most recent visit, with the place empty, she’d brought her old treasures back to this room, out of nostalgia more than practicality. Maybe because her life was on the verge of change... The bookshelves were filled with her beloved fiction—and the books she’d devoured on law enforcement, the FBI, profiling, unsolved cases and the minds of killers.
I must have been a pretty scary kid, she thought.
The guitar she’d never quite learned to play sat, once again, in its stand near her closet. A stack of board games lay on a table in a corner. The room was still decorated in royal blue with black trim, nothing girly or frilly about it.
She had never owned a doll.
She examined her old CDs and DVDs, which she’d arranged on one of the shelves. She’d collected some weird and obscure music and some classics. She’d been in love with the Traveling Wilburys and the various band members and their solo careers and work. She’d watched everything ever done by M. Night Shyamalan.
She’d also owned Blythe Spirit, which her father had taken her to see on Broadway, and Ghost, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir...
Because she had her own ghost?
She smiled a little bitterly. “Blue, I do have my own ghost—so where are you? It’s you and me now, you know?”
Her half smile cracked some of the dried mud on her face.
The shower. She went in and turned the spray on hot and hard. A shower felt great on the body and great for the mind, as Angela had suggested.
However, it didn’t really do much for her mind. Although it did make her forget—for the moment—that they were in a battle against time if they were going to find Bianca Salzburg.
It made her wish she wasn’t in the shower alone.
She winced.
She was becoming obsessed with Malachi. A good thing? Or not? What if they’d just discovered each other simply because of the circumstances? What if what she felt wasn’t real and what if their personal relationship fell apart and they both became part of the Krewe?
She needed to think carefully.
She still wished he was there in the shower with her.
*
A shower could clear the mind.
Malachi didn’t really want his mind cleared; he wanted to put everything within it in order.
First. Theories he was convinced could be proven, or were, in effect, proven by what they knew.
Like his belief that the killer was someone who knew Savannah, knew it extremely well, and knew the history of the city.
Second. The killer thought he was a pirate or wished he was a pirate in days gone by. He’d given Helen Long a card with a name on it, Christopher Condent, and Condent had been a brutal pirate who’d never faced justice, eventually becoming a rich man.
Third. The killer was dressing up as Blue Anderson.
Because there were so many good images of Blue? Or because of the sweeping hat Blue had worn, his long dark hair and the facial hair that could hide a real identity? And did the motivation involve his theory that the killer wanted to discredit the real Blue Anderson? If so, was there any connection to the fact that the victims had all been to the Dragonslayer before they were abducted?
Fourth. A mental note, really. He thought he had the killer narrowed down; he’d be shocked if he was wrong. It was someone close to Abby. Someone who was close to the Dragonslayer and had known Gus well. Someone familiar with the legends of Blue and other pirates, and, perhaps, someone in a solid business position. He’d need a certain amount of money to move about easily, to join others at a bar, to appear to be part of the everyday community. Perhaps he wasn’t young or attractive, but he would know how to make others think he was kind and nice. He was dressing up and proud of the fact that he was fooling people, including his own peers. No one knew him when he went into pirate mode to attack his victims.
Malachi got out of the shower. Angela had left him several pieces of Jackson’s clothing. He didn’t want to look like an agent but he wanted clothing that didn’t advertise the fact that he was carrying a weapon. He chose jeans, a polo shirt and a navy windbreaker. He was going to drink with the barflies today, get them talking, learn more about them. And he’d do it with Abby, who would know what was true and what wasn’t and if any of the trio—or even Sullivan, Macy or Grant Green—behaved strangely.
Downstairs, he was glad to find Kat Sokolov at the dining room table, watching the screens that patrolled the Dragonslayer and now the river embankment, too.
“Kat, what about the victim from the tunnels? Have they identified her yet?”
Kat shook her head. “They have her DNA and took dental X-rays, but there’s nothing to compare them to. I received some possible candidates from the database, but nothing definitive.”