Twisted (Burbank and Parker 1)

“Nope.” His response was equally blunt. “Not if you can get the right people on board, it isn’t.”

Sloane shot him a wry look. “Have you ever known me not to get what I want?”

“Not even once.”

“Well, I don’t intend to start now.” Sloane rose, reaching across Elliot’s desk and extending her hand, ready to seal the deal. “I’ll get started on my end right away. Are you in?”

Elliot didn’t hesitate. He clasped Sloane’s fingers in a firm handshake. “You bet your sweet ass I am.”

CHAPTER

TWENTY-FIVE

DATE: 21 April

TIME: 0700 hours

OBJECTIVE: Persephone and Demeter

The weekend was a total success. I was brilliant. The gods were with me. Their cheers drowned out the shouts of the demons. The demons can no longer stop me. Nor can the mortals. The gods won’t permit it. They’ll never again question my allegiance. And, in a matter of days, they’ll guide me and the goddesses to Mount Olympus.

I have Demeter and Persephone. That was my major triumph.

I arrived at Penn State right on schedule. Professor Helen Daniels and her daughter, Abby, followed their customary Sunday routine. They attended church, then stopped at Stone Valley Recreation Area for a picnic, followed by an ambitious hike around Lake Perez.

I’d memorized the wooded, deserted section they’d pass and at what time they’d pass it. The rest was easy. Both women were slight, so it was easy to keep them quiet while the hypodermics did their job. Besides, they were so terrified by the combat knife that they scarcely made a sound.

I put them in a room together to accelerate their adjustment. It was the right thing to do. The proximity would give Demeter a chance to calm her child. Persephone would reap the benefits that only a mother could provide, and Demeter would

draw comfort from that fact. Together they would soothe each other, which would swiftly and ultimately help them accept their fate.

Everything was almost ready. I had only to settle Gaia and—at long last—claim my Artemis.

Office of Professor Elliot Lyman

John Jay College of Criminal Justice

New York City 8:10 A.M.

After a sleepless night, Elliot left his East Village apartment at dawn, hopped on the subway, and made his way to Columbus Circle, where he got out and walked the two blocks to John Jay.

The sun was still rising and the halls were deserted when he unlocked his office. Most people would probably think he was nuts for being so obsessed with this project. But with his initial work complete, and just a little more tweaking before he’d be ready to test his system, he was champing at the bit.

Sloane had come through, just as she’d said she would. Her FBI colleague, Special Agent Derek Parker, had kicked in, working hard and fast with some of Elliot’s contacts at the Bureau to navigate the back channels of the Department of Justice so Elliot could gain access to VICAP and CODIS.

The NYPD had been a tougher sell. It had taken days of lobbying—not only by Elliot and by Sergeant Erwin—but by Erwin’s captain at Midtown North, to pull off the coup of getting Elliot access to the Real Time Crime Center. Given that the RTCC was the NYPD’s enormous data warehouse of criminals, arrest records, and public records, the top brass at Puzzle Palace was less than enthused about handing over full access to a computer professor.

Midtown North’s lobbying had been a great help. Then again, the groundswell of negative publicity surrounding Cynthia Alexander’s disappearance from John Jay, and the mayor’s daily calls to the police commissioner, pressuring him for answers, hadn’t hurt either.

Now Elliot leaned back in the chair at his workstation with a sigh of relief. Just yesterday, with the help of a trusted grad student, he had digitized the last of the remaining police case files into crime description profiles—a detailed collection of facts, figures, and descriptions about each crime. Last night before heading home, Elliot had typed the cryptic command to run the load script and fill his system’s database with years of violent crime data on rapes, murders, and assaults. The process had taken all night to complete on its own. Perfect timing. He’d walked in just after it finished. He’d then spent the past two hours double-checking and fine-tuning.

It was now time to test the latest refinement of his life’s work.

With great anticipation, Elliot typed in three simple words: find related crimes, and then pressed the enter key. It would be hours before any results were displayed. And his meeting with Sloane, the FBI, and the NYPD wasn’t happening until one o’clock. So, rather than sit here and drive himself crazy, he grabbed his jacket and decided to walk up to the Krispy Kreme on West Seventy-second Street. He’d buy a couple of dozen donuts for himself and his grad students, and then head up to Central Park, where he could sit at the lake, eat, and think.

Any way you sliced it, this was going to be a very long day.

Hunterdon County, New Jersey