Paradox (FBI Thriller 22)

Marv Spaleny, the book festival committee president and owner of Spaleny’s Best Books, walked over and introduced himself. He was always at Bliss’s Diner on Sunday nights without his wife, although no one knew why. He was a tall man, thin as a nail, alwa

ys full of bonhomie that kept customers coming in to buy his undiscounted books.

Marv looked down at the peach pie without a lick of interest and said in his deep, mellow voice that made him a favorite reader at the library, “The book festival was a big hit this year, despite all the trouble on the lake, Ty, biggest year yet. Your deputies did great. I saw the last of our authors off a bit ago. We’ll find out how well all our shop owners did at the weekly council meeting. I know I sold more books than I’d expected. Hope you can make it.”

Congo patted his shoulder. “Come on, Marv, I’ve got your tortilla soup all ready. Don’t want it to go cold.”

Marv gave them a small bow and left them, following Congo, though Marv stopped at every table to preen about the festival success.

* * *

The four of them adjourned to Ty’s back deck. Ty served her Turkish espresso and Earl Grey tea for Dillon, talking him into a dash of cinnamon, which, to his surprise, he liked.

The sun was setting, the air warm and soft against their faces. The crickets had begun their nightly symphony when they settled on the deck and grew quiet to take in the evening.

“The water looks like glass,” Sherlock said and sighed. “This is a beautiful spot, Ty. Do you ever miss Seattle?”

Ty was looking across the lake at Point Gulliver and Gatewood, remembering the murder, seeing it all again. She shook herself. “It’s strange, but I sort of miss the incessant drizzle—liquid sunshine, Seattle natives call it. But Seattle itself? With all the Starbucks, all the crazy traffic, people going every which way, the drugs and the gangs I dealt with in Vice—no, I don’t miss that. Willicott is exactly my speed.” She saluted Sherlock with her coffee cup. “Except for everyone knowing what you eat for breakfast, it’s perfect.

“Dillon, thank you and Mr. Maitland. I know it’s my jurisdiction, but I don’t have enough resources. Your bringing the FBI on board on TV tomorrow will be a big help.”

Savich took his final drink of tea, with cinnamon. Who knew? “I’ll call you in the morning after I’ve got everything lined up, give you an exact time. Sala, I want you there, all right? I think it’s time to set rumors straight about the Serial and about what happened to you and Octavia. I’m hoping the broadcast will go regional. I don’t want either the Serial or Victor to be able to find a hole to hide in.”

Sherlock said, “Something’s been bothering me. Since Victor escaped from Central State Hospital, he couldn’t have had much money. But look what he’s done. Moving around in Washington, buying camping gear, weapons, coming up here. So he’s either been robbing stores or—”

Savich finished it. “Or—he went back and picked up the stolen bank money Jennifer Smiley hid somewhere. Money we never found on her property, even after the FBI went over the place thoroughly, house and grounds.”

Ty asked. “How much money?”

“Over a half a million dollars,” Savich said. “You can bet the citizens of Fort Pessel dug up the property. So far we haven’t heard about anyone finding a big load of cash, and we would have.”

“Why is it important to you to know that, Dillon?” Ty asked him.

He said slowly, “Unless we know for sure whether Victor has that bank money, it leaves us with a mystery.”

“As in where then did he get money after his escape from the psychiatric ward?”

“Exactly.” Savich shook his head. “We’ll figure it out, sooner or later.”

Sala said, “Guys, here’s what I can’t get past. We know Victor’s girlfriend, Lissy, is dead. You’ve said she was the love of Victor’s life, so then who was that girl I heard laughing? Has he hooked up with some runaway teenager?”

Savich remembered thinking someone had been standing in the master bedroom window at Gatewood, looking out over the water, waiting for Victor to return. He didn’t know what to think. Until he could figure this out, better to keep it to himself. He said, “That could be, Sala. It’s been bothering me, too.”

Ty took a sip of her coffee and looked out at the lake again. She didn’t think she’d ever see it in the same light she had before Friday morning. She could picture Octavia Ryan’s body floating among the bones and skulls lying on the bottom, many of them covered by years of sand and reeds. She said, “The only real clue we have so far about all those bones is that gold belt buckle. We have to hope we’ll get a call identifying it when Dillon shows it on TV.”

Sala scooted his chair a bit closer and propped his feet on the deck railing. “I remember a Serial in Boston who murdered twenty-four people—maybe more, no one knows—over about nineteen years. One night a young punk stole his Prius from his driveway, decided to take it for a joy ride. When he brought the car back, he decided to see if there was anything worth stealing in the trunk, and he found a body wrapped in a shower curtain. Thankfully, after puking up his guts, he called the cops.”

Ty said, “Who was the Serial?”

“A newspaper editor, well respected, married, lived what you call a normal life. They found his souvenirs in a locked cabinet in his basement.”

“What happened to him?”

“He put a gun in his mouth when the cops moved in. I guess what I’m saying is it’s not always excellent police work that cracks serial cases. It’s happenstance, a snitch, or most of the time, as you know, an errant parking ticket—remember how they caught the Son of Sam? Or, in this case, it was a joy-riding juvenile delinquent.”

Sala slept for three hours that night in Ty’s guest bedroom before the nightmares pulled him under. Ty found him sweating and heaving, and without a word, the two of them dragged the mattress out on the deck. They settled in and watched the moon hovering over Point Gulliver, watched dark clouds drifting in and out of the moonlight.

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