Delta waited for more. She knew by the sound of Connie’s voice that she was crying. “Con, there’s nothing you could have done. You’re giving it your best. No one could ask for more.”
“I, I know. But a little girl, Del. A little girl?”
“He’s sick, Connie. He’s a twisted prick who doesn’t care who gets in his way.”
“Not even a child.”
“No, hon, not even a child.” Delta watched as Leonard’s men drove through the emergency entrance. “Connie, what was he after?”
“Was she wearing a ribbon in her hair?”
“I don’t remember, why?”
Inhaling a shaky breath, Connie answered, “In the game, a vulture swooped down on Dori and the little girl and picked the girl up in its talons.”
Delta thought how fitting it was that Elson should portray himself as a vulture.
“Dori wasn’t able to catch the girl when he dropped her, but the vulture held a piece of rope or . . . oh Delta, what have I done?”
“Don’t start blaming yourself, Connie. He was crazy before college, crazy in college and he’s a fucking lunatic now. No one can make someone insane. You know that.”
“But maybe I did. Maybe that’s what he’s trying to do to me: make me crazy.”
“Well, he won’t. I won’t let him. And before this is all over, I’ll see him dead. Just don’t start blaming yourself.”
“That’s what Gina’s been saying all night.”
“Well, listen to her. She’s the pro when it comes to head cases and she knows what she’s talking about.” Delta looked over at the crime scene and saw Leonard coming toward her. “Look, I gotta go, honey. Leonard’s on his way over. Maybe now, he’ll listen to reason.”
“Reason? If you can find an ounce of reason for all of this, then let me know. If he’ll listen, Del, have him check out whether or not she was wearing a ribbon when she left the house. It’s important.”
“Will do. And you hang in there, okay? we’re going to get him. It may take time, but he’ll pay.”
“I hope so, Del. I really do. I’d love nothing more than the chance to meet that bastard one-on-one.”
“Not if I can help it. Take a breather, and I’ll see you when I get in.” Hanging up the phone, Delta made her way over to the crime scene, where Leonard met her half-way.
“Stevie,” Leonard yelled as he approached her. “Damn it, you knew something and didn’t let me in on it. Shame, shame. You know better than that.”
“It was a lucky guess, Leonard.”
Chomping on his cigar, Leonard shook his head. “Maybe I oughtta look into that game you gave me after all. Seems you know when crimes are going to happen before anyone else. Either that, or you’ve got a crystal ball hidden somewheres.”
Delta shrugged, resisting the urge to knock his cigar down his throat. “I’m just a good cop, Leonard, that’s all. I follow my gut and it lead me here.”
Moving away from Leonard, Delta inhaled a few deep breaths and watched as Jan walked over holding a soda. “You okay?” Delta asked, noticing for the first time, how pale Jan had become. Suddenly, Delta realized how difficult it must be for Jan to see a child her daughter’s age lying in a crumpled heap. How close to home this crime must have hit.
“Jan?”
“I’m okay. I just need to call home, that’s all. Let me know if I can help out here.” Handing Delta the soda, Jan walked back over to use the phone.
As the crime unit snapped photos, took measurements and dusted for prints, Delta surveyed the area just beyond the midway.
With all the noise, flashing lights, and smells of the carnival pervading her senses, Delta felt it as surely as if he had reached out with a gloved hand and touched her.
He was watching.
Watching and waiting.
Delta was not the least bit surprised when she received a call the next day from Detective Leonard. Everyone from the Police Chief to the District Attorney would be on Leonard’s case for a suspect, and Delta knew he was as empty-handed as a street bum. Before the carnival murder, they were pressing Leonard for a suspect, and they got one when they arrested a local man for the shooting death. But now, with that man in custody and another murder on their hands, the tide had turned.
Tides always turned when a child was the victim. Even the press, which had shown only a passing interest in the other murders, was digging for a better story. The heat was on, and it was burning Leonard’s ass.
Opening the door to his office, Delta found him pouring over reports, chomping on his unlit cigar and running his hand over the bald spot on his head. His clothes looked like they’d been slept in, and his face had aged overnight.
Leonard glanced up at Delta and gestured toward the chair across from his desk. “Sit down, Stevie.” His tone was more weary than commanding. It had clearly been an extra long night for him.
Rubbing his red eyes, Leonard took the cigar from his mouth and pushed himself away from the stacks of paper on his desk. “Stevie, would you like to tell me just what the hell is going on down on your beat?”
Delta fixed her eyes on him. He was desperate for a suspect. Probably got his ass chewed on for not having one sooner. “What would you like to know?”
Leonard leaned across the desk and attempted a snarl. “Damn it, Stevens, don’t play games with me.” Delta wondered at his choice of words, but let it go. It would do her no good to press his overly sensitive buttons at this point.
“Stevens, I’ve got one witness who claims you knew this asshole was wearing gloves. I’ve got dozens of witnesses who saw you and Bowers moving toward the merry-go-round with your guns drawn just prior to his abducting the girl. I have a ferris wheel operator who heard you say something about `it’ being too obvious. I have a teenager who nearly shit his pants when you grabbed him and barked at him to shut the damn ride off. Do I have to go on?”
Delta leaned back in the chair. She had to give it to him—Leonard and his men had been thorough in an area with too many wanna-be witnesses, where the noise level was nearly impossible, and the real witnesses a little buzzed off beer. “Leonard, I don’t know why it’s so hard for you to accept, but we’re on the same side. Although there are times when I wish we weren’t, the fact remains. Just what is it you want me to tell you?”
“The truth, damn it! You and Rivera came here babbling some horseshit story about a computer game, you’re only seconds behind every murder, you have information you’re very clearly withholding, and I’m totally in the dark. The suspect I was holding for the first whack is out, and I feel like I’m left stuffing the bag. What the hell is going on?”
Delta rose slowly and walked over to the bookcase. “You have the disk, why don’t you tell me?” Delta tossed out a red herring. “You still have the disk, don’t you?”
Leonard’s face dropped.
“Don’t tell me—”
“Misplaced is all.”
“Then, I can’t help you.” Delta leaned over the back of the chair. “You blew me and Connie off like a couple of amateurs; like we go around inventing stories just so we can play detective. And now that you’re backed up against a hot stove and your ass is on fire, you want our help. We offered our help right from the start and you chumped us, Detective. What on earth makes you think I’m going to put myself in that position again?”
Leonard shrugged, his body language shouting defeat. “I’m sorry, Stevie, if I made you feel that way. But you gotta admit—your story was a little way out there. If I jumped at leads like that all the time, I’d never solve a case. Cut me some slack here, will you? I need your help.”
Delta’s left eyebrow rose. “Are you asking for my help?”
“I’m asking for your cooperation. I need a perp. Pendleton is all over my case, the media is making my department look like the keystone cops, and I’ve got nothing but a bunch of bodies lyin’ on cement slabs in the morgue; one of which is a little girl. I know you don’t care for me much, Stevie, so do it for her.”
Delta tried not to look taken aback. Had Russ Leonard actually shown a human emotion to her? Impossible. “What do you want to know?”
“Then, you do know something.”
Delta shook her head. “I didn’t say that.”
Leonard sighed heavily. “You know a hell of a lot more than you’ve shared with me. don’t make me play hardball, here, Delta, because I will if I have to.”
“I don’t know what it is you think I can do for you. I gave you a pretty accurate description of Elson with the Identikit. You had the disk and lost it. There’s not much else to work with.”
“Bullshit. First off, it’ll be a cold day in hell before anyone convinces me there’s a disk that Rivera can’t copy. She’s a whiz, Stevie. You two have that game, and I’d bet a month’s salary on it.”
Delta shrugged. “Maybe.”
“I mean, how else is it that you’re always so close every time that motherfucker hits?”
“I get feelings.”
Leonard chuckled. “I’ve heard about cops like you, Stevie; cops who have a sixth sense. In all my life, I only saw two cops who really had it; one is my retired partner, and the other was Miles Brookman. You’ve inherited that trait from him, Stevie. I can see it in your eyes.”
Delta shrugged again. “But feelings aren’t hard, concrete evidence, Leonard. I’m surprised you believe in them.”
“Oh, I believe in them, when they lead me to hard, concrete evidence. Yours may be able to do that. Because whatever is going on down there, you got bit. Something’s under your skin, Stevie, and I want to know what it is.”
Delta shrugged. “It’s my beat and my people who are dying, Leonard. Why don’t you give a little first? After all, can’t we both give and take a little here without compromising either of our positions?”
“You’re not giving me much of a choice, are you?”
Delta shook her head. “I did, and you blew it.” Folding her arms across her chest, Delta waited.
Leonard leaned on the desk and looked intently at Delta. “He’s clever, Stevie, whoever he is.”
“Yes, he is. Very much so.”
“There’s a pattern to his killings.”
“Yes, there is. I know all of this. Tell me something I don’t know.”
Leonard shoved himself away from the table and stood at the window. For a moment, he held his hands behind his back and rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. “Her name was Helen Carver,” he said quietly. “She was only eight.”
A ball of sorrow rose in her throat as Helen’s cherubic little face hovered before her, her hollow, empty eyes gazing into nowhere. It was a picture Delta would see for the rest of her life.
“Can you give me the files to the other murders?”
“You know I can’t do that. You may not give a rat’s patoot about regs, but I do. I’m not even supposed to release Helen’s name, but I know Rivera would find out eventually. Now, you give.”
Delta crossed her legs. So far, he hadn’t given her anything she couldn’t have gotten herself. “What would you like to know?”
“How did you know it was him on the merry-go-round?”
“He was wearing gloves.”
Leonard started to note this but stopped. “Gloves? You knew it was our man because he was wearing gloves?”
Delta nodded. “He cut off the chauffeur’s hands to get the gloves so he could use them when he broke Helen’s neck. You see, all of the murders are intricately linked together. The disk, Leonard, is our only real hope.”
Leonard nodded, as he jotted this information down.
“I can even tell you how the next one will be committed.”
Leonard glanced up from his notes and frowned. “Excuse me?”
“You’re right. We do have a copy of the disk and we’ve been playing the game for some time.” “I knew it.” “Yeah, but what you don’t know is that once we get ahead of Elson
in the game, we should be able to head him off at the next murder. As long as we trail in the game, people will die.”
Leonard’s eyebrows rose. “You can tell me how the next murder is going to happen?”
“We think so.”
“How?”
“Was Helen wearing a ribbon in her hair when she left the house? It wasn’t anywhere on her or in the Goliath Cirrus after we found her.”
Leonard shuffled through the reports. “A ribbon?”
“Yes, Leonard. I assume you asked the mother what Helen was wearing when she left the house.”
“Connell was in charge of that. I’ll have to check his report.”
Delta shook her head. “You do that. And while you’re waiting for your concrete evidence, here’s some not-so-hard data. Each murder is directly linked to the one before and the one after. It’s the domino theory. These games require certain tasks to be completed before you can move on to the next level or challenge.”
Leonard was quickly scribbling this information in his notes.
“He killed the pharmacist to get the poison to poison the dog to get the ax to kill the chauffeur to cut off the hands to get the gloves to break her neck and get the ribbon to strangle the next victim on his list.”
Leonard laid his face in his hands and shook his head. “And this is the house that Elson built.”
Delta shrugged. “That’s about it.”
“Damn it, Stevie, this is less than proof. What you’re giving me here is pure speculation. I can’t take any of this to the D.A. She’d laugh me right outta court.”