Oh - - I feel really bad about the mistake regarding Warrick's eye color - - I only remembered that they were pale, and I guess I must have mistaken them for blue.

Grr - - this is, possibly, my least favorite chapter: it's necessary, but I don't really care for it.  Still, I am really fond of the next one, starting off part two, and so if you're disappointed with this chapter, please stick around.  This one will, however, tell you the names of a great many of the conspirators - - so now, the only ones who won't know what's going on are . . . well, the other characters.

- -

Chapter Thirteen: So Many Ideas (OTHER)

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Matthew Flowers was thirty-six and already a legend.  He was what Conrad Ecklie would call a signature killer, and what he himself called an artist.  Since he was nineteen, he had killed over forty people, all with the same signature - - the white rose.  He was sometimes controlling, sometimes amiable, sometimes long-winded, and always cruel.  In his best moments - - the times when people who were frustrating him were most likely to survive - - he was extremely contemplative, as he was now.

He was thinking about the conspiracy, and decided that it was one of his better ideas.

It was ideal, after all - - it was ideally composed.  There was himself, the killer, who was ruthless and imaginative at the same time, the kind of man who did not care who he killed as long as he was allowed to do it an interesting fashion.  There was Lizzie Zimmer, embittered and not truly understanding her function (as temporary as it was), and her pet lawyer, the arrogant Abraham Claberson, so certain that he was the most necessary figure in the group, and so certain that he would live.

If Flowers killed Lizzie (as he probably would), it would be a death born of necessity, not any true lust for the kill.  If Flowers killed Claberson (as he had idly been considering), it would be because Abraham Claberson was an annoyance, and unnecessary, once they had dispensed of the dull formalities of the actual rape charge.

Flowers wasn't interested in Gil Grissom.  Flowers was interested in causing as much carnage and chaos as possible.

Flowers, Zimmer, and Claberson.  Then, of course, there was Conrad Ecklie.

He smiled when he thought about Ecklie.  If Zimmer was dim, and Claberson was frustrating, Ecklie was amusing.  Ecklie, left to his own devices, would have never had the stones to do anything to Grissom, as much as Grissom was a thorn in his side.  Ecklie had been content to broil and act-out petty revenge scenes in his head, and to, on occasion, pursue possible avenues of Grissom's downfall, as long as he made no actual actions towards fulfilling these bewildered daydreams.

Flowers knew that Ecklie thought he had been found out because he had asked too many questions about the perfect man to arrange some kind of ruination for Grissom.  Ecklie was damaged by this, and Flowers enjoyed watching him squirm with guilt as Flowers built the petty rape accusation into something far more grand and far more deadly.

Ecklie thought that he was the figurehead, the leader.  He no longer had any illusion that he was in control of Flowers, and he was correct, but he certainly didn't understand that none of these actions were being taken for his sake.  He didn't know that Flowers had been led to Ecklie after much of the conspiracy had already been formed.

Ecklie, in short, didn't know that there was someone above him.

Ecklie was pathetically tortured and pathetically unable to do anything about it.  Lacking control over Flowers, he had divulged a few minor secrets to a nameless other.  Flowers didn't know who and didn't care.  Ecklie knew little enough about the true workings of the conspiracy - - whatever he did wasn't damaging.  Let the man playact his little games with his misguided intentions; it would do him no good and do Flowers no harm.

Flowers, Zimmer, Claberson, Ecklie, and Ecklie's assistant.  And, of course, the other.

Flowers called him the financier, when Flowers called him anything at all.  They met regularly, and Flowers was never given any name.  The financier had enough money to pay for anything he liked, and a taste for sadism that matched Flowers's own.

If he had been prone to having friends that he did not kill, he would have called the financier his friend.

"You rang?" Flowers asked, smiling.  He had a disarming smile, an All-American smile.  Nick Stokes would have recognized a little bit of himself in it and returned it without the slightest idea of the wolf beneath.

"Yes," the financier said.  "Sit down.  I'd order drinks, but you don't care for it, do you?"

"I have expensive tastes," Flowers said, "but alcohol isn't one of them.  Addictions are more weakening than I'd like."

"I heard you spent some time with Ecklie."

"You hear a lot.  Almost as much as I do."

"I have a lot of ears around this city," the financier said.  "For example, I know that Zimmer is losing control.  She's met twice now with Sara Sidle, and the second incident - - regrettably - - was her idea.  She's slipping."

"Unfortunate.  I was almost positive that she was amoral."

"I don't think it's a crisis of conscience," the financier said, rubbing his chin.  "I think she's becoming over-confident.  She believes that she is far more important to us than she really is, but, in reality, she's only really important to us in one aspect."

"Her death."

"Exactly.  If you don't mind, I'd like you to work on that."

"With pleasure, as always.  Can I kill Claberson?"

The financier frowned.  "If you do it quietly.  Claberson isn't part of the plan anymore.  Kill him if you like, but don't make it messy."

Flowers grinned.  "You're very interesting to work for.  I take it that Zimmer is just step one, right?  There'll be more?"

"I know you want your pick of Grissom's flock," the financier said, uninterested, and waved his hand to the waiter to signal for the check.  "And I have an idea as to where that can fit in.  And your conceptions of the deaths are inspiring, to say the least."

"You're not telling me something," Flowers said.

"I'm not telling you a lot of things, but this is one I'm going to add.  Kill who you like of Grissom's team - - more than one, if you want - - but there's only one rule."  The financier leaned forward and whispered it into Flowers's ear, and Flowers smiled.  Nodded.

"I think I understand."

"And you'll comply?"

"Without hesitation.  It isn't a difficult thing to avoid."

"And Zimmer?"

"I think I'll kill her tonight, just a few hours after Brown and Willows do their little interview for the press like good children."  Flowers laughed suddenly, imagining the breaking news splitting into their assurances that Gil Grissom was a good (and innocent) man.  "I have so many ideas."

"Good," the financier said.  "We'll need them all."