Hellbound/ L.M.Lewis
Chapter 2
Mark drove and Hardcastle smiled. It wasn't exactly a happy smile, more one of tense anticipation, and it was accompanied by an occasional, almost-tuneless whistle.
McCormick was glad the man's spirits seemed to be improved, but he wished it wasn't on account of them having a four o'clock appointment with a murderer. The judge had been absolutely right about the mobster—the man had jumped at a chance to meet his adversary. It was Romney who set the time and the place—it appeared he had some business to take care of first—and his estate, not all that far north of Gulls Way, was Mark's current designation.
It wasn't that McCormick was all that worried, even though Frank was probably back in his office, blissfully unaware that a whole lot of poking was going on. Mark figured even a pissed-off mobster hadn't gotten this far in life by taking-out ex-judges in his own home. Romney wouldn't know that Hardcastle stubbornly insisted on working without a net.
He wasn't sure exactly what the judge planned on saying. He thought maybe it was better that way, easier to look unconcerned, which is always a big plus when walking into a lion's den. He grimaced slightly, though, as he pulled off the main road and onto the twisting, private drive. It was more isolated than he'd expected.
Isolated and deserted. None of the usual goon greeting committees favored by the higher-class criminal element—no one emerged from the Spanish colonial mansion to do the customary pat-down-and-glower. Mark frowned and glanced at the judge, whose own smile had gone a little puzzled. Hardcastle finally shrugged as he shifted up and out.
There were two cars in the drive besides the Coyote. One was a very sharp Porsche that Mark recognized from the file photos as Romney's. Crime pays. He didn't say it out loud. He tore himself away from a quick inspection and picked up his pace to close the gap between himself and the judge, already standing on the front steps, already leaning hard on the bell.
A second try after a brief and impatient interval. Still no answer. Mark wasn't sure which of them noticed it first, but it was Hardcastle who edged the not-quite-closed door further open with his elbow. He gave a sharp yank to the judge's other arm and raised his eyebrows in silent question.
"We've got an appointment," Hardcastle hissed, "and the door is open."
"Well, it is now," Mark whispered back, but that was as far as he got.
He felt the judge stiffen and he followed the man's gaze. He saw it now, too, not far down the hallway from the door—someone sprawled, half in and half out of another door. Only the feet and legs were visible, and they weren't moving.
"'Rendering aid and assistance in an apparent emergency'," Hardcastle muttered as he started to move forward. McCormick caught the tone and figured he was being quoted precedent.
The judge uttered a perfunctory "Anybody home?" as he strode in. The legs still didn't move and now it could be clearly seen that they were attached to a dead body.
It was a middle-aged corpse—not in the goon weight class, and clearly not Romney himself. Hardcastle frowned down at it. "Elmer Walthall," he said consideringly. "He's an accountant, a money guy for the mob." The judge's frown deepened. "His type usually die of old age; they stay pretty much on the legit side of the business."
It was obvious that the man on the floor hadn't succumbed to natural causes. Even lying face-up, the damage to the back of his skull was apparent. Mark hope that was only blood on the terrazzo flooring. It was a thick smear extending a few feet past the head.
"Someone whacked him from behind," Hardcastle speculated, "then they grabbed his legs and dragged him that way," he pointed back into the foyer, "so he'd be visible from the door."
"Romney?" Mark swallowed hard. Some of what was on the floor was definitely not just blood.
"Nah." Hardcastle looked at him sharply. "Go outside if you're gonna throw up."
Mark shook his head hastily.
"And don't touch anything."
"The phone?"
"Just a sec."
Hardcastle had already stepped back into the foyer but was turning in the wrong direction. Mark, frozen briefly, broke his stare from the thing on the floor and followed quickly, keeping his fingerprints in his pockets.
Their footfalls echoed in the otherwise silent house. The judge didn't bother to call out anymore, merely glancing into each room as they passed by—no one, and nothing else was obviously out of place. They'd reached the back, and the patio doors opening onto a terraced yard with a pool.
Hardcastle hadn't stopped frowning. Now he was staring intently in the direction of the pool. Mark looked, too. It obviously hadn't been in recent use, but neither was it completely drained. The water level was at least a foot below the gutter and murky with sediment.
The patio door was unlatched and slightly ajar. Hardcastle put his foot into the crack and eased it open further. He stepped through and then walked a few feet closer to the edge, staring down fixedly. Mark, right behind him, heard him let out a sound—startled, almost a gasp. McCormick edged up next to him and saw what had stopped the other man in mid-step.
Romney looked as though he was kneeling on the bottom of the pool, though obviously to remain in that position there had to be chains or rope involved. His face was turned upwards, eyes open, mouth as well, in a final shout of horror that must have occurred as the water slowly closed in over him.
Two inches. It was just two inches too deep.
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McCormick, remembering the judge's admonitions by the corpse in the front room, carefully walked ten feet off the patio before he leaned over and retched. Not that there was anything particularly graphic about this last bit. He supposed it was just cumulative.
When he finally turned around, he saw the judge kneeling alongside the edge of the pool, peering in as though he was trying to get a better grasp on the mechanics of the situation. Mark straightened up slowly and reluctantly made his way back.
"You okay?" Hardcastle asked without looking away from what he was studying.
"Yeah." Mark kept his eyes slightly averted.
"Looks like a bicycle chain fastened to the drain grate in the bottom. Kinda hard to see with all this dirt in the water. Must've been at least a little emptier. They put him in there, filled it up—"
"He was still alive?"
"Yeah," the judge shrugged. "Don't suppose there would have been much point to it if he hadn't been."
"Why? I mean, what was the point to it?"
"I dunno. To get him to talk, or maybe to keep him from talking. Maybe just to send a message. Not sure. This isn't your typical mob killing. They usually use water that's a lot deeper."
Mark stood there, arms crossed, listening to the judge calmly discussing reasons, and reminded himself that the man in the pool had been a particularly vicious murderer.
Still . . .
"So they put him in there and started filling the pool?"
"Looks like it."
"And then turned the water off and watched him drown?"
"Yeah. Most likely." Hardcastle looked over at the faucets on the other end. "Probably won't be any prints on those handles, though. He paused, glancing back up over his shoulder. "You sure you're okay?"
Mark nodded once. "Yeah . . . Maybe we should call the cops now?"
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The LA County guys arrived first and, about twenty minutes later, Frank pulled up, looking exasperated, but not all that surprised. Mark stayed back, out of the line of fire, but the latest developments provided Harper with a fair amount of distraction.
"You said you talked to him about four hours ago?"
Hardcastle nodded.
The lieutenant checked his watch. "That wasn't even fifteen minutes after I left your place. Dammit, Milt, you're lucky the guys who did this weren't still here when you two drove up."
"Come on, Frank, don't tell me this was what you were worried about." The judge looked around him and took a heavy breath. "It was the last thing I would have expected. Hell, I don't know where this all fits in."
"A serial killer," Mark said quietly. "Maybe."
The other two were staring at him. Hardcastle finally said, "Two dead guys in one place isn't exactly 'serial,' kiddo."
"No," Mark hesitated for a moment, then plunged ahead, "I mean, maybe someone wants all of them dead."
"Nah, nice try, though," the judge shook his head, "but the first two were suicides. We got the notes. Besides, even if you were to explain those away, there's no sense to the rest of it. Most killers have a method or two that they stick to. We got a poisoning, a fall, a suffocation, a bludgeoning, and a drowning. See?—No pattern."
McCormick took in their looks of doubt and backed off from what he'd been going to say next. The notes were a problem, that was certain, especially the handwritten one. Maybe he was just too imaginative.
Then he shook his head sharply. "But if Romney killed Harleson, and maybe even his accountant, then who killed Romney?"
Frank gave that a puzzled shrug. "Lots of possibilities. Maybe Romney hired out Harleson's killing, then the guys who handled the contract weren't happy with him. They might've taken Walthall out as a witness."
"But why'd they do that to the guy? The drowning, my God, it took time. What the hell does it mean?"
Harper sighed wearily. "It's kinda messy, I'll grant you, but I've seen worse."
The judge was nodding in equally weary agreement, while all around them the slow tedium of evidence gathering ground on.
Mark couldn't quite shake the inkling of doubt. The itch of memory had been there almost since the moment he'd first seen Romney's grotesque look of horror, staring up out of the water.
Still, he stepped down. Frank was a sensible, competent detective, and the judge was . . . Hardcastle.
And you have too damn much imagination.
"Okay, yeah. I suppose that makes sense." He jammed his hands in his pockets and jerked his chin toward the Coyote, then said. "So, we almost done here? They've got our statements."
"Yeah, kiddo, almost." Hardcastle waved him away. He left them talking quietly. Cop details. The usual. Mark wandered back to the car, still itching.
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McCormick drove and they were both pretty quiet. He supposed if it had been anybody else besides the judge, they'd both be sitting in an L.A. county facility awaiting further questioning. Instead, the investigating officers hadn't even fussed about their unauthorized inspection of the crime scene.
Two murders and home before nine. And still the damn itch. He slowed down as they headed into what passed for the center of Malibu. He took the car off on the left, an angled side road.
Hardcastle glanced over. "Not burgers again? I thought you looked a little off your feed back there."
"Yeah, um, sorry about that." Mark pulled into the Civic Center lot and parked.
"Records?" Hardcastle frowned. "They close at six. I was gonna look 'em up tomorrow."
"Not the courthouse," McCormick said patiently. "The library. It'll only take a sec," he added as he climbed out.
The judge craned his head. "You've got a library card?" he said, in what was probably not supposed to sound like quite so much disbelief.
"Yeah, I'm a resident of the County of Los Angeles; they don't care about the rest." Mark shrugged. "You know, that's about the only kind of credit an ex-con can get," he added with a touch of embarrassment "I haven't had much time to use it lately, though."
Hardcastle had settled back into his seat. Mark couldn't help but take a little satisfaction from his look of total bemusement. Then he turned away, and put some hustle into it. The place was closing in less than fifteen minutes.
He was back in less than ten, with two thin volumes that he slipped into the narrow space between the seat and the door. The judge was doing a lousy job of not looking curious, though it seemed obvious that he had no intention of asking about them outright.
"Found what you needed?" he finally asked, after Mark had pulled back onto the PCH.
"Uh-huh."
Silence again, but they were only a mile or so from home, so it didn't last too long. As they pulled up, the judge said, "Maybe pizza. We could have it delivered."
"Ah," Mark climbed out, into the darkness, books snugly out of sight under his left arm. "You go ahead. I'm not all that hungry."
Hardcastle looked at him with thinly-veiled disbelief, maybe even a little concern.
"I'm okay. Really. Just tired—long day. Dead people . . . you know." He nodded toward the gatehouse.
"And you've got some reading to do, huh?"
"Maybe."
"Is it about the case?"
Mark frowned thoughtfully for a moment and then said, "You probably wouldn't think so."
The judge gave this a short grunt, but didn't ask him to spell it out. "Okay," he finally said, "if you change your mind, I'll be up for a while. Got some reading to do myself."
"The Romney file?"
One nod from the older man.
Mark grimaced. "But he's dead."
"Yeah," Hardcastle admitted, "but somebody killed him."
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He'd talked himself in and out of it a half-dozen times that night, and, at one point, wondered what it was like to be one of those evidence technicians, scurrying from one body to the next, scavenging everything for future reference. It went on and on, he supposed, with no end ever in sight. After a while, did they start to see patterns where there were none? Or maybe it just became just so much routine, piles of little Lucite bags waiting to be filled and processed.
He shook his head and gathered the two books from the floor next to the bed. What was the worst Hardcastle could say? He already thinks you're an idiot. He'd decided that didn't matter. And he hoped to God he really was an idiot, and totally wrong in his misapprehensions, because if he wasn't, this thing was a long way from over.
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Hardcastle was sitting at the table in the kitchen. The Romney file was closed, but still at his elbow, and he looked like he needed the cup of coffee that he had in his other hand.
Mark muttered his 'good morning' and grabbed a cup off the shelf for himself. He filled it, then sat down across from the man, putting his books to one side. Hardcastle cast a quick glance down but said nothing. His eyebrows had drifted up a ways, though.
"Anything?" McCormick asked casually, nodding toward the file.
"Not much," the judge admitted. Couple of known associates suspected of being in the contracting business. They might be a start. But he coulda hired anybody to do Harleson. It was a rush job."
"Same night service," Mark agreed. He took a long, grateful swig from the cup.
A moment of silence passed, and then Hardcastle said, very casually, "And you? Anything?"
McCormick put the cup back down. He'd been pretty sure about having made up his mind, but now saying it all out loud seemed harder than he'd thought it would be.
"Look," he finally admitted, "you're probably going to think I'm crazy—"
"What else is new?"
Great start. Mark bit back a retort that would probably put the whole thing on a downward spiral that would be hard to pull out of. He began again, more directly. "Dante," he said abruptly. "The Inferno. You know, the circles of hell, all those people being punished for this and that. You remember that one?"
"Sort of," Hardcastle frowned in puzzlement. "I was a history and political science major, not literature."
"Okay, well, nobody remembers which circle is which. That's why there's Cliff Notes." He took the thinner of the two books and pushed it across the table.
Hardcastle picked it up, riffled through it, and said, "What does this have to do with Sylvester Romney? I don't think he was too big on Italian literature either."
"Okay," Mark leaned forward, elbows on the table, coffee forgotten, "will ya just listen?" He took the judge's silence for a yes.
"See, yesterday, I dunno, must've been when I first saw him, staring up like that. It reminded me of something."
"Something from Dante?" Hardcastle asked. It sounded like he was trying to keep his tone flat, maybe even non-judgmental.
"Yeah. I know. Very weird. It was sort of a memorable image, you gotta admit, what the hell, even you said it was some sort of message, right? Such a stupid, ugly way to kill somebody."
Hardcastle nodded.
"And it reminded me of something out of this," he tapped the other book, still at his side on the table. "Only I didn't remember exactly which circle it was, but that was one of the punishments, to be submerged, in the river Styx, one of the slimier parts, always looking up."
Hardcastle had the booklet open now. "Circle five—the Wrathful and the Sullen?"
"Yeah. Romney was angry all the time. That's what you said. Sullen, too, I'll bet. All that money and power and he can't keep his girlfriend in line. Very sullen."
The judge looked dubious, but he hadn't closed the book yet.
"Okay, turn back to Circle Four."
"Misers and the Avaricious?"
"Yeah, see what happens to them?"
"They get rocks thrown at them?"
"Yup, that'd be Walthall, the money guy, see? And circle Three—Gluttons."
Hardcastle filled back, scanned a few lines, then looked up. "Buried in garbage?"
"Exactly. Though I don't think being greedy with the donuts was Piggy's main offense. Might've been more on account of him getting too grabby with his boss's girl."
"And Shelia," the judge frowned and shook his head, "but she was a suicide."
"I dunno, Judge. Look at Circle Two. Lust. And they get thrown around in the wind. I guess falling off a penthouse balcony was the closest they could come. I'm not even gonna toss in her stage name as exhibit 'B'. That's probably just a coincidence."
"The note—"
"Well, the lab's not done with it yet, are they? Has it been authenticated?"
Hardcastle's frown had taken on a permanent quality. "I dunno. Not sure how hard they'd look. That handwriting stuff is iffier than you think."
"So, your suicides might not be suicides."
"Even Bainbridge? I don't think Dante knew about cyanide."
Mark slumped back a little, letting out a breath. "Yeah, that one is the softest. It's the vestibule, the doorway to hell, they don't get poisoned, nothing like that. But they're there because they were uncommitted, on the fence."
"Well, Harry fell off on the wrong side," the judge said sharply.
"I suppose," McCormick nodded. "Anyway, for them it's worms . . . maggots."
"That's what it is for everybody, eventually," Hardcastle grimaced, "nothing too specific there."
"And they chase a blank banner," Mark added. Hardcastle looked a little blank himself. "A white banner." Still no response. "The sheets, remember?"
There was one further beat. Then the judge snorted and said, "That's a reach. You are crazy."
McCormick crossed his arms and leaned back further. "I knew you'd say that."
But Hardcastle had his nose back down in the booklet. "So what's next?"
"Um," Mark hesitated. "Circle Six is Heretics."
The judge looked up, then shook his head and closed the book. "Heretics, huh? Not hit men? There, see? That one's not going to work. And Harry and Shelia were suicides, plain and simple, no literary gobbledygook. Nice try, though. I appreciate it. And I don't know why you're so intent on it not being obvious—I mean the suicides—you weren't the one doing the stirring and poking."
"Okay," McCormick sighed. "I honestly hope you're right and I'm wrong, and Frank comes over here this afternoon and says they have a hot lead on something." He frowned doubtfully. "And thanks for listening."
"I called you crazy."
"Yeah, twice," Mark said quietly, "but you listened anyway." He took the booklet back and set it atop the other volume, then slid the small stack off to the side and got up to fix breakfast.
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Two uneventful days passed. There were no apparent leads, hot or otherwise, at least none that Frank saw fit to inform them of. Mark set his reading aside, and, by day three, was almost ready to return them to the library.
He was in the kitchen again that morning when the phone rang. It was Frank, but not sounding too excited, even by Frank standards. When Hardcastle didn't pick up the other phone, Mark said, 'Wait a sec; he's probably in the basement."
"The files, huh?"
"Yeah," Mark leaned on the counter and listened for footsteps on the stairs. "He's digging. He hasn't quit." He didn't mention his own nearly-abandoned theory. "You got anything new?" He added hopefully.
"No, well," Harper hesitated, "not exactly."
"Not another body," Mark pinched the bridge of his nose. "Nobody burned to death, nothing like that."
There was a brief, puzzled silence from the other end. Frank was apparently considering the segue. He finally answered, "No . . . nothing like that. But don't drag him up out of the basement. This is just a request. The Mob Task Force is back in on this one. Park and his guys."
"Yeah, I figured."
"They want to make sure this doesn't go any further, so they gotta figure out what's what. They brought in a consultant; one of those criminal-behavior profiling guys. He wants to meet with Milt, see if there's anything in his files that everyone else missed."
"When?"
"Soon as possible. There's factions, ya know? We might be sitting on a powder keg here."
"Like I said—just a sec, I'll get him." Mark started to put the phone down, but heard Frank say 'wait' again, a little louder.
He put the phone back up to his ear in time to hear him add, "Listen, just tell me if he's gonna be there this afternoon, say about one?"
"Frank, you're gonna get me in trouble—"
"No I won't. We'll just drop by," Harper said coaxingly. "You know how he is. I'll tell him about this guy, and then he'll say he's got some prior engagement, and then he won't answer the phone for a while. He thinks this psychology stuff is all voodoo, and he hates sharing his files with people he doesn't trust."
Mark thought about that for a minute. The voodoo part he'd gotten right away. He felt the same way about shrinks. But the second bit—who the judge shared the files with—that had never occurred to him.
He shook loose from this as Frank repeated his request, "So just get him to stick around the house after lunch. You can do that, can't you?"
"Maybe," Mark said reluctantly. Then he hedged his bet with, "Unless something comes up."
"Come on, rotate the tires, change the oil. You spend half your time underneath those cars anyway."
"Not all three at once. I'm not that ambitious." Mark paused and listened for steps again. "Okay, he finally said, very quietly, "I don't think he's got anything planned. I'll let you know if something comes up. Save you a trip out, anyway."
He said good-bye and hung up, feeling a twinge of guilt, though he wasn't sure exactly why. Maybe it had something to do with the sudden realization that there was a short list for who had access to the files, and he was on it.
But Hardcastle was the one always talking about cooperation among law enforcement organizations. And, yeah, they were more free-lance than organized, but the same rules still ought to apply, he supposed. And what was one shrink, more or less, on the team? It might be entertaining to see Hardcase take him on.
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Still, when one o'clock crept near—and he had studiously avoided confirming it with more than the occasional glance at the clock in the kitchen—he snuck out the back door and did some unsolicited pool skimming. He realized he'd been avoiding the task for the past few days. He also realized that putting it off was only going to lead to a situation that more closely resembled the murky flashbacks he was trying to avoid.
He heard the car pull up, and the doors slamming. He knew his typical response to this would be to slough off whatever chore he was currently engaged in, on the chance that the company would be more interesting. But he stood there, leaning on the pool skimmer for a full two minutes before he finally decided that behaving in an ordinary, unguilty way, was the best course.
Hardcastle already had the guests in the den by the time he arrived. The judge had an unreadable expression, though he waved Mark in. Frank and another man sat in chairs. The judge had apparently been caught unawares. All the Romney-related materials were still out on the desk, along with another half-dozen possibly pertinent files that had been fetched up that morning.
"Dr. Noman, this is my associate, Mark McCormick." The judge said it very coolly, as though he had half a suspicion who knew what already.
Mark nodded at the man, salt-and-pepper haired and his glasses perched too far down on his nose. There was no scrutiny from Noman, and no greeting, as his gaze passed briefly over the guy in work clothes, and then returned to the judge, and back to the matter at hand.
McCormick avoided any eye contact with Frank, who was very much giving the impression he wasn't there at all.
"Of course I've reviewed all the materials in the hands of the police," Noman continued, obviously picking up the thread of the conversation where it had been dropped, "but I'm interested in any additional, less formally acquired information."
Mark winced at the tone, at once both condescending and demanding. He now knew exactly why Frank had wanted to do an end run on this one. He watched the judge even out his expression, the surest sign he knew that there was red hot magma right below the surface.
"Lieutenant Harper will tell you that I am always fully cooperative with law enforcement authorities. I seriously doubt that there is anything I have that they aren't already aware of."
"Awareness is something that isn't always complete, even when the information is available," Noman prattled on, apparently completely unaware that he was sitting across the desk from a totally pissed-off ex-judge.
Or maybe he was aware, Mark thought, and just didn't give a damn.
"And I," Noman made a slight emphasis on the pronoun, reinforcing the image of self-absorption, "have an idea about the case—a paradigm, if you will."
In the momentary silence that followed, McCormick could almost hear the judge's dental enamel under assault.
The theatrical pause complete, Noman drew in a breath, "It's altogether possible that I will see some value in the facts you have gathered, something that had been overlooked, something that will support my theory."
"And just what would your theory be, Doctor Noman?" Hardcastle muttered tightly.
Mark gathered, from the equally tight expression on Frank's face, that the lieutenant had already heard at least part of it, and was suspecting it might be the flash point for his friend. Noman, still appearing oblivious to his reception, smiled the smile of the superior theorist.
"It's my contention that a cluster of crimes such as these, while divergent in their apparent mechanisms, and appearing not to share any consistencies, are actually the work of a single person, who is following a predetermined pattern." Noman had assumed the supercilious tone of a lecturer.
He paused, as if to see if everyone was still keeping up. Hardcastle was rubbing one temple in quick, impatient circles.
Noman perched his elbows on the arms of his chair, and tented his fingertips thoughtfully. "I believe the key to the pattern lies in a fourteenth century work of the Italian poet, Dante."
Mark jerked his head up, just in time to see Hardcastle's mouth fall open, silently. That lasted for a split second, followed by a bellowed, "Not you, too? And McCormick's been carrying the damn Cliff Notes around with him."
The doctor looked nonplussed for the first time. His eyes shot sideward, suddenly taking in the guy in the grass-stained denims with a new look. It was more shock than respect, Mark concluded.
"Cliff Notes?" Noman said, obviously grabbing his surprise by the throat and shoving it back down under a layer of barely-concealed disdain. "And when did you stumble across the connection, may I ask?"
Mark ducked his chin. "When we saw the last one . . . Romney." He had a feeling that he wasn't even going to get half-credit, on account of the Cliff Notes. He resisted the urge to point out that he'd also plowed through the Longfellow translation, at least the first eleven Cantos.
"Well," Noman sniffed, "I suppose it was fairly evident by then."
"Evident my foot," Hardcastle grumbled. "It's a pile of crap. The first two were suicides. And if it is some crazy connect-the-dots killer, what is the point of all this folderol? Does he want to get caught?"
McCormick couldn't help notice that Hardcastle was at least arguing with the psychologist. Noman seemed to take the doubt in stride, as though he'd been expecting it. He launched back into lecture mode.
"With a pattern killer like this, 'connecting-the-dots' as you put it, becomes the all-consuming passion. The original motivations may become obscured under the need to complete the design. Extraordinary risks may be taken to fulfill this goal—to do the 'correct' thing in the proper way."
"So, all these fancy curlicues are just signs. This guy wants us to know what he's doing?"
"Well," Noman looked thoughtful, "yes and no. Like any artist, the person executing the design would like it to be noticed. At the same time, the perpetrator may be intensely protective of his work-in-progress, may resent anyone who sees the pattern before it is fully emerged—before he chooses to reveal it."
"You make this guy sound like some sort of creative genius." There was disgust in the judge's tone. "He kills people, at least three of them he has. The first two still look like suicides to me." Then he shrugged wearily. "And even if some of this is right, how does all this theorizing help us figure out who the guy is? Or, more important, what he's going to do next?" Hardcastle shook his head. "A heretic, burning. That's supposed to be circle number six, right? So what the hell does that mean?"
For once, Noman was silent. He had dropped his hands into his lap and had laced the fingers together loosely. "Perhaps," he said slowly, "it might be better to look at the reason 'why' a bit more closely. As I said, it may become obscure, but it might not be completely obliterated."
Hardcastle gave up a frustrated sigh and gestured for the man to continue.
"In this case, the first two victims, or suicides, if you will, alleged that they were persecuted by you. This may in fact represent the projection of the killer—someone who also feels threatened by you and who assigns that feeling to others.
"At the same time," Noman cocked his head, as though he was working it all out as he went along, "the killer is also, in some twisted way, doing your bidding. I have heard of your reputation as a proponent of law and order in the strictest sense."
"I didn't want those people dead—"
"Not even Romney? A man who killed brutally and repeatedly?"
"It doesn't work that way, Noman. That's why we have the law, to deal with guys like Romney."
"Well," the psychologist smiled patiently, "you and I understand that, but perhaps this killer had an imprecise grasp of the concept. Perhaps he sees himself as working for the greater weal. Maybe he is even trying to 'out-Hardcastle Hardcastle'."
"So which is it, I'm persecuting him or he wants me to admire him?" the judge growled.
"It might be both," Noman said smugly. "We ought to, therefore, be looking for someone with a connection to you, and a more than passing familiarity with the case. Perhaps someone to whom you are an authority figure."
Mark wasn't sure he had ever encountered silence in the form of a solid before.