Page 11 of Go Under

Or was he trying once more to lead her to his sanctuary so he could sacrifice her on his altar?

CHAPTER FIVE

“Ah, Jesus, Darnell. You can’t wait until the morning?”

“In the morning, Judge Harmon will be in,” Darnell explained. “And she’s going to spend most of her day dealing with discovery for the Braxton trafficking case. That’s going to be a clusterfuck because Braxton’s lawyer is Annalisa Stanhope. Stanhope’s going to throw up enough roadblocks to flip an Abrams tank, and by the time Harmon finishes removing them, she’s going to be madder than a hornet.”

“She won’t be madder than a hornet in the morning.”

“She will be if you start her day by asking to waive authorization for a records release.”

The man on the other end of the phone sighed. He would hem and haw again, probably two or three more times, but in the end, he’d get Darnell what he wanted. Darnell had spent a decade patiently building that relationship, ensuring that he always gave a little more than he took but always took another little piece of the big, beautiful puzzle that eventually left him with the ability to make the lives of minor functionaries throughout the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas miserable.

It was a brutal way to do business, but that was life in the jungle. Darnell hadn’t made a name for himself in the Bureau by being meek.

One of the analysts waved at Darnell as she went home for the night. Darnell waved back, waited for a pause, then said, “Look, Grant, we can dick around all night, but the bottom line is that I need those records to solve a murder. You might not want your name next to a headline that reads, ‘Court employee aids FBI with sealed records’ but you definitely don’t want it next to a headline that reads, ‘Court employee stalls discovery, more victims discovered.’”

“All right, all right, Jesus, Darnell. I’ll talk to Judge Faro. Don’t expect him to be any more generous than Harmon would be, though.”

“Faro’s a sweetheart,” Darnell said. “He’ll sign.”

Grant sighed heavily. “Yeah, but my name will still be on the transfer paperwork.”

Darnell smiled. “Thank you, Grant.”

“Yeah, yeah. You’re buying on Saturday.”

“Of course. I’ll even let you drink top shelf.”

He hung up and leaned back in his chair, staring thoughtfully up at the ceiling.

Kate Valentine and Marcus Reid. The Dynamic Duo. The Belles of the Bureau Ball. Their reputation had preceded them, of course. Kate was widely regarded as having the potential to be the next great investigative genius the Bureau had. She was just as widely regarded as squandering that potential because of her obsession with one serial killer.

Of course, that serial killer and his lackeys happened to be the most prolific and dangerous killing family in the United States, and Kate also happened to be a large part of the reason they hadn’t killed a lot more people. AD Winters, Kate’s supervisor, was known as the Ice Queen for her sternness and lack of emotion. She was also known for her political savvy. She had ambitions for Director within the next ten years. She must believe in Kate staunchly to stand by her side despite the apparent risks to her career.

Reid didn’t enjoy quite the same sensationalism surrounding his name as Kate did, but he was known as the perfect distillation of the hardboiled gumshoe. No incredible leaps would be made in the mind of the streetwise New Yorker, but if someone knew something about anything, Marcus would find out who that person was and how to find them, find them, and get them to tell him everything they knew. He was like a bloodhound that way. Much like Dick Tracy or Archie Goodwin. Kate, with her preternatural intuition and, frankly, her tremulous mental health, was a perfect analogue for a female Sherlock Holmes.

Darnell fancied himself more like Nero Wolfe. He didn’t hunt for knowledge like a bloodhound tracking a boar, nor did he make grand intuitive leaps. What he was good at, what made him an outstanding agent, was sifting through the noise and finding the nuggets of gold in a sea of silt.

So, what nuggets could he find in this noise?

Gerald Mace’s murder was obviously connected to his career as a court clerk. But how was his career connected to Elijah Cox? He was confident that this would, as Kate and Marcus suspected, turn out to be a legitimate Commandment Killing. The only copycat thus far had been an exceedingly poor one, and while Kate seemed uncertain about aspects of the cipher, the MO was precisely what Cox would expect of one of his acolytes. The fact that the killer was angry and still staged the victim and wrote the entire cipher was strong evidence that they were acting on Cox’s orders.

So how was Gerald Mace connected to Elijah Cox? That was the part everyone was missing with the Cox case. The why. He wasn’t choosing victims based only on the fact that they broke commandments. If that’s all it was, then Cox could park his ass in any major city, sit on his balcony and people watch, and find people to kill every day.

There was something else going on here. If they figured out what that was, then not only would they find this latest Commandment Killer, they’d find Cox.

And this time, they’d know how to stop him for good.

The phone rang. He picked it up. “Yes, Grant?”

“It’s on its way,” Grant said. “Please try to not need me for at least six months. I need to at least have some room between these requests, or people start looking at me funny during staff meetings.”

“Sure. Hey, do me a favor. You see any murderers, ask them to cool it off for six months. That way I don’t have to prioritize taking them off the streets over your job comfort.”

“Fuck you.”

“Yeah, have a good one.”