The Avenger (17 page)

"Why caps on this one?" He frowned and jabbed at the letters on the board. "That's different."

"It's the correct way to write Latin. The Romans wrote in capital letters," Olivia explained. "No spaces between the words either. This note actually is
more
authentic than the previous ones."

"Clever bastard," Jack mused. "He's using a more sophisticated language."

"But why?" she asked.

"Hell if I know." He smarted under the question. "Because he's intelligent enough. Because he wants to toy with us. Because the son of a bitch can."

Olivia examined the letters again. "It translates to 'The priest offered the sacrifice with great care.'"

"What does this mean for the case?" Slater asked.

"He's evolving and will be harder to figure out."
God damn it all to hell!

#

Olivia's office mate, Dr. Howard Randolph, entered the university office that afternoon with a dramatic bang, a large caffè latte, and a nod her way. Olivia looked up from her computer screen where she sifted through her email, answering the urgent messages and deleting the spam. After a cursory glance at his desk, Howard stood at his office window, sipped his coffee, and gazed out the office window where students bumped and jostled their way across the quad's concrete sidewalks to their classes.

Olivia continued to scroll her email. The university's policy of furnishing students with professors' email addresses was a good idea except when the teacher ran into a needy student who used every minor problem as an excuse to contact his teacher. She sighed and continued the task, something she noticed wryly, that Howard never bothered with.

Fifteen years Olivia's senior, Howard stood for a few minutes like a captain surveying his crew. Then he finally riffled through the stack of snail mail on his desk in the opposite corner of their shared office. The desk squatted beneath the single window in the room and offered the gorgeous view that Howard had appropriated. A lopsided smile hovered at the edge of his lips.

"Good weekend, Howard?"

"Fair to middling," he answered coyly.

She remembered his teaching assistant. "Ted Burrows dropped off some papers."

Howard grimaced. "Oh, I forgot he was coming by. Bet he wasn't happy to miss me."

A year-round tan, remarkable even in California, gave Howard's face and forearms a golden sheen. His short, blond hair spiked fashionably over a high, intelligent forehead below eyes so blue Olivia suspected tinted contact lenses.

"He seemed okay," she said. "But he did say he'd stayed up all night to finish them."

Howard rolled his eyes as Olivia glanced up to take in the vigorous look of him. Bermuda shorts, which he wore year round, showed off well-developed calves that glinted with fine, sun-bleached hairs. "More likely he got one of his minions to do it for him," he said.

She gaped at him. "What do you mean?"

"You know his reputation, don't you?"

"I've heard he's quite a ladies' man."

Howard crossed the short distance between them and planted his hip on the edge of Olivia's desk. He leaned forward confidentially. "I'd say Teddy-boy is more than a ladies' man."

"Oh?" She shifted uncomfortably in her chair, regretting her comment. She didn't want to get caught up in university gossip.

"Let's just say Theodore Burrows isn't very discriminating in whom he chooses to ... ah, date."

She instinctively eased away. Sometimes Howard's familiarity made her cringe. Something smarmy lurked beneath the surface of his affability. He lived extremely well in spite of a professor's salary and had once mentioned a grandmother who lived in one of those old and very expensive homes overlooking San Francisco Bay. Olivia had the impression that he came from an old moneyed family used to living by their own rules.

Howard's smirk evolved into a wide grin. "I suspect one or two of Ted's ... amours are more than willing to relieve him of his onerous paper load."

She didn't consider herself naïve, but the implication astonished her. "He wouldn't."

"He does." He examined his manicured nails. "I have it straight from the horse's mouth."

"What are you going to do about it?"

"Absolutely nothing. Why should I care who scores my papers as long as the work gets done?"

Olivia tried to mask her shock. Ted Burrows exchanging sexual favors for the price of a good score on Howard's student papers? Surely not.

After he returned to his desk, she observed Howard discreetly as she looked through a stack of student essays. He threw himself into a fine-grained leather chair which he'd purchased himself. Definitely not standard university issue. The chair made an excellent complement to the cherry wood desk, also an import, and the matching bookcases that flanked the wall on either side of the window.

"Oh, by the way, Olivia," Howard said after a moment. "I heard about your missing student. What was her name, Kendra or Kennan ... ?"

"Keisha Johnson," Olivia supplied, keeping her eyes trained on her papers.

"That's right. Keisha. I'm very sorry about what happened to her. One of the staff told me the police were nosing around here and asking questions."

Jack had emphasized the necessity for secrecy. "Oh, not about Keisha," she lied. "Something else."

"Well, it's a tragedy, her dying like that." His eyes glinted with curiosity. "Is it true someone actually beat her to death?"

Olivia felt grief snag at her throat.

Howard rolled his chair closer. "I know you were fond of her. Is there anything I can do?"

She didn't want Howard's false sympathy. Keisha had been in the office several times while Howard was here, and he hadn't paid her the slightest attention. In fact, now that she remembered, he'd gone out of his way to avoid her.

"I'm fine, Howard." She scooted her chair closer to her computer. "I need to finish my mail," she said, hoping he'd take the hint.

He didn't. "Such a heinous, senseless crime. Do the police have any clue who could have done it?"

"I don't know," she answered sharply. "The police don't keep me apprised of their cases." She offered a tiny smile to take the edge off her words. After all, Howard Randolph was her office mate and she was stuck with him for the rest of the year.

He pulled his chair back to his space and reached for a handsomely-bound leather volume. "I suppose the police won't be all that interested in finding her killer," he mused.

Olivia looked up from her desk. "What do you mean?"

"Well, considering her rather reckless reputation ... " He let the words hang unspoken as he flashed a sly look.

"Keisha was a very nice girl," she protested. "Why do you think her reputation is in question?"

"Oh, come on, Olivia, a pretty girl like that. You know the rumors." A knowing expression crossed his face. "New York City girl, loose in sunny California, away from mommy and daddy for the first time."

She didn't bother to temper her tone this time. "You're presuming a great deal about a girl you know absolutely nothing about."

Randolph glanced up from flipping through the pages of his book. "I'm sorry if I've offended you, my dear. It wasn't my intention."

Without a word, Olivia snapped off her computer and removed her purse from the drawer. As she exited the office, she turned back. Howard's brows were still lifted and he had that silly pretend-surprise look on his face.

"You should speak cautiously about the dead, Howard. Keisha was a nice girl and doesn't deserve your insinuations about her character." She closed the door behind her with a sharp click.

So much for diplomacy.

#

The man reverently touched each artifact arranged on the small altar. Then he lighted exactly seven virginally white candles and placed them strategically around the room so as to produce the most dramatic view. Next, he pinned the photographs to the tag board wall at the altar's right-hand side because, of course, the offering of the Man of Holiness must stand at the right hand of God.

Black and white photos, all of them very startling, in his modest opinion. He'd taken the pictures and developed them himself, all sharp and crisp tableaux, unmarred by the muddy brilliance of color. How could one see the clear beauty of absolutism when the photographed objects were saturated with image gradients and hues? Color obscured meaning. Only the starkness of black and white indicated the unvarnished truth.

The persons in these photos showed naked reality.

He hung them in strict chronological order according to when he'd taken them and then stood back to admire his collection. He caressed the third photo, his favorite. He believed the grainy texture captured the moment of death's realization the best.

The woman had been an aspiring actress, reduced to the waitressing common among girls gone to Hollywood. Lowly work, for which she was paid a pittance. He thought she showed extraordinary potential, but her fate was inevitable. He particularly enjoyed running his fingers over the picture's germane sections and reliving the sticky reality of the event.

"Sweetheart," he whispered aloud, "you were one of the best." She hadn't known, of course, that he had photographed her. By then she was too far gone to be aware of such trivia as cameras.

The man placed a velvet cushion on the floor before the altar and knelt, genuflected, and folded his hands in front of his chest. A surge of foolishness rose up in him. Despite his religious ties, he wasn't sure God existed. But it didn't really matter because a moment of incredible peace descended on him, and a shiver akin to religious fervor – or an orgasm – shook his body with the force of a surging river.

The closing of the front door drew him out of his meditation. Instantly he became as alert as a fox. Who had a key to this apartment? It was unthinkable that anyone had access to his quarters ... possibly to this private room.

Agitated, he pushed up from the cushion and put out the candles one by one with the eighteenth century candle extinguisher he'd discovered by chance at an antique store in Oregon. When he exited the room, he triple locked the door and replaced the plain panel which fitted easily into the door frame. He re-hung the cheap art deco painting, giving it one last glance before he started down the stairs.

"Hi, there," the woman said, smiling broadly up at him where he paused at the landing. "Long time, no see."

"Didn't know you had a key," he said mildly.

"Silly guy, I don't, but I remembered where I'd left a spare from ... before ... " She fumbled with the words, and he knew she was suddenly aware of how bold she'd been.

She'd made a copy?
He trembled with anger at the possibility.

" ... when I used your key once," she finished.

He pushed down the rage and grinned in a way he knew she found charming and cosmopolitan – she'd actually used that word one time to describe him after one of his sessions of wild sex with the silly bitch.

He stepped up to greet her. "It's fine," he said. "I'm just surprised to see you."

"I finished early today," she added, as if by explanation, and hung her coat on the oak clothes tree which, along with a ceramic-topped entry table, was the only piece of furniture in the foyer. She dropped her keys into the glass bowl. "I thought we could order pizza."

Conjuring up images of the heavy meal, his mind revolted at the idea of red sauce mingled with stringy white substances and brown animal meats. Maybe with the correct wine. He sighed and began the descent. He reached for the heavy bag she struggled with and dropped a quick peck on her cheek. For now, she'd expect that much.

Oh, well, at least she'd be good for a quick fuck. She was hardly up to any intellectual stimulation, but didn't he keep her around for the occasional time when a good screw was just what he needed?

"You order," he suggested, "and I'll pick up a bottle of wine when I get the pizza."

"Cool," she answered, moving to the kitchen and the drawer beside the sink where he kept the take-out menus.

She'd become far too familiar with him, he thought, as he watched her bend unnecessarily to adjust her shoe strap, her back toward him. Giving him a full view of her lack of underwear. He rethought his position on giving her the immediate boot. Maybe a few more trysts for old times' sake. Did the vapid girl even know what a tryst was?

"No anchovies," she said, holding the phone to her ear and covering the mouthpiece with a hand that sported rings on every finger.

"You remember." He smiled like a shark.

"I remember everything about you, honey," she answered coyly, "and I mean everything." Her heavily mascaraed eyes dropped to a spot below his waist.

Definitely good for a few more rounds. Even if he had to tolerate pizza and cheap, empty-headed conversation.

"Back in a minute," he said, grabbing his coat from the rack and heading out into the brisk night, tugging the collar close around his neck.

At the liquor store he chose a moderately-priced bottle of Burgundy before picking up the pizza and walking the quarter mile back to his apartment. The food would be cold by the time they got around to eating it – rather, before she devoured it – but he had no intention of letting the heat of the moment slip by.

She might get one slice eaten while he set up the camera. She would need the extra energy because he had every intention of keeping her very occupied tonight.

Chapter Eighteen

Olivia didn't look at all surprised when Jack showed up on her doorstep without warning. He hadn't meant to see her alone again before he left for the mountains, but her accusing eyes had wounded him all day. He told himself he'd explain what little he could and beg her forgiveness.

Those sharp green eyes darkened several shades as she swept them over his casual clothes – jeans and a black tee shirt under his leather jacket. She stepped back and opened the door wider. Barefoot and looking very young in jeans and a collared shirt, she took a seat on the sofa in the living room. Jack chose a wing chair in the opposite corner, putting distance between them.