No response, just quiet muttering about a drink.
“Mr. Von Ziegler?” she prompted.
But he no longer reacted to her words, still stooped, still muttering at the metal table.
Adele shared a look with Leoni, shrugged, and the two of them stepped away from the table. They waited to see if the motion would elicit an action from Mr. Von Ziegler.
You won’t find anything there.
But he kept his head dipped.
“We’ll be back soon, Mr. Von Ziegler,” Adele said.
Still no response.
Adele sighed and moved out from behind the interrogation desk, across the spacious room and to the door. She tapped on the window, and it unlocked from the outside, allowing the two of them out into the Austrian precinct, as the door clicked shut behind them.
As Leoni and Adele moved toward the sliding doors at the end of the precinct, past the sergeant’s desk, Leoni said, in a low tone, “He seems like he might be the guy.”
“Seems like it.”
“No alibi. All the motive in the world. And definitely has the means.”
“Yep. He does seem like it.”
“So, how come you don’t sound convinced?”
Adele opened her eyes wide, as if testing against a headache from the bright lights in the precinct. She winced a bit, but then glanced toward Agent Leoni and shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said, softly. “No reason. No good reason at least.”
Leoni returned her gaze. “Well, he’s the suspect we have. I know my higher-ups at AISE are going to want to speak with him. You might want to call your people. Keep them in the loop.”
Adele breathed heavily, but nodded. She didn’t love the idea of having to contact Ms. Jayne so soon. But what else could she do? The man had all but admitted to the crime. No alibi, no defense. Not even an attempt to gloss over the violent words he’d spewed on his website. It wasn’t a good look. And yet, somehow, she couldn’t shake the horrible sensation they were missing something.
Still, she lifted her phone, dialed Ms. Jayne’s number, and waited for an answer.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
“Yes?” she said, trying not to bite her tongue.
“Agent Sharp?” came Ms. Jayne’s voice, louder than usual, with background noise like the sound of a churning fan. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes?” she repeated, deciding not to ask about the noise. Ms. Jayne’s business was her own.
“I’ve been notified you have a suspect in custody. He looks good for it, yes?”
“I… I’m not sure.”
“No, Adele, he does. I’ve been briefed. Good work, Agent.”
Adele gnawed on her lip, moving out of the precinct now and taking the steps to the parking lot in search of a bit more privacy. She neared her parked car in the darkening evening, keys jingling as she pulled them from her pocket.
“I—I don’t think we have the right angle, Ms. Jayne.”
The background noise grew louder and the Interpol correspondent responded, but Adele couldn’t make out her words. She winced and said, “What was that?”
Ms. Jayne’s voice came crackling and disrupted, but Adele made out the words, “Nonsense. You’ve done well. Make sure they keep him overnight, understand?”
“Yes, I will. But look—”
The loud noise suddenly cut short, the phone began to beep. Adele blinked, said, “Hello? Hello, Ms. Jayne?”
No response.
“Damn reception,” Adele muttered, sliding into the front seat of the car all the same and rolling down the window.
Adele sat in the parking lot outside the Austrian precinct, beneath the glowing yellow of a curved safety light above the asphalt. She reclined in the car, the seat leaned back, her head pressed against the cushioned headrest. Her arm poked out the window into the cool evening air. The summer had gone, slipping away and conceding to night. The darkness in the sky spread out over the city, over the precinct, consuming shadows and settling thick.
Adele stared through the windshield, facing the precinct. A couple of officers also came down the stairs, one of them with a briefcase slung over her shoulder, and another brushing a long strand of hair behind her ear, as she then hefted her heavy belt with tools and weapons and cuffs, and adjusted her uniform, preparing to go on night patrol.
Leoni was still in the precinct, working on paperwork and communicating with the higher-ups in Italy.
As for Adele, she couldn’t shake the feeling that they’d missed a step.
Everyone seemed to agree. Ms. Jayne had agreed. Leoni agreed. Leoni’s higher-ups had agreed. Authorities from Paris, Italy, and Greece all seemed to agree.
They had their man. They’d captured him.
No questions asked. Simple.
And yet, Adele wasn’t convinced.
The killer had been smart. One step ahead. Mr. Von Ziegler, though an author, the sort that might be good enough with words to create riddles, was a drunk. A blowhard. The sort of person to scatter their thoughts across the Internet for everyone to see. He didn’t even have an alibi for the murders. And when he tried to run when they’d shown up, there hadn’t even been an escape plan. He’d caught himself on thistles.
That didn’t have the ring of a criminal mastermind to her.
Absentmindedly, Adele rolled her fingers, tapping them against the vehicle, feeling the cool metal beneath her fingertips. She watched as the two officers on the steps bid farewell and then moved off to their vehicles.
The lights glowing from inside the precinct combated the darkness around, trying to keep it at bay, but failing, casting long shadows and deep alcoves across the parking lot behind the cars.
And yet, Adele appreciated the shadows. The sorts of places one might hide.
The killer had known shadows. The killer had known the Sistine Chapel, had known the Acropolis, had known Notre Dame. The killer had known how to be undetected, how to move quietly. The killer had been smart.
And while innately Adele considered all killers to be stupid at their core, they weren’t stupid in the way that would manifest in being caught so easily. Stupid in what they valued. Stupid in how they behaved. Stupid in how they treated others. Yes. But stupid enough to be caught like this? To not even construct an alibi?
She rolled her eyes, closing them, and grunting at the ceiling of the cop car.
“Too easy,” she muttered to herself.
Or maybe she just wanted it to be too easy. Maybe she didn’t want the case to be over. Because if this case was over, it meant she would have to go back to France. And she wasn’t ready to face that particular mess. A copycat killer on the loose, her mother’s killer somewhere, hiding, like a puppet-master playing with strings.
She forced her mind away from this train of thought. She wasn’t trying to avoid anything. She was simply trying to do her job. But even as she thought it, it wasn’t convincing. Still, she summoned to mind the last riddle. Running it over again and again. Two couplets, the language poetic, but also hinting, coy. It seemed to know something, and wanted to tease her with it. The riddle itself was a mockery.
Mr. Von Ziegler was a writer, but bombastic and straightforward. Clever wasn’t how she’d describe him, neither was coy.
She ran the riddle through her mind again, and again.