“Martin Lenx, who presented himself as a model citizen, probably wouldn’t have wound up in jail, and his fingerprints haven’t been connected to another crime.
“At first, the idea that he left the country might seem plausible, but—and I don’t know why—I just can’t imagine Martin Lenx living abroad. His exalted opinion of himself doesn’t square with a fugitive’s life. The original investigating team decided the car being abandoned at the airport was a ploy, though they looked into the possibility he might have gone back to his parents’ place of origin. It turned out Lenx had no remaining family in Austria. My bet is that he set himself up somewhere else in the United States with a new identity and a different way of life. That’s hard, but not impossible. It’s what he’d aspired to do, and what, in his opinion, his family was preventing him from doing.”
Dupree watched Amaia during Tucker’s analysis. He saw her mouth twitch discontentedly. She clearly didn’t agree with Tucker, but she said nothing.
“Let’s recap,” Johnson said, losing patience. “Lots of elements fit: the way Martin Lenx murdered his family, the families’ profiles, the positioning of the bodies, the room in the house, ballistic evidence establishing that the same gun was used both in Madison and Galveston. But despite all that, Salazar is suggesting we suspend judgment because she doesn’t know what he’s been doing for the last eighteen years.”
Amaia bowed her head.
“Respond, Salazar!” Dupree commanded.
“Until I have a better understanding of what could have set him in motion, I can’t categorically state that Martin Lenx is the Composer.”
An uncomfortable silence prevailed, interrupted only by the static on the telephone line.
Dupree spoke at last. “All right, fine. Everybody get back to work. We’ll hit it on two fronts: on one hand we’ll continue working on the Composer as an independent agent, and on the other, we’ll renew the nationwide search for Martin Lenx and keep developing a profile for him. We’re looking for a connection between the Lenxes and the other families. Let’s review everything known about Lenx and take a closer look at his personal relationships outside the home. Maybe he had some kind of ministry or mentor relationship. Try to locate former acquaintances at work, people at his church.”
Emerson spoke again, triumph in his voice. “Hey! It’d be a good idea to remember he could have been leading a double life, with another girlfriend or wife, children out of wedlock, homosexual relationships, who knows? The kinds of things that a man who wants to be above reproach feels guilt over. Maybe something like that recurred and set him off. Maybe we could identify somebody who served as his disciple.”
Dupree got up, indicating the conference was over. “Salazar, come with me.”
He left the room and went toward the interior staircase, the only place they couldn’t be overheard. Dupree didn’t beat around the bush. “What the hell just happened in there?”
She shrugged, somewhat annoyed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You don’t know? I’m talking about your changing your mind. Again! You pull a rabbit out of your hat and a second later you agree with Emerson. Why? I didn’t bring you here to play nice or pretend you don’t know something’s wrong!” He was remembering her facial expression when she heard Tucker’s analysis. “One moment you stand up to defend your own interpretation. You get in our faces, make us hear you out and take you seriously. Then when corroborating evidence turns up and everything seems to fit your thesis, you retreat.”
“I shared my opinion . . . but I respect what others have to say . . .”
He sized her up. “It’s because of the Lenx family, right? You find it easier to accept the idea of a serial killer targeting families of strangers than the fact that Martin Lenx murdered his own flesh and blood.” Dupree saw it now, and he nodded. “The bastards who hurt their own, especially their own children, are the hardest to take. Those things he wrote about his daughter—” Dupree broke off, suddenly intuiting a new connection. As he paused to think about it, she silently prayed he wouldn’t try to dig any deeper.
But he did. “You have to face it. You have to factor it in. God knows that’s not the same as understanding it, nobody could, unless . . .”
He fell silent.
She half closed her eyes and breathed deeply, trying to cope with her violent reaction to Lenx, the man who’d murdered his own mother. The dark forces pushing a parent to kill a family member or massacre an entire family were far more horrific than mere murder; they were demonic. The very nature of Lenx’s crime, the execution of his own flesh and blood, was beyond comprehension.
She was especially shaken because if Martin Lenx and the Composer were one and the same, the team wasn’t after an evangelical killer rooting out sin or an annihilator avenging himself for childhood abuse. If they were the same person, the killer was conducting rehearsals in preparation for his big finale.
Yes, she’d been there in that scorched and smoking part of hell. She knew the nature of the demon who draws power from the fact that no one believes it can exist. Dupree’s expression told her he’d figure her out sooner or later. She knew he wouldn’t give up. The allure of that secret was the reason he’d recruited her.
“Why are you so determined to pass yourself off as hay?”
She gave him a baffled look.
“Hay, in the haystack! I know agents, men and women, who’d give their right arms to be considered the needle in the haystack. Lots of them pretend they are, every time they get the chance. But you really are the needle in the haystack. Brilliant, sharp, and piercing. You, Salazar, are condemned to stand out; you’ll never blend in.”
She had no idea what to say.
“Something doesn’t fit, Salazar, and I’ll bet my life it never has. It’s just not normal to take a twelve-year-old girl away from home and pack her off to a boarding school on the other side of the world. You want to try to convince me I’m wrong?”
Angered by his harsh insistence, she clamped her mouth shut and refused to look at him.
“It doesn’t fit, and there’s only one thing you can do: use it in your favor.”
She stood still as a statue for several seconds. At last she turned, looked him in the eye, and nodded.
He nodded back, pleased, and stepped forward so his face was only inches from hers. “Joseph Andrews was right. His father fought back, and the killer had to shoot him with the gun he brought to the house. With the same damn weapon and ammunition he used on his own family eighteen years earlier. Those are facts. You told us to look in the past; you said it wasn’t the first time he’d killed. That’s how we got Lenx. So tell me: Is Martin Lenx the Composer?”
“I can’t understand how he dropped completely out of sight for eighteen years. And I can’t see what would convert a family annihilator into an evangelical serial killer all these years later. But yes, I do think the Composer is Lenx.”
Dupree nodded, satisfied. “I saw you disagree when Tucker was speculating about his life in hiding.”
“I haven’t wrapped my mind around Martin Lenx yet. I have to understand him before I can try to guess what kind of life he’s living today.”