Dupree listened, analyzing Tucker’s contentions, head tilted in thought. “What do you think, Johnson?”
“We’re getting ahead of ourselves. First thing to do would be to check whether there really was an emergency, something that kept him from traveling. Some things still don’t fit. But when it comes to opportunity, I have to admit he could be the one.”
“Yes,” Dupree conceded. “At first it seemed unlikely, but arriving as part of a rescue team justifies his presence in each place. It also means he’s being watched and supervised. At first glance, that suggests he’d have trouble getting away long enough to commit the crimes, but what we’ve just heard shows it might’ve been easier than I thought. Maybe he claimed he was busy somewhere else or dispatched to a different area. They’re under local command, so if the team splits up, I doubt anyone but his buddy could vouch for him. And Meigs confirmed that the team does get divided. For example, how difficult would it be for Phil Lorenzo, traveling right now between Charity Hospital and the Superdome, to get away from the team for, let’s see . . . How long do you think it would take him to locate pre-identified targets, round them up, kill them, and rejoin the team?”
Tucker’s voice was a metallic rattle that dropped out briefly but came back again. “For the actual murders, between twenty and thirty minutes. So an hour and a half max, assuming he’s got it planned. The witness told us he’s quick. He goes to do the job, carries it out, then leaves. Fits the profile of the perp; everything is prepared in advance. He’s not there to enjoy himself. That wouldn’t be characteristic of someone conducting a rite of purification and then disguising his targets as victims of the storm. Travel time is another question entirely. Moving around in a disaster zone has to be difficult, and we’ve got to keep in mind that in every case, he got to the families before any other rescue personnel. And that was with communications cut and roads impassable. But it seems to me that the real problem is that we have no idea how he chooses his victims.”
Dupree kept his eyes on Amaia as she was hearing the others out; she hadn’t joined the discussion. He’d seen a change in her over the past few hours, and it wasn’t just fatigue. She was withdrawn, and her face had the look of someone beginning to intuit a harrowing insight; he took this as a sign she’d deciphered something the others hadn’t grasped. Her colleagues were debating among themselves while she stood motionless, her eyes on the floor, as if saving her energy to deal with some thought that was draining her spirit.
Dupree called on her. “Salazar?”
She took a step forward. Her voice, in contrast to the anguish in her face, was clear and firm. “We’ve agreed that the Composer and Martin Lenx are probably the same person.”
They nodded.
“I seriously doubt those identities can be reconciled in Nelson.” They started to protest, but she stopped them. “Yes, I know he fits the timeline, but the evidence is all circumstantial. We have a lot on Lenx: the crime scene details, the photos, and the letter he left for his pastor. All we have for the Composer is his obsession with re-creating this ritual presentation. That’s all the evidence we can rely on to catch this killer. From the Composer’s staging of the scene, we’ve deduced how he presents himself and behaves to take in his victims, and that has to be the basis of the investigation. We have six crime scenes spread out across the eastern half of the country to compare against Martin Lenx’s murder of his family in Wisconsin eighteen years ago. The comparisons are complicated by the force of the natural disasters, but when we filter out those elements, each crime scene is just as orderly and unspoiled as the original one in the music room in Madison.”
“We’ve all accepted that,” Tucker declared, annoyed. “What are you trying to get at?”
Amaia ignored Tucker’s sharp tone. “What I’m trying to get at is that Nelson, enraged by a difference of opinion with his wife over their children, smashed up their living room. His chief in Galveston said the place looked like a tornado had hit it.”
“It was like that in the other cases,” Charbou pointed out.
She shook her head decisively. “No, it wasn’t, and that’s what’s confusing us. Nelson smashed his living room furniture when he flew into a rage, and that wasn’t the first time he had done it. Nelson is choleric; when he gets angry, he loses control. It happened often enough to make his wife want to pack up and leave with the kids. Martin Lenx, on the other hand, put up with years of frustration, years of disappointment when nothing went as he’d hoped. And then, on top of all that, there was the children’s disobedience and his wife’s indulgence of them.
“His finances were a disaster. He’d taken out loans with the house as collateral. His world was falling apart. And in all the months leading up to the murders, he never gave a sign he was even the least bit upset—not to his family or the people at work, not to the other members of his congregation. In fact, in all those interviews, and there were plenty, everyone talked about his controlled character, his discretion, his excellent manners. Martin Lenx never lost his calm.
“Lenx ended it all in one bloody day. From his first murder, his mother, to his last, his older son, Lenx stayed unperturbed. He had more than enough time to feel guilty, to regret what he’d done, but he didn’t. When he finished, he went to the kitchen, where he’d put writing paper and a fountain pen. He took the time to write a three-page letter to his minister. The lines were straight and perfectly spaced. The graphologists tell us he was completely calm when he wrote it. You know the rest.
“Not a single one of Martin Lenx’s actions was unconsidered, impulsive, or taken on the spur of the moment. Nothing in the man was hasty or spontaneous. And in each of the six mass murders over the last eight months, he repeated that pattern down to the tiniest detail.”
Maybe you think I’m crazy? Rosario’s voice echoed in Amaia’s mind. She closed her eyes for a moment and concentrated on blocking out the image of her mother bending close above her. “One night is not the same as another.”
She immediately regretted saying that but couldn’t take it back.
Dupree had hunkered down into that pensive posture of his, studying her. He knew she was speaking of her own experience. “What are you talking about, Salazar? Lenx murdered his family in the daytime.”
She shut her eyes. “I meant to say that no day is the same as another. And no moment. The chosen moment is what counts. Not one of those six mass murders, scrupulously compared with that of his original family, can be seen as a separate action. They were rehearsals for the real thing. Every time he kills, he confirms death sentences he’s already passed on his true intended victims, his current family.”
Dupree prompted her calmly, as if he already knew the answer. “And why hasn’t he carried them out?”
Amaia again had a vision of her mother leaning close, night after night, throughout her childhood. She looked around. “Because one night isn’t the same as another. He was waiting for a sign. The sign is essential. It constituted part of the ritual.”
“‘Was waiting’?” Tucker sounded confused on the other end of the line. “‘Constituted’?”