“I meant to say ‘constitutes,’” Amaia corrected herself, coming back to the subject, momentarily squeezing her eyes to push the image away. “The sword of Damocles he has hanging over his victims makes him feel powerful, but it requires him to wait for just the right moment to let it drop. That gives us a clear picture of his mental state. He’s not tormented or enraged. Not a single piece of evidence suggests he’s capable of the kind of fury that drove Brad Nelson to smash up his house during the argument with his wife.”
“Are you saying that the destruction in every one of those crime scenes isn’t an expression of uncontrolled rage? I thought that’s exactly what we concluded from Lenx’s referencing destruction in the Bible,” Tucker asserted across the line. Static and the poor connection gave her tone a malevolent edge.
“Destruction, yes,” Amaia asserted, “but the Composer left the destruction in God’s hands. Divine retribution rendered via natural disaster, a judgment Lenx didn’t dictate but did accept. Moreover, Johnson and I both find it hard to believe that a man with Lenx’s fervent moral and religious convictions would manifest no sign of them in his new identity.”
“Don’t forget that the Galveston police chief saw him sneaking into a church,” Dupree reminded her. “Maybe he decided to hide his religious zeal in his new life.”
Amaia didn’t accept that. “I do find that strange, but I think it really unlikely a fervent Lutheran like Lenx would switch to Catholicism. He relies on faith to justify the killings. That’s a profoundly Lutheran view, in stark contrast to the Catholic doctrine that good works offer redemption even for those who lack faith. Martin Lenx wasn’t going to pardon anyone’s trespasses. His victims were offending God, and Martin saw himself as God’s appointed avenger.”
She motioned to Johnson, who took up the thread. “And then there’s the grandmother. We’ve confirmed there was a grandmother, or at least a surrogate, in each case. He considers that important. But Nelson’s parents died a long time ago. His wife was still a child when her mother died. His children are older, and the Nelsons have never had a servant or nanny who could be considered a grandmother stand-in.”
Emerson spoke up for the first time. “Okay, I understand the assistant inspector’s reasoning, but it’s possible that this time he couldn’t exactly match all the patterns of his previous life. If, as Salazar suggests, he sees his current existence as a new, improved version, he could have modified some things. Changing religion could have been a deliberate tactic to make sure he’d never come face to face with anyone from his former parish, even by chance.”
Amaia snorted. “Of course I don’t believe he was trying to reproduce the errors of his previous life, but his Lutheran faith was vital to him, more important than anything else, and the grandmother role was so crucial that he included it in each mass murder. So much so that at the Allens’ farm he ran her down in a field and stuffed her body under the roof. He might have been trying to correct errors from his previous life, but I think he’s fated to repeat them. After all, he’s striving to realize an impossible ideal. The everyday lives of these families have more in common than appears at first sight. They were going through the same sorts of conflicts that inevitably occur as children grow up.”
“And if they weren’t, you’d have to wonder why,” Johnson added. “He probably kept them under his thumb when they were younger, but kids usually try to exert their independence as soon as they hit their teenage years. Things tend to get tense, the way they did with the Lenxes. And if his current spouse declined to back up his inflexible demands, maybe her opposition triggered a reversion to previous behavior patterns. No new family could ever live up to his expectations, I guarantee you that.”
Tucker tried to comment, but her voice was garbled through the static. It cut out, came back, then dropped out entirely.
Dupree called her back. “Sorry, Agent Tucker,” he said when she picked up. “I’m afraid we’re about to lose our connection. The Internet is still up, so we can resort to email if we have to. Go ahead with what you were saying.” He put his mobile on speaker phone.
“Right. I don’t agree with your analysis, Assistant Inspector Salazar. I think Nelson’s our man. Sounds to me like every objection you’re making just confirms it. Emerson thinks so too. Johnson, how about you?”
“I’m with Salazar. I don’t think Nelson fits the profile at all. There are enough similarities for us to maintain him as a person of interest, and obviously we should keep tabs on him to see what he gets up to if he’s here in the city. First step would be to verify whether he’s riding out the storm at home.”
“What do you want on your pizza?” Tucker asked.
“Double servings of anchovies and olives,” Johnson replied.
Bill and Bull gaped at the cell phone and at Johnson’s broad grin.
“It’s a little trick we like to use to check whether someone’s at home. One of our agents disguised as a pizza delivery person turns up with an order.” Johnson smiled again. “Anyone will open the door to a pizza delivery man, even if no one placed an order.”
The cell phone screen went dark. Their connection was gone. Dupree tried to call Tucker again but couldn’t get through.
31
ETERNAL SLEEP
Superdome, New Orleans
8:45 a.m., Monday, August 29, 2005
Nana pushed a sedative tablet between her lips and swallowed it without water, her own saliva forcing it down to the ball of anxiety inside her. She leaned against the wall, trying to ease the pressure on her right hip. Intense pain shot up her leg from heel to waist, and agonizing cramps threatened to throw her off balance. She closed her eyes, focused on waiting for the sedative effects of the pill to kick in, and tried to convince herself relief was on the way.
She’d taken refuge in the Superdome passageway almost three hours earlier. At six o’clock in the morning, a furious gust of wind had ripped open the roof above their heads and heavy rain had burst into the stadium. Soaked and panicked, the three of them first sought shelter in the access tunnel, but the surge of frantic bodies pushed them farther and farther beneath the stands. Bobby jammed his mother’s wheelchair against the wall and helped Nana find a place alongside it, her pillow on the concrete floor. Nana had slumped against the wall, overcome. She rested her head against Seletha’s chair and dully watched the pushing, milling crowd look for places to deposit their possessions. The heat was intense. Her hair was drenched, but at least the pee stain on her skirt had dried and left only a whitish circle. Nana rubbed it in disgust but saw a worried Bobby watching her.
“It’s okay, Nana. It ain’t important, and besides, you don’t hardly see it anymore.”
She closed her eyes.
When she’d staggered out from the restroom where those men were raping that woman, her screams attracted the attention of a group of youngsters hanging out by the stairs; she told them what was happening. They stopped the game they were playing and stared in consternation at the door to the women’s restroom. A girl said she’d seen a policeman at the nearest gate, and a couple of boys ran there for help. It took forever. In the meantime, Nana saw three men leave the restroom and disappear into the crowd. A bedraggled woman tottered out not long afterward, fumbling at her torn clothing.