Paige didn’t know for sure, but it was one more reason for her and Christopher to talk to Julius as soon as possible.
They started to make their way through the conference, past crowds of people who were talking about online fiction, and other forms of content creation. The hotel’s conference rooms had signs outside, setting out what was running in them and when. Paige walked past one where the current topic was “Generating ideas through combination and atomization,” stepped past another in which a panel seemed to be discussing the similarities between e-sports streaming and chess content creation, and soon found herself standing outside a room where the sign said that it was playing host to a panel on “Making a Killing in Online Crime Fiction.”
“This is the one,” Christopher said, reaching for the handle.
“How do we play this?” Paige asked. “Do we go in and wait until we can get him alone before we approach him?”
Christopher shook his head, though. “There’s too much chance of him spotting us and taking an opportunity to slip away. If this is our killer, there’s a real danger that he’ll take the opportunity to strike again. No, we’re going to go in there and ask to speak to him directly, then react from there. If he comes quietly, fine. If he runs, we take him down and arrest him. We can’t take the risk of him getting away.”
Paige could only agree with that. Having read Julius’s online story, it seemed obvious that he was already thinking about ways to commit murder in more perfect ways. Was that a part of it? Was he not quite satisfied with his kills each time? Did he always have to seek out the next victim, trying to live up to some ideal that only existed in his imagination?
Paige couldn’t give him a chance to do that.
She and Christopher strode into the conference hall. There were rows of chairs set out there, although the sheer number of them was a little optimistic. There were probably only about a dozen people listening to the panel.
A stage sat at the front with a table for the trio of panelists there. Paige recognized Julius Bryant at the center of the panel, flanked by a man and a woman who both had physical copies of their books set in front of them, as if wanting to take any opportunity to advertise. Julius had a laptop open in front of him. Julius was a lean, dark haired man with a long face and striking features. He was currently wearing a suit, and had a long coat slung over the back of his chair. Was that the coat that the killer had been wearing in the video footage from the bus?
The two authors next to Julius looked faintly bored as Julius was speaking, as if he’d been going on for some time now, and they were just waiting for a chance to speak themselves.
“What I’m saying is that to do anything truly original in such a saturated field, we must be prepared to embrace reality. We must be prepared to do the unthinkable, to step across lines that previously seemed inviolable. The only way to get attention, when so many eyes are elsewhere, is to do the things that people cannot look away from.”
Paige couldn’t help herself. She stepped forward, with her badge held out. “Is that why you’ve killed three people, Julius?”
“Questions are reserved for the end of the panel,” Julius shot back. It was utterly incongruous, as if he simply didn’t acknowledge that Paige had any authority.
Paige glanced around and saw several phones pointed her way, obviously recording. Of course they would be, in the middle of a conference dedicated to content creators.
Still, Paige was determined to try again. “Julius Bryant, I’m Agent King, with the FBI. My colleague is Agent Marriott. We need to speak to you, right now.”
He gave her an annoyed look. “As you can see, I am right in the middle of a panel. If you wish to speak to me, I can come find you afterwards, assuming that I have any time to do it.”
Paige looked over to Christopher, who shook his head pretty much as she’d guessed that he would. They’d already discussed this, and Julius’s deluded sense of self-importance only made it more likely that he was their guy. They couldn’t let him have a chance to get out of there.
“I’m going to have to insist,” Paige said, moving forward.
A couple of the small group of fans stood up, moving into her path.
“Hey, you can’t do this,” one of them said. He was a big, bearded man wearing a plaid shirt. “You can’t just mess with Julius. Don’t you know he’s one of the most brilliant writers of this generation?”
“The most brilliant!” Julius said, clearly unable to help himself as his self-regard took over.
“Step out of the way, or I’ll arrest you for obstruction,” Paige said.
The big man snorted. “I’d like to see you try.”
He reached out towards Paige, and the moment his hand touched her, she grabbed it and twisted painfully, using the lock to force him to one side. She pushed him away and continued to head for the stage. Another of Julius’s fans got in the way, though.
“This is just trying to shut down free speech! Artists should be free to make art!”
“Not if they’re killing people to do it,” Paige said, but the man still didn’t move.
Christopher was there then, forcing the man aside with his greater size and weight. It created a gap for the two of them to try to get to the stage.
Meanwhile, Julius seemed to be typing furiously on his laptop.
“The FBI agents approached the stage, as I had known they would, every move they made predicted, every moment of this predetermined through my own genius…”
“He’s writing this?” Christopher said.
Paige shrugged. “I guess after writing the details of three murders, writing his arrest for them only makes sense.”
Paige still didn’t want to allow him to do it, though. She hopped up onto the stage, but Julius leapt up too, holding his laptop as he backed away.
“Dictation mode on,” he said, and then kept narrating. “The FBI agents had reached the stage now, their pinched features focused on me in expressions of hate, determined to stop me at any cost. I backed away, knowing that I would find a way to escape their clutches, no matter what they tried. I saw my chance, and leapt.”
He hopped down off the stage, wading into the chairs set out in the hall as if they were a sea. Paige set off after him, moving quicker, hurdling the chairs as she tried to close the distance.
“No, this is impossible, you can’t catch me!” Julius cried out, even as Paige got close enough to throw herself at him in a tackle that was far less elegant than she might have wanted.
The two of them went crashing down among the chairs, sending them scattering. Julius started to fight back, still narrating the whole thing as he went for the benefit of his computer.
“I struck out! I kicked at her, and…”
And the very fact that he’d just said he was going to do it gave Paige plenty of time in which to dodge. She slipped aside from the strike, and then wrenched Julius onto his stomach. It was a fight to get his arms behind his back, but Christopher was there then, helping. Between them, they managed to get cuffs onto the writer.
Paige gasped out the words as she tried to get her breath back. “Julius Bryant, you’re under arrest.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
They took Julius Bryant back to the field office of the FBI, and Paige wasn’t entirely surprised to find the press there waiting for them.