Kate shrugged.“How can we know?And that’s the point.”
Silence settled again.The city outside was building towards rush hour.Somewhere nearby, a siren started up, climbed, and fell away.
Marcus broke the quiet.“I think you’ll be fine about the prison visit.I spoke to Winters.”
Kate looked at him in alarm.“You did?”
“I did.I argued that today’s events only demonstrated how central you are to catching Cox.I said it made no sense to exclude the person who knew the most about him.”
“What did she say?”
“She agreed.To be honest, I think she’d joined the dots already.When you messaged her about your mom, it was probably obvious that you had some ongoing involvement in the case.”
“But I disobeyed a direct order.”
“Reading between the lines, I think she knew it was dumb order, and she regretted it.I think Winter was obliged to get tough in front of Captain Big-Balls, and my interceding on your behalf gave her the perfect opportunity to switch positions.”
“Mister Inter-Departmental Politics.”
“I’ll take that as a thank-you.”
She looked at him.“Thank you.I mean it.”
“No problem.In return.Tell me.What were you doing?”
Kate didn’t move.“When?”
“When I called you about Kellermann, you said you’d been reading all week.”
She looked at him for a long time.“I did.I was.”
And she took a deep breath, and she told him all the rest.About Topju, the bullet.The journal.It felt so good to say the words; what had felt deadly inside the walls of her skull became something else once spoken.Not benign, but not quite so dreadful, not strong enough to drag her under.Marcus listened carefully.
"Two options," he said, after a long, thoughtful silence."One: Cox is the disciple and this Gadd-guy is the real master.Unlikely, because sufficient quantities of experts have declared Gadd to be as crazy as a box of frogs.Two: Cox somehow fed all that shit to Gadd, with the ultimate goal of you seeing it.He knew in advance how he was going to stage each of the Commandment killings.All the Bible references he'd use.Because he would, wouldn't he?And then all he's got to do is get it all in front of you.The diary, all the references to your life, your past.And then he's got you where he wants you.Seeing all of that and starting to believe that these dark forces have somehow been shaping your life for years."
“You don’t think that’s true?”
“Of course not, Kate.Do you?”
“No!I don’t know.I just don’t know, Marcus.But whoever’s behind it, they know how to get inside my head.To make me doubt my own sense of reality.”
Marcus leaned back, studying her.“Exactly.And that’s the motive.Not to kill you.To unmake you.Piece by piece.I can see it, Kate.I can see it for the simple reason that I’m not you.”
“But whyme?Why the hell did it have to be me?”
Marcus sighed.“That, I don’t know.But you could also ask the question: whynotyou?Maybe it’s just random.It just happened to be you.I know that’s not very comforting, but…”
“I don’t know.Maybe itiskind of comforting to think that.I mean, it is and it isn’t.”
“If I was you, the first thing I’d have done is look up this Topju guy.He’s the one who brought you the package.I mean, you done that already, right?”
Kate was silent, feeling her stomach flip.Why hadn’t she?She’d been so alarmed by the parallels, with being handed a journal that seemed to predict the details of a series of nightmare cases in which she’d become intimately involved… That she’d forgotten to do the most basic checks.
Marcus was already on it.He held his phone out to her.
“This the guy?”
She looked at the photo.Her stomach gave another flip.
