Malcolm leaned against the counter and kept filching cookies as Pippa set them to cool on a mat. “What’s different about these?”
Jethro’s brows lowered. “The first is from a text written by a wronged lover—guy by the name of Georges Rermante. ‘There once was a starry night upon which the darkness of lovers fell.’” Jethro shook his head. “There isn’t much about him except that he was torn between duty and love, and he chose duty at the end because of betrayal.”
Angus shook his head. “Why can’t Lassiter just come out and say what he wants to say?”
Jethro shrugged. “The next is from a poem by a master in chess in the nineteen hundreds. ‘On first glance, the game can only be played according to the limitations on each piece, unless you’re the master of the game.’”
Nari accepted a warm cookie from Pippa. “Sounds like he’s the master and it’s the same narcissistic theme.”
“At first glance,” Jethro agreed. “But when you delve into the life of the chess master, a guy by the name of Norm Litehnshaw, you see more. He fell in love with his brother’s wife and turned quite mad. Oh, he was probably nuts in the first place, but she became all he thought about, and he lost the ability to play chess. He lost everything until he killed her.”
Nari swallowed. “Then what?”
“Then he returned to chess, won for a while, and finally was killed by his brother as revenge.” Jethro looked up from his computer.
Angus’s green gaze flicked to Nari. “So the logical conclusion is that Lassiter is in love with Nari and has to kill her to continue the game?”
Jethro shrugged. “I just find the data. You analyze it.”
Angus frowned. “It doesn’t feel right. Or at least not complete.”
“Maybe he’s in love with you, Angus,” Pippa said, tossing hand mitts to the counter. “Maybe he can’t concentrate because he’s obsessed with you and knows that if he gets Nari, you’ll come to him.”
Dana frowned from the other chair by the sofa. “So you think the person trying to shoot Angus is Lassiter?”
Angus shook his head. “Lassiter would never work with a partner, and the night of the bombing there were two of them. Same with the first time that navy-blue truck chased me down and shot at me. I don’t know who that was, but it definitely wasn’t Lassiter.”
It was impressive how quickly Angus could put himself in the mind of a killer. Impressive and a little daunting. Nari smiled and he smiled back, relieving her. Okay. He was all right.
Angus cleared his throat. “He failed twice to get Nari, and he’s going to become desperate. He’s already killed the doctor who pronounced him dead, so anybody he’s ever been associated with is in danger. We have to find him now, and the key to that is to find where he’s been since I shot him six years ago.”
Brigid opened her laptop, her curly, red hair falling over her shoulders. “So far, nothing. I’ve looked everywhere. It’s like he just disappeared. I even searched hospitals and rehab places during that time period, figuring he would’ve needed a while to recuperate after being shot several times. Not only is there no record of him, there’s no record of anybody having that kind of injuries that I haven’t been able to track down and verify.”
Nari patted her hand. Brigid was the best; if anybody could find the information, it’d be her.
Angus looked at Jethro. “How about the last note? The one found with the deceased doctor?”
Jethro typed in a couple of commands. “‘The night grows tired, the energy unleashed upon this moment in time that cannot last. A vision of the abyss, drawing me in, only her face halting the time that must occur in the game of the gods.’”
“What the hell does that mean?” Wolfe grumbled.
Jethro dug his fingers into the back of his neck. “It’s a passage from a set of ramblings by a patient in the Canterbury Mental Hospital in the early nineteen hundreds. His name was Morgan Trowcrow, he was in his early thirties, and he’d murdered his mother before going on to kill seven more women who looked like her.”
“So, his mom stopped the time that had to occur? Until he killed her?” Raider asked.
Jethro lifted a shoulder. “He wrote the passage several years after being admitted, and supposedly he was in love with one of the nurses, who he tried to kill several times. There were notes in a doctor’s journal that the nurse might be the woman to whom he referred, and it’s possible she symbolized the institution that kept him from killing.” He looked at Angus. “Or not. Who knows?”
Malcolm leaned against the counter, stress lines by the sides of his mouth. “How the hell does this help us catch this wacko? I say we just hunt him down and end him.”
Wolfe nodded. “I like that plan.”
“So do I,” Angus mused. “Brigid? Any luck with facial rec and CCTVs around town?”
“No. I haven’t spotted him once,” Brigid said. “He’s good at hiding, and he manages to blend in when he needs to. I’ll keep looking, though.”
Dana reached for a homemade bagel from the tray on the coffee table. “I’ve been trying to track down financial records but haven’t found anything. Lassiter obviously had a lot of money stashed away or he wouldn’t have been able to survive these last few years. So far, nothing. He really is smart.”
Angus nodded. “Madness and genius are often flip sides of the same coin.” He focused on Raider. “Any news on who has been trying to kill me?”
