“I know that ‘but,’” Gregor said. “I’ve been involved in it once or twice myself. For future reference, though, you might remember that I not only established the Behavioral Sciences Department, I also established the procedures for that department. I know a serial murder investigation when I see one. And a serial murder investigation is definitely what you’re involved in. Am I right?”
“Yes,” Carl Bettinger said.
“Good,” Gregor said. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Given the people you’re talking to, I’d say there were two possible candidates for your suspect. There’s Dan Chester, for instance. It wouldn’t be hard to cast him as a psychopath. He’s got the morals of a Borgia Pope.”
Bettinger smiled thinly. “He’s also got the face of Ted Bundy. Do you remember Ted, Gregor?”
“I considered Mr. Chester for a while,” Gregor said, “but I decided against him. The man was not only running the senator’s career, he was running the senator’s life. Literally. Stephen Whistler Fox was never anything more than a ventriloquist’s dummy. If Dan Chester was killing strangers, he would have to be doing it very close to home. It would have been noticed—not that he was doing it, necessarily, that it was being done. And here is the interesting thing about all this. You are involved in the investigation of a case of serial murder. In order for you to be involved, you had to be called in by a local police department somewhere. Local police departments don’t come running to the Bureau unless they have no other choice, which usually means unless they’re getting such bad publicity they can’t stand it anymore. But here’s the problem, Carl. There has been no such publicity about any such case anywhere or any time in the last year. On a public level, your case does not exist.”
Carl Bettinger jumped out of his chair. “From that you decide I’m investigating Kevin Debrett? That’s crazy. From that, you should decide I’m not investigating anyone at all.”
“I told you, Carl. I know a serial murder investigation when I see it. You talk to Victoria Harte. You talk to Berman. You have computer eyestrain. What I decided was that there was a class of people who could be killed in such a way that their deaths were not obviously murders, and whose deaths might not be unexpected, or reported. Then I looked at our little group here and decided that Dr. Debrett was the only one among them who had both consistent access to that class of people and a possible—I won’t call it motive, but a possible spark, a possible precipitating event, in his background.”
“I don’t know about any precipitating event.” This time Bettinger was being honest. “I just know—that things are very strange.”
“I’m sure they are. I think I can see the outlines of your case, and it would be making me insane. If it’s any consolation, I also think your serial murderer is dead.”
Bettinger exploded. “They got Bundy,” he said savagely. “They got him. Gregor, I remember the execution. I couldn’t get in—you could have, but I take it you didn’t go—I’d been too far down in that investigation to merit a viewing. I watched the news all that morning on television, though, I remember being so—so damn high. So damn high, Gregor, because for once we had one, pure and simple, case closed and no worries about what some idiotic parole board was going to do ten years down the line that was going to put another ten or twenty people underground. Oh, I know you don’t believe in capital punishment—”
“Let’s say I don’t believe in capital punishment, but I wasn’t sorry to see Ted Bundy die,” Gregor said. “And let’s get back to the subject. I take it I’ve been right so far?”
“You’ve been brilliant.”
“Good. Now, I want to know just one more thing. In these possible serial murders—”
“They’re real enough, Gregor. They’re real enough. I just can’t prove it yet.”
Gregor didn’t tell him that if he hadn’t proved it yet, he might never prove it at all. Kevin Debrett was dead. Gregor started again anyway, out of both compassion and expediency.
“In these serial murders,” he said, leaving out the possible, “has there been, at any time, any suggestion of the use of a drug called succinylcholine?”
Bettinger had gone to the window during his tirade on Ted Bundy. He had been looking out on the beach when the last part of their conversation had taken place. Now he whirled around and stared at Gregor in astonishment.
“Good Lord,” he said. “I knew you were good, but you must be some kind of magician.”