The FBI Thrillers Collection Books 1-5 - Catherine Coulter [182]
Then suddenly, there appeared: Not this time, Sherlock.
The screen went black. The computer was her enemy. As long as Savich was still breathing, the computer would remain her enemy. She lifted her fingers from the keyboard and laid her hands in her lap.
“Your aunt all right?”
It was Ollie. He pulled up a chair and sat beside her. “You look like shit, Sherlock.”
“Thanks. Yes, my aunt is just fine now.”
“You look like you’re ready to go over the edge.”
She’d lived on the edge for seven years; no reason to go over now. She smiled at him. “Not really. I’m just tired, and that’s what I told Hannah. Thanks for drawing her fire, Ollie. I wish she’d open her eyes and realize that I’m about as much a threat to her as a duck in the sights of a hunter.”
“That’s an odd thing to say, Sherlock. Savich told me to tell you to come into the conference room. What’s it all about?”
“Tell the agents how the Ghost gets into the nursing homes, Sherlock.”
She sat forward, her hands clasped together. “The Ghost is disguised as an old woman, a nursing home resident. Ollie showed me how to mix and match report data and plug it into two overlapping protocols. I did it with data from what the witnesses had said after each of the murders. No one found anything unusual in any of these reports—not the witnesses, not the cops, not us. But the computer did.” She handed out a piece of paper. “These are direct quotes from the witnesses, just the pertinent parts, naturally, just the parts that, once tied together, pull the killer out of the bag.”
Savich read aloud: “ ‘No one around, Lieutenant. Not a single soul. Oh, just some patients, of course. They were scared, some of them disoriented. Perfectly natural.’” He raised his head. “This is from a night floor nurse.” He read down the page. “This one is from a janitor: ‘There wasn’t anybody around. Just old folks and they’re everywhere. Scared, they were. I helped several of them back to their rooms.’”
Romero nearly squeaked when he read: “ ‘There was this one old lady who felt faint. I carried her into the nearest room, the recreation parlor. Poor old doll. She didn’t want me to leave her, but I had to.’” Romero had a long narrow face, rather like Prince Charles’s. He had thick, black brows that nearly met between his eyes, eyes that were black and mirrored a formidable intelligence. He shook the paper toward Lacey. “Good going, Sherlock. That last quote was from a cop. A cop! Jesus, it was there all the time.”
Savich was sitting back in his chair, just looking at each of the agents, one by one. “So,” he said finally, once all of them were looking at him, “do you think this is the answer? Our killer is disguised as an old woman, a patient?”
“Looks good to me,” replied George Hanks, a thirty-five-year veteran of the Bureau who had the oldest eyes Lacey had ever seen.
Savich turned to Ollie. “You’re the lead on this case. What do you think?”
Ollie was staring at Lacey. He looked wounded, his mouth pinched. “I didn’t know anything about what Sherlock was going to do. It seems fairly straightforward, put like this. Like it’s so out there that we were all fools not to catch it. Of course they did already check this once, and we mulled it over too, but I guess none of us went deep enough. The first thing to do is call that cop and ask him who that old lady he carried into the recreation room was.”
“Good idea,” Savich replied. “That could pretty well clinch it if the cop remembers.” He turned to Lacey. “I don’t suppose you know if the killer is Jewish, Sherlock? Or hates Jews? Not necessarily the residents, since only two of the five old ladies who were killed were Jews. The owners, you think? Or have you dismissed the Star of David idea?”
“I don’t know, sir, about either. Listen, this idea just came to me, that’s all. It was blind luck.”
“Yes, I rather suppose it was,” Hannah said as she rose, “since you’re so new at this.”
Ollie was dogging