“Thank you so much,” Kate said drily.“I truly appreciate the compliment.”
“Well, you should.I’ve been thinking the same thing, but I didn’t want to say it out loud for fear you’d lash out and then abandon me.”
Kate smiled faintly.“I’m not that kind of girl.”
“Sure.Except when you are.”
Kate’s smile faded.Rather than confront that, she turned her focus back to the case.“We don’t know what the final event is going to be, so we need to keep looking at possible killers.”
“Yeah, but who?We went through everyone on the list.They’re all innocent.”
“Right,” Kate said.“I guess it could be someone who read about this on the news and got inspired, but it seems too personal to me.I mean, this killer genuinely believes they’re sacrificing their soul.They’re terrified.But they’re still doing this.For them to have a motivation so strong they would condemn themselves to hell suggests a deeply personal connection.”
“So, who?Three different murders years apart.One of them didn’t even go to trial.”
Kate cocked her head.“Not criminal trial, but it did go to civil trial.”
“Okay, but that was a wrongful death lawsuit, not a jury trial.Dennison still got away with murder, but it can’t be someone connected to the courts.”
As it so often did, the answer fell on Kate violently.“Yes, it can.Oh my God.We missed it.How the hell did we miss it?”
“What?Miss what?”
“The stenographer.It has to be the stenographer.”
Marcus frowned.“They would have shown up on the list.”
“Not if their names were never a part of court records.”
“How would their names not be a part of court records?”
Kate got to her feet and started pacing, arms crossed.Her heart started to quicken as the pieces of the puzzle fell into place.“It’s not common, but some court systems hire out for stenographers rather than having a court reporter on staff.Those companies will have the stenographers’ names and assignments on record, but the court might not.”
“Okay,” Marcus said.“Any reason why?”
“Stenographers never interact with anyone.They’re basically a human recorder.Some courts have even switched to automatic stenography or just straight audio recording.Human stenographers are an archaic holdover that a lot of systems still use only for legal reasons, kind of like how a lot of DMV documents still need to be faxed even though the last time anyone saw a fax machine,Howdy Doodywas the number one show on television.”
“Okay, so the court wouldn’t feel it important to record the stenographer’s name any more than they would want the janitor’s name recorded who wiped down the benches after the session.But they’d have the name of the company they contracted with, and that company would know the name of the stenographer they assigned.”
“Exactly.”
“Okay.Then let’s figure that out.”
A quick phone call revealed that in all three cases, the Circuit Court of Cook County had hired Great Lakes Stenographers for their needs.A call to the corporate number was a little less brief, but after a couple of minutes of working through hemming and hawing supervisors, Kate found herself on the phone with the Director of Operations who gave her the personal cell phone of the Chicago Area Manager who finally gave them an answer.
“Oh God,” the manager whispered.“I think that was Emily.”
Kate and Marcus shared an air high-five.“Emily who?”Kate asked.
“Emily Warren.She’s one of our most in-demand stenographers.She can type over three hundred words per minute.She was… let me see… Yeah, oh my God, that was her.I had to go back to the archived records to confirm she was assigned toFriar v.Dennison, but it was her.She had just started with us.Oh my God.And she’s been so crazy recently.”
That explained why the manager was so shocked when she realized who it was.It was easy to dismiss crazy behavior as eccentric and quirky until one connected it to violent murders.
“Crazy how?”Kate asked.
“About four months ago, she just started behaving… oddly.She started carrying a crucifix to work.Not wearing it like a necklace but carrying it in her purse.She would pull it out every now and then and mutter under her breath.We didn’t say anything because you know, people can be religious, but it started getting weird.She would say things like how God needed a new instrument to perform the unsavory aspects of His will.I remember that because I was in the lunchroom when she said that to another stenographer.I had to ask her to keep those beliefs to herself when she was at work.”
“How did she take that?”
