Page 16 of Chameleon Killer

"So," she said, setting her coffee down and taking a bite of her scone. "Tell me what doesn't fit."

I smiled. Why ask me what I was thinking? She wanted to know what I'd found.

Coffee in hand, I crossed to the whiteboard mounted beside the bookshelf. It was so damn clean, it practically gleamed.

"I'm thinking we've been asking the wrong question."

Her eyebrow lifted. "Which is?"

Setting my drink down on the shelf, I uncapped a marker.

“Everyone is asking who killed him?” I studied the blank board like the answers were right there waiting for me to scratch them off. “But what if that’s not the story?”

She watched without interrupting as I wrote Guy’s name on the board.

"Guy wasn't random."

"No." Her easy agreement should have surprised me and maybe it would have once upon a time. But I was just vocalizing what she’d seen.

I added another name. "Colin wasn't random either."

"No." Genuine regret filled that syllable and I spared her a look. She didn’t want comfort right now. Wouldn’t accept it even if she did, not when we still had a story to follow.

"Neither of them really fits the Auditor's victimology." I glanced at her now and waited.

Her eyes narrowed and I swore I saw what happened in real time as she followed the thoughts to the inevitable conclusion.

"The question isn't why the Auditor killed them." She blew out a breath.

I nodded. "The question is..."

She finished it with me. "...who needed everyone to believe that he did."

I wrote one word to the right of Colin Thorne's and Guy Reardon's names.

MOTIVE

Mallory abandoned her perch on the desk and crossed to the whiteboard. She took the marker from my hand without asking.

One by one, she wrote beneath it.

Who benefits?

Short-term. Long-term.

Who profits?

Follow the money.

Who controls the narrative?

Media. FBI. Corporate. Killer.

Who's lying?

She underlined the last one twice before stepping back.

A sense of satisfaction invaded me. Because there she was, there was my Mallory. Her tenacity was part of why she’d become the best investigative reporter I’d ever worked with, the rest was how she went after those stories.