Page 289 of Chameleon Killer

“Still bothering you?”

I considered that. “No.”

His expression told me he didn't entirely believe me.

So I amended it. “Not the way it used to.”

That he accepted.

I turned back toward the board. “What bothers me is what happened afterward.”

“We've discussed this.”

“I know.”

“No sightings.”

“No.”

“No messages.”

“No bodies definitively connected to him.”

“Definitively being the operative word.”

“Yes.”

I traced one finger along the rim of my coffee cup. Six months. Simon had vanished. The FBI still called him the Auditor. CPD did too.

Most of the press had adopted the name. There were podcasts. Documentaries.

Books already announced by people who had never spoken to Simon and had apparently never met a fact they couldn't stretch into three hundred pages.

I had been offered an obscene amount of money to write one. I'd declined. I didn't know Simon well enough to write his story.

That sentence alone would probably have given Elliot an aneurysm.

“Mail came,” Flint said.

I glanced toward the door. “Anything good?”

“Two invoices, three solicitations, one handwritten complaint about your parking, and something from a source in Springfield.”

My interest sharpened. “Which source?”

“Delaney.”

I put down the coffee. “Why didn't you lead with that?”

“Because I wanted you to drink something before you developed a new obsession.”

I crossed the room.

Flint picked up a thick envelope.

“State contracts?”

“Looks like.”