Page 72 of Chameleon Killer

Chicago was still dark when I pulled into the underground employee lot at the Cartwright building. Flint Carter’s jeep was in the secure lot. Of course it was.

Where Mallory was, Flint would not be far behind. She’d gone back to his apartment with him. She wasn’t going home and she didn’t want an FBI detail.

She processed her stories through immersion. The deeper the mystery, the less likely she was to leave it behind in the newsroom. The hungriest of journalists lived their stories—every moment of their lives. Some chased deadlines and headlines, Mallory? She chased patterns and answers.

I shut off the engine and sat in the quiet dark of the underground lot. Security cameras were located in every corner. We’d added a few, some disguised as light fixtures to maximize coverage.

No blindspots. We couldn’t afford them. Not with the unsub’s continued interest in Mallory.

She hadn't returned my calls. None of them. Not unusual. Not lately. Ignoring several of them in a row was notable. People presumed that profilers looked for tells.

Some might, but I wasn’t one of them. My experience dictated that I look for changes. In order to notice those changes, however, you needed a baseline of established behavior. Once you had that, deviations were notable.

In this case, Mallory answered my calls when she wanted information. She ignored them when she wanted control. The fact she’d gone into near-blocking mode said something had changed.

Something significant.

I wanted to know what.

My badge took me all the way to the newsroom floors. The overnight assignment desk looked half asleep. Two producers argued quietly over a rundown. A sports anchor was visible in the kitchenette reheating something that smelled terrible.

My arrival generated a beat of notice, a glance, and then away. I was starting to be a familiar figure here. I angled toward Mallory’s desk in the big room, but slowed when I caught sight of Flint standing in the door to a conference room.

Normally, the glass walls allowed everyone to see who was in there. Butcher block paper covered every inch of the glass. Interesting choice.

The door was still open as Flint disappeared inside so I changed my approach to reach the open door. Both stood near the big whiteboard that they’d covered in questions and data points.

Neither of them noticed me immediately. They weren’t talking either. They were looking at the same section of the timeline.

Flint tilted his head and said something in a low tone that didn’t carry. She answered him in a similarly quiet voice. They didn’t so much as glance at each other, their attention was fixed—on the same thing?

They weren’t arguing, because even as she traced some path with her finger, he picked up and followed it to another area of the board. They were communicating without eye contact or even a lot of words.

The comfort between them seemed to have grown. Holding my position, I studied what they were studying. The names on the board were all victims. She wasn’t focused on any of the early targets, but on the most recent.

One crimson colored nail tapped lightly at the board just under Reardon’s name and as Flint shifted, I caught the timeline they’d begun to construct.

Her requests for comments and information had all circled around the paperwork found with Reardon and how he fit the established pattern of motives exhibited by the Auditor’s previous victims and the evidence he left with them.

The more I watched them, the less I believed this line of inquiry had originated with Mallory.

Yesterday she'd been asking why Guy fit.

Today she was asking why he'd survived.

That wasn't a refinement.

It was a pivot.

Investigators changed questions for one of three reasons: new evidence, outside influence, or hard-earned insight.

Mallory hadn't received new evidence.

Which left two possibilities.

I didn't particularly like either of them.Why else would she abandon a seemingly productive investigative path.

The Auditor understood something most offenders never did.