Free Dead Sleep by Greg Iles Page B

the others . . . none of that will come to anything.”
    I’m about to speak, when shock steals my breath. “Wait a minute. By what you’ve told me, the man who took the woman from Dorignac’s couldn’t have killed Wingate.”
    Baxter nods slowly. “Nine-one-one in New York got the call about the Wingate fire at seven fifty-one p.m. eastern time. The Dorignac’s victim disappeared from Metairie between eight fifty-five p.m. and nine-fifteen central time. That’s a maximum difference of two hours and twenty-four minutes.”
    â€œSo there’s no way the same person could have done both. Not even with a Learjet at his disposal.”
    â€œThere’s one way,” says Baxter. “The incendiary device used to ignite the gallery had a timer on it. If it was set long enough in advance, the same person could have gotten back to New Orleans in time to take the woman from Dorignac’s.”
    â€œBut it wasn’t,” I think aloud. “ He wasn’t.”
    â€œHow do you know?”
    â€œBecause I saw him.”
    â€œWhat?”
    As quickly as I can, I describe the drama of the man from the alley, shooting the blind photo over the crowd, and sending the fireman and cop after him.
    â€œWhere’s your film?” asks Baxter, his eyes burning with excitement.
    â€œNot here, if that’s what you’re thinking. Are you positive Wingate’s murder was related to my sister’s case?”
    â€œVirtually certain,” says Lenz.
    â€œSo you’re saying there’s more than one person behind the disappearances.”
    â€œI’m not saying it. The evidence is. Two UNSUBs, not one.”
    UNSUB is FBI-speak for Unknown Subject. “Two killers operating as a team?”
    â€œIt happens,” says Baxter. “But teams usually work side by side. Two ex-cons in a van, snatching and torturing women, that kind of thing. What I’m postulating would be something far more sophisticated.”
    â€œHave you ever seen anything like that before? People cooperating over a long distance to facilitate serial murder or kidnapping?”
    â€œOnly in child pornography,” says Baxter, “and that’s a different thing.”
    â€œIt’s unprecedented in the literature,” says Dr. Lenz.
    â€œWhich does nothing to rule out the possibility. Harvesting women’s skins was unknown until Ed Gein was caught doing it in the fifties. Then Tom Harris used it in a book and made it part of the national consciousness. In our business, you proceed from a very simple given: everything imaginable is possible, and may well be happening as we ponder it.”
    â€œHow would it work?” I ask. “How do you see it?”
    â€œDivision of labor,” says Lenz. “The killer’s in New Orleans, the painter in New York.”
    â€œBut Wingate was killed in New York.”
    â€œDifferent motive. That was self-preservation.”
    â€œI had the same thought up there. So the New Orleans guy kidnaps the women. How does the New York guy do the paintings? He works from photographs? Or he flies to New Orleans to paint corpses?”
    â€œIf that scenario is the answer,” says Baxter, “I pray to God he flies. We can take backbearings from airline computers and work out a list of potential suspects.”
    â€œCould it really be that easy?”
    â€œIt just might be. It’s been a long eighteen months, Ms. Glass. Nobody knows that better than you. We’re due for a break.”
    I nod hopefully, but inside I know better. “If Wingate was killed to silence him, how do you think it happened? The logic of it?”
    Baxter leans back and steeples his fingers. “I think Wingate himself told the UNSUB in New York about the Hong Kong incident. Wingate’s phone records show a call from the curator of the Hong Kong exhibit to his gallery within an hour of your making the disturbance in Hong