Falling Awake

window. He braced one hand on the wooden frame. “You know, Albert Gibbs’s death raises a question that’s been bothering me for a while.”
    “What’s that?”
    “I’ve always wondered how Scargill finds all the losers he uses. And how he got so damn good at manipulating them. Hell, if he’s still alive, he’s only twenty-two years old. You don’t learn tricks like that until you get some mileage under your belt.”
    She drummed her fingers on the sofa cushion, thinking about that. “I couldn’t begin to guess how he locates them but as far as motivation goes, I imagine most of them would have been happy to do whatever he wanted if he paid them enough money.”
    “Not necessarily. A guy like Gibbs, who needed cash for dope, maybe. But not some of the others. Not McLean, the demented fool who kidnapped his ex-wife and hauled her off to his compound in the mountains. A couple of the other kidnappers didn’t strike me as being particularly interested in money, either. Theywere too lost in their own delusional worlds to pay much attention to mundane things like cash. None of them demanded ransoms. All of them had other motives for the abductions.”
    She tilted her head back against the cushion. “Where are you going with this, Ellis?”
    “Maybe I’ve been missing something in the profiles of the people he uses. I need to look at those guys from another angle.”
    “What other angle?”
    “The way I do potential investors and start-up entrepreneurs before I decide whether or not to fund their projects. I need to find out if there are any connections that I’ve overlooked.”
    He swung around and went to his briefcase. She watched him take out a small computer.
    “While you’re doing that, I’ll take a look at some of Belvedere’s research reports.” She sat forward and scooped up the nearest stack of papers. “I know how he worked. Maybe I’ll spot something you missed.”
    “Good idea.” He sat down at the counter and powered up the computer. “I’m getting that nasty feeling you get when you know you’ve missed something important in a Level Five dream.”

27
    a n hour and a half later, Isabel closed the file she had been reading and tossed it onto the coffee table. Collapsing back against the sofa cushions, she removed her glasses and absently stroked Sphinx, who was a warm, heavy weight on her lap. The big cat purred contentedly.
    “Some enterprising soul could probably make a fortune selling Belvedere’s papers as a cure for insomnia,” she announced. “I think he was so determined to be taken seriously that he deliberately wrote the dullest, most boring, most academic-sounding prose possible.”
    “That was my impression when I was reading those files earlier.” Ellis studied the computer screen, looking impatient.
    “Got anything?” she asked.

    “Maybe. I told you all of these guys did time at various jails and prisons.”
    “Yes.”
    “Turns out that at least three of them spent some time in a place called the Brackleton Correctional Facility back in the Midwest. I’m checking to see if any of the others did stretches there, too. It’s going to take a while.”
    “I thought you said Scargill used people who lived in various places around the country. They didn’t all come from the same region or even the same state.”
    “That’s true. But it’s not unusual for overcrowded or under-funded prison systems in one state to ship prisoners off to another state to serve out their time.” He punched a key. “It’s possible these guys all went through the same facility.”
    “Would they have been there at the same time?”
    “No.” His mouth hardened. “That’s the bad news. All of them did time in recent years but none of them did it at precisely the same time. I checked that out a few weeks ago. There’s no way they would have been behind bars together, unfortunately. That would have been too easy. Still, if I can link them all to the same prison, I might be able to find other connections.”
    She studied the intense, focused lines of his body. It was getting late and he had made no mention of returning to the Seacrest Inn to sleep. Was he planning to spend the night here? If so, he had not mentioned it. She was pretty sure she would have remembered a comment like that.

    Idly, she continued to pet Sphinx. “Is this how you always work?” she asked. “Fill your head with as much information as you can get about the crime and then go into a Level Five