Ritual Magic

delegated picking up Karonski, but she wanted to talk to him without other ears around. He’d want to talk to her, too. Ask questions. Ruben had briefed him, but the key word there was “brief.” However competently you deliver a verbal report, you’re summarizing. To spot a pattern, you need to dig down into the details, and when Lily talked to Karonski just before his flight was called, he hadn’t yet read her report. There’d been a last-minute snafu with the case he was passing to his trainee that had kept him busy. By now, though, he would have read it and the various reports attached to it.
    Maybe he’d spotted something that had eluded her. Maybe not. Either way, he’d have questions.
    Lily pulled out her iPad. She, too, had reports to read. And questions. Maybe something in one of the new batch of reports would nudge her in the right direction. There was a pattern, some commonality that linked the victims. She just hadn’t spotted it yet.
    Halfway through the transcription of an interview with the daughter of victim twenty, she got a nudge . . . a teeny little poke that set up a vague itch between her eyes. She frowned and skimmed back through a couple other accounts . . . and called up the database someone at headquarters had set up. It held the basic stats about all the victims. A quick sort of that database turned the itch into a quiver, like a bird dog on point. She switched to her browser and asked Google for some statistical data. It obliged.
    Knuckles rapped on the windshield. She jumped, wished she hadn’t, and popped the trunk. She opened her door and started to get out.
    “Sit, sit,” the man who’d knocked on her windshield said. “The day I need help with my bag from someone I outweigh by a hundred pounds, I’m retiring.” He wheeled his suitcase back toward the trunk.
    He didn’t outweigh her by a hundred pounds. Seventy, maybe, and alas, not all of it was muscle. Abel Karonski looked like he’d been born middle-aged and rumpled. Rumpled hair, shirt, skin. The hair was brown and thinning on top, the skin was pale verging on pasty, and the shirt was white with a reddish stain not quite covered by his tie. Strawberry jam, probably. For breakfast Karonski liked to have a little toast with his strawberry jam.
    She felt as much as heard his suitcase thump into the trunk. A moment later he slid into the passenger seat and slammed his door. “Any word on your mom?”
    She shook her head and started the car.
    “You want me not to talk about her?”
    “I’m trying to keep all that stuffed away. Stay focused on the job. It helps if I can focus on the job.”
    “Okay.” He patted her shoulder. Karonski wasn’t a toucher, so from him, that was a hug. “So tell me why you were thinking so hard you didn’t see me until I banged on the windshield.”
    Lily put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb. This was made easier by the way Mike’s Toyota blocked oncoming traffic. “I finally noticed something. Maybe you already spotted it. All forty-six of our likely or confirmed victims are adults. Twenty have adult children. Twenty-two of them are fifty years and up. That’s almost half. In the general population, only one in nine people is over fifty.”
    “Huh. That means something. I don’t know what, but something.” He chewed that over and nodded. “Schools. I didn’t see any mention of them in your report. Have you asked what grade school or middle school the vics went to?”
    Excitement fluttered in her gut. “That’s good. That’s a good possibility. I’ve got some info on colleges, but they didn’t all go to college. We didn’t ask about lower grades.”
    “You drive. I’ll call Ackleford.” He took out his phone. “We headed to the Bureau’s office?”
    “Yes.”
    “Good. I need to let you know that . . . Ackleford. This is Karonski. I’ll be there in fifteen or so. I know you can’t wait to see me again, but . . . heh-heh. Good to know you’re still the same shining wit I remember, though what you suggest is anatomically impossible. Listen, I’ve got something for you to do to fill the empty minutes till I get there.”
    Lily listened to Karonski’s instructions with half an ear as she began winding through the concrete maze that led away from the airport. After a pause Karonski shook his head and said, “My, but you do get cranky when you’re short on sleep. Just how short are you?”
    She’d tried to send Ackleford home earlier.