The Maze

given it a lot of thought, talked to the Profilers and a couple of shrinks. Why did Bent murder these families with two kids, specifically a boy and a girl, and in each case, the kids were two years apart, no more, no less? I guess he was killing himself and his sister."

    She stared at him, shivering. "But why? No, don't tell me. You did some checking on Mr. Bent."

    "Yep. I told Dubrosky and Mason all about it in the John. They're going to show off now in front of Captain Brady."

    "I wish I could have been there."

    "Well, probably not. Mason got so excited that he puked. He hadn't eaten anything all day and he'd drunk a gallon of that atomic bomb coffee."

    She raised her hand. "No, don't tell me. Let me think about this, sir."

    She followed him down the hall and into Captain Brady's office. He lay down on the sofa. It was too short and hard as a rock, but he wouldn't have traded it for anything at the moment. He was coming down. He closed his eyes and saw that pathetic Russell Bent. They'd gotten him. They'd won this time. For the moment it made him forget about the monsters who were still out there killing, the monsters that he and his people had spent hours trying to find, and had failed. But this time they'd gotten the monster. They'd won.

    "The mother must have done something."

    He cocked open an eye. Sherlock was standing over him, a shock of her red hair falling over to cover the side of her face. He watched her tuck the swatch of hair behind her ear. Nice hair and lots of it. Her eyes were green, a pretty color, kind of mossy and soft. No, her hair wasn't really red, but more red than anything else. There was some brown and a dash of cinnamon color as well. He guessed it was auburn. That's what he'd thought the first time he'd seen her. "Yes," he said, "Mrs. Bent definitely did something."

    "I don't think Mr. Bent did anything. The three fathers Russell Bent shot were clean kills. No, wait, after they were dead, Bent shot them in the stomach."

    "The quick death was probably because to Bent, the father didn't count, he wasn't an object of the bone-deep hatred. The belly shot was probably because he thought the father was weak, he was ineffectual, he wasn't a man."

    "What did Mrs. Bent do to Russell and his sister?" "To punish Russell and his sister, or more likely, just for the kicks it gave her, Mrs. Bent gagged them both, tied their arms behind them and locked them in the trunk of the car or in a closet or other terrifying closed-in places. Once they nearly died from carbon monoxide poisoning. The mother didn't take care of them, obviously, she left them to scrounge food for themselves. Social Services didn't get them away from her until they were ten and twelve years old. Some timing, huh?"

    "How did you find out this stuff so quickly?" "I got on the phone before we left to pick up Russell Bent. I even got Social Services down to check their files. It was all there."

    "So the toaster cord is a sort of a payback for what she didn't do? Beating her face was retribution?" "Yeah, maybe. A payback for all eternity." "And he must have come to believe that even though his mother was a dreadful person, he and his sister still deserved death, only they hadn't died, they'd survived, so it had to be other children just like them?"

    "That doesn't make much sense, does it? But it's got to have something to do with Russell Bent feeling worthless, like he didn't deserve to live."

    "But why did he pick the Lansky family?" "I don't know. No one reported any gossip about the family, nothing about physical abuse, or the mother neglecting the children. No unexplained injuries with the kids winding up in the emergency room. But you can take it to the bank that Russell Bent thought the two Lansky kids were enough like him and his sister to merit dying. He thought the mother was enough like his own mother to deserve death. Why exactly did he have to gas the children? God only knows. Your explanation is as good as any. Brady will find out, though, with the help of the psychiatrists."

    "Russell Bent coached Little League. The Lansky boy was in Little League. Maybe the Lansky boy got close to Bent, just maybe the Lansky boy told Russell that his mother was horrible." She shrugged. "It really won't matter. You know what they'll do, sir. They'll dress it all up in psychobabble. Do you know what happened to the Bents' parents?"

    "Yes," he said. "I know. Sherlock, call me anything but 'sir.' I'm only thirty-four. I just