Evan was a few paces behind, creating a stir as he weaved through the cops and laborers. He squeezed in beside Bandoni’s bulk.
“Mohammed comes to the mountain,” he murmured.
“Your hands are cold,” Cohen said to me.
I caught Bandoni’s eyes and gave my head a faint shake. Not yet.
He frowned but nodded and folded his hands on the table. “What have you two geniuses got for us?”
Cohen shrugged out of his coat. “We’ve got a definite link between Donovan and Noah.”
We all looked at him.
He said, “It’s tennis, like you speculated. But the connection is through Markey, not Todd.”
I used the mental equivalent of a backhoe to bury thoughts of the doll and a serial rapist. “Noah and Markey played tennis?”
“Markey did. But it’s really about his dad, Ralph Byron.”
“Can we skip the foreplay?” Bandoni said.
“The Byrons aren’t members of Redeemed Life. Ralph is actually a pastor at another church, down in Colorado Springs. A real fire-and-brimstone kind of guy, apparently. Which probably says something about how Markey was raised. Anyway, Ralph had served as guest pastor at Redeemed Life a few times, so he had a key. And a couple of weeks ago, he was invited to become a full-time pastor at Redeemed Life.”
I remembered the words the killer had written on Donovan. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was not with God, and the Word was not God.
“The key is good. But—” Bandoni looked skeptical. “Markey hated the idea of his daddy preaching there so much that he decided to kill Donovan on the altar? And the fuck does that have to do with tennis?”
Cohen said, “Markey already hated his dad. And it’s at least partly because of Donovan.”
“Foreplay, then a strip tease.” Bandoni groaned. “Can we just move on to the sex?”
Cohen shot him a grin. “The fact that you’re in such a rush, Len, suggests to me there’s a reason why you don’t have a girlfriend.”
“Fuck you.”
“Fuck you back. I also talked to the DU tennis coach, who knows not only Donovan, but Markey as well. And his dad. The coach said Donovan was his star player. The kid was conference champion and a nationals qualifier his first two years. Probably had a real shot at winning the nationals this year, according to his coach. If he’d lived. Truly gifted.”
“Let me guess,” Bandoni said. “Markey, not so much.”
“Right. The coach took Markey on, no doubt because of daddy’s money. But he called Markey a nonroster practice player. Meaning he got to practice with the team, but he never qualified to compete. Markey stayed on at DU, but he quit the team after his first year.”
Bandoni had that look again—the cat who caught the canary. “I can feel the dots starting to connect.”
“Frankenstein,” I said. “Markey’s father is the creator who rejected his own creation. So Markey—the monster—struck out at those whom his father loves.”
“And because this kid Donovan was a Chad, the others went along with it,” Bandoni said.
“Markey’s a gifted artist,” I said. “Doesn’t his father care about that?”
Cohen turned to me. “Even the coach mentioned Markey’s gift. The kid used to make funny sketches of the guys on the opposing team. His teammates loved it. But that didn’t impress his dad, apparently. And it gets worse. Donovan was at Denver University on a tennis scholarship. You want to guess who created the scholarship fund for the school five years ago?”
“Ralph Byron,” Evan and Bandoni said.
Cohen nodded. “Like I said. Tennis.”
“It fits with the manifesto.” I reached for the coffeepot. “Frankenstein’s monster was cast out of the paradise of human affection through no fault of its own.”
“Not that Markey is a good kid,” Cohen said. “He’s never been officially charged with anything, but he’s gotten his wrist slapped more than once. Mostly for letting his hands find their way uninvited onto women’s bodies. A year ago, he got smacked for upskirting—taking pictures up a woman’s dress. The woman’s boyfriend decked him, and a cop wrote them both up. Neither side pressed charges.”
“It’s possible,” I said, “that since Markey and Noah already knew each other, they started the Superior Gentlemen together. But I still feel like we’re missing something. Why would Markey and the rest turn on Noah so viciously?”
“You mean other than the fact that Noah got a girl and left the group?” Bandoni said. “And was a better artist, presumably, than his student? Could be our guy’s a little oversensitive after years of beatdown from Daddy.”
“Maybe.”
“Let’s stick with what we do know.” Bandoni glowered at Evan. “Your turn, genius.”
Evan opened his mouth just as Suzie appeared at our table. She offloaded our food and Bandoni’s soda, then took Evan’s order for eggs and a side of bacon before disappearing again.
I’d lost my appetite after Bandoni brought up the Barbie, but I sliced the burrito in two unequal halves and slid the larger half onto the extra plate for Cohen, then pretended to dig into mine. Bandoni busied himself drowning his fries with ketchup. Maybe he was hoping to squeak out three servings of vegetables. Then he picked up his cheeseburger and aimed it at Evan like a weaponized Frisbee.
“Talk,” he said.
Evan stole one of the fries and said, “We’ve got two scribes. First, the man who left the notes in the elevator and in Sydney’s car. Her stalker. This man’s writing is loose and uncontrolled. He changes the size and slant of the letters from one word to the next. There’s no fixed baseline.”
Bandoni’s gaze slid to mine. “Which means what?”
“It suggests a lack of self-control. A tendency toward impulsive behavior. Not surprising in a stalker. Also”—he pulled out a photo of the words scratched in the elevator—“notice how much more deeply he carved the letter t in the word watching.”
“It’s thicker than the other letters,” Cohen said. “It looks like a cross.”
“Exactly. It might have been subconscious. But he’s signaling that religion, specifically Christianity, is in some way important to him. Maybe he feels God
