“Right. So, okay, how old was Ridge Blackmoor at that time?”
“Mm. About, say...” she paused, searching the files, “say thirty-eight?”
“Any kids?”
“No. Not married. Let me check...” More papers appeared on the desk, and she dug through them. “No, he never married, and there were no children.”
“Twelve years is a bit too early for the Sandman, but not impossible, if he had to figure out a way to do it, I guess,” Ashton mused. “That would put him at fifty now, though.”
“Right.”
“Coloration?”
“Um...sandy hair, kind of what used to be called strawberry blond, with green eyes. Short, kind of, of thick-set, you know, muscular.”
“And Witte was a tall, slim brunet, with brown eyes,” Ashton recalled, as the ‘peanut gallery’ watched, but remained silent. “You can change hair color, and you can wear colored lenses to change eye color, but you can’t change the body type that drastically. So that wouldn’t be Witte. Keep going.”
“Mmm,” Ames hummed, then fell silent for long moments. Finally she responded.
“Okay, here’s a family,” she said. “Sydney and Kaleb Denholm, and their son Luther. Luther died in his teens of Melsbach Syndrome. The parents were not happy.”
“Why didn’t the board approve the virulosin?”
“Said it was an incorrect diagnosis, and the treatment wouldn’t help. It turned out to be a correct diagnosis. The boy died at age 17.” She shook her head. “Judging by the description, it wasn’t pretty.”
Ashton smeared a hand across his face.
“Right. How old were the parents at the time?”
“Twenty-eight and thirty.”
“And how long ago did that happen?”
“Uh...oh. Only seven years ago.”
“Oh, that’s no good. The first Sandman murder happened, uh...” Ashton paused to recall.
“About ten years ago,” Peterson offered in a soft tone, meant to answer without disrupting thought trains. “The last of the murders – at least in the first wave – was about four or five years back.”
“Yeah, so they’re out,” Ames agreed, still studying the files. “Oh. I got one more, I think. Ooo, and the time frame is right, too – ten years ago, almost on the nose. Raymond Appleton and his wife, Beryl Ellis. He was in an industrial accident. Got himself irradiated bad. Sad situation. There really wasn’t anything anybody could do on this one, but she had to watch him die slowly. She swore up and down that they could have cured him if the medical treatment approval board had only ruled in his favor.”
“Wow. A case where they actually did the right thing?”
“A case where, if I’m reading all this right,” Ames looked up at him, and her eyes glistened a bit, “there wasn’t a ‘right thing’ to be done, Nick. She watched her husband die a slow, lingering, horrible, painful death as his body slowly...” She broke off, eyes going wide in shocked realization. “As his body slowly shut down.”
“Just like the virulosin,” Smith whispered. “Damn.”
Ashton pressed his lips together, face grim. “Any kids?”
“None.”
“We got it,” Ashton declared then. “The Sandman isn’t a he, it’s a she. What did you say her name was?”
“Beryl Ellis. Of course she’d be going by a fake name for all this, though...” She bit her lip, still scanning records. “Nick, there’s one more former board member who hasn’t lost anybody to the Sandman yet. Rasheed Singh has a son, Aarav, about to graduate from the Imperial University of Sintar...”
“Shit. How old was Ellis at the time?”
Ames scrabbled through the file, finally looking up at him. “It doesn’t say.”
“Any imagery of her?”
“Just one photo.” Ames pulled the image out of the sheaf of papers and tossed it across the desk to him.
“Mmph,” he murmured, studying it. “She looks familiar. Where have I seen...?” He glanced up. Then he spoke into the air. “Enhance image. Age ten years.”
A printer appeared on the far corner of the desk, and after a few moments of humming, it spat out an image.
“Oh, good Lord,” Ashton murmured in shock, and held up the altered photo so that Demetrius and Gorski could see it.
It was Lana Rounder’s executive assistant, Joyce Abelard.
The team quickly exited VR, except for Demetrius, who switched channels and contacted the receptionist at the restaurant chain’s headquarters.
“Ms. Hayden,” he told her avatar, “is Ms. Abelard still there? You know, Ms. Rounder’s executive assistant?”
“Oh! No, sir,” Hayden told the inspector, “she left about an hour ago. She was so upset! She said she just couldn’t stand to look at that office any longer, knowing what was happening to ‘her poor Lana.’”
“Did she say where she was going?”
“Home, I think,” the little receptionist replied. “Mumbled something about having to get ready for her nephew’s graduation this weekend...”
“Oh damnation,” Demetrius exclaimed. “Thank you, Ms. Hayden! You’ve been a great help. But I need to move quickly now.”
“She’s gone,” Demetrius announced as soon as he came out of VR. “She left work an hour ago, to ‘get ready for her nephew’s graduation.’ She’s on the way to the university. Right now, I expect.”
“Contact the provost and have him get Aarav Singh out of class and into his office immediately,” Peterson barked. “I’ll get with Charlie and have him set up a cordon of beat cops around the university. We’ll know if she enters the campus buildings.”
“But how are we ever gonna round her up?” Compton wondered.
“Send out the image that Nick and Cally ginned up,” Gorski said.
“I’d think that would make her more apt to flee, to try again another time,” Weaver noted.
“Guys?” Ashton interjected. Everyone stopped and turned to look at him.
“If you’ve got an idea, Nick, let’s hear it,” Gorski decreed. “You’ve done great so far.”
“Okay. She worked her way in at the restaurant headquarters,” Ashton pointed out. “According to the stuff Cally’s been feeding me in VR, for each murder, Beryl
