The Maze

"We do condemn, we do imprison, we just don't necessarily believe in killing the killer."

"We should. It's justice for the victim and revenge as well. Both are necessary to protect a society from predators."

"What about the argument that capital punishment isn't a deterrent at all, thus why have it?"

"It certainly wouldn't be a deterrent to me, the way the appeals process works now. The condemned murderer spends the taxpayer's money keeping himself alive for at least another thirteen years-our money, can you begin to imagine?-no, I wouldn't be deterred. That monster, Richard Alien Davis, in California who killed Polly Klaas and was sentenced to death. You can bet you and I will be spending big bucks to keep him alive for a good dozen more years while they play the appeals game. Someone could save him during any appeal in those years. Tell me, if you knew that if you were caught and convicted of killing someone you'd be put to death within say two years maximum, wouldn't it make you think about the consequences of killing? Wouldn't that be something of a deterrent?"

"Yes. And I agree that more than a decade of appeals is absurd. Our paying for all the appeals is nuts. But revenge, Sherlock, just plain old revenge. Wouldn't you have to say that the committed pursuit of it is deadening?"

That's what he'd wanted to say all along. She was very still, looking out the small window down at the scattered towns in New England. "No," she said finally, "I don't think it is. Once it's over you see, once there's justice, there can be a final good-bye to the victim. Then there's life waiting, life without fear, life without guilt, life without shame. It's all those things that are deadening." She said nothing more.

He pulled a computer magazine out of his briefcase and began reading. He wondered what else had happened to her. Something had, something bad. He wondered if the something bad had happened to her around the time her sister had been killed. It made sense. What the hell was it?

*

Homicide Detective Ralph Budnack was a cop's cop. He was tall, with a runner's body, a crooked nose that had seen a good half dozen fights, intelligent, a stickler for detail, and didn't ever give up. His front teeth lapped over, making him look mischievous when he smiled. He met them at the District 6 Station and took them in to see his captain, John Dougherty, a man with bags under his tired eyes, bald and overweight, a man who looked like he wanted to retire yesterday.

They reviewed all that they knew, viewed the body in the morgue, and met with the medical examiner. There had been twenty stab wounds in Hillary Ramsgate's body: seven in the chest, thirteen in the abdomen. No sexual assault. Her tongue had been cut out, really very neatly, and there was a bump on her head from the blow to render her unconscious.

"Ralph tells me the guy's on a seven-year cycle and we lucked out that he just happened to be here when the seven years were up. That kind of luck can kill a person." Captain Dougherty chewed on his unlighted cigar. "The mayor called just before you came. The governor is next. I sure hope you guys can catch this guy."

"There are many meanings and contexts to the number seven," Savich said, looking up from the autopsy report he was reviewing again. "I don't know if we'll get much out of this, but just as soon as we've inputted all the information from Ms. Ramsgate's murder into the program, I'm going to correlate it to any instances of the number seven as working behavior in numerology." He looked over at Lacey, who was staring blankly at him. "Hey, it's worth a try. There just might be something, it just might be that our guy buys into all that stuff, that it will give us some clues about him."

"Hell," said Captain Dougherty, "use a psychic if you think it might help. A trained cat, if you've got one."

Savich laughed, not at all insulted. "I know it sounds weird, but you know as well as I do that people can be loonier than the Mad Hatter."

"I didn't catch your name," Ralph Budnack said, staring at Lacey, "but I've seen you before. Now I've got it. You came in here claiming to be related to the victim." He turned to Savich, his jaw working. "You want to tell me what the hell is going on here?"

"Calm down, Ralph. It's all very understandable. Her sister was killed seven years ago in San Francisco by this guy. That's why she realized so fast that he'd struck again. That's why she came up here. Thanks to her, we're on to him immediately. Now, you don't have to worry about her. She works for me. I'll have her under control."

Captain Dougherty was staring at her, chewing harder on the unlit cigar. "I don't want any vigilante stuff here, Agent Sherlock. You got that? You even tiptoe outside the boundaries and I'll bust you hard. I don't care if you're FBI. I wouldn't care if you were Hoover himself. It appears to me that Savich would bust you too. I wouldn't want to go in the ring with him."