"Do you know what that asshole, Lambert, is doing?"
"I have no idea, Steve, but I'm sure you're about to tell me."
"He's checking out the crime scenes. Starting with the one in Nose Hill Park. He's over in Bowness right now. Taking photos and talking into a tape recorder."
"Is he alone?"
"Yeah."
"He's probably doing research for a paper in some law journal. Anyway, there's nothing illegal in what he's doing. All the crime scenes have been released and the public has access."
Chris walked over to Gwen's desk and told her what Mason had reported about Lambert visiting the crime scenes. "What do you make of that?" he asked in conclusion.
"Well, I agree with you that he's probably writing a paper on the case. You know what they say about university professors: publish or perish."
"God knows Lambert is ambitious. He's always putting himself forward, giving talks to groups—Rotary, Chamber of Commerce, the Canadian Bar Association, you name it. That letter to the Herald was part of the pattern."
"If he is writing a paper he'll come down hard on the police."
"Unless we make an arrest before it's published." Chris paused. "There could be another explanation, though."
"I know what you're thinking. That Lambert is our killer. That the whole thing is an ego trip on his part."
"Pretty farfetched, huh?"
"Not necessarily. You've met the guy, Chris. Do you think he's capable of pulling something like this? Committing murder just to prove how clever he is?"
"He's an egotistical son of a bitch. No question about that. I've made a few preliminary inquiries. He's single. Lives alone. So he's free to come and go as he pleases. Highly regarded as a teacher."
"So, what do we do?"
"Let's find out how the professor is spending his summer holidays."
"Like the man himself said, we made his day." Gwen shook her head in bemusement as she and Chris exited Murray Fraser Hall, the building that housed the Faculty of Law. "He's something else!"
"Isn't he just? He could hardly contain his glee at being interviewed by the police. It'll be a highlight of his lectures in the fall semester."
"Interesting the way he refused to account for his whereabouts on the nights the murders were committed."
"That was quite an act he put on. The right of the citizen to maintain his privacy, etcetera. He was right, of course. Without a subpoena, we couldn't force him to answer. He toyed with us, Gwen," Chris said as he drove out of the campus, almost deserted now that the academic year was over.
"Toying with you can be a dangerous game. Where are we with the professor, Chris? Do we eliminate him as a suspect?"
"Not yet. And not quite. We'll run a few more checks on the learned Professor Lambert before we turn him loose. He didn't do or say anything to incriminate himself, but he didn't clear himself, either."
"The Stampede signs are beginning to spring up everywhere," Gwen observed as they entered the downtown area.
"It's when they start setting up the viewing stands along the route of the parade that I realize the Stampede is really upon us."
"It's on your desk," a detective looked up from his computer to say. This time the message was in words cut from a newspaper and taped to a sheet of plain white paper:
"It's been checked for fingerprints and DNA. Nada," said the detective, who had followed him over to his desk.
Chris nodded and told him to fax the message and the envelope it came in to the profiler. Maybe Mavis could make something out of the ungrammatical English. Probably not. But one thing was obvious. The killer was getting restless. Bored.
As expected, Dummett's article inspired a flurry of indignant letters to the editor. "How could anyone find excuses for a monster like this?" was the almost universal theme. One writer took a more thoughtful approach, agreeing that a fatal combination of factors—social and psychological—could make a human being fall into such evil depths of depravity. "That being said," the writer concluded in the final paragraph, "the time for understanding and treatment is when, and only when, this individual is safely behind bars."
After checking to make sure that all the letters were on that one page, Chris separated it from the rest of the paper and put it to one side. The letters would be analyzed in detail later. Mavis Ross was probably poring over them already.