CHAPTER 27

Kylie and I didn’t hide our reactions. I don’t think we could have if we had tried. We’d been panning for gold, and it felt as though we suddenly hit the mother lode. Theo had no difficulty reading the rush that surged through us.

“I guess if this were a TV show,” he said, “this would be a pretty good time to cut to a commercial.”

“We’re not going anywhere,” I said. “You had us at Alice, Barbara, Carol, Denise, and Emily.”

“They sound innocent enough, don’t they?” he said. “But each one is the best in the world at his killing technique. Alice is an up-close firearms genius. He can create guns out of plastic composites that look like everyday objects—cell phones, umbrellas, cigarette packs. It gets him past any security search. Barbara is the edged-weapons expert—y’know, knives and shit. He was a medic in the military—knows exactly how to slash his victims’ throats so they bleed out on the spot. Carol is a world-class sniper, Denise is a poison specialist, and Emily uses blunt objects and can stage a hit to look like an accident or suicide. Between the five of them, they knocked off about a dozen people a year. And they’ve been at it for twenty
years.”

I did the math in my head and could only hope that the Sorority was the toxic detritus of a degenerating brain. Because if it was real, it would be one of the most lethal clandestine death squads ever assembled.

“They called themselves the five sisters,” Theo said. “And they had a strict policy. They would do the wet work, but they needed a sixth person to run the business—someone to deal with the clients, move the money to a safe spot out of the country, and make sure they got paid fair, square, and on time.”

“And sister number six probably had a name that started with ‘F,’” Kylie said.

“Nope,” Theo said, enjoying the fact that he tripped Kylie up. “You know how all these college sororities have a house mother—some sweet old lady who lives with the girls and looks out for them? The code name for their business manager was ‘Mother.’”

“What can you tell us about her . . . him . . . them—whatever the pronoun is?” Kylie asked.

“Not much. Mr. Sheffield only wanted to talk about the things they did in the field. Talking about Mother would be like making a pitch to a movie producer and telling him about your agent,” Theo said. “But if you have time, I can tell you about some of their kills.”

Kylie and I nodded like a pair of bobbleheads on a dashboard. We had all the time in the world.

Theo then proceeded to mesmerize us with stories he had heard from Mr. Sheffield over the course of months. Five painstakingly planned, perfectly executed murders, in five different locations around the world. In each case, the mechanics of the crime were precise, elaborate, and entirely believable.

“The Hellmans had to eat this stuff up,” Kylie said when he was finished. “The genre is right in their wheelhouse, and the characters and the stories feel so authentic.”

“A little too authentic,” Theo said. “They knew right away that a kid who was still in high school would never come up with all those plots on his own. They flat-out asked who helped me with the idea. So I told them about Mr. Sheffield, and I promised them that he wasn’t going to ask them for money.’”

“And how did they react?”

“Warren said, ‘If we make a deal, kid, we’re going to want that in writing.’ I gave him one of those bullshit Hollywood head nods, like ‘No problema. Have your people call my people.’ Then Curtis jumps back in and says, ‘Let’s get back to the show. Suppose a person wanted to kill someone. How would he go about finding this Sorority?’”

“Good question,” I said. “What’s the answer?”

“How do you find a hooker? How do you find an S and M bar? How do you find anything? You gotta ask the right people. Same thing with hiring a hit man. If you want someone dead and you have the money to pay for it, the odds are you know some badass who can point you in the right direction. Curtis looks at me and says ‘That’s it?’ And I said that’s all the audience needs. They don’t tune in to watch these guys get hired. They’re there for the action. Same concept as Mission Impossible.”

“What did they say?”

“I think they liked it. They said give them some time to think about it. They’ll get back to me.” He shrugged. “Well, I guess now they won’t.”

The text alert on his phone chirped. He checked it. “Carly,” he said. “She doesn’t like me riding around on the motorcycle this late at night. She said she won’t be able to sleep till I get home. I guess I should get going.”

“One last question about Mr. Sheffield,” Kylie said.

“Sure.”

“You said he worked in research for a drug company. But his grasp of the criminal mind is frighteningly accurate. Did you ever wonder if any of this action-adventure fiction might be true?”

“Are you kidding me?” Theo said. “I started thinking it could be true from the first day he opened up to me.”

“What made you think that?”

“One of the people at the Grove is this man Gary. He’s fifty-two years old and he was diagnosed with schizophrenia twenty years ago. He’s on meds, and when they’re working, he lives at home with his parents. But if he goes off his meds, or if he just—I don’t know—snaps, Mom and Dad bring him back until the docs can restore him to some semblance of normality. When I talk to Gary, I don’t need a medical degree to know he’s psychotic. He’s a sweet man, but he’s delusional. Nothing he says is based in reality.

“Mr. Sheffield is different. Like most people with Alzheimer’s, he was diagnosed later in life. And while Gary is hallucinating about things that never happened, Mr. Sheffield struggles every day to recall the things in his life that were real.”

“So you think his stories are real?”

“I don’t just think it. I know it. Like the newspaper editor in India who was shot by a sniper. That happened. I Googled it. Same thing with the music producer in Korea who was killed when he accidentally fell off a balcony. Every detail that Mr. Sheffield told me was just the way it was reported online.”

“I think we should pay him a visit,” Kylie said.

“Wait a minute. That wasn’t part of the deal,” Theo said. “Mr. Sheffield is an old man who read all that shit on the Internet, and then he turned it all around, and he incorporated it into his own life. A lot of people at the Grove do that. Mrs. Myerson swears she went to the moon with Neil Armstrong, but they kept it a secret because he was married. Their brains are fucked up. You can’t just walk in and start grilling them like they’re—”

His phone chirped again. He didn’t look at it. “I’ve got to get out of here.”

“Before you go, I want you to take a look at this,” Kylie said. She opened her phone to the sketch Izaak Weathers had drawn of the suspect in Curtis Hellman’s stabbing, and handed it to Theo.

As soon as he looked at it, his demeanor changed. “Where did you get this?” he said.

“Somebody drew it for me. Do you recognize him?” she said.

“What do you want him for?”

“He’s just someone Zach and I would like to talk to.”

“About what?”

This was a different Theo. Suddenly, he was resistant, almost adversarial.

“Look, Theo,” Kylie said. “You’ve been incredibly cooperative—”

“And you haven’t. I answered, like, a hundred questions. All I’m asking is why you want to talk to this guy. It’s a two-way street, Detective MacDonald.”

There’s a reason why cops are so tight-lipped during an investigation. We have to be careful about giving up information that a defense attorney can claim we planted in a witness’s head. But Theo was right. He expected a give-and-take relationship, and Kylie knew it was time to give.

“He’s a suspect in the Hellman homicides.”

Theo slumped back in his seat. “Fuck me,” he muttered.

“Do you recognize him?”

Theo nodded. “I’ve seen him at the Grove.”

“Is he a resident?”

“No. About once a month he visits Mr. Sheffield.”

“Do you know his name?” Kylie asked.

“Which homicide?” Theo asked. “Warren or Curtis?”

Kylie held back a second and then gave it up. “Curtis. The stabbing on the Hudson River Greenway.”

Theo shook his head, not wanting to believe what he was hearing.

“Do you know his name?” Kylie repeated softly.

“Not his real name,” Theo said. “But if you want this guy for stabbing Curtis Hellman, I’ll bet you any amount of money that his cover name is Barbara.”