Ardis, Tal, and Kayne sat in Ardis's office with the door locked and a guard posted to ensure that no one disturbed them unless it was a life-or-death emergency. Ardis had finally gotten the last of her information. Some came from the farthest town with murders that matched the pattern, and more detailed information arrived from Master Wren, her cousin. She also had something that Tal would never have access to: the records from the Confessional for all of the victims—or at least, all of those that attended Confession. Rather surprisingly, a majority of them had, and she now possessed detailed glimpses into their personalities.
"I'm going to try something different this time," she said to the other two. "Instead of trying to deduce anything more directly about the murderer, I want to look at his victims and come up with more information about him based on what they were like. And I want to start from the negative—what those victimsaren't ."
Kayne looked alert and thoughtful, but it was Tal who spoke first. "Rich," Tal said promptly. "Or even moderately well-off. I'm talking about the women, of course, but only one of the men was what you would call rich, and that was the last one—the first one we know about in Kingsford. The rest were never better off monetarily than working tradesmen."
"They aren't whores, either; in fact, most of them would have been insulted if you suggested they were," Kayne put in, as Ardis noted that the word "whore" slid off her tongue without eliciting so much as a blush, which was in itself an interesting development. "There are more whores in any town or city than there are street musicians, so he's really having to make an effort to find them."
Ardis nodded, for that agreed with the information she had; when she had been able to find the female victims in the Confessional records, they had been honest musicians who left paid love to the professionals. "What about the men?" she asked.
Tal scratched his head. "There you have me," he admitted. "They don't match a pattern, not even close. They're all kinds."
Now was the time to spring her surprise. "Until you look in here." She tapped the folder of records. "I have access to certain confidential records; I can't letyou look at them, but what I see shows at least one pattern, which is that our murderer worked very cautiously, at first."
"Oh?" Tal said skeptically. "He doesn't seem all that cautious to me."
"The men who attacked women in the open, in daylight, in front of witnesses are all recent. I think he's gotten bolder with success." She placed her palm on top of the folder. "Now, the others, the ones that occurred in the street at night under cover, or even under the protection of a roof—that's where I'm seeing a pattern. The men all confessed to sins of the flesh and preferred lights-of-love who at least pretended to be musicians. If at all possible, they wanted a mistress, even for an hour, who was more than just a whore. It made them feel as if they had discernment and taste, according to what I read here."
"Interesting." Tal chewed his lower lip. "So what we have is a man who is likely to be out in the street in the first place, and equally likely to accost women who are acting like musicians to see if they might have other—ah—talents."He blushed, which was interesting; it was unlikely he felt embarrassment on his own behalf, so it was probably because he was in Kayne's presence—or hers. "So, the question is, why go to all this trouble to pick that kind of victim?"
"So that he wouldn't break a pattern of behavior and alert the neighbors or the family that there was something wrong," Kayne declared, her head up.
But Tal shook his head. "Not logical; most of the murders took place too quickly. It wouldn't matter if the neighbors saw something just before that made them think there was something wrong with the man. I still don't think there was a pattern there, or a reason—unless—" He paused, as if struck by a thought.
"Unless what?" Ardis asked.
He frowned and rubbed one closed eye before replying. "Unless it was a peculiar sort of revenge. We've got one theory that he's taking revenge on the girls for being scorned by a female musician, but what if he's also taking revenge on the men theyare willing to sleep with?"
"That's not a bad thought," Ardis replied after a moment. "It has a certain twisted symmetry." She considered it for a moment. "But what about the others, where there was no previous contact with street-women? There was at least one man who had no interest in women whatsoever as I recall."
Tal shrugged. "I agree with you that there is a pattern of increasing complication and risk-taking. At first, he takes men who have a reason to be alone with women who make their living in the street, and women who have a reason to go along with these men. This, of course, keeps him from breaking the established patterns of his male victims, which keeps anyone from noticing that there is something wrong."
"There were some cases early on where that isn't true," Kayne protested.
Tal nodded agreement. "But those could have been cases where something went wrong—either he couldn't get the kind of victims he wanted, or something else interfered. And remember, all ofthose took place under cover of night and four walls, in neighborhoods where no one ever looks to see what's going on if there are cries or screaming in the night."
Ardis couldn't find anything to disagree with yet. "Go on," she said. "What next?"
"Next is more risk," Tal told them, as Kayne frantically scribbled notes. "He takes longer with the victims, mutilating them as well as killing them. Next, he goes out into the street, into the open, and takes men who are strangers to the women he kills, and women who wouldn't normally go off with a stranger unless they thought his purpose completely honest. He breaks the patterns of the lives of his male victims, but he's moving quickly enough that even if anyone notices there's something wrong with the man, they don't have time to do more than wonder about it. Then—we have things like the killing here, in broad daylight, with a male victim whonever set foot in that part of town, who might well have been stopped by a family member or retainer before he had a chance to act on behalf of the murderer. A thousand things could have gone wrong for him at that last killing. They didn't, which only means that either his luck is phenomenal, or he's studying his victims with more attention to detail than we've guessed."
"And the jeweler?" Kayne asked.
Ardis shook her head. "I don't know. The jeweler often had women in his home, but that doesn't mean that the Gypsy girl didn't go there with legitimate business in mind."
"If he's clever, he could have manufactured that business," Tal pointed out. "Gypsies often wear their fortune; she could have come to the man with coins to be made into a belt or necklace. All he'd have to do would be to drop a good handful of silver into her hat, and she'd be off to the nearest jeweler to have the coins bored and strung before she lost them."
"A good point," Ardis said with a little surprise, since it wasn't a possibility she'd have thought of. "But what else do the victimsall have in common?"
Tal made a sour face. "Theyare people no one will miss. The fact is, all of his male victims were such that even if they did things that were out of character, no one would care enough to stop them until it was too late. Even their relatives don't pay any attention to them until they're dead and the way of their death is a disgrace to the family. Even then, they seem relieved that the man himself is no longer around to make further trouble for them."