Page 100 of Chaos has a Name (An FBI Romance/Thriller #66)

“MATE?”

He nodded.

“She’s neat. Can we all use her? Like if I ask her to do something, will she actually comply?”

MATE hopped off the desk.

“Comply? I’m a very fast, powerful computer. I don’t have to comply. I have free will.”

Chris laughed when people in the room, the smart people, looked uncomfortable. That tended to be the reaction more often than not.

“She has parameters,” he said. “Free will, MATE, is a matter of perspective.”

She stood there.

“I mean, I can’t kill anyone, but I haven’t gotten a body yet,” she said, walking around Ben to freak him out. It was her normal schtick.

And it didn’t work.

“You can have it. I like MATE. She’s awesome,” he said, grinning. “Can she hang out sometime?”

Elizabeth glanced over at the man, and then, shook her head.

“She’s not my daughter. She’s my AI. She’s also VERY expensive, so hell no. She’s not ‘hanging out at your pad, dude’,” she stated.

Elizabeth focused on her husband.

“Christopher?”

He got it.

“MATE, tell Elizabeth about the DNA, and tell her things she DOES NOT know.”

MATE headed her way.

“Yes, Mother. The DNA, according to this weirdo’s information, matches each other. They are related. The DNA matched between seventeen and thirty-four percent. Your killers are somehow related.”

Elizabeth waited.

“You can have a grandparent/grandchild relationship, an aunt/uncle, siblings, or possibly half-siblings. It’s not close enough to be parent and child, or direct siblings.”

Well, that didn’t narrow it down.

Not.

At.

All.

That was still a lot of possibilities, and if the men who procreated were like Wyler…

She was going to be trying to match up relatives for a while.

So much for getting out of here soon.

“Okay, so we have a familial relationship between the two killers, but we don’t know much of anything else. I need more. Can we retest?”

MATE handled this.

“Yes. We have procured enough DNA to ensure that we can run the test one more time. After that, they will need more DNA.”

Ben was just watching the hologram, and he was grinning a little too much.

“Hey, Spanky. Eyes up here,” Elizabeth said. “You can ogle my AI when I’m done.”

He did as she asked.

“What about the blood on the knife? I know you said the DNA on the deer skull isn’t back yet.”

Ben took over.

“The DNA on the knife handle has the same DNA on it, as the sample taken from the last victim. Oddly enough, the handle on the knife was a human bone. Doctor Magnus tested it.”

Okay, well, no shock there.

The crazies were out in full force. This was feeling very ritualistic.

Someone liked playing judge, jury, and especially executioner.

“The knife also had multiple sources of DNA on it. The blood on the hilt was the victims, and the DNA was yours plus others.”

No kidding.

She had to touch it when she found it.

Yeah, she wasn’t impressed like she was with Christina, but they had done their jobs. Thank God she was going home and going to have her head tech back.

By now, Chrissy would have given her something that no one else thought to do.

She thought outside the box.

It was the anthropologist team’s turn, so she focused on Tony.

“Now, oh wise bone guy, how about the Bones and the gnaw marks?”

He hesitated.

“Anthony! I swear to God, if you had time for that music diatribe when I walked in here, but not have information on the snack marks on the bones, I’m booting your ass back to DC, and Jaxon will be staying here to do your job.”

He stopped her.

“I have it done. They are human teeth marks. I can’t match them because I haven’t gone through all one hundred and eight skulls. That’s a lot of bones, Elizabeth.”

Okay, her bad.

He had a very valid point.

Now, she was just bitchy.

“You’re absolutely correct, Anthony. I apologize.”

He was to the point.

“If you give me about seventeen days, I can cross compare the bite marks and see how long this snacking has been going on.”

MATE headed his way.

“I can tell you. I’ve compared all of the photographs that the team took last night to log the skulls. The teeth marks appear on the current victim, and the one before that. Then, there’s a possible third one, too, but that skull is older.”

Tony gasped.

“What? You did my job?”

Chris just sat on his stool and smiled.

“Oh, no. The AI might be able to eliminate jobs in the future. Mainly, Mr. Music Man’s.”

Tony stared at him.

“You’d do me dirty like that after all of these years?” he asked.

Elizabeth shut that down.

“Hey! Bones. Now.”

Tony sighed.

“MATE, you traitor, put the three skulls on the screen so I can see what three matched,” he said. “It’s all fun and games until the AI doesn’t know all the tricks,” he muttered under his breath.

Elizabeth headed his way, and he cringed like she was going to lay him out. Instead, she hugged him.

“I love you, nut. You’re not being replaced. Now, help me solve this.”

Rayna watched, and she got quite the show. It was clear that Elizabeth was an enigma. She’d watched her go from funny, to serious, to caring about her team and someone’s feelings.

Tony relaxed.

“I’m not replaceable,” he said, trying to convince himself of that.

In that moment, Chris realized what he’d said that upset him. Getting up, he headed his way and kissed him in the middle of the forehead.

“Never. I promise,” he stated.

The man took a deep breath and nodded. Old habits formed long ago stayed with a person.

But their reassurance, like always, chilled Tony out—so much so, that he was able to focus on the bones.

“The third skull is a definite match,” he stated. “All three of them have the same teeth scrapings. In my opinion, they were all cannibalized by the same two people.”

Elizabeth was curious.

“Who eats a skull? There can’t be that much meat on the bone, right?”

Chris handled that.

“Cheeks are the meatiest part. The scrapings are consistent with someone eating some cheek muscles.”

Good God.

She was learning too much about the crazies.

“So that’s the order of killings?” she asked. “Those are the latest three?”

Tony shook his head.

MATE nodded.

And they were not on the same page.

“Okay, which is it?” she asked.

Tony wasn’t losing to AI. It took him years to get to this level, and to think that a computer could be programmed to do his job…

It was insulting.

“No. I can tell by the discoloration that this skull,” he said, pointing at the one, “that it has been in the ground longer. The mineral content of the soil stained it.”

MATE moved closer like she was scanning it and learning.

“Thank you for that knowledge. I will not err with that again. You are a good teacher.”

Tony sighed.

“I want to not like her, but she’s kinda like a kid sister. MATE grows on you.”

She gave him a kiss on the cheek—or tried to.

Elizabeth thought about what he said.

“So what you’re saying is that these two,” Elizabeth said, pointing at the ‘newest’ ones, “are the last two victims, and this one is how long ago?”

He considered it.

“Over five years, easily.”

Well, that didn’t make sense.

“Ethan? How?” she asked, turning around to get more insight.

Oh, and he knew why she was asking.

They were told The Hollow passed it down to his ‘apprentices’ or children. Now, they had DNA that opened that up to be just about any relative, and teeth marks on a skull that shouldn’t have them.

“It might be that the apprentices trained a long time. Or that The Hollow didn’t die when expected, and maybe passed recently.”

She was thinking about the possibilities in her head as to who that could be. To her, it felt like Elkie Stormchaser’s husband who died not long ago, and her two sons.

But how to prove it?

She was going to have to talk to the woman.

“Tony, keep going through the bones. Using MATE, see how many different sets of teeth we have. Maybe we can put these deaths on a timeline, somehow. I need to figure out how to pinpoint this duo. I have a good idea of who is at the top of my list.”

They were glad she did because everyone else was confused as hell.

“Can we talk about his missing eyes?” she asked, meaning the latest victim. “It was delivered to the Chief of Police’s home without them.”

When she was focused on Axl, he knew he was up to bat. It was likely a test, and he was ready for it. He and Ethan had gone over their profile, making sure they were ready for Elizabeth.

“Maybe because the killer didn’t want to eat the person while he was watching them. It’s said that serial killers will blind or remove the eyes of a person who knows them so their conscience can keep free of the melee.”

She considered that.

“Or they are collecting them,” Ethan said. “We’ve had our share of collectors that do double duty. The skulls might just be because they’ve always done it, and that’s how they learned, but the eyeballs might be their thing—a way to track their kills.”

Once more, she focused on Tony.

“Are all the skulls showing the eyes were carved out?”

He was honest.

“The newer ones, yes, the older ones, no. These three in particular have marks inside the orbital socket that show they were dug out—and not pleasantly. If they all died like Chris said, at least they didn’t feel that.”

That was the truth.

Ethan was curious.

“Have they eaten the brains?” he asked. He was still trying to lock down the point in his profile if this was mental illness or illness caused by eating a diseased brain.

Tony went there.

“They left the brains intact on the latest victim, and as for the rest, I don’t see evidence they were dug out through the nasal cavity like the ancient Egyptians used to do.”

“So bug predation?” she asked.

He nodded.

“That’s the most logical scenario.”

“I concur,” MATE said, standing next to Tony. “The bugs did it with their little pinchers in the skull. That mystery is solved.”

Was it though?

With each fact, she had more questions, and none of them were making sense to her.

“Tox on the victim?” she asked. “Since we have some of his flesh?”