So far three points are murder scenes. The remaining two aren’t. Yet.

Our angel is staring at a town in south Texas.

I’ll leave the mathematical permutations of how he managed it to Ailes and his geniuses. However he did it, the warlock got the result he wanted. One more “Fuck you” in the middle of everything else.

The angel is watching a town called Santa Lucia.

Saint Lucy, patron saint of the blind.

46

BACK IN QUANTICO, ten hours after we left Times Square, Agent Johnson—one of Knoll’s task force members, a man with a slight build and curly blond hair who resembles a wise elf—is pointing at a molecule on an overhead screen.

While I was grabbing a nap in the dorm after we got back, they made a lot of progress. They have found more clues. Not the kind the Warlock left for us intentionally, as far as we can tell. Telltale signs of how he pulled off the illusion.

Based on my conversation with Knoll, New Jersey police spoke to a supervisor at a welding supply shop in Hackensack who said a man in a taxi van picked up a cylinder of CO2 the day before. He had a vague description: medium build, goatee. He said he’d recognize him again if we had a photograph.

After being unable to find any signs of ligatures or bruising on Swanson’s and Denise’s bodies our medical examiners expanded their toxicology search. In a kidnapping case, presence of certain chemicals is a clear sign that someone was drugged. However, screenings for the usual suspects, like the date rape drug Rohypnol, didn’t show anything.

Johnson circles the molecule with his laser pointer. “A search for scopolamine and some of the more obscure tropane alkaloids used to incapacitate someone came back negative. We were about to move on when we decided to do a screening for any substance with a tropane ring. That’s when we found this. The nitrogen bond is in a different place, suggesting this is some kind of synthetic. We’re reaching out to pharmacology experts and doing a search of the literature to see if this has cropped up before. Our assumption is that it would have the same effects of scopolamine, but break down faster. A synthetic that the Warlock could expect our screenings to miss.

“This drug in its original form, ingested through an injection or even a spray, would render someone in a somewhat zombie-like state and leave them with little memory. We believe our suspect is using this substance to help subdue his victims and keep them under control until he kills them. They would be docile and have very little motor function. He could administer the drug with something as simple as an aerosol. One spray and you’re under.”

One of our early assessments was that the Warlock might be involved in drug trafficking or manufacturing. This gives that theory a whole lot more credibility. He might not just be a chemist working with known drugs, but an inventor of new kinds of drugs. Nothing about him would surprise me at this point.