The Cold Road (Book 1)

Chapter Twenty

As James surveyed the quiet street, soft snowflakes fell, tickling his ears as they landed on his body. He shook his coat, pulling up the collar around his next. A patrol car drove lazily down the street and he waited patiently for it to arrive. It pulled to a stop beside him and Jeb poked his head out the open window.

'Come on in, sir. I have some news.'

The car was warm and relaxing and soon James felt himself sweating under his coat. 'What is it?' he asked, struggling to roll up his sleeves.

'The graphology department up in Richmond sent us an email of their thoughts on the note we discovered at the Perette's. They also had their profiler write us up a quick review. Here.' Jeb handed James a folder.

'They say at least three different people wrote the note!' exclaimed James as he finished the report. 'Two of them show signs of a strong upbringing with good education with underlying malice while the third indicates a poor upbringing with strong undertones and repeated strokes of destress. What?' he demanded. 'How does this make sense?'

'Read the profile and it might make more,' suggested Jeb. 'I don't know. Graphology seems too strange to me. I don't like the idea that a person can guess what another person is thinking just by the way they dot their i's and cross their t's.'

'It's a pseudoscience,' explained James, shuffling through the paperwork in an effort to find the profile. 'It's just guesswork, but even so, three different people makes no sense. I saw the note; it flowed too smoothly to have been written by three different people.'

Jeb shrugged helplessly. 'I just brought the report to you. It came from trained professors. It must be true.'

James read the profile, ignoring Jeb completely. He eventually turned off the quiet music Jeb had playing on the radio and turned another page. He sighed as he finished and rested his head against his hands. He shook his head. 'This is a profile of just one person, but Vitae is certain there is more than one Damascus Devil.'

'So?' questioned Jeb. 'Just repeat the profile a dozen times, what does it matter? We find the one guy, the head, we separate and the whole cult will fold down.'

'It's not going to be that easy. Even if we double this profile, if we remove one the next will just rise up like a Hydra or something.'

He knew where the head was, both of them, now. The profile fitted their exact lifestyles and one's mental capabilities. The profile determined that the suspect they were looking for was capable of performing malicious deeds without guilt or thought of consequences, while holding a façade of another life. Smooth, generous, caring and loving, concerned with the nature of the world. Hard to befriend at the start but a 'true' friend once friendship has been made. James felt sick as he thought about the people running around pretending to be something else, deceiving people. He knew it was life, and the world would be a different and perhaps horrible life if everyone could see each other for what they were.

'What happened to Amsler?' he asked, pushing the seat into its lying position. 'He got out, but can we still talk to him?'

'We have no idea who ordered his release; it's too soon to go after him with more questions. Plant told Franks to leave Amsler alone for the moment. Franks has placed a watch on him, though. Your theories got him thinking.'

'Heh,' snorted James.My theories. 'What about this guy up in Richmond, what do you know about him? He's high up, but who told him Amsler was in jail, and what kind of position is Amsler in to even warrant this sort of attention?'

'I don't know, sir. Someone must have told him. Amsler never used his one phone call, we called his wife but I don't know how she would have known a judge up in Richmond-'