Dead Even by Mariah Stewart Page B

plate.
    “Don’t even think about it,” she whispered darkly.
    “Just testing.” He backed off.
    “Shall I bring you one?”
    “If you don’t mind. I seem to be sitting in the no-share zone.”
    “Coffee?”
    “Sure. Thanks.”
    Miranda took a spoonful of chocolate, closed her eyes, and licked the spoon.
    “This is fabulous,” she said dreamily.
    “It’s chocolate cake, Miranda. Get a grip.”
    “You call it chocolate cake. I call it a gift from the gods.”
    “Christ,” he muttered under his breath.
    Mrs. Duffy reappeared with the second plate, which she set in front of Will. “Your coffee will be right over. We’re making a new pot. Enjoy.”
    “Hmmmm. It is pretty good,” he agreed after sampling.
    “Pretty good. Ha.” She sighed happily. “So go on. You were saying . . .”
    “I think I’d rather wait until I know for certain you’re paying attention and not lost in some gustatory orgasmic experience.”
    “You’re just jealous,” she whispered, “because it’s not as good for you as it is for me.”
    He laughed out loud.
    “Back to what you were saying. Don’t mind me.”
    “Miranda . . .”
    “Your coffee, sir.” A pretty young waitress poured for him and left the pot on the table.
    “Go on, Will.”
    “We were talking about whether or not you’d made an impression on Channing.”
    “We’re past that.”
    “Okay, then, we were talking about the fact that there is a long period of time when we don’t know where Channing was or what he was doing.”
    “Well, I think maybe we’ve already established what he was doing.”
    “You mean the reports that came back from CODIS.”
    “Well, sure. We now know that all that time, he was merely honing his skills. He didn’t wake up one morning and just decide to be a serial killer. That was working on him for a long time. By the time he met up with Giordano and Lowell, he’d become quite accomplished.”
    “You think they knew what he was? Giordano and Lowell?”
    Miranda paused, considering the question. “Tough call. Giordano was a killer himself, maybe he recognized it in Channing. Lowell, on the other hand, is pretty much oblivious to most things, don’t you think?”
    “I’d say that’s a fair assessment, judging by what I’ve read.”
    “Well, I’ll bet if we look real hard, we’ll find there are more unsolved murders that could be traced back to Channing, some that maybe aren’t even showing up in the database.”
    “Because he didn’t leave DNA behind.”
    “Right.” She nodded. “Since he was still in the southern Ohio area when our paths crossed, maybe he’d stayed in that area for a while. Maybe there’s more buried there—no pun intended—than has already shown up. If we could trace his footsteps by following where he’d been, maybe we can find some others who’d crossed his path back then.”
    “People who might have pissed off Channing enough for him to have remembered. Enough to have made a lasting impression. Enough to have put them on his hit list.”
    “Right.” She nodded.
    “I’ll see if I can come up with a time line when I get back to Virginia. Maybe something will stand out when we put it all together.”
    “Think we’ll find a pattern?” Miranda asked.
    “I don’t know. I don’t really know enough about Channing to venture a guess. I’ll have a better feel when I start looking over the data.”
    “We could still come up empty, though, as far as finding three potential victims is concerned.”
    “True. But suppose we do come up with a few names that could be on the hit list. What if we find these people? What do we do with them, once we have their names?”
    “Don’t you think we should warn them?” Miranda asked.
    “Warn them about what? That there may or may not be someone coming around someday who might want to kill them? I don’t know how responsible that is.”
    “You have a better idea?”
    “Maybe it’s moot. Didn’t we just agree that Archer isn’t likely to