Page 53 of Nora
Nora frowned. “That’s…young. Isn’t it?” She didn’t really know anything about the chess world. It just seemed young.
“It is. He’s a bit of a prodigy. Or was. He stopped playing when he was thirteen,” Devil said.
“Why?” Lucian asked.
“There was an incident at school. He was bullied and beaten quite badly,” Devil said. “It may have impacted his mental capacity. Or he may have stopped playing in an effort not to be a target again. Either way, he never played a match after that.”
Nora glanced at Lucian, who seemed to be pondering this new information. She noticed his glass was empty, so she rose, grabbed the bottle, and refilled his before topping hers off.
“What then?” she asked.
“He changed schools and started getting into sports. He wasn’t particularly good at most of them, but he spent a lot of time in the gym and got strong. After a few years, he started to play positions that required more brute strength than any specific skill. I suspect he still had enough of a chess player’s brain to understand strategy and plays and all that. His last year of school, he was recruited to play rugby at a university south of London.”
“And being a university athlete is probably what started him on his path to mansplaining and womanizing,” Nora said. Lucian’s lips tipped into a smile, but he said nothing. “I know that not all athletes are like that. If he was bullied as a kid, though, and then worked his way into the in-crowd, it would explain his ego.”
“But at heart, he’s probably still that young, bullied boy?” Cyn suggested.
Lucian frowned, but Nora nodded. “I think so, yes. I’ve met men like him before—we all have. They may appear to be alpha men, and that’s the image they project, but that’s all it is, an image.”
“Is there anything that would indicate either man is capable of murder?” Lucian asked.
Devil paused. “No more so than with Angelo and Jean. I’m less inclined to think Jurgen capable. I truly think his three years with the abbot were a kind of therapy, and from what I found in my research, he seems a stand-up guy now. Collin, I’m not so sure about. If someone tapped into his dormant fears of becoming that bullied boy again, I could see him lashing out.”
Nora could, too. She didn’twantto see that, but she could. “You raise a good question, Devil.”
“I did?”
Nora chuckled. “Yes, you did.Didsomeone tap into Collin’s biggest fear? Did something happen that would lead to what’s going on now?”
“Ah,” Cyn said. “Was there a triggering event for any of the four men? Something that would have them starting to killnow?”
“I didn’t find anything obvious, but I’ll go back and have a look,” Six said. Devil and Cyn concurred.
“What about the memento?” Lucian asked.
“Memento?” Devil echoed.
“Serial killer, Devil,” Cyn said.
“Ah, of course. We just hadn’t talked about it before.”
“Jewelry,” Nora answered.
“The medal?” Lucian confirmed. Nora nodded.
“Wait, what medal?” Six asked.
Nora took a moment to explain the medal she and Lucian had found the day after the murder of Michael Kelly. Once she finished, she proceeded to tell them what she discovered the night before. “It’s always some sort of jewelry,” she said. “Of the ten victims, including Michael Kelly, he took six necklaces, two bracelets, a pair of earrings, and a ring.”
“You said Michael Kelly’s was a medal,” Six pointed out.
“It was. But it was the kind that should be on a chain, and the abbot confirmed Kelly regularly wore such a necklace. Detective Miller thinks the killer grabbed it during the attack, but then the medal fell off when he fled the scene,” Nora explained.
“I have to ask,” Cyn started. “There’s no chance he’s killing themforthe jewelry, is there?”
Nora shook her head, then spoke. “I doubt it. Most were small items. Meaningful to the wearer, but none worth more than a couple hundred dollars. Except the ring. The ring had a decent-sized ruby in it. The report described it as a bishop’s ring. I don’t know if that’s because of the style or if it was, at one point, actually a bishop’s ring.”
“Who did that belong to?” Lucian asked.
