John Verdon

That ties in with what Ashton’s assistant told you. Didn’t she say that the two graduates she couldn’t get in touch with had gotten interested in Flores when he was working on the grounds at Mapleshade?”

“Yes.”

“This is the damnedest thing,” Kline went on excitedly. “Let’s assume for a minute that Flores is the key to everything—that once we figure out what brought him here, we’ll understand everything else. We’ll understand Jillian Perry’s murder, Kiki Muller’s murder, how and why he hid the machete where he did, why the camera didn’t pick him up, the disappearance of God only knows how many Mapleshade graduates …”

“That last thing could be a harem thing,” said Blatt.

“A what?” said Kline.

“Like Charlie Manson.”

“You’re saying he might have been looking for followers? For impressionable young women?”

“For female sex maniacs

“You have any thoughts on that?”

Hardwick responded with the ironic leer. “I was thinking Jim Jones myself. Charismatic leader with a congregation of nubile acolytes.”

“The hell is Jim Jones?” asked Blatt.

Kline answered. “Jonestown. The massacre-suicide thing. Cyanide in the Kool-Aid. Wiped out nine hundred people.”

Dave?” said Kline. “You have any ideas about Flores’s grand plan?”

“The problem with the commune thing is that Flores lived on Ashton’s property. If he was gathering these women and stashing them somewhere, it would have to be nearby. I don’t think that’s what it was about.”

“What, then?”

“I think it’s about what he told us it’s about. ‘For all the reasons I have written.’ ”

“And those reasons add up to what?”

“Revenge.”

“For?”

“If we take the Edward Vallory prologue seriously, for some major sexual offense.”