49

“Be grateful he changed his SOP.”

He’d given that some thought in the last couple of weeks. “The women were his victims. I’m different, because I’m something else. I’m his opponent, like in a chess game. That’s why he did things differently with me. Whatever he needed those women for, with me, he just wanted to prove that he’d beaten me, both intellectually and physically. And he buried me alive so I’d have a little extra time to think about that defeat.”

“A stupid move. You survived.”

He thought about that for a few seconds. “Yes. He was too cocky. He thinks he has hometown advantage here. He got overconfident.” He shrugged. “Not unreasonably. If Ashley Price hadn’t dug me up, I would be dead. He didn’t count on that.”

Bing swore. “How did you know he was here, in Broslin?” He explained about the spores.

“You saw the mushroom company? Talked to the workers?” “As soon as I got here. Nothing popped.” He drank some. “You told the FBI about this?”

He nodded. When they’d first interviewed