sentence, I see where you’re going,” Lucas said. “You think he hates all the personal ones for different reasons.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Why didn’t he want this one to be happy?”
“I don’t know,” Lucas admitted.
“I didn’t figure you did, I don’t imagine any of us can guess the reason, unless the woman somehow slighted his own happiness. However, if denying happiness was his goal in this instance, what about the others? What did he want to obliterate in the lives of the others?”
“That seems like a lot of motives,” Gabriel said.
“I don’t think it is the motive,” Lucas said. “I think killing for the sake of killing is the motive, I think the other is just extra stuff.”
“A bonus,” I quickly chirped.
“That’s one way to put it,” Lucas said. “If the other is just a bonus, then he targets those women for that reason. He kills them because he is going to kill someone, might as well be them.”
“Because of the lack of evidence in each case, we are having trouble connecting them,” Xavier said.
“This guy is a nightmare,” Gabriel kicked his chair back and folded his arms behind his head. He stared at the whiteboard. “We can’t even take an educated guess which killings would help us figure him out.”
“An educated guess rules out the first one, it was probably important to his partner, not him,” Lucas answered.
“But figuring out the partner could help identify him,” Gabriel said.
“Probably, but three kills isn’t enough to go on. We know he wasn’t as skilled, liked his victims younger and probably did the first one alone,” Lucas answered.
“I hate dead ends,” I sighed.
“We all do, Ace,” Xavier responded.
Twelve
I awoke with the knowledge that I was not alone. My hand searched under the pillow and found my boot knife. My guns were on the nightstand, but it was too far away. In one smooth fluid motion, I pulled the boot knife from under the pillow. The light flipped on.
“Seven seconds,” Gabriel said to me.
“What the hell?” I groaned at him.
“It took seven seconds for you to wake up after I got into the room. Are you on something?” He asked.
“Xavier gave me something to help me sleep. Obviously, if I woke up in seven seconds, it isn’t working,” I told him. He flashed a smile.
“Come on, Sleepy, we have somewhere to be,” Gabriel handed me a Mountain Dew. I had come to the conclusion that Gabriel’s job was less about leading the team and more about keeping the team from killing FBI agents. I knew when he woke Xavier and Lucas he did so with cups of coffee in hand. He was not only our liaison but our handler. I didn’t envy his job. I would have hated waking up this lot.
“Where?” The clock on the nightstand read 4:17 a.m.
“Patrol car pulled over someone suspicious. They were carrying a knife, a winch and a bag full of bloody clothing.”
I took the Mountain Dew as I climbed from bed. I drew my hair up into a bun without a brush. It was permanently misshapen into that style so it went easily. I pulled on the rest of my clothes, redid my bun and followed Gabriel into the parking lot.
The SUV was already running. Lucas and Xavier’s shadows could be seen inside it. I pulled open the door.
“Sleeping pills must be slowing your reflexes. It took almost four minutes for you to get up and moving,” Xavier said to me.
“I don’t think Ace should be taking sleeping pills,” Lucas said adding emphasis to my name.
“Would you rather her have a sleep-deprivation induced psychotic break?” Xavier countered.
“This is the first time I have taken one while working,” I told everyone.
“Why did you take one tonight?” Gabriel asked.
“Something about the photographs being broken. It bothered me. He didn’t just obliterate her happiness by smashing the pictures, he got rid of her memories,” I told him.
“And that bothers you?” Lucas asked.
“Wouldn’t it you?” I countered.
“You think it was about the memories or the happiness?” Gabriel asked.
“I don’t know, that sounds like a question for Lucas. I just got to thinking, I don’t have many photos, but the ones I do have are important to me. They are about more than just smiles and faces frozen in time, they are about specific memories. Especially that photo of her with her class. That was a special photo because it wasn’t a class photo, it was set outdoors. They were doing something, a field trip or an Easter egg hunt. It was a memory that she wanted to look at every day.”
“I will think on that,” Lucas said.
“So we think our killer pulled a Bundy?” I asked.
“Anything is possible,” Gabriel shrugged. Even in the darkened interior I could see it. The tone of his voice told me that he wasn’t buying it.
“Not our boy,” I whispered.
“Probably not, but we may have caught a different serial killer or just some schmuck who can’t figure out that driving around with a bag full of bloody clothing and a knife is a really bad idea,” Gabriel replied.
“Ten to one, he’s a poacher,” Xavier said.
“People,” I shook my head in the dark.
The city was deathly quiet. Our car was the only one I saw on the road. In a city this large, there should have been traffic, even at this hour. The fact that there wasn’t proved something about the fear level of the city. I had only seen it once before, in Colorado Springs, once the sun went down, the town closed up. Their killer had been pretty stealthy, sneaking up on his victims and slitting their throats as they walked down the street. His mistake had been an ATM camera. Once we found the picture, it had only been a matter of time.
We arrived at the police station a few minutes later. Gabriel and Lucas went into the interrogation room. Xavier and I sat in a different room.
Despite what people see on TV, interrogation rooms do not have large windows that allow you to see everything going on. Instead, we were shoved into a room with two other people, one of them Agent Arons, and a small TV. The camera for the TV was inside the interrogation room; a room that was overcrowded with just three people. Lucas was wide enough for two or three normal people.
The suspect sitting in the chair opposite the Marshals looked like many things, including a Viking warrior or a Russian muscle man. He was well muscled with a beer gut. His clothes looked slept in or worse. I imagined he didn’t smell very well. He hadn’t shaved in ages or by the looks of it, washed the beard that had grown in. I would have guessed him homeless and a car thief before our meticulous skinner.
Deciding this guy was guilty of poor taste and maybe a few other things, but not our serial killer, I turned to our surroundings. Something told me this had once been a janitor’s closet. It was five foot wide by seven foot long. The walls were a strange muted yellow color. The TV sat on a skinny folding table. Our seats were metal folding chairs that were missing their rubber coated feet. They made horrendous noises when they were scooted across the linoleum tile floor.
A uniformed officer came in with four cups of coffee. The coffee looked strong and smelled stronger. Growing up in a house with a serious coffee drinker meant I loved the smell despite hating the taste. It also meant that I could tell the strength of the coffee based on the smell. It wasn’t quite Snow Dogs thick, but it was getting close.
“Sugar? Cream?” The officer asked me. I shook my head and put the coffee on the table. Some would consider me a germophobe. I wasn’t, but the thought of drinking coffee from a coffee mug that had been in a police station for an unknown number of years, bothered me. All those lips and hands of strangers made me not want to touch the cup. It wasn’t about the germs, it was about the strangers. I had the worst case of “stranger danger” on the planet.
On the monitor, Gabriel and Lucas stood up. We followed their lead and met them in the
hallway. Gabriel was shaking his head. Lucas was trying not to smile.
“You might check him against other open murder cases, I’d bet he killed someone, but he isn’t our serial killer,” Gabriel said.
“He had a bag full of bloody clothes!” Arons protested.
“But no skins and he’s not coordinated enough,” Gabriel answered. “This guy couldn’t kidnap and then skin our women. He’s a barely functional alcoholic. He’s already starting to detox. He’s dirty, smelly, and his mental state is a mess, but he isn’t our killer.”
“However, I wouldn’t rule him out as a killer in general,” Lucas jumped in. “He probably killed a guy or girl that pissed him off and is trying to figure out what to do about it. That’s probably why he ran the light. Not only is he detoxing but he seems to be in a state of mild shock. I associate that with people who have done something out of character. In this case, he said something about trouble at home. You might check his girlfriend or wife or any of their lovers if they exist.”
“He lives alone,” Arons answered.
“That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a girlfriend,” I pointed out.
“Or a mother,” Lucas said.
“How very Norman Bates,” the unidentified detective said.
“In the movie, Bates just preserved his mother, she died of natural causes,” Lucas said dismissively.
Agent Arons visibly paled, “this guy is an amateur taxidermist.”
“Oh, how creepy,” I said, shooting a glance at Lucas.
“Which part?” Lucas asked.
“Both. How does one become