skill improves. Dr. Ericson would have more experience with the tools of the trade.”
“Henry Junior confronts his mother about her infidelities. He’s already broken. She brushes him off or worse, becomes aggressive and he turns into a serial killer. Then he’s in the woods, doing whatever and slaughters the moose. Seeing what he’s done to the moose, he realizes what he has become and slits his own throat. Dr. Henry Ericson takes a few weeks and then starts going through his son’s stuff and finds what? Souvenirs from the kills? Realizes his son is who we are looking for and just to throw things off, he kills thirty-eight, well forty women, now?”
“Maybe he was only going to kill one or two so that the killings didn’t end with Henry Junior’s death, but finds he likes it. He ups the age of the victims to match his wife and starts killing surrogates of her.”
“Then he runs into Lucas and I, we tussle, he realizes just how close we are and with a severely damaged shoulder, he manages to kill Agent Arons and his wife?” I asked.
“I haven’t gotten that far in the thought process of it, but essentially, that’s what I’m getting at,” Xavier answered.
“That’s thin,” I said. “But it does fill all the necessary holes.”
“The sheriff’s wife is a judge, right?”
“Yeah, she dropped the charges against me,” I answered.
“We’ll never get a warrant,” Xavier sighed. “We need to talk to Gabriel.”
“Why would he kill Agent Gentry? They seemed pretty buddy-buddy.”
“Because he could,” Xavier said.
Twenty-Three
“Good news, we think we know who our serial killer is,” I said as I walked up to Gabriel and Lucas. They were standing against the SUV in the parking lot of another state park. “Bad news, he’s pretty deeply involved in the case.”
“Since you consider him to be our serial killer, I’d say that does make him deeply involved in the case,” Gabriel turned to look at me.
“Point taken, but this is different. We are pretty sure it’s Dr. Henry Ericson based on Xavier’s analysis of his hand behaviors and his wife’s infidelities,” I said.
“I’m going to find this explanation annoying, aren’t I?” Gabriel asked.
“Most likely. Do you want a chair? A Valium? An ambulance on standby?” I asked.
“Just tell me,” Gabriel sighed heavily and looked at Xavier.
“Around Thanksgiving, Dr. Ericson’s son found out his mother was cheating and had been cheating on his father for decades, literally. We think he did the first three victims. Then he killed himself and Dr. Ericson took over. It explains why they never found anything in the toxicology reports, Dr. Ericson would know what not to look for. It also explains the increased skill level of the replacement killer. And the timing is perfect. Also, whoever attacked Lucas and Ace was stabbed in the left arm. Dr. Ericson is left-handed, but this morning, as we talked with him, he did everything right-handed, even things we normally do unconsciously. Like he began crying but wiped his tears away with his right hand.”
“What about the eye color?” Gabriel asked.
“Contacts,” I offered. “You can do anything with colored contacts. I still can’t figure out how he did his wife and Arons, but I’m pretty sure he did.”
“Ericson is the right build for the guy on film,” Lucas said. “The death of a son could have sent him into a dissociative situation and in order to keep the son’s name from being smeared by the press when it came to light, he continued the killings. He probably only planned one or two, but found he liked it. Parents do amazing things for their children.”
“Can you prove it?” Gabriel asked.
“No, which is where we have a problem. I don’t think that even using our special status, we are going to get a warrant from any judge in this town based on what our gut is telling us. My guess, between Hilary’s ties to the FBI and Ericson working as a coroner part time, he knows all of them. They aren’t going to be happy if we come to them wanting a warrant for a fishing expedition,” I said.
“Great,” Gabriel sighed and closed his eyes. “Is there any way to use Ace to get to him?”
“That is a possibility,” Xavier said. “If we are right, then Ace attacking him back was probably a surprise. I told him once she was not your average woman and I don’t think he believed me. I imagine he does now. He’ll come for her if he thinks he can get away with it.”
“If I was a serial killer and wanted to attack me, I’d wait for me to get a migraine,” I told them my deep dark fear. “I’ve always worried about that. But once the migraine hits, death looks better and better.”
“How do you feel when you have a fake migraine?” Gabriel asked. I frowned at him.
“Not keen on the idea of being bait?” Michael snickered at me.
“Sometimes, it’s fine. This one,” I shrugged. “I’m not bothered by Dr. Ericson, him I can take. I think it’s his daughter that bothers me. She’s a sociopath in the making and finding out daddy and brother were serial killers and that daddy then murdered mommy, might be the proverbial straw. If we trap him using me as bait, in ten years, she might come looking for revenge.”
“Why do you think she’s a sociopath in the making?” Lucas asked.
“Because of her anger. I saw it flash across her face. She is one angry teenager who almost worships her father. I foresee bad things in her future. Especially if she figures out who her biological father really is,” I said.
“Yeah, I noticed it too,” Xavier said. “It’s not uncommon for teens to be angry, but she has a lot of it pent up. If we arrest her father, Lucas might want to sit her down and talk to her. I don’t think it will do any good, but it might help.”
“Who is her real father?” Lucas asked.
“Her uncle, Dr. Ericson’s brother. I didn’t get any more details,” I said.
“Well Cain, how about it? Ready to take one for the team? I’ll radio to say you are headed back to the motel with another migraine. I’ll send Lucas with you, he can hide in the other room. He’s the stealthiest and he’ll be good back up,” Gabriel said.
“If I say no, what happens?” I asked.
“You get to go back to the motel and fake a migraine anyway,” Gabriel said.
“Well then, I guess I don’t have anything better to do,” I said and started walking to the car.
“At least you get out of the cold!” Xavier yelled to my back.
“There is that,” I shouted giving a wave.
I was in the SUV again. It was still warm from our trip over. Lucas started the engine.
“You really don’t want to do this, do you?”
“I didn’t kill him the first time. I have questions about a second encounter,” I admitted. “Then there is this nagging thing in the back of my mind about him getting the drop on you last time.”
“It was a onetime thing,” Lucas said. I doubted that. Lucas might be the stealthiest, which was odd in and of itself, but he also managed to get sucked into his own mind at the wrong time. It didn’t happen often, but it only took once. I don’t know what went through the big man’s mind when it happened.
His face would change, contort just a bit, almost as if he were in pain. I didn’t know if that was the case when our killer had jumped him from behind, but I had a suspicion that it was a contributing factor. Even after six months, we didn’t know all of each other’s secrets. And Lucas, like me, had many.
The world flashed by the window. There was still snow everywhere. The roads were cleared, tearing black lines through the blinding whiteness. It was getting lighter, but was still dark enough that the street lights were on. Sodium arc lights and fluorescents dotted the landscape, offering orbs of light to stand in. They made the snow look worse as if it were an illusion waiting to suck an unsuspecting by passer into an off-colored abyss.
The windows of the shops were not yet lit up. The darkened panes reflected
the poor outside lighting, holding in the secrets of what was inside. They seemed to stare at our car, cursing us for being interlopers.
The parking lot of the motel was bleak. A few sodium arc lights lit the front of the building. The lights turned the beige paint into a yellowish-tan. The building looked sickly. Only the office had lights on and they just added to the sickly glow. A feeling of dread overcame me. I wanted nothing more than to stay in the warm car or go back to the search scene.
“Tell Xavier to find out where Henry Junior killed himself and look there,” I told Lucas as he stopped in front of the motel. He was going to park on the backside of the building and come in through another door. The motel had exterior and interior room doors.
“Will do,” Lucas stared at me. “How badly do you not want to go in?”
“There’s just something about this one, I’ve felt it since I got here. I’ll be fine,” I gave him a wink as I exited the SUV.
The room was dark. I hadn’t bothered to leave a light on, I knew my way around without it. I locked the front door and stopped. I took a deep breath. Something twitched near the bathroom. A jerk in the dark. I pulled my gun, but didn’t turn the lights on.
“US Marshal, I’m armed,” I said to the dark. Another twitch, I realized the bathroom door was closed and the light was on. The twitch was a moving shadow.
It moved rhythmically in the light, swaying slightly back and forth. I listened for sounds and found only the whirring of the heater and