‘You don’t have a laptop.’
‘Don’t need one.I’ve got my phone.’
‘God bless you.’
Ella did just that, then began devouring names one by one.By her mental math, if she spent just one minute per name, she and Ripley could have this whole list checked in just eight hours.
It was going to be a long day.
***
‘I can’t do this anymore, Dark,’ Ripley said.‘Everyone’s got their limit, and I’ve reached mine.’
Ella knew where her partner was coming from.She was two-hundred names deep and her eyes felt like two pee holes in the snow.
‘Suck it up, Mia.Think of it like exercise.You don’t want to do it but you have to.’
Ripley leaned back and groaned.‘I’d rather bench press a train than do this.It’s been two hours and I’m barely one-tenth in.Can’t we get Fields or his guys to give us a hand?’
'He's still working the Foxall scene and making sure his wife is okay.Not to mention he's still dealing with the Creed transfer paperwork.'
‘I’d rather do that than this.’
‘What name are you at?’
‘Vincent Kohler.Thirty-four.Two convictions.He stole from an estate sale in Metairie in 2016.He walked out with a box of carved wooden figures and a set of porcelain ornaments valued at six thousand dollars.He said he’d been hired to appraise them and took off with them and never returned.’
‘We’re in the wrong job.’
‘Aren’t we just.’
‘But it’s too long ago.Whatever triggered our unsub happened recently.’
‘I know.I was just telling you what name I was at.’
The next name on the database was Frederick Olsen.The details said he’d been busted for a string of home invasions and cracked the owners over the head when he got caught.He didn’t fit the profile.
Next.
Some names Ella had discarded right off the bat.The small-time thieves and the white-collar fraudsters.Murder wasn’t their kind of thing.This killer was a different breed altogether.
Others earned a closer look.The ones with a history of violence; the high-value thieves and burglars whose hair-trigger tempers had landed them in jail once or twice.But even they didn’t quite fit the bill.They were too impulsive and reactionary.Their unsub was the opposite.
And on and on it went.Name after name, dead end after dead end.Ella caught a glance at the clock.Midday.If the killer held his pattern, they had maybe twelve hours at most before another body landed in their lap.
‘Ugh,’ grunted Ripley.‘I’m going to get a sandwich.’
Ella looked over her monitor.‘What happened to the all-meat diet?’
‘It’s giving me headaches.Do you want anything?’
Ella must have had sympathy pains, because there was a one-two punch of fatigue and frustration behind her eyeballs that didn’t leave much room for anything else.
Including fine-tuned instincts apparently, because she almost missed it.
A little blip on her screen, an unremarkable face in a sea of unremarkable faces.
Darryl Croon, the file read.38.Caucasian.6’0’, 170 lbs.
