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Trinity’s fingers moved over her laptop mouse and a photo of another woman popped up. “This is Mila Powers.”

Mila, too, looked to be in her mid-thirties. Her hair was blonde and cut sharply to her shoulders. She was clad in jeans and a light pink sweater and stood outside a large, concrete building, leaning against the wall. One arm hugged a binder to her chest. Her other hand lifted a travel coffee mug in the air, as if in a toast. Mila’s smile was bright but tinged with a look that said, “Am I really doing this?”

“I got this photo from her best friend,” Trinity said. “They were both baristas at a café in Nanticoke. Both single after getting out of long-term relationships. The friend had two young kids. Amicable shared custody with her ex-boyfriend. Mila had wanted children of her own, but she’d had a broken engagement a year before her murder. Apparently, that sent her spiraling pretty badly.”

Trinity didn’t read from notes as she talked about the Last Kiss Killer’s victims. Respect for her swelled in Josie’s chest. This was what made her sister an exceptional journalist. The victims of the unsolved crimes she featured on her show were real to her even though she had never met any of them.

“Mila had been in therapy and had recently signed up for classes at Luzerne Community College. It was part of a new leaf she was turning over to take control of her own life. Her best friend took this photo on her first day.”

Josie tried to imagine the courage it must have taken this young woman to start anew in her mid-thirties after the dreams of a family she’d held close to her heart had shattered. Mila Powers had never gotten to experience the hard-won feeling of accomplishment after completing her schooling.

Turner’s fingers tapped along the surface of the table. Any minute now she expected his phone to appear in his hand and for him to start scrolling.

“Same shit?” he asked. “Strangled in her bed? No forced entry? No signs of sexual assault?”

Trinity nodded. “Yes. Fully clothed. A neighbor found her.”

“And no evidence left behind,” Turner sighed. “Alanna Jarrett likely met this asshole at the bar where she worked. Then he comes into the coffee shop in Nanticoke where Mila Powers was employed and meets her.”

“Maybe,” Trinity said. “Probably.”

Mentally, Josie compared the two women, searching for visible similarities but finding none other than they looked about the same age. If the killer had walked into the establishments at which these women worked, was it just dumb luck that they both met his apparent criteria of being single and living alone? What had made him zero in on them in the first place? Josie couldn’t shake the feeling that whatever drew him to a particular woman without knowing anything about her was important.

“All right,” Turner said. “What else have you got?”

Trinity took them through the rest of the victims. Kira Wiggins, a thirty-seven-year-old nurse from Bethlehem. Dulcie Rocha, a thirty-four-year-old high school teacher from Shippensburg. Leona Pollard, a forty-year-old grocery clerk from York. Carly Terrell, a thirty-nine-year-old receptionist from Bellefonte. Again, there were no marked physical similarities among the women. Some were short, others were tall. Some were curvy, others were slender. Some had brown hair, some had blonde hair. Dulcie Rocha, the high school teacher, had red hair. Some had tattoos, others didn’t. Kira Wiggins wore glasses. Carly Terrell had a birthmark on her left cheek the size of a nickel that was roughly the shape of Michigan. Alanna Jarrett, Leona Pollard and Carly Terrell had children. The night Leona was killed, her teenage daughters had been with their father. Carly’s ex-husband had had full legal and physical custody of their three children who were all in middle school at the time she was murdered.

“This guy is all over the map,” Turner groused. “Literally and figuratively.”

Trinity clicked out of the last victim folder and opened a map that showed the towns in which the victims had lived. They were fairly far apart. “He never killed in the same place twice.”

Josie studied the spread. “Some of the towns are a minimum of two hours away from one another.”

Turner stood and rounded the table, peering over Trinity’s shoulder. He pointed to a pin she’d placed in Southeast Pennsylvania. “Paoli,” he said. “Which victim lived there?”

“Sylvia,” Trinity answered. “That’s where she was living when she was attacked.”

Josie said, “Paoli and Morgantown are pretty close, right?”

“About twenty-five miles.” Trinity dragged her cursor back and forth between the two towns.

“But that’s it.” Josie leaned forward to get a better look. “The rest are pretty far from one another. Well, some of these are only forty or so miles from each other but the others are pretty far apart. Either this guy purposely visited different towns to throw off police or he’s transient. Whatever he does for work, it requires travel.”

“That’s always been my theory,” Trinity agreed. “Maybe he killed in different places to try to fly under the radar, but I imagine it would have taken him time to find the right victim—a woman living alone whose children, if she had any, weren’t home with her at the time. I’ve always thought he stopped in these places for a short time, a week, maybe more. Long enough to find a suitable victim. Then he killed them and moved on.”

“You’d think something like that would be easy enough to verify,” Turner grumbled. “Check with area hotels, motels, Airbnbs around the time of the murder.”

“The investigators would have no reason to do that,” Josie said. “Each murder was isolated until… Trin, when was the connection between victims made? When did it become clear this guy was a serial killer?”

“Not until after Dulcie Rocha, victim four. You see how spread out these places are from one another. You’ve got six different jurisdictions, if you don’t count the attack on Sylvia.”

“It gave him more time,” Turner said. “The only people looking for him were the ones in the towns where he killed. As long as no one saw the big picture, when he moved into a new territory he wasn’t being actively pursued. Nobody was looking for him. He was practically invisible.”

“Well, his days of flying under the radar are over,” Josie said. “He made the mistake of committing homicide in Denton. Let’s make sure he pays.”

Fourteen

Josie waved at the dust motes she’d dislodged when she rolled out the freestanding corkboard that Chief Chitwood had bought a couple of years ago. They swirled everywhere, finding her nostrils and tickling the back of her throat. She maneuvered it through the second-floor great room at the Denton PD stationhouse, trying to avoid knocking into the many desks littering the space. Most of them were used by uniformed officers to write reports and make phone calls. Only five desks were permanently assigned. One belonged to their press liaison, Amber Watts. The others were occupied by Josie, Noah, Gretchen and Turner, all of whom were in attendance at the moment in a rare window where their shifts overlapped.