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“He’s not coming back,” Laura said, shaking her head. “Not now. He’s too smart. He would have to expect that we’d find out who he is, and besides, with the noise we made, the neighbors will be talking. He won’t get within sight of the building without figuring out what’s going on and turning the other way.”
“I’m calling them anyway,” Nate told her. “We need the guards plus an APB with his photo. You try and find some clue about where he’s going next.”
Laura nodded. What Nate said made sense. It was likely that the killer would have left some kind of clue behind. Some trace of his intentions. He might have written something down somewhere, and if it wasn’t on his person, she would be able to find it.
There was too much planning that went into this for it to be all in the guy’s head. Or maybe that was just what she was telling herself to keep her hopes up. To keep the faith. She knew who it was, she knew his name and his face. She was a whisker away from getting proof.
So why did Laura feel as though the fourth victim was slipping out of her hands?
She started in the kitchen, rifling through drawers, checking every cupboard, every surface. There was a single battered cookbook, the pages stained and even charred in one place. She picked it up and shook it upside down, looking for anything loose that might fall out. That done, she turned her attention to the living room. She could hear Nate talking in the hall, hear him requesting all of the backup they might need to help run Ed Bronston down.
There was nothing on the coffee table, nothing on the floor around it. Laura turned up the seats of the sofa, and only found a giant slash across the bottom of one of them. She slipped her hands into the gap, trying to feel whether there was something shoved between the cushion and the case. When it turned up empty, she retreated and regrouped, heading for the bedroom.
The closet revealed only a few shabby items of clothing, most of them looking as though they had been through the wash a few too many times, faded and thin. The bed was unmade, the sheets rumpled. Laura grimaced to herself before lifting up each of the pillows and even searching under the mattress, grateful that she was wearing gloves to prevent herself from contaminating the evidence.
There was a wonky dresser by the bed, missing one foot. In all of the drawers Laura only found a few more items of clothing, several books, a comb, and a couple of other items of personal grooming. She rifled through each of the books one by one, making sure that there was nothing written in the margins or slipped inside.
Nothing.
By the time Nate was done with his call, she was still looking through the bathroom. There was nothing of any note whatsoever in the cramped space, and she backed out before the flickering light bulb overhead gave her a headache.
“Nothing,” she said, with a sigh. “It’s like he barely even lives here. He has nothing.”
“Came out of the psych ward, got dumped into this place, couldn’t afford to keep going.” Nate made a tsking sound with his tongue. “Makes sense he would get bitter about it. Angry, even. I wonder how long he’s been stewing on all of this.”
“Long enough to find out everything about me.” Laura wrapped her arms around herself, staring at the space where Ed Bronston made his home. There was nothing homely about it. She tried to imagine living here, and couldn’t. Not even at her lowest, when the alcohol had taken nearly everything from her. Even her own cramped apartment, filled with secondhand furniture, looked like a palace compared to this.
She had mementos. Belongings. Framed photographs and books and decorations, even if they were simple ones. Bronston had nothing.
She didn’t feel sorry for him. Not in the slightest. It was his own violent behavior that had brought him to this point. But she could see where Nate was coming from.
“We’re going to get him,” Nate said, with a firmness that was reassuring.
“But how? I mean, what now?” Laura asked. “We can’t just sit around and wait for the APB to catch him. He could slip past a dozen checkpoints and be out of town. He could be in someone’s house waiting for them already. We can’t just wait.”
“You’re right,” Nate told her. His hand swept backward over his close-cropped black hair, rubbing it thoughtfully. “We have to be proactive. We’ve got to try and figure out where he would be going next.”
“The next victim,” Laura said, nodding.
It seemed like an insurmountable task. But right now, it was the only direction they had left to turn.
They were going to have to try.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
Laura sat in front of the computer, trying not to panic. Even the short wait for the deputies to arrive and take over, and then the drive back to the precinct, had been almost unbearable. Now she was starting to appreciate the sheer size of the task that lay ahead of them, and she was about ready to tear out her own hair.
“Well, at least we can be happy the census was taken not too long ago,” Nate said. He was tapping a pen against the side of the desk beside her, a noise that was just about driving Laura out of her mind.
“That doesn’t help a whole lot,” Laura mumbled. She was waiting for the results to finish loading. A search of the residential records of Albany for anyone with the first name Alex was, perhaps predictably, taking a long time.
“We have to narrow it down,” Nate said. “He’s only killed women before. You really think he’s going to go after a guy?”
Laura thought about it, then hesitated. “I guess it’s not uncommon for women to be called Alex, too. Maybe he hasn’t changed his MO.”
“So we can narrow it down to probably half, right?” Nate said, as Laura ticked a box on the screen and reloaded the results. This time they came back far quicker, but there were still pages and pages of them. “What else?”
Laura squeezed her eyes shut, as if she could force thoughts out of her brain. “I don’t know… um… they were all attacked alone.”
