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“He’s not running around the countryside abducting young females,” owned Gervase. “I don’t know that he’s not a player. He’s certainly an inspiration to someone.”
“You’ve been wrong before,” Boxner said.
“Really?” Kennedy asked. “When?”
Boxner began to splutter, and Jason decided that if Kennedy chose to throw good old Boyd out the window, he wouldn’t interfere.
Gervase ignored their exchange. “Time of death is listed between one and three o’clock on Saturday morning. Here’s one other point of interest,” he said. “Rebecca was already dead before she was strangled.” He stared at Kennedy, waiting for his reaction.
“How did she die?” Kennedy asked after a moment.
“Blunt force trauma to the head.”
Jason asked, “Is it possible the killer was unaware the victim was deceased?”
“That’s a good point,” Gervase said. “The ME thinks the strangling took place less than thirty minutes after death. So our guy could have been in a rea
l frenzy and still otherwise preoccupied. He may not have known the girl was dead. He might have thought she was just unconscious.”
That would have to be someone supremely unobservant. Jason waited for Kennedy to make that point. Kennedy said, “Does State’s CSI think she died at the scene?”
“I’m not following,” Gervase said.
“The Madigan girl was found much farther afield than any of Pink’s victims.”
Boxner said, “He doesn’t want to get caught like Pink. He’s smarter than Pink. He’s making a real effort to conceal the body.”
Kennedy repeated his question to Gervase. “Did Madigan die where her body was discovered?”
Gervase said slowly, “They’re not sure. They don’t think so. And I can’t see her willingly accompanying him to Rexford. He’d have had to fight her every step of the way.”
“That’s not necessarily true,” Jason said. “A ghost town is interesting, especially to kids, who aren’t going to think twice about flooding or rotten floors or snakes.”
“Maybe at Halloween,” Gervase said. “It’s hard to imagine Rebecca leaving her own party on the spur of the moment to go check out a ghost town.”
Jason remained unconvinced. Spur of the moment was pretty much synonymous with adolescence. And the opinion he’d formed of Rebecca through the statements of friends and family was she was a girl who acted on impulse a lot of the time. If someone attractive, someone she admired and felt safe with invited her to share a private adventure to a spooky old ghost town? Jason glanced at Boxner.
Feeling his gaze, Boxner looked Jason’s way. They stared at each other with open and equal dislike.
Jason said, “So we continue to have similarities to the original crimes. And the significant differences are probably inevitable given we’re dealing with two separate offenders?”
Kennedy nodded.
“Which brings us back to my theory,” Gervase said. “That what we have here is not so much a copycat, as the return of Pink’s original accomplice. I always said I didn’t believe Pink could have been acting alone.”
“Yes, you did always say that,” Kennedy agreed. Jason knew him well enough by now to know when Kennedy was being sardonic.
Gervase also recognized Kennedy’s sarcasm. His eyes kindled with irritation, but he restrained himself, instead reaching for his coffee cup and drinking from it.
That tensions were running high was understandable. They were now past the initial forty-eight. For local law enforcement forty-eight was the magic number. Most homicides were solved within that initial time span—or at least the information vital to solving the crime was provided within that window. Cases that didn’t resolve within the initial forty-eight might drag on for weeks, months, even years…or might never be solved.
From the FBI perspective, they were just getting started. The Bureau usually wasn’t even called in until well after the initial forty-eight hours had passed.
The real problem here was they had no idea when the unsub might strike again. Pink had waited years after Honey. And less than two weeks after Ginny. What his accomplice or apprentice might choose to do was anyone’s guess.
Kennedy said, “The problem with trying to match this scenario with your pet theory is that it doesn’t fit the profile. The Huntsman’s accomplice wouldn’t be someone who lures his victim into accompanying him. There is no coercion, no coaxing. Part of the pay-off for this offender is the abduction itself. The ability to overpower and take his victim against her will. That’s always been a fundamental component of these crimes.”
Gervase set his cup down. “We don’t know that. You said yourself we’ve got two different offenders. What worked for one might not work for the other.”
