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Twenty-Four

True to her word, Cassie did not call Harris over the next week. She half-expected the detective to call her to look at Sage’s body, but several days passed with radio silence. Cassie had worn out her welcome.

The police department had bigger problems on their hands.

Ms. Campbell, the reporter who was always one step behind the police department, had confirmed with an “unidentified source” close to the investigation that the four women found over the last month had indeed all died in the same tragic manner—with their throats slashed and their hearts ripped out.

Of course, the public went wild. Every news station was talking about Savannah’s latest serial killer. While the media played guessing games as to who could be behind these gruesome executions, the police department was busy dealing with nonsensical hotline tips and the press following Harris wherever she went.

David had called Cassie halfway through the week to give her an update, but there wasn’t much to say. They hadn’t found anything new or different about the latest crime scene, and while it was confirmed that each woman’s medical records had been changed to cover up their blood type was O Negative, they were no closer to finding out who did it. The women had doctors at different hospitals so whoever was changing the records was able to hack into multiple systems across the city. David said they had their best people on the breach, but that it wasn’t going to be easy to trace if the hacker knew how to cover his tracks.

Cassie told David about seeing Jessica Tran and getting a vision of her less than an hour before her death.

He had taken note of what the medical van looked like but said vans like that were issued to several different hospitals in the area and that their own employees drive them. He searched through any missing vehicle reports, but there were none for medical transport vehicles.

Cassie had begged him to tell Harris to look at parking garages around the city to see if any of them housed medical vans, but she had refused to waste manpower on what she called a wild goose chase.

So, Cassie took matters into her own hands.

Every day that week, she picked a different parking garage and spent hours going through every level looking for something that matched up with what she saw in her vision. She knew it was a long shot. The driver could’ve changed where he parked the vehicle or changed what the van looked like by swapping out decals. But going on that wild goose chase felt a lot better than doing nothing.

And every day, she was disappointed. Parking in downtown Savannah wasn’t cheap, even when she didn’t stay long, and it hurt more when she continued to come up with nothing. There were plenty of white vans, none of which were medical transport vehicles. The ones that looked similar weren’t enough of a match to warrant calling Harris or David.

When Friday night rolled around, Cassie didn’t bother going home to change out of her work clothes and started her usual route around the city. With a Hardee’s burger in one hand and a coffee in the other, she spent the next several hours trolling the streets of Savannah hoping and praying she could spot the van before the killer picked out his next victim.

What astounded her the most was that the nightlife in Savannah had not let up. The weather was warm without being oppressive, and Friday nights were always bound to be packed with tourists, students, and locals. She didn’t expect the city to shut down because of a serial killer but was mildly surprised by how many people were out and about, enjoying a drink and a night on the town.

She stopped short of rolling down her windows and telling all the twenty-somethings to go home and lock their doors.

After her second dinner and third cup of coffee, she looked down at her dashboard. It was around midnight. The pit in her stomach grew tighter, and though she was doing her best, it didn’t feel like enough.

Cassie pulled over along one of the side streets and parked her car. She tried to think backwards about this murder case. Harris theorized that the murders took place between midnight and two or three in the morning. It had to be late enough that most people wouldn’t be at a park, and if they were, they wouldn’t run into the middle of the woods if they saw something.

Cassie had a few more hours to figure out where to go.

She knew the killer used a medical transport van, which wouldn’t stand out regardless of where it was parked. Doctors and nurses and medical couriers were automatically given a pass. As a society, we put our trust in them, and we rarely believed they were capable of breaking that trust.

Then again, if Harris was right about her doctor theory, there’d be plenty of reason to think twice about trusting your doctor.

When Jessica Tran was taken to the medical transport van, it was parked in a garage several floors up. The killer did this to keep the vehicle off the street. Most parking garages had cameras at their entrances and exits, but if the killer switched jackets and wore a hat, no one would be able to tell if he entered in his personal vehicle and exited in the van.

Maybe Harris had already thought of that and had someone on her team look at the security footage, but Cassie couldn’t be sure, and she wasn’t about to call up the detective and tell her how to do her job. She would find some real evidence first.

And try not to gloat while she was at it.

Cassie drained her coffee and threw the empty cup on the floor of her car with the others. As she was about to lift her foot from the brake, she checked her rearview mirror and saw the back end of a white van drive by on the main road.

Her body reacted before her brain could comprehend what she had seen. She spun her vehicle around and gunned it toward the main road.

When she reached the intersection, she rolled through the stop sign and took a hard left. She weighed the consequences of getting pulled over by the police. On the one hand, she could tell them who she was and get them to pull over the van to check out the driver. On the other hand, it might cause enough of a distraction for the killer to get away. She leaned heavily in the direction of the killer getting away.

Cassie hit the gas and tried to distinguish the van from the other cars in front of her. In the middle of every intersection, she would slow down and peer in either direction to make sure the van hadn’t made a turn. On every straightaway, she would speed up to pass as many cars as she could.

At the third intersection, she saw a white van get into the turn-only lane. Cassie weaved in between multiple cars and endured several middle fingers, but when she saw the words Savannah Non-Emergency Medical Transport Van on the side of the car, her heart caught in her chest and everything else disappeared.

Without a doubt, she knew she had found the killer. What would she do about it?

Twenty-Five

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
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