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“We’ll find him,” he said, keeping his hands on his knees. “You and I will nail this bastard and we’ll get Kendra.”
She breathed out forcefully. “How do we do that, huh? We can’t map Jenna’s last twenty-four hours. Can’t figure out how these girls were lured out of their homes. We don’t know where they went—”
Kay’s phone chimed. She had a new text message. Without looking at it, she handed Elliot the phone, careful not to touch his hand in passing.
“It’s from Doc Whitmore. ‘Call me when you wake up,’ he says. He knows the hours you keep, huh?” He made the call on the vehicle’s media center, and it was picked up almost instantly by the medical examiner.
“Good morning, Kay,” he said.
“We’re both here,” Kay replied. “Good morning, Doc. You spent the night working again?”
“I had the second DNA profile running. I just dozed off on the sofa. I couldn’t go home, you see, with that poor girl still out there.”
“Tell me what you got,” Kay demanded, visibly impatient like she always was.
“Ah, yes. Remember we found two DNA samples on Jenna’s body. Considering we found the same fingerprints on the condom wrappers, we assumed there was only one rapist, but the second semen sample belongs to a different donor.”
“What?” Kay asked. “There are two unsubs?”
“Precisely. The second sample isn’t a match to Gavin Sharp either. There’s no match for the first one in CODIS, and the second is still running.”
“All right,” she replied, sounding defeated. “That’s something, I suppose. Maybe we’ll get lucky with the second perp.”
“I got more,” he announced, a hint of pride coloring his voice. “I finished analyzing Jenna’s stomach contents. About four hours before her death, she had a tuna sandwich with mayo and capers.”
She grinned, slowing the SUV slightly before making a screeching-wheel U-turn on the deserted highway. “You just made my day. There’s only one place in town that serves that. And it opens in about twenty minutes.”
“I know.” He could hear the smile in Dr. Whitmore’s voice.
“Thanks, Doc. Get some rest,” Kay said.
The doctor laughed. “I’ll follow the doctor’s orders.” Then he ended the call, leaving a brief silence to fill the space.
“Who makes them? Are you thinking Katse?” Elliot asked.
“No,” Kay replied, sounding very sure of herself over something he didn’t quite know what it was. She shot him a quick look and smiled for a brief moment, then the smile waned, and her jaws clenched as if she’d remembered something bothersome. “Capers are small, pickled fruits of a Mediterranean bush.”
How did she know what he was thinking before he had a chance to think it? If she did that so damn well, how could she not know how he felt about her?
The road curved around a hilltop and soon Mount Chester came into view with its sharp peaks and dark evergreens. Kay pointed at the mountain with an accusatory finger. “Katse doesn’t add capers to their sandwiches, but those guys do, up at the Winter Lodge.”
THIRTY-SIX
LEADS
Alpine Subs opened at six thirty, probably catering more to the hotel employees than tourists at that early morning hour. It was built as an annex to the Winter Lodge restaurant, with a small storefront facing the hotel parking lot, and direct access from inside the lobby.
A single, beat-up black Hyundai was parked in front of it, probably belonging to the sandwich shop staff. The light was on inside. Even if the “OPEN” sign was still off, Kay didn’t want to wait. She climbed out of the SUV and walked briskly to the door, a step behind Elliot.
The air was crisp and cold, slightly warmer where the rising sun’s rays hit the valley. Her breath turned briefly into mist before vanishing. Dawn’s early colors were fading away, leaving the rocky peaks a silver gray serrate against the azure. In the distance, a hawk cried, circling above ground near the chairlift’s lower terminal. A mouse must’ve been out looking for food in the frost-touched grass, grabbing the hawk’s attention just as Jenna and Kendra had grabbed the unsub’s.
The psychology behind TV and print media advertising applied to criminal investigations equally well. One has toseesomething to want it. They have to know it exists, to put their eyes on an appealing visual, and, as desire blooms, to decide if they’re going to pursue what they want.
The unsub must’ve seen Jenna somewhere, maybe in person before the website told him she might be a good choice for exploring his dark urges with. That’s what Kay had believed until the earlier call with the medical examiner, and part of that still held true.
A second hawk joined the first in circling aboveground, stalking its prey. They took turns crying, flying lower and lower, getting ready to strike. Kay wondered if the mouse saw them coming, if it realized the danger they posed from a distance.
Two instead of one changed everything. The dynamic of the kill, of the sexual assault itself, of the initial choice of Jenna as a target. But two instead of one matched what she’d found at the crime scene. Two recent male shoeprints. Two condom wrappers. One unidentified partial print on one of the wrappers that wasn’t found on the other.
