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“You think he had the knife to use in the abduction?”
“I think he planned to take a second shot at grabbing Samara but got spooked. Maybe he saw her arrive with Michael, maybe he saw someone in a car watching the house, but I think that was the goal. This,” Tom waved his hand at the pool of blood and the two people lying in it, “was a temper tantrum. He was angry that we were getting in the way of him getting what he wanted so he decided to teach us a lesson.”
From the mangled bodies of the elderly couple who Samara’s stalker had slaughtered, her partner could be right. “How do you think he got them? There were two of them to his one. I know they're older than he is, but still, he managed to overpower them without either of them being able to fight back or even scream for help.”
“He probably had a ruse, got them to lower their guard, and then when they no longer viewed him as a threat, he pounced.”
Without getting too close—crime scene hadn't finished goingthrough everything in the parking garage, and she didn't want to disturb anything—Chloe knelt at the edge of the puddle of blood. “This was overkill.”
“It’s an expression of his rage.”
It was.
And this man was full of rage.
Chloe didn't even want to think about what would happen to her sister-in-law if this man ever got his hands on Samara.
But she also didn't want to think about what would happen if he didn't get his hands on Samara.
The stalker had made his intentions clear.
Either he got what he wanted, or he was going to keep on killing.
As if reading her mind, Tom said, “I don’t know what we’re going to do about his threat.”
She shifted her gaze from the bodies to the writing scrawled in the blood.
The stalker had left them a message. If they didn't hand over Samara to him by tomorrow, then he was going to kill again. There was no way they would give him what he wanted, but if he was going to pick random strangers off the street to murder, how would they keep people safe?
The best they could hope for was that he had left blood behind, and they got a hit on his DNA. But if Tom was right and this guy wasn't in the system then they had no way to find him. And if they had no way to find him, then they had no way to stop him. And if they had no way to stop him, then how many lives were going to be lost?
Slowly, Chloe stood, her gaze still on the message written in blood. “It doesn’t look like our plan is going to work. We hoped he would be so focused on getting Samara that he wouldn’t notice that she was protected. But he didn't take the bait. So, what are we going to do now?”
“He’s inexperienced,” Tom said. “He’s already messed up several times. He didn't secure Samara in the car, she escaped, now he has to scramble to try to fix things. But he’s out of his element, he doesn’t have a plan, he’s angry, and that has him making more stupid mistakes.”
“It doesn’t seem like he made many mistakes with this. He killed them, and then he stole their car and drove off,” she said. As far as she could see the stalker had played things well. Even if Tom was right and this was an unplanned spur-of-the-moment decision, it had all played out pretty well.
“Security cameras,” Tom said with a smile, pointing at the cameras that were barely visible at the entrance to the parking garage. Trust it to Tom to catch that. He noticed everything which was one of the reasons she loved working with him.
“Good catch. We might be able to get a clear shot of his face.”
“If we do, we can get his image up everywhere, and hopefully someone knows him and can turn him in.”
“I know you think he might not be in the system, but if we find the car and he doesn’t set it on fire like he did last time, then maybe we can get his prints.” That gave them two potential opportunities to get something on this guy that could tell them his identity. “Why do you think he stabbed the man only once and the woman dozens of times?”
“Issues with someone. His mother maybe, or a wife or girlfriend, could have something to do with why he fixated on Samara,” Tom suggested.
They still didn't know what exactly had led the stalker to Samara.
Back when this had all first started, and Samara had begun receiving messages and emails, and someone following her all over social media to the point that her sister-in-law had had to close all her accounts, she and Tom had interviewed her extensively. It hadn't been an official case, there wasn't anythingillegal about contacting someone, but since Samara was her sister-in-law, she and Tom had done everything they could to try to find the person who was stalking her.
Now the case had exploded, with an attempted abduction and now a double homicide, with threats for more murders, as well as the threat to Samara, and they still didn't know anything more about this man. They needed to try to figure out how his life had intersected with Samara’s.
“I don’t think there’s anything else we can do here,” Tom said, breaking her concentration. “It’s time.”
Chloe sighed inwardly. As much as she wanted to put it off, he was right, they had to go and do this. “Are we telling them everything?” she asked.
“I don’t think we have any other choice.”
