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It was a good question. On previous cases, the police had mistaken items left by the killers for the personal possessions of the victims, so there was a chance that could be happening again here. It was also possible that a shared possession could point to some kind of link between the victims, one that might allow them to better understand why the killer had chosen to target them rather than someone else.
Dr. Mikkel shook her head, though. “There’s nothing. If there was, I would have noted it in my report.”
Paige couldn’t help feeling a hint of disappointment at that, but also some trepidation because of what she was going to have to do next. So far, she’d managed to avoid looking closely at the bodies of the two murder victims, but now, if she wanted answers, she was going tohaveto look at them.
Paige forced herself to look their way. They were partially covered with sheets, which Paige was grateful for, but even so, it was hard to look at the dead like that. They seemed pristine and almost peaceful, but Paige guessed that was down to the efforts of the coroner and her team.
She couldn’t help flashing back to the moment when she’d found her father dead at the age of fourteen, to that instant when she’d been standing over his body, staring down at the earth darkened by his blood in the middle of the forest where she’d found him.
This wasn’t the same, both because she was looking at strangers and because this was so far from the immediate aftermath of their deaths. That didn’t make it easy to look them over, though, searching for anything that might help her to understand what was going on there.
Paige found herself drawn to a small grey spray of something on Hope Jackson’s ankle. “What’s this?” she asked.
Dr. Mikkel shrugged. “We think it’s paint, but we’ve sent it off for further analysis to be sure. There are plenty of ways that could have gotten there, though.”
There were, but even so, it struck Paige as a little odd. She filed its presence away for later.
“Have you seen everything you need here?” Christopher asked her.
“Yes, I think so,” Paige replied.
“Then it’s probably time for us to go. I want to get the lay of the land at the spots where the victims were killed. Maybe it will help us to understand what’s going on better.”
Paige could only agree with that. They needed to get to the crime scenes at once.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Do you think that the killer might be trying to drive people away?”
Paige started slightly at the question since Christopher had been so quiet on the way over to the boardwalk where the murders had taken place.
To Paige, the Arnville boardwalk looked bright and lively. The stores near it were painted in primary colors, trying to grab attention any way they could. There was something quaint about it, with a feeling that it had been the same for fifty or sixty years.
Paige could smell the scent of the sea air, looking out briefly over the ocean to take in the boats that were going back and forth there. A golden sandy beach was spread out before it, filled with people even though it was a weekday.
“If he is, it isn’t working,” she pointed out.
“But could that be the point?”
Paige considered it more seriously. Was it possible that a murderer was killing people to try to ruin a location’s appeal? “It’s possible that someone might do something like that if they had particularly traumatic associations with the area,” Paige answered. “But I’m not sure I believe it as a motive. Someone who really wanted to drive people away would have easier ways to make the location seem unpleasant, and I’m not sure what they’d really gain from it. It feels like there has to be something else to it.”
“You’ve said in the past that a killer’s motivations only have to make sense to them,” Christopher pointed out.
He was second guessing her on the motives of killers now. That wasn’t usually something Christopher did. While he might have suggestions, he generally believed in Paige’s expertise when it came to this aspect of their jobs.
“It just doesn’t seem like it fits with the MO so far,” Paige said. “Either way, we need more information.”
“That’s why we’re here,” Christopher replied, leading the way past a small beachfront bar, then turning down an alleyway. “This is the alley where Hope Jackson was killed.”
Paige looked around the place, trying to get some sense of the way things had happened. The alley was broad but cluttered with dumpsters and the rear doors of buildings that faced onto the boardwalk. There were a couple of streetlights set along it, but they seemed widely spaced to Paige.
“At night, there would be a lot of shadowy spots here,” Christopher said. “The dumpsters would provide cover to someone following their victims.”
“Or waiting here for them,” Paige said. Was it possible that the killer had known which way his victims would come?
“That would imply a killer who picked out particular victims.” Christopher didn’t sound happy about the prospect, but Paige found herselfhopingthat it was that way. A killer who selected victims before he killed them might have a pattern that she could decipher to lead to him. One who was selecting victims randomly would be harder to track down.
“Maybe he is,” Paige said.
