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“I thought there weren’t any obvious links between the victims?”
“Not that I can see, but that doesn’t mean the link isn’t there.” Paige just needed to look deeper, trying to find connections that weren’t obvious social or work ones.
“Maybe,” Christopher said, although he looked doubtful. “For now, though, we need to focus on the crime scene.”
He started to walk around it, checking the space beneath the nearest streetlight, obviously looking for any clues that had been missed by the local CSI teams. As far as Paige could see, there wasn’t anything. The whole space had already been cleared as if the local PD didn’t want to leave any traces that might disturb passing tourists.
Paige could understand the officials of a small town not wanting to frighten away the tourist industry that was a major component of the town’s economy. At the same time, the suddenly pristine state of that corner of the alley had probably wiped away any clues that had still been there.
That was frustrating; it felt as though it was making their lives harder and removing their chance to get ahead in the case.
Paige tried to push back that frustration, looking around the alley, trying to understand the location and which direction the killer might have come from. She tried to picture him stalking Hope Jackson.
One element of the location stood out to Paige. She could still see the ocean from here, the beach clearly visible just a short way away.
“It’s pretty close to the bar over there,” Paige said. “And to the beach. But the police report doesn’t mention anyone hearing anything. The local cops talked to people around the bar and there’s nothing.”
“A combination of loud music and drunk patrons?” Christopher suggested.
Would that be enough? How loud would the music need to be in a bar for no one to notice a woman being murdered right outside?
“Or a quiet killer,” Paige replied. “We know from the coroner’s office that he crept up behind his victims, so maybe part of it was to try to kill as quickly and quietly as possible.”
“Does that matter?” Christopher asked, with a slight frown.
Paige wasn’t used to him shooting down her ideas. Usually, he was a great sounding board. It seemed as though, ever since their kiss, something had gone wrong between them, so that they no longer worked quite as much in synch as before.
“It might tell us more about the kind of person we’re looking for,” Paige said. “We know that this is a killer who wants to kill quickly, but who takes the time to display his victims afterwards in the most shocking way possible. One who clearly doesn’t want to risk being discovered, but who is willing to kill close to a busy bar. That suggests a lot of confidence in his skills, a certainty that nothing is going to go wrong.”
“So, he’s arrogant?” Christopher said.
“Only if that confidence isn’t justified. Maybe there’s something about his background that gives him every reason to believe that he can get away with it. Maybe he’s ex-military, or has been in a gang, or has killed people elsewhere.”
Any of those explanations might suggest why the killer was prepared to take this much of a risk.
“Or he might just be so crazy that he doesn’t care,” Christopher suggested.
That was another possibility. Someone with a strong enough compulsion to kill might not be slowed down by the risk of being caught. At the same time, this killer hadn’t just charged into the street and started killing people; he’d murdered his victims in spots where he hadn’t been seen and where he’d had a chance to finish his work.
“The part where he displayed his victims is the interesting part,” Paige said. She tried to find the spots where the crime scene photographs had been taken, trying to see in real life what was there in the photographs.
It was impossible to get much out of it, though. Aside from the realization that the killer probably had some kind of expertise to be able to kill so quickly and quietly, there didn’t seem to be anything to glean from the location.
“Do you think it’s possible that there’s anything to the gang links the local cops were looking into?” Christopher asked.
Paige wasn’t sure. “I guess it’s possible. But this looks more like the work of a serial killer. I think that’s the basis we have to proceed on.”
“We have to look at every angle that might get us to the killer,” Christopher insisted. “For now, though, I think we’ve gotten everything we can from this spot.”
He led the way out from the alley with Paige following in his wake. She found herself looking around the boardwalk as she went, and she hadn’t gone fifty yards before she stopped.
“What is it?” Christopher asked. He looked puzzled.
“I’ve seen this spot before,” Paige said. She got out her phone, pulling up a video of Hope Jackson singing out on the boardwalk. She looked around, checking the angles. “Here. This is one of the spots where Hope Jackson used to sing. There are several videos of her singing here.”
“So, the killer struck as she was on her way back from singing?” Christopher said.
“It looks like it,” Paige replied, but there was another side to it too. “It also means that if he targeted her specifically, he would have known where to find her.”
