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Kendra looked at a tripod-mounted telescope sitting in the corner of the room. “Hmm. I didn’t figure you for a Peeping Tom.”
Trey smiled. “I’m notonlyinto serial killers. I’m kind of an amateur astronomer.”
Kendra leaned over and looked through the eyepiece. “It’s hard to see anything in the city, isn’t it?”
“It’s better than you might think. But for serious stargazing, I go to Julian or the desert. You know, it’s possible to see the entire Milky Way from only one percent of the U.S. One of those spots happens to be less than ninety minutes from here.”
“Wow.” She straightened and turned toward one of the monitors, which was cycling gory crime scene photos of Jackie Gabert. The one beside it displayed several shots of Stewart Dusenberry at the construction scene.
Kendra blanched at the sight. “I’m surprised you don’t have shots of the bomb victims.”
“They’re all here.” Suber waved to a dark monitor. “They’re all loaded on screen three. I usually leave that one off unless I need to take a look. People around here don’t appreciate seeing pictures of their dismembered friends and colleagues.”
“Imagine that.”
He looked down. “To tell you the truth, I’m not crazy about those shots, either.”
Kendra looked at him in surprise. “Squeamish? That doesn’t sound like the Trey Suber I know.”
He shrugged. “I’ve worked hundreds of serial killer cases and studied thousands more. But this is the first time one of them murdered someone I knew. It’s different.”
“Yes, it is.”
“I liked Cynthia Strode. She was always nice to me. Some people around here, they look at my website and trading cards and treat me like some kind of weirdo.”
Kendra tried to remember if she’d ever treated Trey that way. She hoped not.
He paced across the room. “Cynthia was a good person. I want to catch this guy.”
“Me too.” She stepped toward him. “That’s why I came down here.”
“What do you mean?”
“This may not be anything, but I want you to look at this case in a different light.” She lowered her voice. “I’ve already spoken to Griffin about this, but there’s been some indication that the killer may be in law enforcement. Someone who may even work in this very building.”
He gave her a skeptical look. “And where did this indication come from? The killer?”
“I’m just asking you to consider it. You know the people here, and you know more about serial killers than anyone.”
“That’s why I’m having a hard time believing it. Serial killers in law enforcement are a rare phenomenon.Reallyrare. Not unheard of, as you well know. But I think you’re wasting your time. And if you want to pull me down that rabbit hole, you’d be wasting my time.”
Trey seemed angry, almost combative. But as he’d said, it was a personal case for him. She needed to cut him some slack. It hadn’t been her intention to alienate him.
“Okay, for the moment, put aside the possibility that a law-enforcement officer may be involved.”
“Thank you.”
“What do you think of our case?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about the psychological dynamics of the case.”
“That makes two of us.”
Trey spoke quickly, as he often did when discussing one of their investigations. “There hasn’t been a lot of research done with dominance hierarchies as it relates to serial killer teams, probably because teams like this are so rare.”
“This seems more like a cult.”
“Exactly!” Trey wrinkled his brow. “In my experience, as much as participants like to dress up their behavior with terminology and concepts from other disciplines like psychology or even physics, at its root it’s just classic cult-like behavior. A charismatic leader who needs to control, preying on followers who need tobecontrolled. But not every wannabe leader, or so-called Alpha, has the skills to find, influence, and control followers. Jackie Gabert seemed particularly ham-fisted in her attempts. Which may be one reason she’s in a drawer in the morgue right now.”
