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“I can see up his nose,” he said to Valerie.
She looked up from her papers. “If only I had a clothes peg.”
“I could pinch it shut,” Will offered sarcastically. “It would at least stop the sound he’s making. He sounds like a drowning wildebeest.”
Charlie opened one eye. “The sexiest wildebeest this side of the Atlantic.”
Will sighed and squeezed past him into the seat next to Valerie. Charlie began snoring again.
“How does he do it?”
“Do what?” asked Valerie.
“Charlie,” said Will. “He can just jump in and out of sleep at the drop of a hat. It takes me ages to get some rest.”
“Why’s that?”
“Racing thoughts,” Will explained. “I’ve had them since I was a child. As soon as I try to sleep, my mind decides to run through things.”
Valerie seemed intrigued. She was now giving Will her full attention. “The great Will Cooper has hang ups?”
A flash of blue light beyond the nearest window was followed by a clap of thunder. The storm was getting nearer. Will fought his fear of flying as best as he could.
“Everyone has hang ups, my dear,” he said, tapping his right temple with his finger, nervously. “One must do their best to keep them from ruining one's life.”
“Are you okay?” asked Valerie, sounding concerned.
“I am,” said Will, pushing away any thought of his father again. He stretched out his hand. “Any luck with the case files?”
Valerie handed some to him. “I’ve been trying to work on a profile of the killer from the three cases, but so far, it’s difficult. I hope this isn’t another killer like Frederick Pitt.”
“You mean without a specific victim profile?” Will had considered this himself. A killer with a specific profile was easier to catch.
“Yes,” said Valerie. “There seems little to connect them.”
Will held the files in his hand. He rifled through some of the victim photographs. “It occurs to me,” he said as the plane juddered in the storm again, “that when faced with no discernible link between the victims, we should look for something that stands out singularly.”
“What do you mean?” asked Valerie.
“Perhaps,” Will continued, “there is a way to prove a deeper connection between the victims. If the killer has a type he targets, there must be something attracting him to those he’s killed already. Sometimes, you just need to find that anchor in one of the victims, something more obvious, and then that same thing suddenly becomes apparent in the others.”
Valerie looked back down at a photo in her hand. Will could see it. It showed the most recent victim with her wrists tied to the steering wheel of an old tractor.
“I did notice this,” Valerie said, pointing to the right wrist of the murdered woman in the photo.
Will peered down at it and could see writing tattooed across the skin.
“The photographs we have aren’t very clear,” Valerie commented. “I wonder what the writing says.”
“We might have to wait until we speak with whoever’s done the autopsy.”
“We don’t have much time, Will,” Valerie said, clearly referring to Jackson and the unit’s possible demise within forty-eight hours.
Will watched as Valerie took out her cellphone, turned on the camera, and then pointed it at the photo. She then zoomed in on the screen.
“It’s still hard to see,” she said. “Post … Ten …”
But Will knew what those words were now, his mind putting them together like patchwork.
