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"Thank you," she said.
"If you think something is missing, it probably is, and we need to find out what. And fast." He checked his watch. "Already it is afternoon. We only have a few more hours before he might be gearing up to kill again."
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Juliette nodded. She agreed with Lucien, and felt deeply worried by how fast the time was passing. They were still too far behind him. How could they catch up?
She needed some head space, a chance to get her thoughts in order. And she couldn't do it here, in this crowded square, at a moment's notice. Abruptly, she realized what she needed.
She needed to do what she always did when a tough case or problem was weighing on her mind. That was to walk, and let it simmer in her subconscious.
If she did this here, her mind might offer a solution. She didn't have a lot of time, but she could try.
"Give me twenty minutes, and I’ll see if I can work out what it is," she said. Turning, she strode away.
The pressure of needing to find a solution weighed on her mind as Juliette headed out of the square and onto a side street, which at this hour was busy with pedestrians and cars, moving slowly and weaving around each other in the narrow space.
The killer might have walked this way, down this very road. This was his hunting ground and she knew he'd scoped it out well.
What had he been thinking as he walked? How was he committing these crimes? Was he considering this alleyway as the place to take his next victim? Or that one ahead?
She frowned, realizing what was at stake, and what impact a third murder might have on the case. It would be a huge blow. It might even be a death blow. This task force was new, and they needed to get results.
Juliette usually loved walking. She settled into a rhythm and went into her own head, and her subconscious mind always seemed to get as much exercise as her legs did.
Now, as she walked, she tried to put her worries aside and let her subconscious do the job it needed to do.
He was hiding in plain sight, perhaps as a street performer. They'd asked the other performers, the musicians, and entertainers, to keep an eye out for him, but nobody had seen him so far - or if they had, they weren't saying.
Why was that? What were they not seeing here?
Her boots trod the ground as she veered away from the main street, heading down the second of the alleyways that had caught her eye. Down here looked exactly like a place where he might hide out and lie in wait for a new victim. It was close to a tourist hub, yet deserted.
What had made her turn down here, though? It was an uninviting place. Wet, with a puddle of water running down the gutter in the middle, with high walls that even now in the daytime seemed to swallow the light.
"I walked down here because I was trying to put myself in his shoes. Trying to think how he could have done this. But why would Claudette have walked into a place like this?" she said aloud. "Why would Katarina have walked in here? Why is nobody seeing him?
She remembered that mime artist in the square - he'd had an excellent and surprising performance. He'd wrapped himself in a curtain of white, and had then appeared to grow magically taller, swaying like a ghost coming to life. When the curtain had opened, he'd been standing normally, and smiling. She thought that he must have had some kind of collapsible platform that he'd used to achieve this very captivating illusion.
So what if this killer had a disguise, too? A black cloak or a black drape that he could wrap around himself or hide behind so that he looked like nothing more than a discarded trash bag, just a featureless dark object in the shadows?
That would work and it would tie in with the street performer ethos.
That meant he would reveal himself to his victim when the time was right. He'd step up, out of that concealment, and he'd do something to attract their attention and lure them in.
He must look like a performer, or like something he wasn't. But now at last, she thought she'd gotten deeper into his mind, and figured out his MO. Conceal, then reveal, then lure. All done from the cover of a deserted alleyway to make certain nobody else saw.
That was what they’d been missing. They’d thought he’d started out in plain view and had somehow lured or dragged his victims into the alleyways. But now, she was realizing, he must have hidden in the alleys all along, and only shown himself when the time was right and a susceptible person had walked past.
She nodded, her pace quickening as she turned to start the walk back to the square. If this was how he was doing things, they needed to change their strategy, because they wouldn't catch him if they patrolled the public places.
None of the street performers would see him because he was out of sight, hiding, revealing himself only to a potential victim, catching her eye and enticing her into his dark territory.
Now, she needed to figure out how they could work with this.
Arriving back in the square, she saw Lucien's head turn immediately to look at her.
She had the explanation. Now, she needed a solution. She hurried over to him.
