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“Mothers meeting?” he said. He motioned with his arm for the agents to join him inside, abruptly ending any discussion about Logan Nash. Ella stepped in and took a seat on a leather sofa below Edis’s collection of plaques dating back to his time in the Chicago PD. Ripley sat on the opposite side of the room while Edis grabbed two folders, passed them to the agents, then assumed the position behind his desk. “I know I granted you both some time off, but this one is urgent. It’s vital I have my best team on the case.”
Ella began leafing through the new documents. The sad reality was that serial murderers didn’t take vacation, so there was no such thing as time off in this game. Even if you were at home, the grisly details of cases past tugged at your memory bank.
“What are we looking at here?” asked Ripley.
“Davenport, Iowa. Two murders in two days. The guy in charge of the investigation, Clive Grant, is an old friend of mine, so I promised him we’d lend a hand.”
Ella went right to the crime scene photos. The first batch showed a thirty-something brunette slumped on her bed, one arm dangling over the side. Ella checked the close-ups for wounds or lacerations but couldn’t see any.
“Strangulation?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Edis. “Victim number one was thirty-four-year-old Vanessa May. Single, lived alone, strangled in her bedroom, and left there.”
Ella took a moment to pay her silent respects to the recently deceased. Killed in the place she should have felt the safest. The thought chipped another fragment out of her soul, and the only way to glue it back in place was to deliver swift and adequate justice to whoever did this.
“Home invader,” she said. “That means he’s meticulous, sneaky, audacious.”
“Or the victim knew him,” Ripley said. “Too early to tell.”
Edis continued, “The guys down in Davenport haven’t gotten anything to go on. The crime scene is squeaky clean and there are no cameras on the victim’s street. So they need a behavioral profile to make any kind of headway.”
“Got it,” Ripley said.
Ella turned to the second batch of photos, offering a new level of brutality. Another brunette woman lay on a gray hardwood floor, a trail of blood leading from her abdomen out of shot.
“Our second victim is Katherine Parkinson, forty-six years old. Similar home invasion from what police can discern, but our perp has upped his game here.”
“Stabbed in the stomach,” Ripley said. “That’s unusual.”
Ella added, “Strangulation to stabbing in the space of two days? Seems unlikely. That’s a real drastic progression in such a short space of time.”
Ripley said, “Could have been an opportunistic thing, but most killers do tend to stick with one or the other. Does anything else connect these murders, Will?”
Edis sighed and said, “Nothing but proximity at the moment, but two similar murders in the same city is a cause for concern. Grant is one of the best detectives I know, so if he’s asking for help then he needs it. He isn’t just trying to pass the buck here, and he’ll work with you side by side until we’ve got this perp behind bars.”
Ella flipped back and forth between the crime scene photos, not really noticing any of the similarities the director was talking about. “I don’t know about you guys, but this looks like two completely different killers to me. Are we sure your friend isn’t jumping to conclusions? Davenport has what, a hundred thousand residents?”
“That’s for you two to figure out,” Edis said. “I understand there’s not much to go on, but please supply Davenport PD with as deep a behavioral profile as possible. Me and Grant go a long way back, all the way to our days on the force together. The man saved my life more than once, and I always promised I’d repay him one day. Please don’t let me down because this is about more than reputation; this is personal.”
Ella was already trying to piece together the fragments of this unsub’s psychopathology, but the disparate killing methods were throwing her a curve ball. “You can trust us, Director,” she said.
“The jet is available if you don’t mind being a little cramped. You could be in Davenport within two hours.”
Ripley jumped at the chance. “We’ll take it. Come on, Dark.”
Ella grabbed her bag, thanked the director, and headed for the door with her partner in pursuit. Outside, she said, “Looks like we’ve got a sadist to catch.”
“I hear that. I don’t like this sudden progression in M.O.,” said Ripley. “We’ll go through every detail on the way, and I need you to tell me about… the other thing.”
Ella was ready. Experience had taught her that when the odds were stacked against you, you had to break them down one by one. It would start with a potential serial killer down in Iowa and end with an assassin somewhere in D.C. She had a lot to get done, so it was time to get to work.
“Let’s go,” Ella said. “We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
***
Ella took a seat on the jet, laid out her documents and readied herself for two hours of contemplation. Despite the FBI’s status, they didn’t have a fleet of private planes available, and there was only one private jet for the entire bureau. Special agents and investigators were required to fly via commercial or government-licensed airlines, but William Edis was required by law to travel privately. His personal jet cost thousands of dollars to operate even if it was just sitting in the airport, so an extra grand of jet fuel was a small price to pay to get some use out of the thing.
“Victim one,” Ripley said as she perused her notes. “She’s thirty-four, single, can’t find anything about her job or personal life on here. I hate to say it but she might have just been an easy target.”
