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Ella considered it, but she had an opposing theory. ‘I don’t think luring Kathleen here would be as difficult as you think.’
‘No?’
Ella reached back onto her desk and found printouts of Kathleen Carter’s dating site profiles. ‘The woman seemed to be on every dating site known to man. Either Kathleen was desperate to find her true love, or…’
Ripley took one of the pages. ‘Or she liked to get wild.’
‘Rule number one of horror movies. Horniness equals death.’
‘But we’ve checked Kathleen’s conversations. She hadn’t talked to anyone on there recently.’
‘She could have met our unsub somewhere else. He could have mentioned that he knew a quiet spot. Easy as that.’
‘Is it?’
‘That’s how I’d have done it,’ Ella said.
Ripley shot her partner a look of concern. ‘Of course it is.’
‘I’m in the unsub in this scenario. But even so, it means he comes prepared, because he must have had the weapons in place for when Kathleen arrived at that cabin.’
‘A murder kit.’
‘A disembowelment kit. That’s a new level of sinister.’
‘This is as premeditated as it gets. He’s been planning these kills for a long time.’
Ella studied her notes on the whiteboard, now realizing that they had a lot of theories but very little that could help them catch this perpetrator. Uncovering a solid motive or predicting his next move was difficult.
‘Mark's comments about the failure of actors... Could it be that our killer is recreating these scenes as some kind of audition?’
‘That's an angle,’ Mia responded, joining Ella at the whiteboard. ‘Each murder as a scene, each scene a portrayal of his desperation to be seen and recognized. The one thing wedoknow is that he wants to be recognized, otherwise he wouldn’t have notified the police of Kathleen’s whereabouts.’
‘If this is an audition, then there has to be a climax, an ultimate scene he's building towards. But what could it be?’
Ripley rubbed her temples, ‘We need to think like him. He's a cinephile, someone who deeply loves and understands movies. Maybe he's building up to a specific scene from a movie he values above the rest. A grand finale.’
Ella interjected, ‘If that's true, we need to figure out what that movie might be, and more importantly, the specific scene. And once we do that, we might be able to anticipate his next move, intercept him before he can act again.’
There was a brief silence before Ripley spoke, ‘Dark, you said that horniness equals death in horror films. A common trope, right? What if we look at the most iconic scenes in horror history where this trope plays out? Maybe that's where he's headed.’
Ella shook her head, ‘That's dozens, if not hundreds of movies. How do we narrow it down?’
‘What if we start by looking at the forums or online groups that he might frequent? We've got access to the Dread Pages soon. There might be some sort of clue or pattern there. We could also take another look at the physical locations. The places he's chosen so far are all reminiscent of classic horror settings. What if it’s a different clichéd location every time?’
Ella pieced an idea together. ‘He started in an isolated cabin, then outside a suburban home.’
‘Where next?’ Ripley asked. ‘What’s the logical progression?’
Ella pulled up a series of images in her head, everything from asylums to cornfields. The parameters were broad, but there was one setting that stood out above the rest. One that wasn’t too dissimilar from the locations he’d killed in so far.
A figure sped through the precinct, a beeline towards the agents. Chief Daniels manifested on the opposite side of the table, red-faced and short of breath.
Ella recognized the signs immediately. Bad news was forthcoming, and if she was a betting girl, she’d put a hundred dollars on one piece of bad news in particular.
‘Agents,’ Daniels interrupted. ‘Mark Brewer’s alibi checks out. He’s not our man.’
Ella clenched her fist and tapped it against the whiteboard. ‘As expected.’
