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But Cami felt a cold fear that the killer wouldn’t be sleeping.
Although she didn’t want to share her thoughts with Connor, that control panel kept on nagging at her mind.
The killer hadn’t reset it, he hadn’t had the chance. That had been an important step for every one of his kills so far. He must know that this step hadn’t been done and that it could result in his undoing. If he knew he didn’t have time left, then somebody like this would move faster.
That was why she’d been so anxious to access the other records.
Because Cami was very, very scared that he was going to speed up his killing interval now, trying to take as many victims as he could in his efforts to outrun the police. He was clever and careful, and the mistake he'd made had been due to a coincidence that he couldn't have planned for. Lucky for them, but unlucky for him.
But it was going to motivate him to do even more, even faster, than he might have been intending to do.
As he drove, Connor was on the phone and on the radio.
"I'm trying to cover all eventualities here," he said to Cami, in between his communications. "Yes," he said to the man in his office. "I want a phone track for the number on the screenshot I sent. And I need any other updated details for Miles Ferguson that you can find."
The time couldn't pass fast enough for Cami. Connor's car sped along tree-lined roads, through a tiny suburban shopping center, past a school and a church, and then they were heading out of town, with darkened fields on either side of them and only a glimmer of lights from the small, scattered dwellings beyond.
The phone rang again, and Connor grabbed it up.
“The details you have given me are the same ones on my system,” his assistant replied. Cami bit her lip. That meant that if they were wrong, there was no other address for them to try. But hopefully, they were right.
The pin drop was getting closer and closer, and in another minute, Connor swung the car into the driveway. The place looked dark and quiet. Cami crossed her fingers tightly as the car jolted to a stop, and the headlights flashed onto the simple, single-story home with white-plastered walls and a neatly tiled roof.
Connor didn’t hesitate. He jumped out of the car and raced up to the house, hammering hard on the door. Beside him, Cami tensed as she saw a light flicker on.
There was a pause, punctuated by the rapid beating of her heart.
Then footsteps, fast and urgent, pounded to the door and it was wrenched open.
“What in the name of hell is going on?” the man who appeared in the doorway declared dramatically. “What is it? Is there a fire somewhere? Accident?”
He looked to have been jerked from sleep – disoriented, with wide eyes and tousled hair and wearing blue pajamas with a faint gray stripe. And he was most definitely not Miles Ferguson, Cami saw to her consternation. He was at least twenty years older.
“FBI,” Connor replied, showing his ID. “We’re looking for Miles Ferguson. This is his last recorded address.”
The confusion in the man’s eyes caused Cami’s stomach to clench.
“Miles Ferguson?”
He didn’t know who he was. This was a disaster. It was going to mean a dead end and a delay that might take days or weeks – or longer – to solve. But then, as Connor spoke, Cami realized he’d picked up on a small but important intonation.
When this sleepy man had repeated Connor’s words, he’d emphasized the first name.MilesFerguson?
As if maybe the name Ferguson did ring a bell.
“Do you know of anyone by that name?” Connor asked. “Is the last name familiar to you?”
“It is. It is. That was this home's old owner. Mr. Ferguson. But he was killed months ago."
Killed? Shivers cascaded down Cami’s spine. This was getting more complex, more scary than she’d thought.
“Tell me about Mr. Ferguson?” Connor asked, in an easy voice, as if he had all the time in the world for this late night conversation. Stressful as the situation was, Cami knew that this approach would help this man to regroup faster after his shock awakening. No point in piling on the pressure and causing him to panic.
Well, he was panicking slightly, as you would after a bang on your door when you were fast asleep, but Cami could see that he was calming down now. He was nodding his head thoughtfully.
“We got the house after he died. He’d been renting it, but he was killed in a random robbery when he was getting home. Bashed over the head, and never woke up. Then it was sold, and my wife and I bought it. We reckoned it wasn’t random,” he said. “The guy carried cash around on him all the time, and he worked at a pawnbroker. So somebody must have thought he had something valuable, and followed him.
Perhaps, Cami thought. And perhaps not. He could have been killed for another reason. People might just have assumed otherwise.
