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“A high school senior killed in a single-car crash.”
She used magnets to put up pictures of each potential victim next to their name. The college boys and the teacher were white, the hiker was mixed-race Black and Japanese, and the high school student was Black. She didn’t believe that these were racially motivated crimes.
“Because each of these accidents appears as it was—an accidental death, and no law enforcement agency seriously considered homicide—ifthey were in fact murders, that tells us the killer is a high-level planner. He is extremely well organized, methodical, patient, with above-average IQ.
“Because the races, genders, and locations were different, I don’t think he’s a traditional serial killer—someone who is compelled to kill. I initially thought he might be an opportunity killer—on a hike, sees a lone woman, pushes her off a cliff. The boys in the lake—he could have lured them out, pushed them overboard. The water was so cold they had little to no chance of making it to shore alive. Yet the sailboat—a grown man, physically fit, in the middle of the Sound, sailing alone? How is that a crime of opportunity? And the car accident is the biggest outlier. The other four murders were outdoors, recreational areas. The car accident was a kid driving and hitting a tree. Jim spoke to the investigators and the medical examiner for me because he’d been on shore this morning.” She nodded to him. “Please, Jim, add anything that I might have missed. But it appears that the investigation was inconclusive—there were no drugs or alcohol in Billy Clark’s system, per the ME. Single-car accident. No sign of any other vehicle, and Billy was only found after he didn’t come home on time. The conventional wisdom was that a large animal was in the road—not uncommon in the area, according to the detectives—and he swerved to avoid it, hitting the tree. Or that he fell asleep at the wheel. There were no skid marks indicating braking, but there were swerve skid marks.” She put up a photo from the original police report that Jim had emailed her earlier.
“The detective in charge of Clark’s death investigation spoke to Neil several times,” Jim said. “Neil’s questions led him to believe that Neil thought Billy’s accident wasn’t an accident, that it was intentional. Neil gave him no specific suspect or reason why he thought Billy Clark had been murdered. That annoyed the detective, and he stopped returning Neil’s calls.”
“If these five deaths are in fact homicides,” Catherine said cautiously, “and if they were committed by the same person, then he has apersonalreason for killing each of these people. That means he knew each person—and if he did, we should be able to find that personal connection.”
Matt said, “But even if we do, we won’t have any physical evidence tying anyone to these murders—which were all ruled accidental by authorities.”
“I think that’s where Neil found himself,” Catherine said. “He had a suspect but lacked proof. Ryder, please explain the connections you confirmed.”
Ryder walked to the board and wroteUniversity of Washingtonto the side. “We already know that Mott, Stevens, and Douglas were all at the University of Washington at the same time. That was easy to confirm. Douglas was a year younger than the two men who drowned. Travers graduated from Washington State in Pullman, and Clark had accepted a football scholarship to University of Oregon, so neither of them had a U of W connection.
“Mott and Stevens were born and raised in Olympia and had been friends before college, roommates in college. Travers was originally from Spokane, and after college he took a teaching job in Seattle, high school. He was promoted to a new position in Bellingham two weeks before he died. Douglas was from the Seattle suburbs, lived at home while she went to college, graduated, went to nursing school, and worked at a children’s hospital. She was recently engaged before she went missing. Her body was never found.”
“Wait—” Kara said.
Everyone turned to look at her.
“You see something we don’t?” Catherine asked. She wished Kara would be clearer and less...casual, for lack of a better word. She didn’t even dress like an FBI agent.
“Did Mott or Stevens have something good happen to them before they died?”
“I don’t understand the question.”
“Look—you have it right there. Billy Clark had a scholarship to Oregon, he had his college signing three weeks before his accident. Travers was promoted, about to start a new job—I assume it came with a raise, a better position, whatever. Douglas became engaged. That’s generally good news, right? So could the killer target them because of these accomplishments? Maybe because they accomplished something he didn’t?”
Catherine was surprised at Kara’s psychological insight. Maybe she shouldn’t be. Matt had said over and over that Kara was a good cop. Yet she was a risk they couldn’t afford, especially in these times. Though Matt irritated Catherine, he was an exemplary agent and had worked hard to create this team. She couldn’t let someone like Kara destroy it.
Yet she had a point here.
“That would be a viable motive,” Catherine concurred. “Ryder, do you know about the boys?”
“No. Nothing in the file, and Neil didn’t make that connection—or if he did, it’s with the missing files. I’ll reach out to Jessica Mott, see if she knows something.”
Kara was staring at the board as if she had more to say but didn’t.
Matt said, “This is good, but we still don’t have a name or even a direction or one person who knew all those people.”
“Well, we have one name,” Ryder said. “At least, it’s something we should pursue. Damon Avila.”
“The bartender at the Fish & Brew?” Kara said.
“He graduated from the University of Washington the year before Mott and Stevens would have—two weeks before they died,” said Ryder. “And he dated Missy Douglas for two years.”
“Way to bury the lede,” Kara said.
“There’s no reason to believe that he was involved in any of these deaths,” Catherine said. “There is no known motive. He and Missy broke up after he graduated. He didn’t share any classes with Mott or Stevens—Mott and Stevens were computer science majors, but Avila was biology and Missy was nursing. And Travers and Clark have no connection to Avila that we can yet find, but Ryder and I only made that possible connection this morning, so we just started the background on him. And even if we did find something, there’s no evidence at all—physical or circumstantial—that Avila would have been involved with their deaths, all of which have been ruled accidental.”
“Meaning,” Matt said, “we have no cause to question him.”
“Correct,” Catherine said. “Andifwe talked to him about these deaths without having evidence, we’d tip our hand, in my opinion. We need more.”
“It would be a balancing act,” Matt agreed.
