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So, she walked. Turk walked with her, glancing up at her occasionally to make sure she was all right. Faith felt a rush of gratitude for his companionship and reached down to scratch behind his ear for a second.
Turk huffed, a sound she recognized as encouragement, and she smiled briefly. “I know, boy. I know we’ll get him. We always do. I just wish it could be easy sometimes.”
Turk barked in agreement, and Faith scratched him one more time before turning back to the case.
Their initial hypothesis, that the killer was targeting medical professionals, had fallen through. Hucksley was a lawyer. Their second hypothesis, that the three were connected tangentially, had yielded no results either.
There had to be a connection. These weren’t random killings. It wasn’t unheard of for serial killers to choose their victims at random. The Son of Sam had chosen his victims randomly. The Beltway Snipers had picked random people. The Vampire of the Twin Cities Terminal had chosen his victims arbitrarily. It was possible, but she couldn’t believe that there was no connection in this case.
The Son of Sam and the Beltway Snipers had shot their victims from a distance. It was cold, impersonal. Those people weren’t people to them, they were targets. The Vampire had killed people he felt were rude. He would wait until he came across someone he felt was selfish and then kill them and stage their bodies to make the point that people were too focused on themselves and not others. His killings were theatrical, but they were quick. He poisoned them, and within a minute, they were gone.
This killer was burying people alive and taunting them as they slowly suffocated to death. He was giving them false hope and playing his message on a loop so that his voice was the last one they heard, even disguised as it was. He wasn’t just killing random people. He wanted his victims to suffer.
Then again, the Demon of Morgan County had a nearly identical MO. He would kidnap women he saw as whores and drop them in an abandoned well, which he would prep by sanding down the last fifteen feet so they could almost reach the top but lose hope at the last moment. The only difference was that he would taunt them personally and not via recording.
His victims were just as random as the Vampire’s. He would dispense his warped version of judgment, and to him, no doubt, the victims weren’t random, but to a reasoning, thinking human, they were.
So what was this killer’s criteria? People taking advantage of the vulnerable? That definitely tracked with Hucksley. He was an ambulance-chaser, and ambulance-chasers were oftentimes little more than con men.
Dr. Ames made sense too. ER bills were often crippling to lower-income patients, and ER doctors could often be impersonal since they saw thousands of patients. It might seem to someone that Dr. Ames didn’t really care about their health and that William Hucksley was only trying to con them. It was a stretch, but it was possible.
But then Marvin was the outlier. Marvin was a paramedic, and not even a team leader. Someone else told someone else what to tell him to do. He wouldn’t be the only paramedic responding either. He would be part of a team, and it would be clear that he wasn’t the leader of that team. No one would reasonably believe that he was taking advantage of vulnerable people. He wasn’t particularly wealthy either, certainly not nearly as well-off as an experienced doctor or a veteran lawyer.
So what was the motive? Why these victims? There had to besomereason. She couldn’t believe the killer was just spitballing, so what was he thinking when he chose them? What factor, logical or otherwise, made a fifty-two-year-old lawyer as attractive as a thirty-six-year-old paramedic and a forty-two-year-old doctor?
She completed the circuit—her fifth since they arrived back at the hotel—and sighed. She cast back at everything she’d learned in the case so far and tried to find any straw to grasp, no matter how small, but there was nothing. Nothing stood out in her mind that could lead her to understand the reasons behind this murder.
And the next one. She knew for sure that their killer wasn’t done. That was one hunch she still felt confident about. Their killer would kill again, and soon. There was a week between victims one and two. There were four days between victims two and three. Tonight was the second night after victim three’s death. There could be another victim any day.
She needed help. Michael was asleep, and she and Michael had brainstormed and come up with nothing several times already. She needed an outside perspective.
She pulled her cell phone out and dialed Clark’s number. It rang several times, then went to voicemail. Clark must be busy with another case at the moment.
“Hey, Gordon, it’s Faith,” she said. “Hey, I was hoping you could help me out with the case. Michael and I have hit a dead end, and I want to get a fresh perspective on things. Call me back when you get this message.” She paused a moment, then added, “When I get home, I’ll go through the Copycat case and let Desrouleaux know if I have any thoughts.” She paused again. “Thank you for trusting me.”
She hung up and took a deep breath, then headed inside. She wouldn’t get anything else from walking around and stewing.
***
Gordon Clark listened to Faith’s message as he walked up the stairs to his apartment. He had to smile. Faith’s news wasn’t good, but the fact that she was reaching out for help and willing to admit that she wasn’t superhuman was a great sign. She had matured a lot since Clark had taken her—unwillingly at first—under her wing.
He would call her back in a few minutes, but first, he needed a shower. He had just returned from the latest Copycat Killer scene—victim number thirty. Once more, they had found nothing to help them advance the case. He was grateful that Faith would be looking into it. She had the sharpest mind he had ever seen in an investigator. With her looking at things from a new angle, he had no doubt they would make headway.
It didn’t worry him that Faith was stumped at the moment on her current case. She always was at first, but she always figured it out. She would get through this case, then she would help them get through the next one.
Preferably as lead investigator. He hadn’t shared this plan with anyone else, but he intended for Faith to take over the Copycat Killer investigation after she proved herself by finding leads in the file and doing so without going cowboy. He would make the case to the Boss and Desrouleaux. Desrouleaux wouldn’t fight him. He was nearing retirement, and whether he solved this case or he didn’t, he was likely done in a year or two. Chavez was new, and she didn’t expect to be made lead of anything for a while.
The Boss would be a harder sell. He still took Faith’s near-implosion personally, feeling that she had taken advantage of his repeated forgiveness and the endless second chances he gave her. Still, Gordon felt he could convince him. He was one of Faith’s biggest supporters prior to the Trammell case. He wanted to believe. Gordon could work with that.
He opened the door and walked inside. The lights were off to save electricity, and the room was pitch-black, but Gordon knew where everything was, so he navigated to the light switch without bumping into anything.
He switched the light on just in time to see the silhouette of an attacker and a knife coming toward him. He moved instinctively, swiping at the knife. He missed, but he managed to get his shoulder in between the knife and his neck, so instead of being buried in his carotid, it glanced off of his collarbone, opening a nasty but not deadly cut.
He stepped forward and shoved his attacker back, tripping him over his heel. The attacker stumbled but didn’t fall. Gordon had time to register a few details—male, medium height, athletic build—but he couldn’t get much more than that. The attacker wore a black ski mask, gloves, and a long-sleeve shirt with jeans, which revealed nothing of his appearance other than gender. Clark couldn’t tell the attacker’s race or age, besides a rough estimate of between twenty and forty or a well-preserved fifty based on his athleticism.
Speaking of athleticism, the attacker recovered quickly and launched another attack. Clark parried the blow and launched a right cross that caused the man to stumble again. Once more, he recovered quickly and thrust with the knife.
Ignoring the searing pain in his shoulder, Clark parried blow after blow. He didn’t get a chance to counterattack after the first punch. His attacker was just too fast. He needed to find another way to stop the guy. He worked his way back into his living room where he had more space to work. Once there, he angled away from a knife thrust and threw a powerful left hook. The attacker ducked it and tried to come over the top with the knife.
