CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Well, they had learned one thing new. Prince William County had taken an impression of the boot print and determined that it belonged to the most popular discount boot brand in the United States.
They guessed the pair was between three and five months old, which narrowed their suspect list down to twenty-one thousand and sixty-two people in the Greater D.C.
area. Five thousand, five hundred fifty-three of them were within a margin of error of six-three and two hundred thirty pounds.
Faith had even run with that for a little while, trying to find out if any of those many had been in the vicinity of their victims during the time of the murders.
Eventually, she had to admit there was no way to answer that question for sure.
Washington and Arlington had traffic cameras that covered nearly every square inch of their city limits, but outside of those two major cities, there were wide stretches of highway, street, and land where anyone could disappear.
As late night crossed the Mendoza line to early morning, Meyers sighed and leaned back in his chair, rubbing his eyes. “Damn. I think I have to tap out. Sorry, everyone. I’m beat. I guess I can’t keep up like I used to.”
Faith didn’t blame him. He was twenty years older than she was, thirty years older than Jessica, and she doubted like hell he’d ever encountered a case that kept him up all night before.
The high-profile murders happened in Washington, Arlington, and Baltimore, the big cities, not here in Quantico.
Not in the small, affluent towns surrounding the big cities.
“You’re doing good,” Jessica offered helpfully. “Thank you for your help.”
Meyers offered the young agent a tired smile as he left the room. Turk took his departure as permission to sleep himself, and after a soft bark good night, he picked a corner of the room, circled twice, then lay with his head in between his paws and promptly fell asleep.
Jessica and Faith stared dejectedly at him for a moment. “Well, shit,” Jessica said. “Now what do we do?”
Faith shook her head. “There has to be a connection between our victims.”
“Does there? This isn’t an Ottis Toole and Henry Lee Lucas thing?”
Those serial killers, two of the most famous in American history, were famous in part for being opportunistic killers who lacked defined victim profiles and just killed whoever they happened to find and have the opportunity to kill.
While many of their confessions were later deemed to be false and given in exchange for amenities, the killings that were confirmed fit the MO of two people who just killed when the fancy struck them, rather than adhering to a particular type.
“I don’t think so,” Faith said. “Those two didn’t have any form of organization. They didn’t favor a particular method or a particular location the way our killer does.”
“It’s possible that he only chooses the location and picks an opportunistic victim at each location,” Jessica offered. “His MO already carries a lot of risk. He might get a thrill out of taking risk, but he obviously wants to control that risk.”
“Yes,” Faith admitted reluctantly. “It’s possible. Dog parks could just be an easy place to spot people without standing out himself.”
“The last one wasn’t a dog park, though.”
“It was close enough to a dog park that I feel comfortable saying he spotted her there, then followed her until she was alone. Or maybe he spotted her earlier and memorized her habits.”
“He couldn’t have spotted her that much earlier unless he just decided to kill Iris and Mark first.”
Faith sighed and got to her feet to make more coffee. At the rate she consumed caffeine and avoided sleep when she was working, she was going to die in her fifties. Hell, she might even have a heart attack and die before Turk. Then she’d never have to suffer the pain of losing him.
And with that morbid thought, she ruminated as she poured fresh grounds into the coffeemaker. “In any case, he is using dog parks as his hunting ground. Now we have to figure out why he picked those victims.”
“You’re sticking to the idea that he had a reason for the victims he chose, huh?”
“He must have,” Faith insisted.
Jessica sighed. “I don’t want to be a bitch, but is it possible that you just really want him to have a reason because without one, it’s going to be very hard to find him?”
Faith opened her mouth to deny it, but she closed it when she thought of the way she’d fixated on Brian Meadows.
Jessica was right. She wasn’t at her best right now.
Something about Luna had affected her. In her last case, she had become attached to a therapy dog named Honey who had been sedated only to wake and discover that her owner was dead.
That had affected her, but she had been able to separate her emotions and focus on the case. What was different about this case?
She looked at Turk. He had just the faintest trace of a scar on the left side of his face where Jethro Trammell's axe had split his skull.
Most days, she didn't notice it, but she could see it now as clearly as she could the day she first met him, when it was fresh and raw and tore through his features like a rip in an oil painting.
Turk had fought to protect his handler. He had lost. Luna and Beau had fought to protect their owners. They had lost. That’s what affected Faith. Knowing that those loyal dogs had given it their all and been forced to understand that it wasn’t enough.
“You’re right,” she confessed. “I really want there to be a connection.
I really want to have something concrete I can look for that will tell me who this guy is.
There could be nothing. He could really just be a perfect killer who figured out a way to take lives without getting caught and is trying to see how many he can get before he slips up.
“But as long as we’re looking, I want to look at our victims. Killers like Toole and Lucas exist, but they’re rare enough to be a rounding error.
The overwhelming majority of killers choose specific victims. Sometimes their logic doesn’t make sense to normal people, but there is some sort of logic. ”
Jessica absorbed this rant patiently, then leaned back in her chair and sighed. “All right. You’ve been right often enough that I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. And I really don’t have any idea what else to do, so… let’s look at the victims.”
Faith smiled gratefully at Jessica and brought two fresh cups of coffee to the table. Jessica sipped gratefully and sighed. “I am so glad that people in Quantico value a good cup of coffee. You wouldn’t believe the crap that Hozier foists on us at the D.C. office.”
“You guys don’t buy your own coffee?”
“I mean, we could, but it’s more fun to bitch about Hozier each time we make coffee.”
Faith laughed at that. “I understand that.”
Her laughter faded quickly. The moment of lighthearted humor was a nice reprieve, but they had work to do now.
They got the easy part out of the way quickly.
None of the victims appeared to know each other or to have interacted with each other at any point in their lives.
They didn’t even run in adjacent circles.
Mark Patterson didn’t have a family other than his fiancée, and all of his friends were fellow members of the Stafford County Parks Department.
Iris Caldwell was revered by her former coworkers and her devoted family, but being retired, she rarely ventured outside of Quantico unless she was traveling far.
Rebecca Hartley lived alone. Her family lived in Boston and California.
She had a close-knit group of five or six people that she went on frequent camping and hiking trips with, but they were all in her age group, younger even than the youngest of Iris Caldwell’s children, none of whom appeared particularly outdoorsy.
“So there’s no floater in their social group coming after them for some perceived wrong,” Jessica summarized when their social media review didn’t turn up a lead. “That means it’s something intrinsic about them.”
“You’re probably right,” Faith said.
“But what is there? All three of them like parks?”
Faith shook her head. “Too generic. Why them and not any number of other people?”
“They were alone when the killer saw them?”
“They can’t have been the only people he’s had the opportunity to kill,” Faith said.
She steepled her fingers and turned the details over in her mind. What qualities did all three share that might have set the killer off? Dog ownership had nothing to do with it because Rebecca didn’t have a dog.
Two older people, one younger person. Two women, one man. A widow, a single woman, and a recently engaged man. A mother, a confirmed childless man, and a young woman who probably was years away from deciding for sure what she wanted in that regard.
It wasn’t even exercise. Rebecca Hartley was in shape, and Iris was in excellent condition for her age, but Mark Patterson… Well, he wasn’t in terrible shape, but he looked like a normal man pushing seventy.
So, what was it? What did these three people have in common?
She tapped her fingers on the desk, pursing her lips and mulling the problem over in her mind. Other than the fact that all three victims appeared to be happy with their lives, she wasn’t sure what attributes they shared.
Could that be all it was? Just envy? Certainly, that had been a motive for killing before.
Several people who knew Ted Bundy expressed that he seemed envious of people who were happy and normal, perhaps because he knew from a young age that he would never have the mundane lives they had.
Elliot Rodger’s manifesto ranted about the romantic and social success others had that he felt he was unfairly denied.
If that was the only thing that the killer was lashing out against, then finding him was going to be next to impossible. They couldn’t narrow things down much by looking for happy people.
The door to the break room opened, and Meyers walked inside, rubbing sleep from his eyes.
“There’s coffee,” Faith told him. “It’s...” She glanced at her phone. God, had that much time passed already? “Reasonably fresh.”
“‘S fine,” he mumbled, pouring himself a cup of the steaming liquid and drinking it far too fast for Faith’s comfort. “Did you guys find anything?”
Faith sighed. “Not yet.”
“I hate to say it,” Jessica said, “but I think we’ve hit a wall we’re not going to break through tonight. I think the best thing we can do is issue a warning to people not to be alone in public parks and to keep an eye out for anyone behaving suspiciously.”
Meyers nodded. “Yeah. I think you’re right. Hey, who knows? Maybe we’ll get lucky. Maybe telling everyone to be on the lookout will make them more aware and we’ll get an actual answer when we ask if anyone’s seen anything suspicious.”
“From your mouth to God’s ears,” Jessica replied.
Faith didn’t say anything. She agreed with the other two that putting a warning out was wise, but she didn’t like relying on luck.
She really didn’t like thinking that they were waiting for their killer to go hunting again so a concerned citizen could report suspicious behavior.
It was a little too close to using innocent people as bait.
And Faith feared that their killer would catch the scent of the dogs on his tail and grow more cunning.
Without knowing who they were looking for, they could just be driving their killer underground where he would linger like a snake waiting to strike until someone strayed a little too close to his hiding spot.
The only thing Faith knew for sure was that he wouldn’t stop. Envy was the kind of emotion that ate at a person’s soul until it consumed it. Someone in that condition would never stop hunting for a soul to replace the one he had lost.
And no amount of souls taken would satisfy him. They would vanish like wraiths, leaving only deepening hunger behind.