CHAPTER ELEVEN
Miles rubbed his eyes and leaned back in his chair, staring at the laptop screen until the text blurred.
The conference room at the Los Angeles field office had become their temporary home for the past eight hours.
A long table dominated the center of the space, covered with case files, printouts, and their various devices.
Someone had set up a small table near the wall with coffee, bottled water, and a box of granola bars that had been picked over until only the ones with raisins remained.
Agent Kim had claimed the corner of the table nearest the power outlets, and her setup looked like mission control.
Two laptops, a tablet, and her phone were all connected and running different searches simultaneously.
She had organized their case materials into color-coded folders, and a legal pad sat beside her keyboard with neat columns of notes.
It never stopped shocking Miles just how much of a machine the women could be herself.
Vic sat across from Miles with her own laptop open, scrolling through yet another database of known criminals in the Los Angeles area. She had been at it for hours without complaint, but Miles could see the frustration building in the set of her shoulders.
"Well I’ve got absolutely nothing," she said, breaking the silence that had settled over them for the past twenty minutes.
"I’ve run every search I can think of for connections between Parker and Thompson.
Different variations of their names, their employers, their known associates.
There is nothing linking them beyond the UCLA study. "
"Which is?" Kim asked without looking up from her screens.
"They both worked at extreme heights," Miles said. "Parker was a professional skydiver. Thompson washed windows on high-rise buildings. That is the only common thread we can find. Heights." She said the word with a bit of venom in her voice.
"So do you guys think it’s safe to assume that the killer is selecting victims based on their professions rather than personal connections?”
"That’s what it looks like," Miles said. He stood and walked to the small table, pouring himself another cup of coffee he did not want but needed. "The question is why those professions specifically. What about working at heights triggers this particular killer?"
Vic closed her laptop and stretched her arms over her head. "Maybe the killer is afraid of heights. Selecting victims who represent what they fear."
"Yeah, that could be possible," Miles said.
He returned to his seat and pulled up the crime scene photos on his laptop again, studying them for what felt like the hundredth time.
"But Kane's disciples usually have more specific motivations.
The fluorine killer targeted people he believed were chemically impure.
The nitrogen killer thought his victims were demons disguised as humans.
There is always a delusional framework driving the selection. "
"So what is the framework here?" Kim asked. She looked up from her screens, pushing her hair back from her face. "What connects skydivers and window washers in a way that makes sense to a delusional mind?"
Miles thought about the helium balloons, about the victims being lifted into the air until they woke up and had no choice but to fall. The methodology was specific and symbolic. The killer was making a statement about something.
"Gravity," Miles said quietly. "Or defying it. Both victims spent their professional lives working against gravity. Parker jumped out of planes and floated back to earth. Thompson worked hundreds of feet in the air cleaning windows. They both existed in spaces where most people would be terrified."
Vic nodded slowly. "The killer sees that as wrong somehow. As unnatural, maybe."
"Maybe," Miles said. He was not convinced yet, but it was a working theory. "The problem is that the killer would not need much technical knowledge to pull this off. Weather balloons and helium tanks are commercially available and Clyde Newsome already told us it wouldn’t take a lot to get little floating death machines up in the air.”
“And the condition the bodies are in upon impact has left us nothing to be able to analyze to see what sort of medication is being used to knock them out,” Vic said. “There is nothing specialized about the methodology that narrows our suspect pool."
Kim had returned to her typing, her fingers moving quickly across the keyboard.
"I’m running searches for individuals with criminal records involving aircraft, airports, or unauthorized flights in the Los Angeles area.
If the killer has a fixation on height or aviation, there might be prior incidents. It’s a long shot, but…"
“But a long shot is better than no shot at all,” Miles said.
Miles appreciated her efficiency, but he worried it was still too broad.
Los Angeles was a massive city with multiple airports and a constant flow of air traffic.
The number of people with aviation-related incidents in their backgrounds could be substantial.
He wondered, briefly, if they might want to start looking at meteorologists and working their way out from there.
"How far back are you searching?" Miles asked.
"Ten years initially," Kim said. "I can expand if needed, but most of Kane's disciples have relatively recent criminal histories or incidents. They tend to escalate quickly once they connect with his philosophy."
Miles stood again and walked to the window, looking out at the Los Angeles skyline as the sun began to set. He’d never been to LA before and the sheer size of it was intimidating. He did his best not to let it discourage him.
"We aren’t moving fast enough," he said, more to himself than to Vic or Kim.
"We’re moving as fast as we can with what we have," Vic said. Her tone was gentle but firm. "We have two victims, minimal physical evidence, and a killer who is careful enough to leave almost no trace. This is going to take time."
"Time we may not have," Miles said.
Kim looked up from her screens, and Miles caught her staring at him with an expression he could not quite read.
When their eyes met, she quickly looked away, and he noticed the flush that crept into her cheeks.
She returned her attention to her laptop with sudden intensity.
Miles pretended not to notice and returned to his seat, though it did make him wonder if the few times they’d met for drinks might have been giving her the wrong impression.
Kim was kind and smart and, honestly, very easy on the eyes.
But even if he were interested in her like that, he hadn’t nearly gotten over what had happened to Elana… and he wasn’t sure he ever would.
To distract himself from the remote possibility, he pulled up the profile he had been building throughout the day, reading through his notes again.
"The killer likely has some personal connection to aviation, meteorology, or height-related activities," Miles said. "Either through work, hobby, or a traumatic incident. Something that created a fixation strong enough for Kane to exploit."
"What about someone who was injured in an aviation accident?" Vic suggested. "Someone who blames people who work at heights for their own trauma."
"That’s worth exploring," Miles said, jotting down a note on a pad beside him. "Kim, can you cross-reference aviation accidents in the Los Angeles area with surviving victims that have any kind of criminal record?”
"Can do," Kim said without looking up. "I’m pulling FAA incident reports and cross-referencing them with the list of IP addresses that accessed Kane's manifesto websites. It’ll take a few hours to process all the data."
Miles checked the time again. 6:58 p.m. They'd been at this all day and had precious little to show for it.
He knew investigations took time, knew that building a solid case required patience and methodical work.
But the pressure of knowing another victim could be selected at any moment made patience feel like a luxury they could not afford.
"Let me try a different approach," Vic said. She opened a new search on her laptop. "What if we look for people who were denied pilot licenses or flight certifications? Someone who wanted to work in aviation but couldn’t for medical or legal reasons. Maybe the killer envies his victims"
"Good idea," Miles said. "That fits the profile of Kane's other disciples. They tend to be people who failed at something they desperately wanted and then found meaning in his philosophy."
Kim made another note on her legal pad. "I can pull FAA medical certification denials. Those are public record in some cases."
The three of them fell back into focused silence, each pursuing different angles of the investigation.
Miles read through the autopsy reports again, looking for any detail they might have missed.
Vic searched databases for individuals with aviation-related grievances.
Kim worked through her multiple screens, building queries and cross-referencing results.
The coffee grew cold in Miles's cup and the remaining granola bars remained untouched.
The clock moved past seven, and the sky outside darkened from orange to purple.
Miles looked out to that sky and thought about the victims falling from it—and of the terror they must have felt as they realized there was no way down until those balloons started popping.
He thought about the killer watching from below, convinced they were doing righteous work in service of Kane's twisted philosophy.
Lastly, he thought of Kane back on the East Coast. The idea that Kane knew this would happen and probably even knew the name of the killer was maddening.
But all Miles could do was to keep digging…
and to remind himself that each disciple they brought down was one more dent in that smug bastard’s armor.