'No, that's not the norm. It would have been nice to get specifics from Becky, but the contact was just too brief.' Hollis grimaced. 'Though I have to admit that I'm relatively new at this medium stuff, and I'm only now reaching the point where I can-sometimes-hear them.'
'Do you see them?' Jordan asked. As Marc had promised, he seemed to have no difficulty in accepting, without a blink, the reality of psychics and her own claims of being a medium.
She wondered why and made a mental note to find out later. She nodded. 'Sometimes as clearly as I see you now. Other times, hardly at all.'
'That must be unsettling. Either way.'
'You could say that.'
With a slightly queasy look crossing his expressive face, Jordan said, 'When you see them, they don't look like-'
'Like they did when they were killed? Showing me how they were killed, how they died? No. No wounds, no signs of illness, not even especially pale-when I see them clearly, at least.'
'Do they ever tell you anything about… what comes after?' he asked, clearly genuinely curious.
'No. But something must, right? I mean-they're dead but they still exist, somehow. They communicate. They seem to think, to feel, just as they did when they were alive. Personality intact, as far as I can tell.'
'And they stay like that?'
'You mean indefinitely?' Hollis shrugged. 'I don't know. All I can tell you is that once we've closed a case, murderer caught or killed, I don't see or hear the victims anymore. Another SCU member, a much stronger medium than I am, says some spirits choose to remain in that state to serve as guides, but not many of them. No idea why.'
Before Jordan could do more than open his mouth to ask another question, the sheriff interrupted.
' Jordan, I know you're curious. Hell, I'm curious. But let's get our priorities straight. If this is the same son of a bitch who tore through Boston last summer, we're looking at more victims, and probably sooner rather than later.'
'It's the same killer,' Hollis said.
'Okay, it's the same killer,' the sheriff said. 'So, why here? Why pick Venture as his hunting ground? This is a long way from Boston, and a small town makes it far less likely he can disappear into the crowd.'
Dani shook her head. 'He has to have some connection here, with someone or someplace. Something that drew him here. Isn't that the only reason that makes sense?' There was an itch at the back of her mind that told her she had forgotten or overlooked something important, probably in her vision dream.
Hardly surprising, that. But damned frustrating.
'It's certainly one of the few reasons,' Hollis said. 'To ditch the anonymity of a big city for a small town, where strangers very likely get noticed, and quickly, is not exactly a smart move, especially if you plan to remain an active serial killer.'
'Maybe he panicked,' Jordan suggested. 'If you guys were getting close-'
It was Hollis's turn to shake her head. 'No, the task force wasn't closing in on him. But the media spotlight got awfully bright when Annie LeMott went missing, and brighter still when her body was found. Bishop believes that's what drove the killer from Boston.'
'It makes sense,' Marc agreed, 'But Dani's right. I doubt this bastard picked Venture by sticking a pin in a map.'
Jordan said, 'So I guess we're looking for a connection.'
'Which,' Paris said, 'is not going to be easy when we have no concrete facts on this man.'
'Not going to be easy.' Dani sighed. 'Masterly understatement, I'd say, at least unless we're able to pick up the right signs and follow this trail supposedly being left for us.'
'That's assuming there is a trail,' Jordan said, adding to Hollis, 'No offense.'
'None taken. I'll be very surprised myself if we do find a trail. The universe is usually not so helpful.'
'And why would a killer be?' Dani said to the room at large.
Marie Goode, in additlion to not being an especially fanciful woman, was also not a stupid woman. So finding a necklace that was not hers very late on Wednesday night in her supposedly safely locked-up apartment had sent her internal alarm bells jangling.
So she had done what any rational woman would, under the circumstances, and called the police. And uniformed sheriff's deputies came, and took her statement, and checked all her doors and windows for her, and carried away the necklace, saying they'd look into it and promising that a patrol car would cruise past her complex every hour for the rest of the night, just to make sure there was nobody lurking out there.
That should have been the end of things.
Marie had tossed and turned fitfully nevertheless, leaving lamps on in her living room
By the time morning finally came, she was hardly rested, but it was a workday for her. She dragged herself out of bed and took a quick shower, unable to relax even after she was dried and dressed. She skipped her usual coffee for toast and weak tea, hoping to settle her jumpy stomach. It even worked.
Until she unlocked and opened her front door.
A dozen red roses that had been propped against the door fell over the threshold.
She didn't even have to bend to read the card nestled within the green tissue wrapping. There was no envelope, just a plain white card with two words written in a flowing hand.
Maybe another woman would have been charmed by a secret admirer leaving flowers. Maybe another woman would have enjoyed a much brighter day with that thought in her mind.
Maybe Marie would have. Except for that creepy walk home last night.
And the necklace left inside her locked apartment.
And the fact that the hair on the back of her neck was standing straight up once again.
It was broad daylight, and Marie's apartment was less than a dozen blocks from the sheriff's department.
She closed and locked the door,, leaving the flowers outside. She got her pepper spray and her whistle, holding both in shaking hands.
And then she called the sheriff.
'All we can do is work with the information we do have,' Marc reminded the group in the conference room. 'We have crime-scene data, forensics reports, victim profiles. From Boston as well as here. Right?' He looked at Hollis with his brows raised. She nodded and gestured to a very thick accordion file folder on the conference table. 'In there is every bit of information Bishop felt we needed concerning the investigation so far. It's not all the case information, obviously; that would fill boxes. But in there is a complete background and profile of each of the Boston victims.
'And his victim preferences are very important, we believe. In Boston, that was his only really consistent trait, and Bishop believes he won't stray far from it, now or in the future. He always chose the same physical type of woman. Small, delicate, dark brown hair, brown eyes. Almost childlike.'
Jordan frowned, but before he could comment, Hollis was adding, 'We also have Bishop's latest profile of our killer.'
'Latest?' Paris asked.
'He started revising the original as soon as we knew the next hunting ground would be so far from Boston. So different from Boston. Phis… well, one other thing I did get from Becky was that the killer had definitely escalated in his sheer brutality but in so doing took a pretty large leap as serial killers go, which is unusual. That alone required a revision of the profile.'
Marc frowned. 'A leap?'
'In the speed and degree to which he escalated in violence. The twelfth victim, Annie LeMott, was savagely beaten, and she was stabbed multiple times-but her body was left more or less intact. All of the victims in Boston
