A blue X marked the spot where Leslie had lain. The contour lines on the map swirled closer together, indicating a valley that had been imperceptible when Jeffrey was standing in the physical location. Campus security cameras verified that the killer had not approached from the college side. IHOP was around one and a half miles away from the scene. The closest access point to Leslie’s body was the fire road Frank had mentioned.
Jeffrey had used a dotted green line to suggest the killer’s possible trek from Leslie’s body back to the unpaved, one-lane road. Again, the contour lines showed a lower elevation where the perpetrator had most likely parked his vehicle out of sight. There were no tire prints. No footprints. The rain had flooded the roadtop into a muddy slick.
A dark van. That was all that Tommi Humphrey could recall from the night of her brutal attack. Jeffrey had done a cursory search for dark vans in the tri-county area. Memminger and Bedford, much like large swaths of Grant County, were filled with painters, electricians, plumbers, carpenters and people who simply liked to drive vans. The tally was at 1,893 and climbing by the time Jeffrey had closed the search on his computer.
He returned to the map. He followed the fire road back to its starting point off Stehlik Way. Stehlik was accessed via Nager Road from the north and Richter Street from the south. The Heartsdale Memory Gardens with its rolling hills was approximately two miles off Richter, straight down Mercer Avenue.
A storage facility was under construction across the street.
He picked up his BlackBerry. He sent an email to Lena Adams, instructing her to go by the worksite on her way into the station. It was possible that a construction worker had seen a suspicious-looking vehicle, possibly a dark van. It was also possible that a construction worker drove the suspicious-looking vehicle. He sent another email telling Lena to get all of the names of any workers or visitors who had been on site in the last three months.
It was feasible that a stranger had stumbled onto the fire road, but the more Jeffrey thought about the women who were attacked in the woods, the more likely it seemed that the perpetrator was someone who was familiar with the terrain—a student or professor who had lived on or near campus, someone in the fire services division, an emergency worker, someone in the department of transportation, a traveling salesman, an adjunct, a janitor, a handyman, or a local who had lived here all of his life.
Counting the students, the county’s population topped out at 24,000 residents. Jeffrey would knock on every door in the vicinity if that’s what it took. The problem was that the county wasn’t an island. The killer could very well be from one of the adjoining towns. If he added in Memminger and Bedford, that pushed the population north of 100,000. If he added the southern part of the state, that pushed the number into the millions.
He searched his desk for the folder Lena had left him. As ordered, she had summarized all of the reported rape cases in the tri-county area. There was a total of three dozen unsolved rapes, which felt like a too-exact number. None of the M.O.s matched the Grant County women. None of the victims shared any similarities to Tommi Humphrey, Rebecca Caterino or Leslie Truong.
Jeffrey closed the folder.
At the police academy and during every subsequent seminar Jeffrey had ever attended, he’d been taught that rapists stuck to a type. They were drawn to a particular age group or a particular look; young blondes with ponytails, grandmothers with pin curls, cheerleaders, prostitutes, single mothers. Attackers had their choice of victims and they chose according to their own sick fantasies.
That theory didn’t seem to be holding up in the Grant County cases. Tommi’s hair was short and blonde at the time of her attack. Beckey’s hair was brunette and long. Leslie’s was black, cut in a pageboy. One had reportedly been a virgin, the other a lesbian, the third someone who, according to her mother, was experienced. All three victims were students at Grant Tech, but their ages, physical builds, skin tones, even the shapes of their faces, were all different.
Jeffrey rubbed his face. He couldn’t keep going in these same circles. Two women had been attacked in two days. Now they were starting another day. What was going to happen?
He checked the time again before picking up the landline and dialing a familiar number.
“Mornin’,” Nick Shelton said. “What can I do you for?”
“It’s Jeffrey. How long would it take for the FBI to generate a profile?”
“How long until you retire?”
“Shit,” Jeffrey mumbled. “That long?”
“I could winnow it down to a year if I got the right fella on the case.”
Jeffrey did not want to think about what would happen if this case dragged on that long. He had seen what had happened to Leslie Truong. He had heard the details from Tommi Humphrey. “Nick, being honest, if this thing goes to the end of the month, I’m going to get the state involved. This guy keeps learning. He’s going to hurt more women.”
“You really wanna get into a pissing contest with my boss?” Nick chuckled. “No offense, bubba, but her dick’s bigger than both of ours put together.”
Jeffrey rubbed his eyes. If he let himself go there, he could still see the broken neck of the wooden
