He stopped, double-checked, triple-checked.The date worked. This woman, she was in the right age range. He looked across,checked out her last known address, and carefully jotted it down on a piece ofpaper along with her full name. There was even a landline number, though hewouldn’t be so stupid as to give the police a phone record link between himselfand one of the victims. He knew they would be looking for him. There was nopoint in handing them the smoking gun.
Very interesting, this woman.Turned out she’d gone back to school eight years ago to get her master’sdegree. Good for her. Self-improvement was an admirable thing. After all, thatwas all he was trying to do. To find new knowledge out there in the universe,the one single truth at the core of everything. In fact, she probably wouldhave approved of his search. That would make it all the easier.
That was, of course, if he couldtrack her down. He opened a new window, started searching on social media. Itwas amazing how much information people would give away about themselves onsocial media. She had a few accounts; she evidently wasn’t great at using thelocation tag feature, which was typical of an older woman who had not grown uppart of the internet generation, but it didn’t matter.
It typically didn’t matter, notwhen they had stayed local. Because he was local too, and he recognized thesights. The image she had posted of her son and his girlfriend, strolling alongon a nature walk just outside of the city. Another group shot, all of themaround a table at a local restaurant that he had attended himself—probablytaken at a Christmas gathering, judging by the caption.
Yes, she was still local. And inone of her shots she had even posted a view of the interior of her home, lightstreaming through a square thick-framed window in the front room. He opened upStreet View and typed in that last known address. He squinted, comparing thearchitecture. Yes, she was still there.
He snorted to himself. She wasmaking this too easy. Maybe it really was fate. Everything coming together todeliver him what he needed, so that he could make the necessary sacrifices andget the answers that he sought. You really had to wonder, even when you had arational mind and weren’t given to religious fantasies. You had to think therewas some kind of larger force at work, a pattern to be followed.
Well, he wasn’t going to letanyone down. He checked the woman’s Facebook profile, saw that her job waslisted. A local workplace, too—no long commute for this one. She would be atone of the two locations sooner or later, and he could begin to track her fromthere. An opportunity would arise. It always did.
The decision was made. He loggedoff the computer, switched it all off, and gathered up his notepaper with theaddresses that he needed. It was as good as done. Tonight, she was going todie.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Zoe paced back and forth in thecramped office space, only managing four steps in either direction before shehad to execute a turn and go back the other way. “It is impossible,” she saidout loud, her brain racing to think of new possibilities even as she verballyproclaimed defeat. “We cannot narrow it down.”
Flynn had his hand clamped overhis forehead, as though he was trying to hold his brain in. “Let’s just go overit again. Slowly. We know that the victim has to be fifty-three years old, andsomehow connected with the university.”
“Yes. Staff, student, or alumni.Three categories,” Zoe said.
“Well, she’s not likely to be afellow student. She’d be too old,” Flynn said. “We can rule that out.”
“No, we cannot,” Zoe pointed out. “Shecould be a mature student. And we do not even know for sure that it will be afemale. They were all white or Latina until Maxwell. Who is to say they willnot all be female until the one that is not?”
“All right, fine. But the firstthing we need to do is to figure out who is even a candidate. How do we dothat? Talk to the college for records?”
Zoe was still pacing. At eachturn, she almost hit the wall, she was going so fast. She couldn’t bear tostand still. She needed to be out there, doing something. Not in here, trappedwith the numbers that were beginning to overwhelm her thoughts again as hercalm faded completely. Her normal stride length was twenty-nine inches, butabbreviate that due to the smaller space and her restricted stride, and theroom was eighty-two inches across; but she’d already known that, of course,because she could see it in the dimensions of the room laid out whenever shelooked at the floor.
“There will be dozens ofcandidates,” Zoe muttered. “Possibly hundreds, even if we narrow it down byonly those who still live locally enough. And even then, we will have to jumpthrough hoops to get there. A warrant from a local judge, then waiting foraccess to the records. Then we will have to check every single candidate withthe right birth date to discover whether their current address is still in thelocal area. And he has access to this information already. For all we know, hepicked her out months ago.”
“So, we need to narrow it downmore,” Flynn said thoughtfully. “Maybe find another way to figure out who he’stargeting. But wouldn’t it make sense to just get started?”
Zoe blocked him out, trying tothink. Things were turning over and over in her head, things that she wasfairly sure were useless. The shoe sizes of all four victims, the length oftheir forearms in inches, their respective waist circumferences. And then picame into the picture and she was thinking about the kind of equations shecould put together with those circumferences, even though it wasn’t a perfectcircle, and—
Zoe threw her hands up to herhead, gripping hard at her own hair in an attempt to make it all stop. Theywere so close—so very close. But they weren’t there. And if
