Climbing to his feet, Lemond spun around as these thoughts came to him. There was no sign of the man who had really done this, and a door leading out to the alley was ajar. An alarm should have gone off when that door was opened but it hadn’t. Why, he wondered?
Lemond’s jacket was on the ground and he took it up. He wrapped it around the knife to conceal it; he would have to get rid of it later. He looked down and saw his clothes were completely destroyed. He wouldn’t get far walking the streets like this. Either the first police officer he met would pick him up, or the first do-gooder he passed would call the cops.
There was no more time to think about it; he had to leave and get out of town before it was too late. Pushing out through the door of the alleyway, the air felt cool on his sweating skin. Almost at once the cramps came over him once again, but there was nothing he could do about that for now. He had to keep on going; he had to escape.
His mind raced as he moved through the alleys. At that moment all he was aiming for was to put distance between himself and the murder, but after that he would need to use a bathroom, change his clothes and get out of Baltimore- probably in that order. He could chance going home, but bringing this blood into his apartment would only leave more evidence for later down the line if they caught up with him.
How quickly this happy night had turned to shit.
Chapter 2
IF SARAH BRIGHTWATER had not known already, the scene at the farmhouse would have told her at once that this was the same killer as two other sites in rural Virginia in the last four months. She had been at the scene of the second herself, but the first had taken place while she was on her previous case and as it had only been one murder at the time, it hadn’t been on the FBI’s radar.
The rain rattled steadily on the roof as Sarah walked the house looking over the scene. As before, the killer seemed to have brought a lot of items that made no sense and strewn them about the room where the body of the man had been found.
Each of the victims had been a strong male, all single farmers under forty. Not your typical victim of choice for serial killers. Whoever was doing this was either really strong or had the charm to put these men at ease, only to take advantage at the right moment.
“Have someone run through the victim’s computer and cell phone for any way he might have been in contact with the killer,” Sarah said to Amina, a young Agent Sarah ha taken a liking to. She didn’t think they’d find anything, but you never knew. So far the only thing to link the men was that they were farmers who lived alone. Each time a day worker had been unfortunate enough to find the body. None of them would likely ever recover from the scenes they had unwittingly stumbled upon.
Sarah stood before the body of the latest victim, a Mr Terrence Shannon, who was- well the only word was displayed- on his dining room table. He’d been cut surgically from his chin to his goin and the skin had been peeled back and hammered in to the underside of the table. The smell of the blood and inners hung in the air and it was something no police officer or agent could ever get accustomed to.
There didn’t seem on first inspection to have been anything taken from the body, so why they were cut open like this was still a mystery. What did it mean to the killer, what did it signify?
Without her even realising, Sarah’s mind went in search for a way this could be connected to the Dwight Spalding murders- that was the real case she should be one right now. What was the point in chasing down this one if the man who’d murdered her mother was still at large and as had been discovered (though not fully believed yet by her superiors) to be still active all these years later? She shook her head; there was no point in thinking like this, getting angry about things she couldn't change. That wasn’t going to get her anywhere.
What she needed to do was prove herself once again, catch this killer and then try to get reassigned to the other case. Her partner Malick, who had been almost fatally shot in their last case was finally coming back to work this week. That should help her in her goal of a fast resolution. She’d missed having a partner and it was probably the fact Malick had not been around that had let her get in so deep with the journalist Tyler Ford with whom she’d worked well outside her remit (and the law) to solve the recent ‘John the Baptist’ case. It could have cost her her job, and truth be told if what actually happened came out, it still could.
Sarah looked at the floor of the dining room in which she stood. The items looked tossed about the floor but having studied the photos of the previous scenes, she was sure they were not arranged haphazardly, but what was the message? So far, she hadn’t come close to finding one.
This time the items were as random as the previous two scenes. An
