the gun range. Many of the photos were taken from a distance. Some from odd angles, as if Sara had used a camera phone at waist level. “Sara was probably sending Glenn photographs to help gain his trust.”
“Lot of good that did her.” Carina rubbed her eyes.
“Go home,” Will told her. “It’s been a long couple of days. The Feds are tracking Glenn in Mexico, we can’t even take a shot at him down there.”
“Jim’s killer is still out there.”
“And we can’t do anything about that at six o’clock on Friday night.”
“What about you?”
“I-” He didn’t want to tell Carina he was working on Jim’s case. She would insist on staying, but she was going through an emotional wringer. “Just paperwork.” Not a complete lie. “If anything breaks, I’ll call you.”
“Promise?”
“Absolutely.”
Carina left and Will found himself alone in the task-force command center. It had been set up to track Glenn, but right now Will spread out his file on Anna Clark’s murder. Why had Jim called him? What had he wanted to talk about? Jim’s message hadn’t sounded urgent, but Will wouldn’t forgive himself anytime soon for not responding to it immediately.
The door opened and Hans walked in. Closed it behind him. “Got something.”
“And?”
“Gage’s phone records. He made a call last night to Dillon Kincaid. I assume you know him.”
“Yes, I didn’t know you did.”
“I worked with him on a case last year. I saw the 202 area code and called the number. I was surprised when he answered.”
“I wonder why Jim called him.”
“And talked for twenty-six minutes. We started talking, but I think you need to listen in. He’s waiting for our call.”
Hans put the phone on speaker and dialed Dillon’s number. He answered on the first ring.
“Hi, Dillon, it’s Hans with Will Hooper.”
“How are you doing, Will? How’s Carina holding up?”
“She’s okay. I just sent her home. I didn’t know we’d be talking.”
“You can fill her in later. I feel awful about Jim. He was a good guy, one of the best investigators I’ve ever worked with.”
“We’re going to have a huge hole in the department,” Will agreed. “Why did Jim call you last night?”
“He wanted to run through something that was bugging him. And I’ve been thinking about it all day. Hans filled me in on the differences in the crimes Glenn confessed to and the Clark homicide. What I keep coming back to is Jim’s thought that the cuts were made postmortem.”
“Which means what? That the killer didn’t want the victim to suffer?”
“Yes. The killer wanted to kill her, but not torture her. There was no pleasure in the act of killing. Killing was a means to an end. And especially since Anna wasn’t the intended victim. If you’re right and everyone involved in the case knew Anna was going to be out of town, then the killer was surprised when Anna showed up.”
“There was one more thing about Anna’s crime scene,” Will said. “Glenn always tortured his victims in their bed, then moved them to the front door before slitting their throat. But there was no evidence that Anna was even in her bed that night.”
“That fits in with your theory that the killer was waiting for Robin,” Dillon agreed. “The killer surprises Anna, subdues her-according to Hans she was petite, so it would have been easy for someone of virtually any size to slit her throat. Then, to make it appear that Glenn killed her, the copycat makes incisions in her body with an identical weapon. Jim said that it appeared that the marks were made twice?”
“Yes,” Will said. “We talked about that yesterday, that the killer traced and deepened the marks. But the coroner at the time didn’t make note of anything odd.”
“Sometimes, we only see what we expect to see,” Dillon said sadly.
“We’re no closer to figuring this out,” Will said. “I need to interview the seven people Jim spoke with between clocking out and going home. I’ll drag them all down to interrogation-”
“Good idea,” Dillon said. “But I think I can do you one better.”
“How so?”
“Jim was hung up on why you were paged. Pagers started going out of fashion even back then. Everyone had cell phones. But I think the person didn’t want to talk to you. The person wanted you to come to the apartment and find the body. You, Will, specifically you.”
“I don’t understand what you’re getting at, Dillon.”
“The killer was angry with you. I told Jim last night that this sounded like a premeditated crime of passion. I suggested that he look into Robin McKenna’s ex-boyfriends, regulars at the club, anyone who may have wanted her dead and planned on using Glenn’s M.O. to do it. But not just anyone could have access to Glenn’s hair samples and, according to Jim, no one in the media knew about the bleach until the trial. That was insider knowledge.”
“Not to mention using the exact type of knife. Those details weren’t revealed until trial either,” Will interjected.
“This murder was a crime of passion, but it was directed at you, Will,” Dillon said. “The individual has an above average IQ. Methodical, organized to the point of being borderline OCD. Narcissistic-not in the same way as Theodore Glenn who believes he’s above everyone, but to the extent that this person categorizes people as worthy and unworthy. That is how Anna’s death was justified, even though she wasn’t the target. Anna was unworthy because she was a stripper-it wasn’t a ‘real’ job in the eyes of the killer. In fact, the killer probably has disdain for working-class professions and individuals. But more important, this individual dislikes women in general. And this is what is key:
“I’d stake my reputation on the fact that the killer is a woman. She identified solely with her father, and would have followed in his footsteps. If she’s a cop, her father was a cop. If she’s a CSI, she has an advanced degree and her father was a doctor or scientist of some kind. She worshipped her father and is an only child, possibly a child the father wanted to be male and couldn’t keep those feelings from her. She internalized that and concluded that women were inferior.”
Will leaned forward but couldn’t speak. Dillon was describing a woman he knew. As Dillon continued, Will’s fear grew.
“Her mother was a weaker figure in her mind, likely a homemaker,” Dillon surmised. “She may have gone back to work at some point and took a working-class job because she had no formal education, something that would embarrass the killer even if it was satisfying to the mother. She will have no close female relationships. Her female colleagues will not like her and she will exclusively socialize with her male colleagues. She is attractive, professional, and a perfectionist. She will have clocked in as much overtime as she can, not for the money but because her job is her identity.
“Will, you personally know this woman. And there’s a fifty-fifty chance you had a sexual relationship with her.”
THIRTY-FOUR
“Diana Cresson,” Will said.
His stomach churned. How could he accuse a woman he’d worked with for more than a decade, a woman he’d
But as Dillon explained the profile, Diana came to mind and stayed. Diana was the only woman in Jim’s department Will had dated. She was meticulous-a wonderful trait in a criminalist. She was a dream in court, formal and professional. Her father was a biologist for a prestigious university on the East Coast, where she grew up. Will couldn’t remember her ever talking about her mother.
Could Diana have killed Jim? Shot him in cold blood? A man she’d worked with for years?
“Did you have a relationship with her?” Hans asked.
