"Possibly the fourth," Hollis said, and explained what she had seen at the crime scene the previous day.
"You're sure this isn't the woman you saw?" Marc asked, indicating the photograph.
Hollis shook her head and went to pin the photo on the bulletin board beside those of Becky Huntley and Karen Norvell. "I'm positive. I don't know who she is or why nobody's reported her missing-yet-but it's a safe bet she's a victim of our killer."
"Shorty's at the crime scene with the pool-maintenance people," Marc said. " Jordan rousted everybody first thing this morning; whatever you saw must have spooked him."
"Or I did," she said ruefully. "I'm told it's a bit unnerving to watch a medium trying to communicate with a spirit."
"Well, we'll know in the next few hours if there's any real evidence in that pool." Marc looked at Dani. "You: were saying, if Shirley is a victim…?"
"Then maybe we know now what the killer's been doing all these weeks. Maybe he came straight here, to Venture, already had or found his safe place, and got it ready. And then started selecting his victims."
"Hunting," Paris said. "But not one at a time, more like a… group of potential targets. He had a pretty good I.D. on all of them before he moved on the first one."
"It makes sense," Dani said. "Just like in Boston, these women were grabbed as they went about their lives, and in each case the timing was perfect; they were outside, unprotected, with no witnesses. He never had to break down a door or even shatter a window to get at them."
Hollis said, "No way to chalk that up to chance. Not the three times here, and sure as hell not the dozen times in Boston."
"But in Boston he didn't have the time between victims to do much hunting, and there sure as hell hasn't been much more here," Marc objected-but then nodded. "Of course. The X factor: Is he or isn't he psychic. That's what tipped off Bishop, wasn't it? The hunter was moving too fast to spend much time searching for his prey between attacks, yet there each victim was. Perfect time, perfect place, perfect opportunity. Exactly when and where he wanted them, when and where he expected them to be. Almost like magic."
"Or like he knew," Dani said.
Hollis was nodding. "The more-traditional profilers insisted that the killer had likely selected most if not all of his targets early on, that he knew their habits and routines long before he got his hands on them. And that makes sense, up to a point, but it conveniently ignores the several instances where the victim was alone and vulnerable-and in a situation not a normal part of her routine-when she was taken. Once, maybe, the killer got lucky. Not more than once."
Paris closed a folder and pushed it away from her with a slight grimace, which Dani knew the others would probably read as distaste rather than what it was: the response to a pounding headache. "And then there's Annie LeMott," she said. "If I'm reading the files right, even the traditional profilers agreed that the killer wasn't interested in the limelight and would not have grabbed Annie if he had known who she was."
Marc offered another objection. "But wouldn't he have known? If he was psychic, if that was how he was hunting his prey?"
"You'd think." Hollis was scowling at no one in particular. "Damn, no wonder Bishop's still trying to get a handle on this guy."
Dani rubbed the back of her neck in a vain attempt to soothe the stiffness there but forced herself to stop when she realized Marc was watching her. "Look, one doesn't necessarily negate the other. Think about it this way: If he isn't psychic and did have to spend time studying and hunting each victim, we have several instances where he couldn't possibly have known in advance where his prey would be, because the women were somehow outside their normal routine. If, on the other hand, we assume he was so lucky because he's psychic and hunted them that way, then the only victim who doesn't really make sense is Annie LeMott. Who she was made her a dangerous victim, and if he was psychic he should have known that."
"Maybe he couldn't read her," Paris suggested. "Even the strongest psychic isn't a hundred percent."
"As far as we know, that's true," Hollis said. "Plus, some people have shields, either naturally or because they needed at some point in their lives to protect themselves, and even the strongest psychics we know of can't get through walls like that."
Paris nodded. "Exactly. So even if he is psychic, and if he does have more bells and whistles than we do, we can't know for sure that he doesn't have some of the same limits. In fact, he must have, given that he's at least nominally human. So he's out trolling, he already has eleven notches on his belt, and if I remember correctly, there was nearly a week between the eleventh victim and Annie. Right?"
Hollis nodded. "Right. Boston was jumpy as hell, and very few women ventured out alone."
"So he hasn't been lucky in that sense. If there's plenty of prey but none of it's vulnerable, unprotected, alone, then this hunter doesn't come out of the dark. And he really, really needs to feed."
Dani said, "I know the animal metaphor fits, but-"
"Sorry. Anyway, he's out hu-trolling, and crosses paths with Annie completely by chance." Paris frowned. "Does anybody know what she was doing out alone?"
Nodding again, Hollis said, "She and a friend went to a movie, together. Rode together, sat together in the theater, were careful not to be alone, just as they had been warned to be. Went back to the apartment building where they both lived, together. Approximately a half hour later, a neighbor saw Annie about to take her trash out. That's the last anyone saw of her."
Paris shook her head a little, jolted from the mental exercise of trying to solve a puzzle by the reminder of a young life snuffed out. "Man, you do everything right and then get tripped up by something utterly ordinary."
"Such is life," Hollis noted. "Or fate or destiny, if you believe in that. Because not only did Annie spend those few precious minutes about ten yards from the safety of the door of her apartment building, but she just happened to be exactly the killer's type, he just happened to be close enough, and for whatever reason he couldn't know or guess that by grabbing her he was making his first real mistake."
Chapter Fourteen
"AT THIS RATE," Gabriel said with a sigh, "we're gonna be here a long, long time."
We can't be here a long time. You said it yourself: strangers will stand out here. Especially once they know about the victims.
"Yeah, the sheriff's done a good job of keeping his people quiet this long, I have to say." Gabriel studied his map for a moment, then squinted into the distance. "That old textile mill is right in the middle of a neighborhood. No way can I get close in daylight."
My turn tonight, then.
"Right." He put a small check mark beside that particular circled area on his map. "Just about every backyard I see has a dog, so be careful."
Dogs love me.
"They make a lot of noise when you're around. I'm just saying that if you're going to do a little breaking and entering in the dead of night, best not to rouse the neighborhood watch. Okay?"
Yes, Gabriel.
"The meekness does not become you. It's also a rotten lie," he said, moving the map slightly and leaning closer to the Jeep's hood to get a better look. He frowned, then bent to get a laptop out of his backpack and opened it up on top of the map. "You know, this is sort of a weird little place."
Why do you say that? I mean, aside from the obvious serial-killer thing, it seems a perfectly normal small town to me.
"With an awful lot of churches."
Small towns in the South usually do have a lot of churches.