They didn’t have the right guy in custody yet.
Laura watched the women walking up the road, felt him beginning to follow them at a distance. How he moved with a purpose, keeping them in sight, as though he was controlling how far they went. Watching for the right moment. She strained to see some kind of landmark or sign that would tell her where to look, where she could go to intercept them—
Laura breathed again on the other side of the vision, pulling her hand out of the box with another flare of pain in her fingers. She flexed them, looking for blood, but there was none. The paper cuts were shallow, even if they did sting like hell.
Nate was walking back across the bullpen toward their desks, flipping through pages of something in his notebook. He glanced only briefly at her as he passed by, as if she was only an inconvenience. He was probably wondering why she wasn’t taking part in setting up the next phase of the investigation.
He probably didn’t realize she was still on the first.
“Nate,” she said, almost reluctantly, because she had to do this. They had to talk about it. She couldn’t just be a loose cannon going off on her own, not if he was ever going to trust her again.
Even if she didn’t, he might never. But they still had to at least pretend that they were working together. She had to keep it together for as long as she could.
“I was thinking we go in and talk to Seabrooke again,” Nate said. “Put the pressure on him this time. More hardline. See if he lets it out when he’s scared or angry. If we can push him, he might admit it all.”
“Nate, I don’t know about this,” Laura said. “I don’t think it’s him.” She knew it wasn’t him. She was absolutely sure. But she wanted to approach this cautiously, to ease him into the idea.
He only stared at her. “Why are you saying this now?”
“I told you outside the interview room I wasn’t sure,” Laura protested. “I just don’t think we should concentrate all of our resources on one theory when we haven’t proven it yet.”
“Just look at the facts,” Nate said. “He fits everything. And it was your theory that led us to him in the first place. What, are you now saying your little hunch was wrong?”
“That wasn’t a little hunch,” Laura sighed, knowing what he was trying to get at. “That was a guess. An educated one, but a guess. And I don’t feel that killer instinct from him. I don’t think he could go that far. Besides, he’s so obsessed with this driver, I don’t think he even has the time to go after anyone else.”
It was all logical, she knew. She was making a good case. But the one thing she could say that might convince him completely—that she had seen it wasn’t him—wasn’t good enough. She couldn’t tell him that.
Whatever she did, she needed to come up with something fast. It felt like yesterday was repeating itself. She hadn’t convinced him fast enough then, and Kevin Wurz had died. She couldn’t argue with him forever.
She needed to get him to see, and she needed to do it fast.
“I’ve organized a psychological assessment, and I’m fairly sure I know what it’s going to say,” Nate argued. “The guy’s a head case. He doesn’t even know what he’s been up to. I’m expecting to get a report telling us that he could be capable of anything. You saw what he’s like, Laura. Would you really want to put that guy in a dark alley and see if you come out of it unscathed?”
“That’s reductive,” Laura said, trying to hold her tongue as much as possible to keep it civil and not insulting. “Look, Nate. I know what you’re going to say even before I say this, but… I have this feeling. The next set of twins, they’re still in danger. If we can just warn them…”
“This wild goose chase again?” Nate asked, shaking his head. “You’re going to go after some specific women and try to track them down, without even telling me how you know what to look for? You’re really trying this?”
“I…” Laura closed her mouth, realizing that almost anything she could say would be useless. Unless she was going to tell him the truth, none of it meant a thing.
“Tell me this,” Nate said, his tone fierce. “You say your hunch about this revenge killing twin theory was wrong. Now you’re telling me you have another hunch and that we should divert our resources onto that. Why should I do that, Laura? Why should I trust a single thing you say?”
“They’re not the same,” Laura said, desperately. “You’re saying they’re both hunches, but this… I… I know…”
“No,” Nate snapped, shaking his head at her. “Knowing something means you have proof of some kind. And you don’t know. And I’m not going to waste any more time following your wild hunches around when I don’t even know where they come from or what they mean.”
He stalked away from her in the direction of a group of detectives he’d been talking to earlier, leaving Laura feeling like she had been dismissed.
Which meant she was on her own. And the twins she’d seen…
If she didn’t do anything, if she let Nate get to her and just shut up and put her head down, they were going to die.
Laura sat down again at her desk, slumping into the chair. The files around her fluttered lightly in the slight wind caused by her passage. There were so many of them. Where was she even going to start?
Finding the women seemed impossible. A needle in a haystack. Even though she’d been handed the haystack, it was getting late. Soon it would be totally dark outside, and from that point on the women would be in great danger. He could be lying in wait for them even now. The time it would take her to go through every file, look up every women who might fit, rule them out one by one until she found them—and then look for an address, organize a patrol…
No. There wasn’t enough time to do it that way anymore. She had to think of something else.
They had the wrong guy, but maybe that didn’t mean her approach had been without merit. She’d been looking for the killer, not the victims. The fastest way to catch him—to stop him. Even if she saved a life tonight, he might still slip away the same way he had with the Wurz twins. Catch the killer instead, and you’d save everyone, not just one person.