There was a pause. Milford looked up at her, frowning and squinting his eyes. Then his expression cleared a little, though he looked no less mystified. “You mean, Stephanie and Ross, kind of Stephanie?”
“Stephanie Marchall,” Laura confirmed. “Your ex-girlfriend, isn't that right?”
“Yeah,” Milford said, but he shook his head again. “I mean, a long time ago. She's married now. To Ross. They've been together for ages. We ended up staying friends, all three of us. I wouldn't even think about calling her my girlfriend anymore. It was so long ago, it barely even registers.”
“It would seem so,” Laura said. “You're not even that upset about it, are you?”
Milford frowned again, his brow turning into a jagged line. “Upset about her marrying Ross? No, not really. He's a great guy. From what I heard, they're happy together. I’ve moved on, anyway.”
“Not about her marrying Ross,” Laura said. “About her dying.”
Milford’s face dropped, almost comically so. The color drained out of him once again, and he looked over at Nate as if he was trying to figure out if Laura was telling the truth.
“She's dead?” he asked, his voice dropping to barely a hoarse whisper.
Laura felt an impatience growing at the back of her mind, in the pit of her stomach. He would have to be one of the best actors the world had ever seen to be able to pull this off. First there was the whole thing about the drugs, and now this. It was like he really didn't know that Stephanie was dead. She had seen a few local news reports, knew that they were just naming the dead as ‘local women’ for now. Captain Blackford had given some kind of statement to the press a couple of days ago about not being able to give the full name of the first victim before her whole family had been notified.
The shock on his face, in his voice, it seemed genuine. Which was very bad news for them, because it meant that Bradley Milford was probably innocent.
“Where were you yesterday between the hours of eleven AM and midnight?” Laura asked, deciding to get right to the point.
“I was at my coach’s house,” Bradley said. “We had a team party.”
“Did you stay all day?” Nate asked. “Or did you come and go to the store, like you were doing earlier today?”
“No, I was there all day.” Milford shrugged his shoulders. “Coach needed help with this bathroom upgrade he’s doing, so we all pitched in and then afterwards we cracked open some beers and had a good time. I was still there late, so I slept in the spare room, then in the early hours I got woken by the phone call about Vee and headed right to her parents’ place instead. That's why I had to go to the store to get supplies. I needed to brush my teeth, all of that kind of stuff, before coming out to practice. After your visit earlier, I ended up just coming straight here and using the showers. Luckily, I usually keep a spare uniform and change of clothes in my locker, just in case. But, is it true? Is Stephanie really dead as well?”
“I'm afraid she is,” Laura said. It seemed like it was cut and dry now, no way to avoid the truth. He had an alibi. He couldn't possibly have put Veronica in position on that platform if he was working hard on a DIY project all day. And, yes, there were sometimes issues with allowing someone to use their parents as an alibi. There was a certain amount of bias involved. But that stacked up against the way he was acting… it was a convincing show. “And two days before that, what were you doing?” she added, just to be sure.
“I was here,” Milford said. “We had practice, and a game in the evening.”
That ruled him out for Stephanie Marchall, too. He wouldn’t have needed to be there at the end, when he could have snuck away after the game to get to the gas station before midnight. That wasn’t the t
imeframe they were most concerned about. It was earlier in the day, when Stephanie was set up on the platform. That was when it was sure the killer had to be around.
And if he’d been here, there were enough witnesses and doubtless enough security camera footage to back him up.
“I’m going to call Blackford, get someone down here to take him in for the drugs,” Nate suggested. From his tone, Laura could hear that he’d come to the same conclusion she had. He wasn’t their killer.
She watched Milford in silence while Nate walked away a distance to make the call. Her mind was on the vision she had seen earlier. The clock ticking down. The killer had to have his victim in place already by now. That meant that every false lead, every dead end, was ticking down her life.
If only Laura’s vision had given her more information, a wider view. Some clue about the location, even the identity of the victim. Any flash at all of the killer themselves. But she had nothing.
Not for the first time, and almost definitely not for the last, she found herself wishing she knew how to control this. It was getting into the early evening already, the lights over the field starting to tick on in the early darkness of the winter day. It wouldn’t be long before real dark set in, even though people were only just starting to leave their workplaces and travel home.
Laura had always thought of darkness as the domain of killers. There was something about it. The way it hid. So many of the cases she worked involved people who were attacked and killed at night. This one was different, and yet the same. The abduction may have been happening during the day, but it was the night that held the death.
Midnight. A firm deadline. One they couldn’t ignore.
They were going to have to work fast, now, to get this done.
Nate walked back over to join them, his cell phone still in his hand. “What are you thinking?” he asked Laura, in a low tone. They both glanced at Milford, who showed little sign of listening in, and walked a couple of steps away anyway. Not far enough that he would be able to get any great distance on them if he decided to run again, but far enough for a quiet conversation to remain mostly private.
“I’m thinking that we’re running out of time,” Laura said bluntly. “We don’t know what kind of timeframe he’s working on, but this killer has already given us a view of his MO that we can’t ignore. If he has his next victim already, we only have about five and a half hours before they’re dead.”
Nate checked his watch, verifying her count. “In a case like this, I think we assume he has a victim until we have some kind of conclusive proof that he doesn’t,” he said. “I would normally point to the fact that there was a two-day gap between the first and second victims, but we both know that killers escalate. And if he’s smart, he’ll know that the chance of getting caught increases as the deaths rack up, and he’ll want to get as many done as possible.”
Laura couldn’t help but shiver. It was chilling, to hear it in those terms. As many as possible. Yes, that was normally what sadistic, brutal killers like this went for. Putting as many people through their tortures as they could. Racking up a body count. Whether it was some kind of conscious decision, some crusade to clean up the world or end personal grudges, or simply an insatiable hunger to keep doing it again, the count was often part of the point.