CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Laura slumped in the driver’s seat for a long moment, too tired to think about starting the engine. Out in front of their windshield, a silent cop show was playing out: Michael Noran ducking his head to get into the car with one of the local police as he was taken in for his part in the insurance fraud. To make Laura even more sure that he was innocent of the murders, his wife had shown up right before they took him in – and she was loudly protesting about how he was too unwell with his MS to sit in a police cell.
There was no way, apparently, he would have had the physical strength and speed needed to commit the murders, even if they had still had reason to suspect him.
He would be dealt with and processed by the Pacific Cove PD. No reason for Laura and Agent Won to involve themselves any further. He wasn’t the person they were here for.
Which still left the nagging question: who was?
“Where do we go now?” Agent Won asked. He sounded just as weary and frustrated as she felt, but he was showing it a lot more. Getting surly. He didn’t yet have the experience to preserve his poker face at a time like this.
Laura tapped the steering wheel thoughtfully, pretending that she was just watching them take Noran in and not experiencing a moment of existential despair. “We have to go back to the drawing board,” she said. “Reassess everything we think we know and go back to the beginning. There might be something we’ve overlooked.”
“There’s nothing!” Agent Won said, gesturing in the air with a frustrated hand. “We’ve looked at everything. And what’s with all these suspects not being right? It’s so weird, it’s like someone’s playing us! Like we’re being tricked – all of them seemed so obvious!”
Laura shot him a look. “You haven’t done many cases,” she said. It wasn’t a question, since she already knew it was true. Even if he hadn’t admitted it already, she would have known it by his attitude.
“So what?” Agent Won huffed.
“So, you don’t know that this is what it’s like,” Laura said. “Endlessly tracking down the leads, from the most obvious to the least, despairing, thinking you’re never going to get anywhere. Being so right, up until the moment you find out you’re completely wrong. That’s why it’s so important for detectives to keep an open mind about their cases. Once you shut yourself in with tunnel vision and start twisting the facts to fit the conclusion you’ve already come to, you’ve lost the chance to solve the case. We won’t know the full picture until we know the full picture. The way things look can be deceptive.”
Agent Won sighed, though this time it sounded a little less petulant. “It’s like this every single time?”
“More or less.” Laura shot him a wry smile. “Still want to be an FBI agent?”
Agent Won caught her look and ended up smiling back. “I’m probably an idiot, but yeah.”
“Well, you’re in good company,” Laura said, knowing she was probably the same. She sighed, settling more comfortably into the car seat. “Let’s go back over what we know, start looking at the smaller threads that we haven’t picked up yet. Like the candles, for example. We know they’re sold across a wider area, but they must have been purchased here in town – it’s too much of a coincidence, otherwise. I’ll ask for a look at the sales records of Noran’s candle store while they’re going through his books, see if there’s anyone who comes up time and time again for the kind of candle we’re looking for. In the meantime, we can check out any other retailers in the area who stock the candles made at the factory.”
“We have the list of stocks from them already,” Won said, loading up something on his cell phone. “I think I remember there were only a few stores in town. Yeah, here we are – three stores. The general store, a souvenir store on Main Street, and what sounds like a kind of hippie incense place down by the water.”
Laura nodded, starting the engine. “Alright, then,” she said. “Let’s go.”
Pacific Cove was not a big town, and all three stores were set within a few blocks of one another. As she drove towards the first, Laura couldn’t help thinking about her visions again, trying to go over them one more time. The flames snuffed out, leaving only smoke trailing in their wake. What did it mean? She was at least sure that it was connected to their killer, but… how?
If only she could be sure that it was a totally useless vision, one of those that came out of nowhere and had no bearing on any case, then she would be able to stop thinking about it and move on. But as it was, Laura couldn’t dismiss it. Just in case there was something she needed to know, something she hadn’t yet worked out, she needed to keep turning it over in her head.
“I think this is it,” Won said, gesturing ahead. There was a small space for parking on the side of the road outside the store, and Laura slid the car into it before unbuckling her seatbelt. Won was out of the car before she was, bounding towards the store with that endless enthusiasm of his. There were some advantages to having a rookie agent around, after all, Laura thought as she followed him. Right now, she had no enthusiasm left, and she was starting to run out of any kind of energy.
He stepped inside the store first and went right up to the counter, walking down an aisle that stocked such diverse things as hammers and nails, cell phone cases, dog toys, and fishing magazines. There was an older man behind the counter in a flannel shirt, and he greeted them with the kind of confidence that made Laura feel he was almost certainly the owner.
“Hi, I’m Special Agent Eric Won,” he said, showing his badge. “I’m here with my partner, Special Agent Laura Frost, just investigating the murders that you’ve been having here in Pacific Cove. I wondered if you could tell us about any customers you’ve had in here buying candles?”
“Candles?” the man behind the counter grunted, though not in an unfriendly way. “I don’t know. We sell a few, not a huge amount.”
“You stock them from the local factory, isn’t that right?” Eric said. Laura stayed back, letting him handle things. With one ear on the conversation in case something did come up, she could use the rest of her attention to think about the problem they had to solve. About how to track down the killer in other ways, in case this angle – local candle sales – didn’t work out.
“Sure,” the man said, gesturing to the left. There was a display of candles there, Laura saw. She walked over, picking up one of the thicker models that matched the kind the killer was using. “We don’t take too many. Just a few every month. They sell, but not as much as most of our other stock.”
“Can you recall any particular resident who has bought several?” Eric asked. “It doesn’t have to be all in one transaction. Maybe there’s someone who comes in and buys them over and again?”
“No,” the store owner said, shaking his head slowly side to side. A frown had settled between his black brows, like he was thinking hard. “I can’t think of anyone who comes back often. Maybe a couple of the older ladies who like to buy a candle for their husbands’ birthdays, light them in remembrance.”
“What about over the last couple of weeks?” Eric persisted. “Have you sold any at all? Particularly of the type my partner is holding?”
The owner shook his head again. “Maybe. Sorry. I think one or two, perhaps. It’s not often we sell those ones. I can look up the records, but as far as I recall, it’s just a couple of the widows, like I mentioned.”
“Thanks,” Eric sighed, scratching a hand through the hair at his temple. “If you could get those records, just in case.”
Laura sighed as the owner went into the back, shaking her head. “I have a feeling we’re not going to get a lot of success with this route,” she said, feeling the weight of truth in the words.
“Shouldn’t we stay positive?” Eric replied, lifting an eyebrow, and Laura only shot him a tired a look.
***
“Well, I was right,” Laura said, without any real sense of satisfaction. The other two stores in town held a similar story. Very few candles sold, and when they were, it was often to the older members of the population. While Laura couldn’t rule out one of them having a relative who requisitioned the candles for their own use, she did find it unlikely to imagine that it was a little old lady cutting the throats of these girls and then moving their bodies.
Which meant they were no closer to getting anywhere than they had been before.
“We haven’t had any lunch yet,” Eric complained, as they walked out of the last place – the hippie incense place, as he'd called it, which left Laura feeling slightly unwell from the thick wreaths of scented smoke that hung in the air there. “I can’t think on an empty stomach.”
Laura checked her watch with a growing sense of despair. She hadn’t even thought about food, but now that he’d mentioned it… it was already past two in the afternoon, which meant lunchtime had come and gone.
“Fast food only,” Laura cautioned him. “We need something we can eat on the move. We haven’t got time to sit down for a meal with a plate.”
“We haven’t got any leads to follow,” Eric groused. “I don’t see why we can’t sit down for five minutes.”
“Because we’re running out of time again,” Laura told him. “He’s going to claim another victim soon. Maybe tomorrow. But maybe – and my suspicion is, more likely – tonight.”
“Why would he change his MO?” Eric asked. “It’s always been two days between.”
“Because this is a small town, and we’ve been talking to a lot of people.” Laura rubbed her forehead, trying to cut off the headache that was trying to form there. Not a vision headache – just the normal kind, from the lack of sleep and the stress of the case. “I have no doubt now that he knows, whoever he is, that the FBI are in town. He knows we’re coming for him. And from what I know of all the killers I’ve tried to track down in the past, he’ll want to keep going and take as many victims as he can before he gets caught. Which means escalating, stepping up the pace – and that could mean someone is in danger tonight.”