CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Christopher looked around the crime scene, trying to get a better sense of what had happened. Not so that they could find out who had done this. As with the crime scene before this one, they knew that part, but in case there was anything that might lead to the killer.
"It’s hard to tell if there was a struggle, based on the damage to the victim," Donna the forensic tech said. "We’ll only know for sure after the autopsy. My guess is he threatened her to get her into this position before he started... work."
Based on what he could see in the office, Christopher wasn't so sure about that.
"See the mark there, on the carpet?" he said. "Where the table has been standing?"
"Yes?"
"Well, what made it move?" Christopher asked. "I think he grabbed for her, or hit her, when she was close to the desk. She must have stumbled against it and knocked it out of place."
"True. So we should be able to get prints and DNA."
"What about the ropes?" he asked. "Do they match the ones found at the other crime scene?"
"They do," Donna confirmed. "Same manufacturer. We've got some matching fibers from the earlier crime scene, but we can't yet confirm that this is the same rope."
Not that any of it mattered. They were all still looking at this the way they would look at a normal crime scene, the way they'd been trained to look. They were all searching for evidence of the killer's identity, but when they already knew that, it didn't help to get them closer to catching him.
Maybe the ropes might help? If Riker favored a single type, then it might be possible to track any new purchases. That was a long shot though, and Christopher knew it.
Christopher wanted to tear the room apart, find some clue that would help them find Adam, but he knew that wouldn't work. It wouldn't be in there. The physical clues simply weren’t enough to help him catch Riker.
His best hope of catching the serial killer was the psychologist who currently stood in the middle of the murder scene, going through her laptop as if all the answers lay in there. As if it were simultaneously her comfort blanket to grip against the sight in front of her and a source of information that she needed to interrogate to work out why it hadn’t given her the right answers.
Christopher could only guess at what Paige was feeling, seeing her reaction to what had happened, but he could only imagine that it was a lot worse than he felt. He'd been to his fair share of crime scenes but seeing what had happened to Sara Langdon was disturbing.Seeing how she'd died was disturbing.
For Paige, there had to be whole other levels to it, with the sight of the dead woman in front of her and the realization that her understanding of the killer's motivation was wrong, it had to be. She had to be questioning everything she knew about him.
Was she going to be able to handle this? Christopher hoped so. He needed her.
She'd been so sure that Adam was going after his uncle. That hadn't been the case. He'd gone after another woman.
"I don't know what went wrong," Paige muttered as she looked through her files. "The uncle was the obvious choice."
"That doesn't mean he was the only one," Christopher replied. He could hear the dejection in Paige's voice, the guilt. He knew he’d let too much of his own disappointment show on the way over. He guessed she would take that as a comment on her efforts, when Christopher was really just frustrated that he couldn’t seem to stop Adam Riker.
He saw her expression change, a look of surprise coming to her, along with what seemed to be an amplification to the guilt.
"Wait."
He could see that she had new information. "What?"
"I... think I know who Sara Langdon is."
Ok, that was interesting news, as far as Christopher was concerned.
"Who is she?"
"Adam mentioned a Sara in one of his sessions. Just once. A former girlfriend. He said that she was wild. That she used to go around committing small crimes with him. That he thought she was like him. That he loved her, and she broke his heart, but he didn't feel as though he could hurt her."
"So what changed?" Christopher asked, with a look back towards where the technicians were just starting to get the body ready to remove it.
"I... I don't know." Paige replied, uncertainty filling her voice again. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry," Christopher said. "You're doing your best."