Billy looked genuinely perplexed by the question. “How could anyone dislike Zoe? She was great. Is that what you think this is? Someone she upset? But she never hurt anyone.”
“We just have to look into every possibility,” Paige said. “We won’t take up any more of your time, although I imagine Agent Marriott will want to talk to your manager and make sure that there’s nothing on Zoe’s records that might help us.”
Christopher wanted exactly that, but he also suspected Paige had said it mostly as a way to bring the conversation to a close.
“Sure, it’s just down there,” Billy said, pointing.
“I don’t think there’s anything here,” Paige said, as the two of them started to walk. “We’re going around asking all the questions we’d ask with a normal murder, but I don’t think that’s going to do us any good.”
Christopher was starting to feel that was true, but he also knew that they couldn’t just ignore the obvious.
“We have to eliminate all the more mundane explanations for this,” Christopher pointed out. “Especially when the obvious killer is currently behind bars.”
“There’s another explanation.” Paige stopped in front of him, looking up into his eyes. “You and I both know what this is, and that we won’t find answers looking here.”
“What is it?” Christopher asked. He knew what Paige was driving at, but he wanted her to be the one to say the words. She was the expert on this, after all. He could see the gears turning in her head as she thought it through, obviously wanting to be certain before she just came out and said what she was thinking.
Finally, she seemed certain enough to go through with it.
“I think we have a copycat on our hands. The similarities in the MO are just too great. The same number of stab wounds, the same victim profile, the fact that victims were lured into position before the killer struck. One of those elements might be coincidence, and all of them might just be someone trying to cover up a normal murder if it were just the one killing, but two like this?”
Christopher could only nod along with Paige’s reasoning, but the implications of it were terrifying. Someone just trying to cover up a murder by copying a serial killer would be bad enough, but a full-blown copycat might mean more deaths to follow, unless he and Paige found a way to stop the killer.
“If it is a copycat, what does that mean?” Christopher said. “Does it give us any way forward in all of this? Anything that might lead to the killer?”
“I think we need to know more about the original killings,” Paige said. “I can remember a few details, but it isn’t like I’ve had a chance to look at the files for those cases. Right now, I want to know everything about the murders Lars Ingram committed.”