CHAPTER SIX
As far as Paige could see, almost nothing had changed about Christopher’s office from the last time she’d been in there, when they’d been chasing Adam Riker. He still had the same corner office with a view out over D.C. that he’d had before. It still wasn’t quite as large as it could have been, although that might have had something to do with the piles of clutter in it. Paperwork was still spread everywhere, in piles that gave Paige the urge to tidy up the moment that she looked at them.
There were glass boards up on one side of the room, one of them occupied by pictures of Zoe and Marta. A picture labelled Lars Ingram sat nearby, off to one side. He was a man in his forties, with square, almost bullish features, and a cold expression, pictured in an orange prison uniform.
Paige went to find a place to sit, moving one of the piles of paperwork off a chair.
“Hey, how am I meant to find anything if you move it around?” Christopher asked. Paige couldn’t tell if he was being serious or not.
“Are you trying to tell me that you know where everything is?” Paige asked him. She’d known people like this at college, whose rooms had resembled the aftermath of an explosion in a stationery store every time they had a paper coming up. She hadn’t believed that they knew where things were, either.
“I have a system,” Christopher assured her. Paige would believe that when she saw it.
“Piles of stuff on the floor don’t count as a system. Besides, I need somewhere to sit.”
She took a chair and sat down, while Christopher planted himself behind the desk, in a space that seemed barely big enough to contain his height.
“Can you call up all the information on Lars Ingram’s cases?” Paige asked.
“You asked about his cases before,” Christopher said. “Why focus on him, though, when we know it can’t be him? Doesn’t it risk distracting from the actual killer?”
“If I’m right about this being a copycat, I want to see how much of it they got right, and if there are any differences.” Those differences might allow them to identify their killer, focusing on what was unique about him, and hopefully identifying ways in which he hadn’t been as careful as he should have been about protecting his identity. Copycats didn’t always get the details right, only copying what they’d heard in the news.
“Ok,” Christopher said, and started to tap in the details to call up Ingram’s murders on his office computer.
Paige went around the desk to see the results, and she was only too aware of how close she was standing to him as she did so. Carefully, pointedly, Paige took a small step back, avoiding a stack of paperwork, just to remind herself that she had no business being so aware of anything when it came to Christopher.
Paige was still reminding herself of that when a man walked into the office. He was perhaps six feet tall, with salt and pepper hair and a short beard framing slender features. His frame was even more slender in a dark suit, a chrome plated watch flashing at his wrist as he moved.
“Marriott, there you are,” he said. “What’s this I hear about you drafting in someone from outside the BAU to help on your case?”
Paige saw Christopher stand. “Agent Sauer, this is Paige King, who helped me out with the Adam Riker manhunt. Paige, this is Agent Andrew Sauer, my immediate superior.”
“This is who you’ve brought in?” Agent Sauer said, looking Paige up and down. “The same woman you had running around with you trying to catch up to Riker while he killed four more people? The one whose past ended up plastered all over the news channels?”
Paige didn’t need the reminder that all the details of her past were out there, for anyone to find. The death of her father, the things that had happened with her stepfather, all of it.
“I believe that Riker would have gone on to kill more if it weren’t for Paige’s help,” Christopher said.
It was obvious that his boss wasn’t happy.
“Wait, didn’t I hear that she was in training at the academy?”
“That’s right,” Paige said, determined to speak up for herself in this.
“So you’ve brought someone in on a case who’s half trained? Who isn’t qualified yet to do the job?”
Christopher was already shaking his head. “With respect, sir, Paige is eminently qualified when it comes to looking into the work of serial killers. She has a PhD in criminal psychology and has spent time working in an institution with some of the worst offenders out there. I believe that her insights will be invaluable.”
“More valuable than those of the fully trained profilers we already have?” Sauer said, sounding as though he didn’t quite believe it. Paige could understand that. She knew how well trained the profilers might be, because she’d seen for herself how hard even the basic training was.
“I believe so, sir.”
Christopher’s boss still didn’t look convinced. “And what insights has she brought to the table so far?” He looked straight across at Paige, his gaze piercing. “I don’t mean this as an insult, maybe you’ll make it as an agent in time, once you’re fully trained, but what have you done so far? What can you really tell me about this case?”
Paige knew that she had to say something quickly to convince this man if she wanted to be a part of the case. “That it was probably a copycat. That the murders appear consistent with those of Lars Ingram, who is currently on death row. That the victims have no obvious enemies, and that the killer struck in a very consistent way with both. More than that, he did it expertly, without leaving obvious trace evidence and while avoiding cameras at one scene. That suggests someone who has killed before, or at least committed other crimes.”
Sauer looked as though he was relenting a little, but not completely. “And tell me about copycat killers.”