CHAPTER NINE
They had to wait while the guard took Lars back to his cell, which meant Paige continued sitting there in the interview room in the prison, trying to work out what she and Christopher were going to do next. She felt completely frustrated in that moment. She should have been able to get more out of Ingram.
“If we can’t get this guy’s identity out of Ingram, we’re going to have to look for other ways to find it,” Christopher said.
“I should have been able to get him to talk,” Paige said. She felt as if she should be apologizing to Christopher for everything she’d just failed to do. “I read him wrong.”
Christopher shook his head. “You gave it your best shot. I heard what you tried. They were both good shots. They just didn’t land. You heard what he said at the end. He has nothing left to lose. He just doesn’t care.”
“I care,” Paige said.
“And that’s good,” Christopher said. “But what we really need now is to find another way to get to the answers we need, and I don’t know if we’re going to find them here.”
Paige shared his frustration, because they had to just sit here rather than getting on with hunting down the next lead. Except that Paige wasn’t sure what that lead was going to be.
“We looked over the crime scenes, we have the coroner’s report, what’s next?” Paige asked.
“We don’t have any physical leads so far,” Christopher said. “So you tell me. You might not have gotten anything out of Ingram, but I’m pretty sure that you’re the person best placed to get into the copycat’s head.”
After the way she’d struck out with Ingram, Paige wasn’t so sure, but she gave it her best shot anyway.
“He’s a copycat, but he’s not just a copycat. He’s precise about it. He knows all the details of the crimes. That says one of two things…” Paige had to think for a moment as the implications of it settled in her head “…either he was getting details straight from Ingram, or he was completely obsessed. Maybe a little of both. Someone that obsessed would want to get in contact, would want to let his hero know what he was doing, right?”
“That sounds plausible,” Christopher said. “Which means we’re in exactly the right place.”
Paige frowned slightly before she understood what Christopher meant by that.
“Every phone call here is monitored,” Christopher explained. “All the letters are opened and copied. There are visitor logs, call records. The prisoners don’t have the same rights to privacy that everyone else does, so we can potentially go through it all. If we’re lucky, then our guy will be in there.”
Paige felt a lot more hopeful than she had just a few minutes ago. Before, they’d had nothing, but now, they had something to go on, somewhere to look. She had to believe that a copycat would want to get in touch with Ingram. There was a level of infatuation to someone like that which wouldn’t allow them to hold back. Even if they didn’t need to get more details from Ingram, having gotten them some other way, they would have to find some way to at least express their admiration.
The guard, Nadia, came back after a few minutes. “Ok, if you’re ready to go, then I’ll lead you back out.”
“Actually,” Christopher said, “We need to go through any communications Lars Ingram has received. I want to look at the phone records, the letters, all of it.”
“I can take you to the admin offices. Everything should be there.”
She led the way back out through the prison. Paige felt the eyes on her there again, watching her every move. It made her grateful that she didn’t have to work in a place like this anymore. She vastly preferred being out in the world, trying to actually catch killers, rather than being in the places they were locked up.
The guard led the way up through the prison, into a set of run-down offices that looked as if they hadn’t been renovated in years. Those offices were filled with staff. There were several guards there, but more clerks. She led the way to one of them.
“Krista, these people are with the FBI. They’re asking for access to an inmate’s correspondence. Can I leave them to you? I have to get back to work.”
Paige saw the clerk nod.
“I’ll have to check with the warden, but it should be fine. Which prisoner?”
“Lars Ingram,” Christopher said. “We’re looking to work out who might have been in contact with him.”
“I’ll check with the warden, then find the letters for you and call up the visitor records.”
It felt pretty strange to Paige, the ease with which they were able to get so much information about a prisoner. She’d spent plenty of time at the FBI academy going through all the legal limits on their powers as agents, all the protections that were there specifically to prevent any kind of abuse of power.
She had to remind herself that those protections didn’t apply to prisoners in the same way, that they’d been specifically excluded to ensure that prisoners couldn’t continue to order crimes from inside.
It meant that when the clerk came back, it was with a thick file, filled with letters, seeming almost to overflow with them. Paige had to admit, she was surprised by just how much correspondence Lars Ingram seemed to have.
“This should be everything,” Krista said, setting it down on one of the desks. “I’ll pull up the rest of the information on my terminal for you to look at.”