CHAPTER FIFTEEN
They drove back to Christopher’s office, and Paige used the time to think about how they were going to make progress in finding the copycat. She knew that Christopher was relying on her. Maybe some physical evidence would come through on this, but she suspected that what they really needed was for her to find some insight, some link, that they could go on.
“Do you think that there’s a link between the three murders beyond them all being of young women involved in caring for people?” Paige asked Christopher, as they pulled into the FBI parking lot.
“Would there have to be?” he replied. “You’re the expert on this, Paige.”
The expert. It was another reminder of just how much they all needed her to be the one to come up with something in the current absence of physical evidence.
Paige shrugged. “I’m not sure. With Lars Ingram, that was enough for him to select his victims. He seems to have done it randomly, looking out on the street or online for women who met his criteria, then following them until he was sure he would be able to kill them without being caught.”
“So our guy could be doing the same,” Christopher said, in a grim tone. He obviously knew as well as Paige did that, in that case, it would be harder to catch him.
“He could,” Paige admitted. “But it’s also possible that he’s deviated from what Ingram did in this. Some copycats copy a killer’s methods, but then apply them to a group of victims that has more meaning to them, more of a connection. I know it’s a long shot, but if there is a link between our victims, that might lead us back to our killer.”
Christopher seemed to consider it for a moment or two, and then nodded. “It’s worth looking into. You start running background checks on the victims; I want to chase any possible camera footage from along the route the killer must have taken, and keep on top of the CSI results as they come in.”
Meaning that there would be a lot of responsibility on Paige’s shoulders. She would effectively be working alone, trying to collate every scrap of information that she could about Marta Huarez, Zoe Wells and Amelie Pichou. It was potentially daunting, but it was also familiar in a way. She was used to sitting alone, trying to do in-depth research. It was just that, previously, lives hadn’t been at stake.
“He’s going to kill again,” Paige said, as the two of them got out of the car, starting to head up to Christopher’s office.
“Not if we stop him,” Christopher replied. “Besides, we might get lucky. It might just be those three he wants dead.”
That didn’t sound like good luck to Paige, not when three women were already dead. In any case, she didn’t think it was likely.
“Serial killers don’t just stop. Sometimes life events stop them, or sometimes they pause between kills, but that isn’t likely in this case. We have a pattern of escalation here that suggests he’s going to try to kill at least one person a day.”
“Unless we catch him,” Christopher said.
Ultimately, that was what it came down to. The two of them had to catch this killer, or he would continue to murder young women. Three had died already at his hands, but if they got this wrong, then other women would die too.
That thought fueled Paige as they reached Christopher’s office. She started to look up the three victims using DMV records, tax records, internet searches and searches run through the FBI’s databases.
In the modern world, there was plenty on all three, although perhaps not as much as Paige might have expected from people their age. The social media profiles for the three women were there, but they didn’t spend as much time posting on them as a lot of women in their twenties might have. They certainly didn’t spend a lot of time posting about the exciting places they’d been, or about the big nights out they’d had. The time they’d spent caring for others had seemed to leave no room for their own lives.
Maybe that was a part of the killer’s motive.
“Is it possible that the killer is murdering these women because he’s saying that they’ve already given up most of their lives to care for others?” Paige mused aloud.
Christopher was looking through files on his computer.
“It’s possible, although I’m not sure if that helps us get closer to identifying him.”
“And I guess there’s the problem of whose motive we’re dealing with,” Paige said.
Christopher looked over at her, obviously waiting for her to explain.
“What I mean is that our copycat doesn’t have to have a motive of his own beyond really liking Lars Ingram’s work,” Paige explained. “Maybe Ingram killed for the reasons I just described, but this new killer might not share the same motives.”
“So it might not get us anywhere?” Christopher asked.
Paige shook her head. “Sorry.”
“No, it’s good to work through all of this, and try to work out what’s relevant. I’ve been checking for cameras along the route the killer must have used to get close to the house. Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be anything close enough for us to be sure that anyone we see on it is the killer.”
Paige understood. A figure glimpsed close by just before a murder was almost certainly a suspect. One spotted half a mile away ten minutes beforehand could easily just be someone out for a nighttime walk, with no real way to link them to the crime.
Paige just hoped that she would be able to come up with something that was more helpful, and soon.