CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Paige sat in Christopher’s car feeling embarrassed and dejected as they drove back towards the FBI building. She’d messed up, and because of that they’d broken their way into a woman’s home with weapons raised. She’d jumped to conclusions and gotten this wrong.
“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Christopher said, obviously catching sight of her expression.
“I don’t think I’m being hard enough,” Paige said. She sighed. “Honestly, Christopher, I’m starting to worry that you should have a real profiler with you, not someone half trained.”
“There was enough of a connection to Ben Astor for him to be a suspect, and once you worked out what Lisa Handel did for a living, even I thought that she was in danger,” Christopher replied. “My guess is that any of the profilers I could have been teamed up with might have come to the same conclusions.”
“But it wasn’t them,” Paige said. “It was me. I messed up. I’m not sure that I deserve to be here.”
That was hard for her to say, because she wanted to be there, more than anything. It wasn’t just that it was the job that she wanted to do more than anything, it was the fact that she was partnered with Christopher, getting to work with him up close and bounce ideas off him.
“Well, I know you do, or I wouldn’t have requested your help,” Christopher said. “Look, I could drop you back at the academy if you really want me to, but that would leave me without a partner on this, and also eat up time we don’t have. Besides, I want you working on this, Paige. Now, are you going to keep going?”
A part of Paige still felt as though she ought to give up, but she pushed that part down. If she really wanted to work in the FBI, then she couldn’t afford to give up like that. If she went back to the academy now, her instructors would ask the reason why, and when she told them, she was sure that they would never feel comfortable about letting her out into the field. Agents didn’t get to pick and choose whether they kept going with cases, and even if she wasn’t an agent yet, neither could Paige.
“I will,” Paige said. “But I’m not sure what we need to do next.”
“We keep working the leads we have until we can find another,” Christopher said.
So far, they’d looked at two main leads. They’d tried to get Lars Ingram to give them information, and they’d looked at the Sunshine Care Agency.
“I want to go back to speak to Lars Ingram,” Paige said. “I want to try to get him to talk.”
She’d struck out before, but maybe now that he’d had time to think, he might be more inclined to answer her questions, especially if she thought of a new way to persuade him.
“He’s scheduled for execution tonight,” Christopher said. “And you heard him yesterday. He isn’t going to help us without getting something in return. We’d be wasting our time talking to him.”
“I have to try,” Paige said. “If I can get any answers out of him, I think it has the potential to blow this case wide open.”
If his copycat had gotten in touch, even briefly, then Lars Ingram might have the answer they sought about his identity.
Christopher’s expression was thoughtful. “Possibly, but I still don’t think that we can use all our time trying to get a psychopath to talk. I want to go back to the recruitment agency, and check each of their employees. I think there’s still a chance that the connection you found there could turn out to be more, and I don’t want to let it go just yet.”
“You don’t need me for that part,” Paige said. Yes, she could be an extra pair of hands looking into the recruitment agency, but she would be more helpful trying to make use of her training and the time she’d spent working with the worst killers, trying to get some answers out of Lars Ingram.
“You still want to go to the prison?” Christopher said. “Alone?”
“I spent half my PhD talking alone with killers,” Paige said. “I’ll be fine.”
“All right. I’ll drop you at your place, and you can drive over from there. I’ll let them know that you’re coming. Just… promise me that you’ll be careful.”
*
For the second time in as many days, Paige found herself walking through death row, escorted by a guard, going to see a serial killer. She could feel the pressure of the eyes on her from all sides, and tried to move carefully, keeping well away from the cells on either side as she went to the visiting room.
Paige sat there on one side of the table, separated from the rest of the room by the plastic screen. The dull gray surroundings of the room felt much more oppressive without Christopher there beside her. It both reminded her, and didn’t remind her, of the build up to her therapy sessions with Adam Riker, back at the institute. There was the same sense of anticipation, bordering on fear, that came with knowing that she was about to match wits with a serial killer. There was the same sense of needing to get information out of someone dangerous, who would only engage with her on his own terms.
There were differences, though. The room was a long way from the comfortable, soothing environment of the institute. Where that was designed to be calming, this place was simply designed to contain until the prisoners there could meet their inevitable fate.
The biggest difference, though, was that Paige didn’t have the same confidence that she’d had talking with Adam Riker. With him, she’d thought that she was getting all the information that she wanted smoothly, through her own cleverness; yet she’d learned the hard way that he was playing his own game, controlling what he told Paige while getting more information than he gave.
Memories of her interactions with Adam left Paige on edge as she waited for Lars Ingram to arrive. She knew the stakes here: the copycat killer would keep murdering young women until he was stopped, and she remained convinced that one of the best ways to do that was to try to get information out of the serial killer he was copying.
Doing that meant sitting there and waiting while a guard fetched Lars Ingram. He shuffled in wearing his manacles, and if he was afraid about this being his last day on earth, he didn’t show it. Instead, he merely looked annoyed by the interruption to his day of Paige being there.
“Coming alone this time?” he said, as the guard fastened him into place. “I don’t even warrant two of you now?”