“That appears to be the case,” Christopher agreed. “The details are too close for the similarities just to be a coincidence.”
Paige sat there, staring at the file for several more seconds. There were detailed descriptions of the probable blade used, some kind of hunting knife, along with descriptions of each injury, the time of death, and the surrounding scene. It appeared that a decanter of brandy had been knocked over, and the file suggested that might have been during the struggle.
“This file is wrong,” Paige said.
“I’m sure the coroner did a thorough job, Ms. King,” Administrator Podovski said.
Paige shook her head, though. She was sure about this part.
“What do you see, Paige?” Christopher asked.
“The decanter that was knocked over, the file suggests it might indicate a struggle, but the coroner’s report shows no defensive wounds. More than that, though, the other cases by Ingram show us why it was knocked over.”
Christopher looked intrigued at that, and Paige found herself playing up to that expression. She wanted to impress him. She felt as if she’d been called there specifically to impress.
“Why is that?” he asked.
“With Ingram’s other victims, every one of them was ambushed in their own home, or the home of their employer. They were lured to a particular spot where Ingram was waiting, using some kind of distraction. My guess is that the brandy was the distraction in this case. It’s another element the copycat has copied.”
“That makes a lot of sense,” Christopher said. “You know the previous cases well?”
“I’ve read them,” Paige said, not wanting to make too much of it. “It’s not like I could take a spot test on all of them, or anything.”
She didn’t want to pretend that she was an expert on this case, when she’d come across the details only in passing. The academic work on these murders had been useful, though, in deciding on the directions she was going to go with her own work for her PhD. While the world of true crime writing was broad, the truly academic side of it was smaller.
She saw Christopher looking over at Administrator Podovski.
“You see my point?”
“Impressive, of course,” the administrator said. “But the fact remains that she has not completed her training.”
Paige cleared her throat, pointedly. She was getting tired of being talked about with no idea of what was happening.
“Could someone please explain to me exactly what’s going on? What am I doing here? What are you doing here, Christopher, if you’re on this case? Shouldn’t you be off looking for the killer?”
She saw Christopher shrug. “I will be, just as soon as I have the kind of backup that I need to actually find this guy and bring him to justice.”
Paige ran those words through her head a few times, the meaning slowly sinking in. Backup?
“Wait, you mean me?” she said, caught by surprise even now, simply because it seemed impossible that she could be asked when she wasn’t fully trained yet. She realized that this was the reason she’d been summoned to the administration building. This was the reason Christopher wanted to see her face to face after so long.
“Yes, you,” Christopher replied. “I think that you understand serial killers better than anyone I’ve met, and I’ve seen firsthand how useful your instincts can be in a case like this one.”
“But I’m not even fully trained yet,” Paige insisted. She might be training to be an agent, but she wasn’t one yet, and her instructors were clear that she still had a way to go before she was done. Even after she completed her training, there would still be a period of probation, and of working her way up through the ranks. If she wanted to achieve her aim of becoming a profiler, then she would need to wait for an opening in the BAU, apply, and go through an additional selection process. She couldn’t just walk out of her training to jump onto a case.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell the agent,” Administrator Podovski said. He sounded as if he didn’t entirely approve of any of this. It clearly wasn’t the way things were meant to be done, and Paige got the feeling that the administrator was a man who liked things to be done according to the rules. “You show great promise, Paige, but we can’t just throw you into a dangerous situation when you’re not ready.”
“And what I’ve been telling you,” Christopher shot back, “is that this murderer isn’t going to wait until Paige is fully qualified. The situation is too urgent. I need her help, and I need it now.”
That still didn’t make complete sense to Paige. Christopher had the full resources of the FBI behind him, after all.
“Why me?” Paige asked.
“I told you, I need the backup, and-”
“Yes, but why me?” Paige asked. “You have the BAU behind you. They have plenty of fully trained profilers working for them. You could have gone to any one of them, and they would help you with this. So why me, Agent Marriott? What is there about me that makes you want me working with you rather than one of them?”
That was the key question here. Why did Christopher want her on this case, rather than one of the fully trained professionals he had available to him? What was it about Paige that had made him think of her?