“But Teri was also a sex worker. Enter the third victim, Kate Sutton.”
“Also a sex worker.”
“Victims one and two are connected. Victims two and three are connected.”
Paige looked like she was getting it. “So like, a nonconsecutive sequence?”
“Nonconsecutive. That’s one word. There’s another. The proper mathematical term is a Gigli Sequence.”
“Gigli? That sounds familiar actually. And victim four? Shouldn’t there be a connection between Kate and Irene?”
“There is,” Ella said, pointing to the columns she’d already filled in on the whiteboard. “They have the same name.”
Paige stared at her partner blankly, willing her to continue. Ella waited for her to make the connection herself.
“Oh… snap,” Paige said. “Rena. Kate’s escort name. It’s short for Irene.”
“Bingo. Now we just have to find potential victims who might share some of Irene’s traits, although I admit, there’s a big pool of possibilities.”
Paige turned around and leaned against the window. Ella began compiling everything they knew about the newest victim, although she had to admit they didn’t know much about her yet. They were still waiting on forensics reports to come back. Even though she was confident her theory was correct, putting the wheels in motion to outsmart this killer was a tall task. The killer could focus on literally anything about Irene: her job, her looks, her circle of friends, her home. Now that Ella thought about it, there were probably a million tangible connections that could be made.
“Ella,” Paige said. “What was the name of that sequence again?”
“A Gigli sequence.”
Paige turned back with a rare look of calamity. “You know what a Gigli is, right?”
She did not. “I thought it was just a mathematical sequence. It means something else?”
Paige hurried to her desk and began typing on her laptop. She turned her screen around.
“A Gigli is a piece of medical apparatus used for amputations.”
Ella froze solid, not breathing, still enough to hear herself blinking.
“Are you serious?”
Paige tapped the screen. It showed a piece of razor wire connected by a handle at each end. According to the short description below it, a Gigli Saw was used during amputations when bones needed to be smoothly cut.
“The numbers don’t lie,” Paige said.
“Holy crap, of course!” Ella said. “Amputations. They could be the trigger for all of this.”
Ella felt it in her blood. This was the revelation they needed. Their killer had been obsessively precise in everything he’d done, more methodical than any serial killer she’d come across in her life. Everything had been calculated with mathematical accuracy, so there was no chance this little connection was a coincidence.
Gigli. A mathematical sequence. A medical device used to sever legs. Two completely different things bound by a single name. The killer’s neuroses were on display again.
“Why didn’t we look into that immediately?” Ella called in excitement. “Amputations. Hospital records. Can you access them through that system?”
“No. Police files only. But I’m searching anyway. See if anything lines up.”
Ella sank back into her chair, ignoring her pounding heart, thinking, trusting Paige to do the job better than she could. Why hadn’t she considered amputation accidents as a viable motive until now? Maybe it was because the word amputee implied both legs had been removed. She cursed herself for not seeing the obvious.
“Lots of results from the keywords amputation and amputee,” Paige said. “Sixty-seven.”
“Filter out the impossible. No women. No one over the age of thirty. We know he’s male, white, and local, and the unsub himself isn’t an amputee. Even with fake legs, one of the eyewitnesses would have noticed him walking strangely.”
“Nineteen,” Paige said.