"Hayley’s mother mentioned the paramedics who rescued her. Remember how talkative she was when we were there, telling us all about that near death experience her daughter had. I jotted a note down. She explained how worried they were, and that a couple of the team called her a few times after Hayley was found."
Owen looked dubious. "They sound like good guys, to do that."
May shook her head. "Everyone's a good guy until we realize what their motive is. I think we need to research these paramedics straight away. If they rescued Hayley, that information should all be in the missing person case file, and it would have been updated when she was found."
"I'm going to access those records now," Owen said.
May waited, feeling impatient, as Owen looked up the paramedic team who had attended the rescue incident where Hayley had been found.
"There are two paramedics who worked that incident," he said. "Jake Evans and Patrick Corby. They are both still employed and working in the area. But May, I'm looking here in the databases and I don't see any prior records for them. There seem to be no problems. They're both clean."
May thought, her mind racing furiously. Why was she now feeling so sure that something important had been said during that interview with Hayley’s mother? Was her instinct wrong?
"What about triggering incidents?"
Owen looked dubious. "Paramedics see triggering incidents all day, every day. It's one of the main reasons why people in that profession eventually quit."
"I understand," May said. "But perhaps it's not a general incident but something more personal. Something that occurred in their own lives. I think that's what we're looking for. We need to call the head office and ask if either of these two men has experienced anything in the past couple of months that could have caused them to start killing instead of saving lives."
Owen nodded. "Okay. I'm going to give them a call and ask."
"While you do, I'll start checking the others on the list."
They didn’t have time to spare. The media were descending. Attention and criticism were being focused on their police department and on her, personally. May had to do whatever she could to stop this killer. The confidence of the general public in their local policing would be severely affected if they could not prevent further kills.
And as for the victims, May couldn't even bear to think what they must have suffered, their terror, the unfairness of their lives being taken. Every person in the wider area was now depending on her to prevent these senseless killings from happening again.
Turning back to her list, May decided she would have to work from the top, logically, checking prior records, then calling to find out if there had been any disasters or precipitating events.
She tried not to think about the length of the list, or the fact that the killer was still out there, as she worked through the names.
Here was the first one on the list, Andy Baker. May's eyes widened as she read the name of their trusted local coroner. It could not have been him. Nothing had happened in Andy's life. And in fact, he'd been out of town when the first murder occurred and hadn't known the details.
May felt a sense of horror that she'd even had to consider Andy, and a wave of relief that he was cleared, and she could move on.
But that shocking moment of seeing his name there brought home to May very strongly that the people in death-adjacent professions included some of the trusted folk that she and Owen dealt with regularly.
Would she be ready for that bombshell, if one of them turned out to be the killer? Imagine having to arrest a valued colleague and friend.
"No," May muttered to herself. She simply could not accept that any of the people they worked with regularly had done such a thing. And if there had been a precipitating event, they would have heard about it. If someone close to Andy Baker — for example — had died, they would have known.
So, May decided that meant she was going to start with the people on this list that she did not know so well. That would narrow it down significantly.
At that moment, Owen cut the call, sighing.
"It looks like neither of the paramedics have had anything happen in their life, May. Neither of the two has taken any compassionate leave. They've been working as normal. In fact, the control room operator told me they have both been doing some extra shifts in the past few days, and based on that timing, I'm not sure either of them would have had time to do these kills."
May felt sad, because she'd been hoping that either Jake Evans or Patrick Corby was the man they were seeking.
She must have been wrong. Her gut feeling about that interview was clearly incorrect. There was no doubt that she and Owen were going to have to go through the whole process of evaluating everyone on this list.
She turned back to the list, feeling a growing sense of frustration. Perhaps they were not going to find this killer in time, after all. It seemed as if circumstances were conspiring against them. They had a long list that was realistically going to take a full day to work through, even with the steps she'd taken to narrow it down. They had potential victims who hadn't yet been warned, and also potential victims for whom a warning might be useless, because the killer could already have decided on a different approach for them.
They were trapped here, knowing that this man must be on the list, but not knowing where or why.
May bit her lip, trying to stop her imagination from running away from her with horrible worst-case scenarios. Instead, she forced herself to focus on the list in front of her, even though her mind was boggling with wild theories, illogical possibilities. She couldn’t erase the vision of the killer driving determinedly to his next victim.
May felt ready to burst into tears at the idea.