Alex nodded. "But different colored hair, and really not similar in appearance. Although I agree, they are all pretty small. Probably wouldn't be able to put up as much of a fight."
Paige's petite stature also met that requisite, but Brett didn't say anything to that effect.
"They're all unmarried," Paige said softly. "None of them had children. I'm not sure if that's important or not."
"Let's assume everything is important right now," Brett said.
"And, actually, that's an important distinction and goes towards proving Brett's theory that this is all the same guy. It's not impossible, but eight women killed, all who are that age and not married nor have kids? That goes a little further than coincidence."
"They all lived in west coast states. Three in California, three here in Oregon, and two were in Washington State.” Brett knew that didn't necessarily mean anything conclusive.
"The reason it doesn't fit as a serial killer pattern is because of the different causes of death." Alex pointed out.
"That's what Ameling said too." Brett nodded as he sighed. He looked over at Paige. "Killers tend to stick with one MO when it comes to killing. Don’t tend to deviate from that method. The same killer probably wouldn't jump between strangulation," – he pointed to the picture of the third victim – "stabbing, and burning.”
“Different causes of death but they were all severely beaten before they were killed,” Alex offered.
Brett saw Paige wince from the corner of his eye. This couldn’t be easy for her.
"They were killed on different days of the week," Paige said.
“Yeah, but look, all the dates are somewhat similar," Alex offered. “Not exactly the same but close. Five were towards the end of the month, two are on the 15th, and one is on the 13th."
Alex's words reminded Brett of why he had thought about this case being similar in the first place.
"Paydays," he murmured. "I need a calendar." While Brett brought one up on his phone, Alex looked more closely at the date of each murder.
"You could be right," he said. "Look up April 13 of last year. Was that a Friday?"
Brett found it and turned to Alex. "Yes. So on that month someone who got paid twice a month would've been paid on the 13th rather than the normal 15th, because the 15th fell on a Sunday."
Brett looked up the other dates. "They are definitely all paydays. The last day of the month, or closest Friday to it or the 15th of the month or the closest Friday to it."
"If it wasn't for the different methods of death, I would be in full support of your one killer theory. But serial killers are almost always consistent. We both know that. "
Paige stood up from where she'd been leaning against the table and began studying the whiteboard more closely. “He is consistent. So consistent he can’t change his own pattern.”
Brett stood too. “How so? He kills in three different ways.”
She walked over to the wall and put her finger on the corner of the picture of the first victim. “Strangled.” She touched the second. “Stabbed.” She touched the third. “Burned.”
Brett shook his head, walking over to stand with her at the pictures. “I already thought of this. Looked for a distinct pattern in the order of the killing methods.”
Paige wrote out a list on the white board next to the pictures.
1) Strangled. 2) Stabbed. 3) Strangled. 4) Burned. 5) Strangled. 6) Stabbed. 7) Burned. 8) Strangled.
Brett nodded. “Yes, that’s correct, but there’s no pattern. Teresa Cavasos was the last and she was strangled.”
Paige looked over at him. “According to the dates, I should’ve been victim number 3. I would’ve been his ‘burn’ victim. He planned to leave me in that burning building. That’s how I got away. He’d already doused the building with gasoline and it caught on fire too early.”
Alex studied what she’d written on the board. “Even if that was true, it still wouldn’t make a consistent pattern in the killing methodology. Too many strangles.”
“It would be consistent if he has OCD. If he killed Victim C, Alexandra Dobbs, the woman after me, by strangling her, only to realize that was unacceptable to his pattern.”
Brett realized Paige was right. What looked like an inconsistency with the pattern might actually be the killer resetting it.
“You should’ve been burned. Then the next victim would’ve been strangled. But you got away so it messed him up.”
Realization dawned in Alex’s eyes. “So he strangled the next victim, but that didn’t give him the closure he needed, so he had to go back and burn someone.”
Paige nodded. “Exactly. The pattern is strangle, stab, burn.”
They all studied the pictures. It made twisted sense and tied together all the killings in a more believable way.
“A serial killer whose MO is a pattern, not just a single way of killing,” Brett murmured.
Alex nodded. “It’s not even the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“I should’ve been dead.”
Paige’s words were so soft he almost didn’t hear them. He stepped closer to put an arm around her. “Baby…”
She stepped back, arms wrapped around her middle. “I know you suggested it before, but I should’ve died.”
Brett wouldn’t let her close herself off. He wrapped his arms around her. “But you didn’t. You survived. And thank God.”
“If I had died, then one of those other women would still be alive.”
“You can’t think like that, Paige,” Alex said. “There’s only one person responsible for the death of these women. The killer.”
She didn’t look convinced. She untangled herself from Brett’s arms and walked to the table picking up the “before” picture of the woman they hadn’t identified yet. “If we’re right about the pattern then this woman will be the next victim and she’ll be stabbed.”
The woman was young, maybe late twenties, small in stature like Paige. She had black hair that fell down to the middle of her back. In the drawing she was laughing, looking at someone or something to the side. She didn’t seem to have a care in the world.
“We’ll find her,” Brett said.
Paige slid the other picture of the women over to Brett. It was another picture of violence, another brutally beaten face. By process of elimination they had determined it was the same woman, because she certainly could not be matched by appearance.
“But will she look like that when you do?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
"Hey." Paige felt a finger graze down her cheek.
She’d been sitting over at the end of the conference room table for a while now while Brett and Alex continued to talk about the case. The women.
Charlotte Winters, Heather Brown, Alexandra Dobbs, Teresa Cavasos… All these women who had just been horrible pictures in her portfolio now had names. Real identities.
Were all dead.
Paige should've been dead also.
Brett had spoken his suspicions to her before but until she had seen the pattern for herself she hadn’t truly believed it.
The man who attacked her, the man with the aura so black, had meant to kill her in the most brutal of fashions.
And more than that, Paige was connected to him in some way. Every person she had drawn had been one of his victims.
Paige didn’t know how to get rid of the panic building inside her.
She was seeing inside a killer’s mind.
Her mind was seeing what his was projecting. Her eyes saw and her hands drew what was most important to him. It was almost unbearable to be connected to him in this way.
How did Adrienne get through it? How hard she worked with the FBI all these years – being connected to the depraved thoughts and actions of multiple evil people? Paige obviously wasn't as strong as her sister was.
"Hey. Paige."
She finally focused on Brett who was crouched in front of her chair. He had obviously tried to get her attention more than once.
"You're exhausted. I already called your security team and they're sending someone to come get you."
Paige wanted to argue. Wanted to stay and help figure out anything else if she could. But Brett was right.
She couldn't remember ever feeling this exhausted before.
She would blame it on the fact that she hadn't gotten much sleep last night, worried about what was going through Brett's mind, and now she was on her second night of no sleep.
Not because she was linked in some way with a sadistic killer.
She nodded. "Yes, I'm sort of tired."
She felt his fingers trail down her cheek again. "I don't blame you. Plus, we've got to get you out of here before the normal detective workforce makes their way in. That will start happening in an hour or two."
Paige glanced over at the photos again. "I'm glad you were able to piece it all together." Paige had to face another hard truth. "If I had come forward with the pictures earlier we might've been able to save some of their lives."
Brett shook his head. "You can't think that way. There would've been no way to identify them and you've already tasted firsthand how receptive law enforcement would've been to you showing them the pictures."
"Crazy at best. Criminal at worst."
Brett shrugged. "Sadly, yes. For people who don't know you, for you to just show up with what are obviously exact replicas of crime scene photos would throw you into a very suspicious light. I can't say that I would’ve reacted any differently in the same circumstances.”
Paige wrapped her arms around herself. Despite the mild temperature in the room, she felt like she couldn't get warm. Felt like she might never be warm again.
"Hey," Brett said again. “We’re going to get through this. Going to catch this guy. For what he did to these women and for what he did to you."
She watched as Brett slipped off his jacket and wrapped it around her. It helped. The warmth of the fabric; the smell of it so uniquely Brett.
It brought her back from the void she felt so close to stumbling into.
"How are you going to catch him? You can't use these pictures. Nobody else is going to believe them."
"The pictures give us a link," he said. "Alex and me. Now that we know where to look and who to look at, we’ll find something else to prove they're all connected. We won't bring you into it."
Paige nodded.
"Our first line of business will be identifying the unknown woman in the last drawing. Once we find her we can not only put a protection detail around her, we can hopefully use her to figure out who the killer is. See who’s following her.”
"We're going to have to use some creative arguments to get protective detail around someone we hope could potentially be the next victim." Alex still stood staring at the pictures.
As she shuddered in the jacket, Brett reached and pulled her up against him so they were both standing. Now with his heat against her she almost felt warm.
“You’re going to be the one who leads us to him, sweetheart. The one person who got away will be the one who brings him down," Brett said against her forehead, his hands moving in circles on her back.
Brett's phone chirped.
"Tom's outside." Brett’s hand at the small of her back began to ease her towards the door. "The best thing you can do is get some rest."
Paige just nodded. Exhaustion weighed so heavy on her there was nothing else she could do.
“Hey," Alex called out before they made it to the conference room door. "We will get this guy, Paige. What you've done is amazing. Don't doubt that."
Paige gave him a weak smile but the doubts weighing down her mind were so great she hardly knew how to express them.
Doubts about her mental health. How could she be connected to a killer? Doubts about her courage. How could she have just put these pictures in a box and not delved into them further?
Doubts about her very sanity. The next time she drew a picture she would know exactly what it meant. Another person dead.
She wasn't sure she would ever be able to go to sleep again for fear she’d find a new picture on her easel when she awoke.
Her stomach filled with a twisting despair. She brought both of her fists to her belly in an effort to keep the despondency inside.
"Whatever it is you're thinking, stop. Right now." Brett halted their progress towards the front door and turned her to look at him. "You made the right choice with the information you had. Once you knew these were real women, real victims, you haven't shied away from it."
"But…"
"There is no 'but.' Thinking these drawings had stemmed from what happened to you was not only logical, but healthy. There's nothing you should've done differently."
She heard what Brett was saying and even acknowledged that it was probably true. It didn't change the fact that she’d been drawing these pictures for over two years and some of those women had been alive when Paige had drawn them.
She stepped a little closer to Brett and put her hands on his arms. "It's just hard. And I'm tired. And all this is… overwhelming."
His arm slipped around her and he pulled her against his chest. "I know. You just have to hang in there. Give yourself a chance to process it all.”
They walked the rest of the way out the front door to where Tom had parked on the curb and held the car door open. The darkness seemed even more oppressive. Paige shuddered again, even with Brett's arm wrapped protectively around her.
"Maybe I should come with you," he said, concern clear in his eyes as he looked at her. "You can't discount the trauma it does to a psyche to see this much violence when you're not accustomed to it."
As they stepped outside Paige wanted to brush his comment off. To make a light or witty statement that would take the look out of his eyes, the concern that she was pretty close to losing it.
And she was.
This blackness that seemed to surround them now was more than just night. Whatever anyone wanted to call it –the darkness before the dawn– it was ripping at her. Clawing at her mind.
"I just need sleep." It was the only sentence she could get out. She knew he needed to stay here. Needed to find out who that other woman was. Needed to do something besides cater to her psychotic episodes.
Her cowardice had already cost women their lives. The least she could do now was let him go do his job to stop the killer.
"Are you sure? I know Tom will take you straight home and you'll be safe but will you be okay?”
"Yes." The word came out as a croak and she knew she wouldn't fool him much longer. She kissed him on the cheek. She just needed to hold on a few seconds longer until she could get inside the car and fall apart on her own.
She slid into the backseat and gave her best smile to Brett.
"I'll be over as soon as I can. Just rest. Even if you can't sleep, just rest." He gave her a hard kiss on the lips and then pulled back closing the door.
She could hear him saying something to Tom but she didn't even try to listen. All she could do was hold onto herself, hold onto her sanity, as the blackness around her seemed to push against her further.
Tom didn't try to talk to her all the way back to the house, which was good because Paige wasn't sure she could get a sentence through her lips right now.
She saw his concerned gaze in the rearview mirror a few times, but she didn't even have it in her to try to give him a reassuring smile.
She just wanted to go home and sleep. She prayed sleep would not elude her tonight because she wasn't sure how she would cope if it did. She would even take a pill if she needed to.
She tried to pull some strength around her. To tell herself that she was capable of handling this. But with the darkness surrounding her so heavily on all sides she was finding it difficult to do so.
When they pulled up at the house Paige sat looking at it out the window. She didn't want to go inside. Didn't want to have to go through the darkness to get to the door.
She knew she was being unreasonable. She had full-t
ime security here. There was no sadistic killer here. He was just inside her mind.
Still, she wished she had asked Brett to come with her. She wouldn't have even had to ask. She just wished she had agreed when he offered.
"Are you ready to go inside Miss Jeffries?" Tom was looking at her with concern from the rearview mirror again.
"Tom, can you just walk in with me? I know it's probably an insult to your professionalism to ask you to check the house one more time. But would you--"
"Absolutely. And it doesn't insult me in anyway. You pay us very well to make sure you feel secure. Whatever that means is what we'll do."
"I know you have to feel like I'm slipping off the wagon. Especially after how Jacob just talked about no one being after me."
Of course that had been before she knew she was connected to a killer.
"I do know exhaustion can play a factor in how secure someone feels. So don't be hard on yourself. See how you're feeling in a few hours after you get some sleep. I bet you'll feel much better and ready to handle it. Whatever it may be."
Tom helped her out of the car and ushered her into the house. She walked with him as he checked every room, every closet, under every bed.
Anywhere where the boogie man could hide.
"Guess this proves I'm pretty psychotic."
The older man shook his head kindly. "Not at all. It's always better to feel secure than to let your pride get you into a situation where your imagination can run away with you. I'll be right out in the guard house if you need me."
"Thank you, Tom. For everything."
"Detective Wagner updated me with some of the information. You can trust that we're going to be on full alert."
He nodded at her once more and then left.
Exhaustion flooded Paige. She was relieved to feel it.
She was home. She was secure. She was out of the oppressive darkness that seemed to be following her since she stepped out of the police station.
Tom was right. Brett was right. She needed sleep, to give her body and mind a chance to regroup. As she walked by the room with the easel, she felt relief that the box of pictures was gone. They were in Brett’s hands now, where good could finally be done. If these women couldn’t be saved, at least he could find justice for them.
Critical Instinct Page 17
