Page 56 of Nora
Nora smiled. “I couldn’t agree more.” Although she wished her mind would figure out who the killer was. Only then would she truly be able to rest. Rising from her seat, she said good night to her four companions, then took the stairs to the third floor. Entering her room, she slipped her shoes off, then changed out of her jeans and sweater and into a pair of leggings, wool socks, and fleece sweatshirt.
Pulling her hair into a bun, she took a seat at her desk, then opened her computer. She wasn’t expecting any new intel, especially not from Sabina, who’d been called away on another case. But the first email message that popped up was from her asking Nora to call when she had a chance.
It was odd for Sabina to email and not text, and that piqued her curiosity. It was a little late, but Nora reached for her phone then noticed it had run out of power. Which explained the email. Sure enough, when she plugged it in, there were two texts from Sabina and one from Six.
She responded to Six first, assuring her that both she and Lucian would be at the party on Saturday. Six was acting as if Lucian would back out and she needed to keep confirming his attendance. Nora knew he wouldn’t. If he hadn’t wanted to go, he would have said as much. She still didn’t know why his family was so worried about him, but she did know that if he said he wanted to go, then he’d go.
Once she had Six calmed down about Saturday, she texted Sabina.“Sorry, phone lost charge. Is it too late to talk now?”
Her phone rang almost as soon as she hit Send. “I’m guessing it’s not too late, then,” Nora said.
Sabina let out a huff. “I’m still at work. Had to wrap up some stuff from the last case, so I decided to get it all done while I finished your project.”
Nora straightened. “You’re done?”
“I am. I’m packaging up the reports and was going to send them to you, but I can walk you through it, too?”
“Please.” A frisson of excitement grabbed hold of her.
“There are a lot of random similarities between the ten victims, but only two that are consistent across every victim.”
“And?”
“Religion and age.”
Nora hesitated. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting, but it wasn’t that. “Age?” The ages seemed fairly diverse to her when she’d reviewed the files.
“Every victim is between the ages of fifty-five and sixty-five. It’s an unusual range for a serial killer to target. I know, because I looked at that, too, when I saw the results.”
“What did you find?” Nora asked. Serial killers were not high on the list of people intelligence agents targeted. Most of what she knew about them came from the psychology courses she’d taken in college. More years ago than she wanted to admit.
“I know you already noticed that this killer is indiscriminate about ethnicity and gender, which is unusual. But most serial killers also tend to target the young—it’s something like half of all serial killer victims are under the age of thirty. That’s not always the case, of course. However, if a killer targets a different age range, they usually have something else—like gender or job or ethnicity—that pulls them to those targets. Because your killer doesn’t appear to be tied to any of those, the age parameters are unusual.”
Nora wondered if it was something about the age that triggered the killer. Maybe parental issues? Maybe someone carrying a grudge from childhood related to a teacher?
Deciding to let that intel percolate for a little while, she asked, “What else?”
“Religion,” Sabina said.
“As in…?”
“They are all religious, or if not religious, connected to the Church. The Catholic Church, to be specific.”
Nora frowned. Mentally sorting through the intel, she recalled that Loretta Campion was listed as the local parish secretary. And Michael Kelly was a monk. Other than those two victims, she didn’t remember any mention of the Church, or religion, in the other files. Then again, that’s why she’d asked Sabina to help.
“All of them?” she asked.
“All of them. I sent you the file, but their roles ranged from choir director to bell ringer to a major donor. All appear to have been devout, although looks can be deceiving. At the very least, they were all involved with the Church—whether they were true believers or not, I can’t say.”
“I wonder what that means,” Nora pondered out loud.
“Someone with a grudge against the Church would be my first guest,” Sabina answered.
“But is that grudge because of the Church itself or because of the role the Church played in the killer’s life? Like maybe one of his parents was über devout and made his life miserable. Or the killer’s sister became a nun and she was treated badly. I know I’m kind of going off the rails, but there are a lot of options.” Then realizing how that might have come out, she added, “It’s still more than we had before. So, thank you. I’ll start probing the suspects’ relationships with the Church and see if any have a bad reaction.”
“You’ve narrowed the pool, though, haven’t you? I’ve been in touch with Cyn, and she mentioned you’re down to four?”
“We are. Of those, I know that two go to church regularly. In fact, I was just talking to Jean and Angelo about Mass on Sunday. They went to the service at the monastery where Michael Kelly lived.”
