Page 106 of The Whispering Girls
FORTY-FOUR
Sunday 1210 hours
Katie hurried and finished her search of Jack’s veterinary practice and home as fast but as accurately as she could. She didn’t want to miss anything as they weren’t going to be able to backtrack once they sealed up the place. She gathered loose pieces of paper with notes, stuffing them into her pockets, and snapped photos of the rest as a point of origin: photographs, cut-out articles from the newspapers, and a list of documents that were missing.
One thing that struck Katie was that there wasn’t anything about the place that read criminal mind, killer, or someone up to no good. Everything was quite normal personal belongings, and even items that Katie thought might be keepsakes, such as concert ticket stubs, matches from restaurants, and pens from various hotels he stayed at, nothing had a creepy aspect. These were objects many people kept as mementos or souvenirs.
Katie found a nine-millimeter gun and plenty of ammunition hidden in the bottom drawer of a bedroom nightstand. There wasn’t anything else that would be a helpful weapon.She knew they would be heading into the unknown and the culprit or culprits knew the area and would have the upper hand.
She looked at the time and calculated that the reinforcements would automatically be deployed in roughly six hours. They could wait it out, but she knew John didn’t have the luxury of time.
“C’mon, Cisco,” she said. They went up the secret staircase for the last time.
Katie, McGaven, and Cisco left the Echo Forest Lodge with the excuse that they were going to search the hospital using the dog. Clark wanted to join them, seeming to not fully trust them, but they declined. Trust worked both ways.
The detectives decided to take Katie’s Jeep. They remained quiet as Katie drove and McGaven loaded bullets into extra magazines.
Katie knew that when they tracked down the chief and Jack, things would begin to make sense—at least that was what she hoped. Her thoughts wandered to John. They had put him in difficult positions before and he always had their backs. John’s expertise with forensics made him indispensable. And she cared for him. She thought he cared for her too. Perhaps always had. But she’d had a fiancé and then had been dealing with that breakup. Timing hadn’t been on their side.
“What are you thinking about? I mean, you should see the look on your face,” said McGaven.
“Just everything.”
“That doesn’t sound like the Katie Scott I know.”
“I’m not feeling like Katie Scott right now.”
“What do you mean?” he said.
She ignored that. “We’ve been able to track down information about the chief and Jack, but I can’t get those crimescenes out of my mind,” she stated. “You didn’t see Jack processing TJ’s scene. It was clear he was horrified but he managed to stay professional and very competent the whole time.”
“The staged crime scenes, posing, and the totems left behind, seem to come from another type of person. You know as well as I do that there’s no one type—or two or three. These killers all have their motivation for doing what they’re doing,” said McGaven.
“Iamrubbing off on you.”
“What can I say? I’ve learned a few things. But can we just not be inside exploding buildings anymore?”
“I can’t promise,” she said.
The roads were still deserted though it had stopped snowing the past couple of hours. There was a frosty wind making the temperature drop even more. There were no signs of anyone using a snowplow, but some sidewalks and driveways had been cleared. It would take a few more days for the roads to be drivable for most.
“I just can’t stop thinking about Theresa and TJ. They never got to find each other again and just be sisters.” Katie shook her head. She would have loved having a sibling, a sister or a brother, but this was her life as an only child. “Both of them had their faces covered and that generally means the killer was someone who either had met them or knew them. They were strangled and there wasn’t any sign of overkill. No other injuries like numerous stab wounds.”
“But the placements of a hanging and one lying peacefully in the park…” he said.
“Every time I think about the killer, I get mixed feelings.”
“You mean more than one killer? That would explain the difference in how they were displayed, and then Natalie at the hospital being different again, and the other nurse and security guard.”
“No, I believe only one killer murdered all five victims,” she said.
“And Carol Ann?”
“That murder doesn’t have the same MO and signature as the three key homicides. Everything that we have points to a different killer.”
“It’s been fifteen years. Maybe the MO and signature have changed?” he said. “When I searched down homicides in the past two years with the same signature and MO, it was limited. Why? The internet signal was terrible and the search parameters I used were vague. But still…I did find two that might have, or could have, been committed by the same person.”
“Where?”
