Page 121 of The Whispering Girls
Officer Clark confessed he was an FBI agent working undercover to force out Chief Cooper, but that still didn’t feel right, even after Katie saw the badge.
And Officer Banning wasn’t seen after the hospital incident.
Katie knew the killer staged the scenes, but all three were different, two subtly and one very much so. It seemed to read that there was someone else—someone who possibly made Jack a pawn. The hospital workers found outside were collateral damage and witnesses to the crime. This person killed easily and whenever they had to.
Katie trudged onward as quietly as possible and began to make her big loop to try to bypass the shooter and be able to come up from behind them. That was her plan, anyway.
Her mind shuffled facts swiftly. She focused on the crime scenes, the totems, and how the victims were killed.
All strangled up close and personal…
Hung from a tree…
Faces covered…
Totem using some of the victim’s things…
Laid out for everyone to see.
Posed…
Message written in blood for effect…indicating there would be more…
People aren’t who they say they are…and some surprised her…
Victims were killed with moderate and selective force. Nothing personal but their belongings, which meant that the killer was trying too hard…
Her, McGaven’s, and John’s presence posed a big problem, which needed to be taken care of…
The murder of Carol Ann was separate from the three main victims…
The secrecy…
The rural area…
The weather…
Devin had been watching and didn’t know it…He understood where people were located, the news, the hunters, and even was intrigued with serial killers…
There was a serial killer about fifteen years ago and victims were scattered around the county and not Echo Forest specifically…
Who would know this?
They wanted to create copycat killings. Why?
People who copycat kill are rare, but it happens. They are usually insecure and feel that their life hasn’t met up to their expectations. Katie had read several articles about this type of killer. This type of killing would make them feel important doing something that can’t be solved. Their ego would expand by watching people try to investigate the homicides and what the media was saying about it. It was what drove him and he would continue until he was stopped.
The killer was attracted to a certain type of victim and couldn’t help but kill and sexually attack them postmortem. By the look of the first crime scene and behavioral evidence, it had been something that was committed by more of a seasoned killer honing his skills and feeding his need. The clues left on purpose, the display of the victims, and then the totems almost seemed overkill. Even though they didn’t have all the information they would normally, the picture of the killer was becoming clearer…and clearer. It was someone who knew and understood law enforcement, who was intelligent, clever, and becoming more efficient with every scene. It could have taken months, but most likely years for this to happen.
Katie paused, letting her body relax before going on. “It couldn’t be,” she barely whispered.
She heard a noise in front of her. It was someone’s steps in the snow and heavy breathing, as if the person had been walking for a long time.
Katie jetted into a heavily filled pine area in between an oversized sequoia tree. She could see the outline of a person, average height, primed for shooting as they stared through a scope. There were some gaps in linkage, but it was Katie’s extreme reasoning and experienced inference that pointed to the only person who could be the killer. Upon first thought, it seemed unlikely but the more she thought about it—she knew who the killer was.
Now she stared at their back.
It was him. He could use his authority to cover up his murders as well as using whatever he could to commit his crimes, making it appear that Jack or the chief committed them.
