He pushed the Search button, and, within a few seconds, the results flashed on the screen with twelve names.
She whistled. “Jesus, twelve women in the last seven days.”
He nodded. “But remember? Just because they’ve been reported doesn’t mean that they’re actually missing. As adults, they have every right to wander on their own.”
“I know,” she stated, “but Christ.” She looked at the list and was struck almost immediately by the looks of the third photo on the left. “Look at that one.”
“Why her?”
“Because she resembles the other two victims.”
He looked at the photo sharply and quickly brought up another screen, where he opened up the pictures of the two victims they already had, and he nodded. “That’s her,” he agreed. “Obviously our killer has a type. Now that he’s three for three.”
“Yes, I agree.”
And, with that, Rodney printed off the photos, and she arranged them on the whiteboard, so they were beside each other, then shook her head. “We need to find out who this person is, when and how she went missing, and what the hell is going on.”
Rodney added, “Based on Simon’s message, it looks like we’ve got an urgent scenario happening here.”
Just then, the sergeant walked in. “What’s all this?” he asked, motioning at the photos. She hesitated, and then he raised an eyebrow. “Detective Morgan, you’re not trying to keep something from me, are you?”
“No, sir,” she replied. “I’m not. I’m just not certain that I want to share it with you yet.”
He just glared at her, setting his hands on his hips.
“Look. Just ten minutes ago I got this text message, and that brought us to this point,” she explained, as she held up her phone, tapping it, so that Simon’s text would come up.
“What’s this?” he asked, looking at her.
“A text from Simon. He’s been connecting with a female who has been screaming in his head. He hasn’t been able to find any place or location or distinctive landmarks to locate her. Nothing that would tell us where she is or who she is, so it wasn’t anything I could work with,” she stated. “And, besides, it’s not like I have time on my hands and am just sitting here twiddling my thumbs.”
“No, of course not,” Colby agreed. “Then Simon sent you this message. What is so important about it?”
“It’s the ankle reference. Both of our prior victims had their ankles broken.”
He looked at the board. “You have three women up there. Are you saying you already know who this third woman is?”
“We did a quick search of missing persons in the last seven days.” She motioned over at Rodney. “We chose females between fifteen and forty, and almost immediately, out of the twelve women, I saw this one.”
“But you can’t rule out the others.”
“No, but look at the three victims. See if she is the right one,” she noted.
Colby frowned at Kate, then studied the photos and nodded slowly. “He’s got a type.”
“Yes. At least if this is his third victim, he does. Of course we can’t exclude the other possibilities, and we’ll do our due diligence to make sure, but, if we had to guess, she’s the one who fits.”
“Do we have any information on her?”
Rodney hopped to his feet, a sheet in his hand that he’d just pulled off the printer. “She never showed up for work, but she’d had a fight with her boyfriend the previous night. She went to her girlfriend’s, where she slept overnight. They were both headed to work for the day, but the friend said that our missing girl had been really upset and was talking about just taking off for a while. So we don’t know if she took off on her own or if she got picked up by somebody else,” Rodney explained.
The sergeant shook his head. “But the bottom line is, how does any of this connect to the other cases? How does this guy know who this woman is or that she’d be perfect for his cause? And did he know ahead of time that she was distraught?”
“Well, the only way we’ll find that out,” Kate noted, “is to find him. Or her.”
Colby turned to Kate and asked her, “So what the hell are you doing sitting on your backside?” She just glared at him. Laughing, he said, “Get to it. But this is good. This is movement.”
“We could be barking up the wrong tree completely,” she added, as if warning him.