“Wow,” she replied. “Once again, we’re back to that lack of respect.”
“Nobody else in this fucking world understands anything. Everybody is stupid,” he muttered, as he took another swig.
She considered her next question, when her phone went off. She walked several steps over to the front door and answered Owen’s call. “Hey.”
“Two other cases.”
She started to swear. “Damn it, around here?”
“No, in the province of Alberta no less. One in the city of Calgary,” Owen added, “and they found one in Edmonton, the capital, about two years ago.”
“Jesus,” she said. “You want to keep going cross-country and let me know what you find?”
“Yeah, will do.”
“So, we have at least four dead, and this missing girl is a possible fifth.”
“But we don’t know for sure, do we?” Owen asked.
“No,” she agreed. “And why would he be back here in Vancouver again?”
“Depends on if he’s doing a couple in each location and then moving on,” he guessed.
“And the problem is, we don’t have enough cases to know yet.”
“I’m on it,” Owen replied. “When you come back, hopefully we’ll have more figures for you.”
“Okay.” She hung up and turned toward the suspect, only to find him snoring on the couch. She shook her head and whispered, “So much for Prince Charming.” She walked over to join Rodney, who had done a full search on the apartment. When he stepped out of Henry’s bedroom, he shook his head. She nodded. “Let’s go. We know where to find him.”
As they walked to his car, she told him what Owen had said.
“Two in Alberta?”
She nodded. “Now they’re contacting other major centers across the provinces.”
“Good God,” Rodney said. “We really need to get these databases linked together.”
“More than that,” she added, “this is getting pretty rough. If these are all related in MO, we have a serial killer who likely started back at the same time as our original victim.”
“But was Lord the ground zero case?”
“We don’t know.”
“That would help a lot too,” he muttered, “if we can at least catch a break on something.”
“Finding new victimsiscatching a break,” she reminded him. “Of course we don’t want there to be more victims. Yet, if these cases line up, now we’ll see a pattern, and every crime scene will tell us something more.”
“Depending on how old the murders are,” he stated.
“We’ll find out just as soon as we get back to the office.”
And, with that, he suggested, “I’d say, let’s head that way now.”
They got into the vehicle, and he took off for the station.
*
The pain wasalmost incapacitating. Simon started out fine and managed to get through part of the day. However, by the time lunch came around, his ankle was killing him, and his wrists were killing him, and his shoulders were killing him. After about twenty minutes experiencing the extreme pain, he finally noted it wasn’t his pain. It was hers. Her pain was enough to almost cripple him.