“You know you would do it too, don’t you?”
Chapter 6
“I’m considering goingrunning tomorrow morning.” Kate glanced at Simon.
“Do you think he’d kill again that fast?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “If I could install some cameras up and down the pathway, that would make me happy.”
“Can you get a surveillance team to do that or something?”
“There’s a million reasons why we can’t,” she replied.
“And that just makes it that much more awkward. Even with cause and effect.”
“Public security, privacy rights,blah, blah, blah,” she complained, with a shrug. “We’re going through the street cameras around the area, but it’s such a heavy traffic spot that it will be difficult to pinpoint anybody. And the same vehicles come and go on a regular basis. The IT department’s got a long list—and we’ve got Reese and her two assistants helping them as much as they can—but, short of something to narrow it down, nothing is happening. The rope that was used was cheap and could have been bought in any hardware store,” she added. “They were killed by a garrote, probably handmade, according to the coroner, or at least it wasn’t an easily identifiable piece of wire, just plain old wire. And they were knocked out by a branch first.” She explained the setup to Simon.
“Wow.” He relaxed a little farther back, bringing his knee up to rest his beer bottle on. “When you think about it that way, it actually takes quite a bit of planning.”
“And the mode of killing wasn’t random. Whether it was random that he chose them as his victims, it wasn’t random once he decided on them.”
He frowned at her.
She shrugged. “Think about it. He’s up on the top of a nearby hill, and he’s looking for his victim. Is he looking forthatparticular victim?”
“Maybe. Is he looking for those two victims?”
“Maybe,” she murmured. “So, it might have been that they weren’t random in the sense that he chose them because he saw them coming. But it’s still possible that they were random in the sense that anybody could have been coming along and would have been good enough to have done the job on them.”
“Right, and those random killers are much harder to catch.”
“They’re damn hard to catch,” she murmured. “Stranger killings are always bad. In this case, if it happens again, then you know there’ll be a massive outcry from the public—and with good reason. This is a popular running trail, and, all of a sudden, it’s been tainted by killers.”
“Not to mention the ongoing danger of the killers,” he noted, with a sidelong look at her.
She nodded. “It’s a PR nightmare, and the department would obviously do our best to try and solve it quickly. Stranger abductions generally take longer because we can’t solve them until we get more victims and find a pattern or connection.”
“Ouch,” he murmured.
“Exactly,” she said. “You know I’ve done everything I can so far, and it’s only a matter of time before I get pulled off the case.”
He nodded. “Anything else you can do?”
“I’ll do it tonight.… Or maybe I can just call.” She frowned. “I really want to talk to that other husband, Agnew, and ask if he was in the same boat.”
“But you won’t know that over the phone.”
“No,” she replied quietly. “He might be capable of hiding it over the phone. I need to see his face.” She checked her watch. “I think I’ll run up there right now.” She hopped to her feet. She tossed back the rest of her beer, handed the empty bottle back to him, and said, “Maybe I’ll go for a run afterward.”
“Or go tomorrow morning, like you said earlier,” he suggested.
She frowned, then shrugged. “Or how about I do both?”
“You need the exercise?”
She nodded. “Honestly? Yes. This tension is coiling up inside me.”
“Then we’ll both go,” he stated. “Let me get changed real quick, and we’ll go talk to Agnew now. Then you can run the pathway and wear off some of that energy at the same time.”