“I’m back at the damn scene,” she replied. “Just way too damn many areas for somebody to have watched for whoever was coming. I’ve been trying to determine whether these two sets of victims were targeted or random.”
“The coroner just called about the second couple.”
“Good, I’ll call him back.”
“No need. I just talked to him, and he told me absolutely nothing is there, outside of two very healthy individuals, cut down in the prime of their lives.”
“Which really sucks.” She let out a slow breath. “They were out here, fit and healthy, exercising and looking after themselves, enjoying life, and some asshole had to stop it.” Running her hand through her hair in frustration, she added, “Oh, I was thinking about running a search, looking for anybody else who may have died out in this area, beyond that last two years.”
“You mean, on the trails?”
“Yeah, I was wondering about that,” she shared. “I did run a search on any criminal history for any of the four victims, and, so far, nothing major showed up. The one woman was in a car accident quite a few years ago, but there didn’t appear to be any charges or any major injuries to it.”
“Yeah, I did the same thing,” Rodney confirmed. “Nothing popped in my case either. I haven’t looked for any deaths on the pathway though. Do you want me to follow up on that?”
“Sure, I just don’t know where to go from here.” The frustration was evident in her voice. “Sorry, I don’t mean to be taking it out on you.”
“No problem. The death notices have been done, regarding the two latest victims,” he stated. “And, of course, it’s the same deal. Everybody is in shock. The couple had no enemies, and nobody knows why anybody would do this to them.”
“You know what I keep coming back to?” she began. “And I know it’s a horrible thought, but I keep coming back to this second case being some cover-up.”
There was silence on the other end. “You actually think somebody killed these two in order to make the first two look random?” he asked slowly.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “It’s a big deal because it means the killer is taking a lot more chances to do this again, without being seen or leaving evidence.”
“Not only taking a lot more chances of getting caught but also showing a complete disregard for life.”
“Or a super-sensitized regard for his own,” she clarified. “When you think about it, that’s an awful lot of people dying in order to get whatever he wanted out of it.”
“Yet we haven’t really got anything—outside of too few witnesses and the two husbands’ word for any of this.”
“I know,” she agreed, “and that just adds to my headache.”
“Of course it does,” he murmured, “but let me see if I can come up with anything on the crime history in that area.”
“You know that, if nothing else breaks,” she said, “the worst part is feeling like we’re just waiting for another victim.”
“And yet what good will that do, another death with no forensic evidence? Surely he wouldn’t kill a third time at that same general area?”
“The second kills were just a tad removed from the first,” she noted, “which makes sense, in case we staked out that initial crime scene. So that also tends to mean any third kill would likely be over a little bit more.”
“Or in a completely different area,” he warned.
“I sure as hell wish we could get surveillance out here.”
“You can ask the sergeant for it, but you know what they say about public spaces like that.”
“I know. I know.” She groaned. “And honestly, there’d be no good way to hide the cameras. And too many locations where we need eyes to even get started.”
“Not well enough anyway.”
“And you know, chances are, we’ll be hiding them in one area, and it’ll happen in another.”
“Always,” Rodney replied. “These guys aren’t stupid.”
“Yet I wonder just how smart they really are,” she murmured. She hung up and walked back toward her car.
The trails were vast paths all over the place, and some of them even connected through blocks of townhomes and came back around again to hook up to other spots.