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Synopsis
He took her life, but left her alive. Three years ago, reporter Kate Johnson was the first victim-and only survivor-of the Broadcast Butcher. Scarred both physically and psychologically by the brutal serial killer, Kate lives life on the run, knowing that one day, he will find her and finish what he started. In the pursuit of justice, you sometimes have to step outside the law. Agent Hayden Reed spends his life chasing monsters. The only way to stay sane is to detach, but the second the Broadcast Butcher case crosses his desk, Hayden knows this is the case that might just cost him his soul. To catch this vicious murderer before he strikes again, Hayden must find Kate and earn her trust. For it's her darkest secrets that hold the key to stopping this madman once and for all . . .
Release date: April 29, 2014
Publisher: Forever
Print pages: 416
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The Broken
Shelley Coriell
CHAPTER ONE
Tuesday, June 9, 1:48 a.m.Mancos, Colorado
The cry was low and tortured, pulled from the gut of a man who’d been to hell and back.
Kate Johnson threw off her covers and grabbed the box of paper clips she kept on her nightstand. “I’m coming, Smokey Joe,” she called even though the old man couldn’t hear her. He was too far away, trapped in a time and place known only to his tormented mind. She tore down the steps of the cabin and into Smokey’s bedroom.
“Safety pins! Where the hell are my safety pins?” Smokey’s hands clawed at the covers she’d tucked around him four hours ago. “Dammit to hell! I need those pins.”
Kate took one of his hands in hers and dropped a handful of paper clips onto his palm. “Here you go.”
His knobby fingers clamped around the bits of metal, and he dipped them in a frantic but practiced rhythm. Eventually his cries died off and gave way to moans. Then came the sobs. They were the worst.
As she had done dozens of times over the past six months, she sank to her knees beside his bed and gathered him in her arms. Papery skin over old bones. The sour-sweet smell of cold sweat. Her cheek rubbed against the sprigs of gray hair on his head. As the sobs tapered off and his trembling ceased, she looked at her arms and shook her head. How could a hug, nothing more than two arms, her arms, stop a war?
When the old man’s breathing returned to normal, he opened his sightless eyes. “That you, Katy-lady?”
She squeezed his bony knee. “Yes.”
Relief smoothed the lines of terror twisting his face.
She left his bedside and opened the top drawer of the bureau. “Who was it?”
He inched himself to an upright position. “Never got a name on this one. He wasn’t talking by the time ground grunts got him in the chopper. Mortar round blew off half his neck.”
“What do you remember about him?” This was another thing she didn’t understand, Smokey’s need to relive the pains of the past. Yesterday’s horrors should be bundled up and tucked away. They had no place in this world. She reached into the drawer for a clean nightshirt.
“He had red hair, color of a firecracker, and he held a picture of his momma in his hand. We lost him before we got to Da Nang, but I made sure the hospital crew got the picture and told them to tell that boy’s momma she’d been right there with her son when he needed her, offering comfort only a momma can.”
Mommas don’t offer comfort. The thought snuck up on her, a jarring uppercut to the chin.
“Katy-lady, you okay?”
The bureau drawer slammed shut. “I’m fine.”
She handed Smokey Joe the clean nightshirt and sat on the foot of the bed. That’s when she noticed the soft voices coming from the radio on the nightstand. A late-night talk show host was talking to William from Michigan about a school shooting in New Jersey that left two eleven-year-olds dead. “This!” She jabbed a hand at the radio. “What is this?”
“Don’t know.” Smokey raised his gaze to the ceiling. “Can’t see.”
She snapped off the radio, silencing the voices. “You were listening to the news before bed again, weren’t you?”
“You going to start nagging me? I don’t pay you to ride my ass.”
“No, you pay me to take care of you, and if you don’t want to take out any new help wanted ads, listen to me. Your doctor said no news before bedtime. Those stories from the Mideast bring back too many war memories.” And trigger nightmares of a time when he desperately tried to save bloody and broken bodies with only a handful of safety pins and a heart full of hope.
His gnarled fingers fumbled with the buttons of his sweat-soaked nightshirt. She reached over to help.
“I wasn’t listening to no war news. There was another one of them Barbie murders. This one right here in Colorado. All the stations are yammering about it.”
Barbie murders? What an insane world, filled with criminals without conscience, a public fascinated by the gory and gruesome, and media ready to unite the two for the sake of ratings. She didn’t miss the crazy world of broadcast news and had no regrets that she hadn’t seen a newscast in almost three years, not since she’d been the news.
She unfastened Smokey’s next two buttons. “So a Barbie was killed?”
“Yep. Course the coppers don’t call ’em Barbies. That’s just my name, but I think that makes six now, all TV gals, all stabbed to death in their homes.”
She grew still. “Broadcast journalists? Stabbed?”
“Yeah, not too pretty, either. Each gal had more than fifty knife wounds. Now why the hell does someone need to stab a body fifty times?”
Her hand sought the scar between her right eye and temple. Because twenty-five isn’t enough to kill?
“I’ll tell you why.” Smokey jabbed a crooked index finger at his temple. “He ain’t right in the head.”
Kate slipped the shirt off Smokey’s bony shoulders, her own shoulders relaxing. As an investigative reporter she’d seen up close the machinations of the criminal mind. She knew the mean and twisted and evil that perpetuated crimes against humanity. There were plenty of bad people in this world, plenty of knife-wielding crazies, and the twenty-five scars that crisscrossed her body had nothing to do with Smokey’s Barbies. “Haven’t we both determined the world in general isn’t right in the head?”
“But this guy’s sick, scary sick. He does that creepy thing with the mirrors.”
The curtains on Smokey’s window shifted with the night breeze, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. “Mirrors?”
“After he kills them Barbies, the screwball goes around breaking every mirror in the house. Shatters every single one. You ever heard of such a crazy thing?”
Sounds ricocheted through her head. The swoosh of a hammer. The crack of glass. The obscenely happy tinkle of falling mirror fragments.
Smokey’s shirt, soaked in sweat and terror, fell from her hand.
* * *
Tuesday, June 9, 2:20 a.m. Colorado Springs, Colorado
Hayden Reed stared at the shards of mirror that once covered an entire wall in Shayna Thomas’s entryway. The largest piece was no bigger than two inches square.
Insanity was one hell of a wrecking ball.
He squatted to study the destruction, looking for trace—blood, footprints, hairs, fibers, anything that would lead him to the killer he’d been tracking for five months. All he saw in the broken mirror were distorted bits of his face, a macabre reflection of a man who’d been slammed by a wrecking ball of his own.
Parker Lord’s voice echoed through his head. “Hold off on the Colorado slaying,” his boss had said. “Hatch can cover for you and bring you up to speed when you get things wrapped up in Tucson with your family.”
Hayden stood. His family was fine.
Time to hunt for the Butcher. But first he needed to track down Sergeant Lottie King.
A uniform directed Hayden through the living room and down a hallway where he came face-to-face with a short, round African American woman. Her crinkly gray hair hugged her head in a tight knot, and she wore a simple navy suit and a Glock 22 holstered under her left arm. On her feet were the highest, reddest heels he’d ever seen outside a whorehouse.
“Chief warned me some FBI hotshot was coming in, and you got hotshot written all over you.” The sergeant crossed her arms over her chest. “My boys said you’re one of Parker Lord’s men, a fucking Apostle. That true?”
Hayden noticed the tone. It happened often at the mention of Parker’s Special Criminal Investigative Unit, a small group of FBI specialists known for working outside the box and, according to some, outside the law. Some media pundit nicknamed them the Apostles. Like Parker, Hayden didn’t care about names, only justice. “Yes.”
“Heard you boys play by a different set of rules.”
He clasped his hands behind his back. “We don’t play.”
Her jaw squared in a challenge as she jutted her chin toward the shattered mirror in the hallway. “So tell me, Agent I-Don’t-Play, what’s your take?”
Shayna Thomas had been found dead in her bedroom four hours ago. Multiple stab wounds. No signs of sexual trauma. Shattered mirrors. All the earmarks of another Broadcaster Butcher slaying. Hayden pointed to a spot three feet down the hall. “The unsub stood there. One strike. Used a long-handled, blunt instrument he brought with him. Carefully positioned his body out of the glass trajectory. You’ll find no blood near this or any of the other broken mirrors. You’ll also find no footprints, no fingerprints, no trace, and no witnesses.” The other Butcher crime scenes had been freakishly void of evidence.
The sergeant locked him in a stare down. He studied the wide, steady stance of those high heels, the indignant puff of her chest, and the single corkscrew of hair that stuck out above her right ear.
“And your take, Sergeant King?”
The police sergeant’s nostrils flared. “I think we got us one fucked-up son of a bitch, and I can’t wait to nail his ass to the splintered seat of a cold, dark cell where he’ll never see the light of day.”
Early in his law enforcement career, he’d learned there were two kinds of people behind the shield: those seeking personal gain—a paycheck, ego strokes, power—and those seeking justice. Like him, the woman in the red shoes was one of the latter. Hayden unclasped his hands. “And I can’t wait to hand you a hammer.”
A smile wrinkled the corner of her eyes, and he saw what he needed: respect.
“Damn glad you’re here, Agent Reed.”
“For the record, Sergeant King, I hear you aren’t much of a slouch, either.”
“Ahh, a pretty face and a smooth talker. I think I might be able to work with you.” The smile in her eyes dimmed as she motioned him to follow her down the hall.
“Timeline?” Hayden asked.
“A man out walking his dog hears breaking glass as he passes Thomas’s house. He calls the station at 10:32. Beat officer arrives at 10:37. He makes repeated shout-outs, but no one responds. He looks through the front window, sees the broken mirror, and calls for backup. When the second uniform arrives, they enter and discover the victim in the master bedroom.”
“Positive ID?”
“Confirmed. Shayna Thomas. Homeowner.”
“Current status?”
“Crime Scene Division’s still processing.” Sergeant King’s red shoes drew to a halt. “This is one mother of a scene.”
“Blood.” Hayden didn’t frame the single word as a question. They’d found excessive amounts of blood at the other Butcher crime scenes, five since January.
“It’s the fucking Red Sea in there. You better watch those shiny shoes of yours.” Lottie pointed to the door in front of them. “I’m warning you. It ain’t pretty.”
Wrongful death never was.
Inside the bedroom, blood peppered four walls, striped the white down comforter, and clung to the fan centered on the ceiling. The victim lay on the ground in front of a dresser. Blood soaked her T-shirt and jogging shorts and matted her hair. She was a brunette, slim, probably attractive. Hard to tell. Lacerations decussated her face, arms, neck, and abdomen, but as he expected, the V at her legs was blood- and injury-free.
He saved the hands for last. He always did. It was hard to think clearly after seeing them, hard to stop being the dispassionate evaluator. Drawing air into his tightening lungs, he turned to Shayna Thomas’s bloody hands. They rested on her breasts, fingers intertwined as if in prayer, a gesture of peace amidst the chaos of murder.
For a moment he lowered his eyelids and calmed the rage that simmered in a place he refused to acknowledge.
Those bloody hands beckoned him, pulled him in, and wouldn’t let go. His boss, Parker Lord, was wrong. Hayden needed to be here.
* * *
Tuesday, June 9, 2:23 a.m. Mancos, Colorado
Run. Fast and far.
Kate’s hands shook worse than Smokey Joe’s as she yanked the saddlebags out of the closet and slammed them on her bed. From the bureau, she hauled out the few things she called her own: underwear, scarves, T-shirts, chambray overshirts, jeans, and her leathers. She jammed all but the leathers into the bags and threw in her brown contacts and hair dye. Meager belongings compared to her on-air days, a time when she wore a different face. A face not yet hacked by a madman. A madman who hadn’t stopped after the butcher job on her.
The wooden floor creaked behind her. She dropped her leathers and spun. Something shifted in the shadow of the doorway. She reached for the ceramic lamp on the nightstand then set it down when Smokey stepped out of the darkness.
He cleared his throat with a rough cough. “You taking off?”
Her hand dropped to her side, and she tried not to look into his sightless eyes, eyes filled with confusion and something else. Oh God, please don’t let him look at me like that. “Yes.” What more could she say? I’m sorry for disappointing you. I’m sorry for leaving because there’s a madman roaming the country who vowed to kill me and who has since murdered six other women.
She yanked the saddlebag zippers closed. How stupid to think she could stop running, stupid to stay in one place so long, and stupid to put an old, blind man like Smokey Joe in danger. She picked up the leather pants and jammed her legs into them. The Shayna Thomas attack had occurred in Colorado Springs, only three hundred miles from Smokey Joe’s cabin in southwestern Colorado.
Smokey scratched the stubble on his chin. “That big order? You got it done?”
“Order?” She grabbed her helmet from the top shelf of the closet.
“That gal out of San Diego who wants all them angels. You get ’em done?”
Kate couldn’t think about their online jewelry store or tourmaline angels. She thought only about getting away. “Order’s done. It’s boxed and on the table.”
“I’ll ship it.” One of Smokey’s slippers, the color and texture of beef jerky, whisked across the floor. “Where should I send your cut?”
“You keep it.” She needed no connections to Smokey Joe, no trail that could put him in the sights of a knife-wielding madman.
Smokey nodded and shuffled away. The sound of his ratty slippers on the floor she polished weekly pounded in her head and tugged at her heart.
The past six months with Smokey Joe had been peaceful, and after being on the run for more than two years, she’d needed the rest and recharge. During her time here in the scrub canyons and pine forests of southwestern Colorado, she hadn’t thought about the past or the future. She’d been simply living, living simply.
She flung her saddlebags over her shoulder—amazing how little a person needed to live—and rushed down the steps to the bottom floor. She bolted through the kitchen but ground to a halt at the backdoor.
Turning quickly, she set the timer for Smokey’s morning coffee, flicked on the bread machine, and left an urgent voice message with his case manager. Only then did she slip out of the house, deadbolt the lock, and escape into the safe cover of darkness.
Chapter Two
Tuesday, June 9, 5:07 a.m.Colorado Springs, Colorado
What’s wrong, Pretty Boy?” Sergeant Lottie King sat on the foot of the bed next to him.
Hayden pointed to the beveled mirror on the wall in Shayna Thomas’s spare bedroom. “It’s not broken.” Its wholeness slammed him in the gut, momentarily throwing him off balance.
“Maybe our killer thought eighty-four years of bad luck was enough,” Lottie added. “The SOB shattered the hell out of twelve others.”
Hayden shook his head. “It’s not consistent with his MO. He breaks every mirror in the house. In the Santa Fe slaying he even broke two mirrors in a model dollhouse. This mirror should be broken.”
“If it’s your guy.” Lottie kicked off her right shoe and rubbed her instep. “You think this might be a copycat?”
“It’s him.” For the past five months, Hayden walked in the Butcher’s shoes, invited the evil into his head. He knew how this offender worked. “Too many similarities. Victims’ professions and general looks, manner of death, complete lack of traceable evidence, and”—Hayden blinked hard, refusing to see the red—“the folded position of the hands is a holdback.”
Air rushed over Lottie’s lips. “Damn. We got us a monster right here in Colorado Springs.”
Monsters. That had been Marissa’s term for the violent criminals he spent most of his career chasing.
I’m always sharing you with monsters! Marissa had screamed at him. You never let go. Those killers you hunt are in our home, at our dinner table, in our bed.
He winced at the flash of memory and blamed it on Tucson.
Lottie poked her foot into her shoe. “Okay, Mr. FBI Profiler, get out that crystal ball of yours. Where the hell do we go now?”
In his line of work there was a proper order of things, a clear course of observation, analysis, and application. The process fortified him and drew him further away from that Tucson grave. Hayden motioned with his hand to the door. “The beginning.”
In the foyer they found Detective Scott Traynor. If Sergeant King was the head of the operation, Traynor was her hands and feet. The lead investigator was tall and lanky with straw-colored hair and freckles across his nose. Hayden pictured him sitting on a tractor in the eastern Colorado hayfields, but he wasn’t fooled by the easygoing farm-boy appearance. Lottie’s right-hand man carried a cell phone in his shirt pocket, a walkie-talkie clipped to his belt, and a small tablet in his hand. He wore a ring of sweat around his collar and dusty loafers. Scott Traynor was plugged in and running hard.
“Offender’s point of entry?” Hayden asked.
“No signs of force,” the detective said. “At this point we’re speculating he came in through the front door.”
Speculation did not solve murder investigations bathed in blood. That’s why he was here. Time to do his job. Time to become the monster.
Hayden walked to the front porch, where cool air crowded the charcoal night. “I’m Thomas’s attacker.” Hayden positioned himself in front of the door. “It’s after ten and dark, but the porch lights illuminate me. Thomas has a peephole. What do I do?”
“Is the door locked?” Detective Traynor asked.
Criminal investigative analysis started with studying the victims and their behaviors, and in the past five months, he’d spent hundreds of hours learning about the five murdered broadcasters. “Smart, successful women like Shayna Thomas don’t take safety risks. The door is locked. How do I get in?”
“You have a key,” the detective said.
Hayden reached into his pocket and took out his own set of keys, which jingled in the pre-dawn stillness. “How do I get the key?”
“You steal it.”
Lottie caught the detective’s attention. “Find out if Thomas had a recent issue with lost or stolen keys, and find out who had access to her purse both at work and home.”
“Good.” Hayden stuffed the keys in his pocket. Now from another angle, always a second angle, sometimes a third, sometimes a fourth or fifth or sixth. “I have no key. How do I get in?”
The detective frowned. “You knock on the door, and she lets you in?”
“Why would she do a dumb-ass thing like that?” Lottie asked.
Hayden asked himself that same question at the other five crime scenes, and now, like then, he faced the same chilling answer. “She knows me or has reason to trust me.”
Sergeant King opened her mouth, but before she could speak, the radio at her waist squawked. “Hey, Sarge, we need you out back. You aren’t going to believe what we found at Thomas’s bedroom window.”
* * *
Tuesday, June 9, 5:34 a.m. Mancos, Colorado
A pair of ratty, old slippers padded into the kitchen.
“Coffee’s on,” Kate said, her voice as soft as the early morning light slipping through the muslin curtains on the window over the sink.
Smokey Joe shuffled to the table and sniffed. “Tuesday.”
Yes, it was Tuesday, her baking day, and she was in Smokey’s kitchen, where swirling scents of cinnamon and yeasty bread warmed the air. A golden loaf, speckled with raisins, sat on the counter.
She poured a mug of coffee from the steaming pot and set it on Smokey’s placemat in the number three spot, right where he liked it. She pulled a serrated knifed out of the drawer, her hand tightening on the hilt as the sun glinted off the jagged metal blade. The flash of silver blinded her, but she blinked and cut two thick slices of bread, which she dropped in the toaster. “You have a doctor’s appointment this morning at nine, so we’ll need to leave here by eight.”
If Smokey was surprised she was still in the cabin, he didn’t show it. He sat and grunted. “Doctor Collins?”
“Yes.”
He took a long draw from his coffee. “Don’t like him. Pain in the ass.”
She smiled in spite of herself. “You’re going anyway.”
“Hell of a day,” Smokey said into the rim of his mug. “You riding my ass and Doctor Collins poking up it.”
A laugh joined her smile.
Smokey Joe took another swig. “You gonna tell me about it?”
The toast popped. So he wasn’t going to pretend last night never happened. She placed the toast on two plates. Nor could she.
When she had tried to leave, her bike wouldn’t start. Grounded until the parts store opened this morning, she’d tried to get some rest for the road trip ahead, but the anger coursing through her veins left her wide-eyed and wired. She ended up using Smokey’s computer to go online and learn about the Broadcaster Butcher murders. She’d discovered each attack mirrored hers except for one thing: She survived.
“Do we need to call the coppers?” Smokey continued in his worn, scratchy voice.
“No.” She’d gone that route in the beginning, and look where it got her. “Not yet.” But she would. She had to. She took the butter from the refrigerator, hacked off a chunk, and dropped it onto Smokey’s toast. But who to contact? The Colorado Springs Police would be the logical choice, but she’d relied on the local police after her own attack. Not only had they failed to capture her attacker, but also they hadn’t taken her story seriously. They all but called her a liar. More importantly, they failed to protect her when she needed them most.
“Why didn’t you take off last night?” Smokey asked when she set his plate in the number seven position.
She’d never been good at hiding her emotions, and right now, if Smokey weren’t blind, he’d see a massive dose of what was under her anger: fear mixed with guilt and shame. “Honestly?”
“Shoot straight or ditch the rifle.”
“My bike needs repair work. Ignition’s shot.” Shameful, to think she’d be taking off again if the mechanical gods hadn’t conspired against her. She’d be running from her past, from her responsibilities with Smokey, and from the fact that her attack was not the private nightmare she’d believed for three years.
Six women had died. Her stomach twisted.
Smokey Joe poked at the toast but didn’t eat. With a grumble he reached for the small glass dish that sat in the middle of the kitchen table. The little dish had an illustrated donkey and read LOST MY ASS IN LAS VEGAS.
He picked up the set of car keys that always rested there. “Here,” he said, his voice gruffer than normal.
“I can’t take your car, Smokey.” And I can’t involve you any more than you already are.
“I don’t plan on doing no driving this week.”
She couldn’t chuckle this time.
“You don’t got to keep it,” he said. “Just go into town, buy what you need at the parts store, then git.”
She started pacing. If only it were that easy. She’d stopped in Mancos because she’d run out of money and out of steam, but even with a wad of cash in her saddlebags and six months to rest her legs, she had things she needed to take care of, things that couldn’t be handled from the seat of her bike on a scenic road to nowhere.
Smokey picked up his toast. “You staying?”
She stopped behind his chair, noticing his hand shook. “For a while.” At least until she got Smokey a new aide and figured out who to talk to about her attack.
Smokey shoved back his plate of uneaten toast. “Then I got something for you.” Suddenly spry, he darted to the dented file cabinet in the corner of the kitchen and pulled out a small plastic case. Inside was a gleaming hunk of metal. “Ever shoot before?”
“No.”
“Wanna learn?”
Kate stared at the gun in the old soldier’s hand. After her attack, she’d thought about getting a gun, but that meant background checks, paperwork, lessons, all trails leading to her. Plus it meant fighting, something she’d been doing most of her life. For once she’d opted to run, and, in the end, that wrong choice had led to the horrific deaths of six broadcasters.
“Yes, I need to know how to handle a gun.”
Smokey’s fingers, steady and strong, reached for the box of ammunition in the case. “Good. I’ll teach you how to load, and we’ll head out back for target practice.” He took out five rounds and laid them in a straight line next to his coffee mug. “Then we’ll get the place ready.”
“Ready?”
“For war.”
* * *
Tuesday, June 9, 5:35 a.m. Colorado Springs, Colorado
The Crime Scene Division tech pushed aside a sun-crisped shrub, giving Hayden a clear view of the silty ground below Shayna Thomas’s bedroom window.
“By the size and shape, I’d say the print’s from a man’s running shoe,” the tech said. “Fresh. Hasn’t been disturbed by insects or wind.”
“Get a cast made.” Hayden raised both eyebrows. “You said there’s more?”
The tech directed his gaze to the windowpane above the shoeprint. “Picked up a bunch of good prints. Looks like he may have been rubbing the dirt off the glass, trying to get a better look.”
Lottie pressed her lips together. “Did some Peeping Tom work before he went in and hacked the hell out of her.”
Hayden had seen these types of guys in action, knew what was going on in their heads. Brushing back branches, he peered through twigs and studied the underside of leaves. At last he found it. “He did more than peep.” Hayden pointed to a thick, white substance on a bush to the right of the windowsill. “Ejaculate.”
“Pervert,” Lottie said with a growl.
Hayden slipped his hand in his pocket. “But one who isn’t too bright.”
Lottie nodded. “So let’s call him Mr. Stupid. He leaves behind a fucking trifecta of evidence. Shoe impression as he stands at the window. Fingerprints as he wipes the dust for a better view. And ejaculate after he gets his rocks off watching Shayna Thomas in her bedroom. Why the hell didn’t he just leave us a business card?”
Hayden’s hand curled into a fist. “Something’s not right.” Like the mirrors.
“Not right?” Lottie aimed her right hand pistol-style at the window. “Pretty Boy, we just got a helluva lot closer to finding us a butcher.”
“Have we?” Those shiny, intact mirrors winked at him. Mocked him. “No one has ever found trace or contact evidence at any of the Butcher crime scenes.”
“Maybe he’s getting sloppy.”
Hayden wanted to believe they had something on the Butcher, but he knew too much about the sick art of serial killing. “With each victim, serial killers refine their methods. They don’t suddenly get sloppy.”
“I’m assuming you already worked up a profile of Mr. Stupid,” Lottie said.
Hayden nodded. He had created the initial profile after the second murder, when the FBI had been brought on board because they were dealing with a serial killer working across state lines. Over the past five months, he added to and refined the profile. He knew this man inside and out. “We’re looking for a male between the ages of twenty and forty. Thin or small in stature. A social misfit who may live alone or with his parents or an older relative. High school education. Few if any physical relationships with women. Not gainfully employed or has a job with a good deal of flextime. Has some kind of disfigurement or handicap, possibly unseen, such as a stutter, or visible, such as acne scars or a limp. Home and person are meticulous, and he thrives on clear, written instruction. Carries around a small spiral notebook everywhere he goes. He’s methodic and craves order. There’s nothing sloppy about him.” Hayden pointed to the prints and ejaculate. “These should not be here. Something went wrong.”
* . . .
Tuesday, June 9, 1:48 a.m.Mancos, Colorado
The cry was low and tortured, pulled from the gut of a man who’d been to hell and back.
Kate Johnson threw off her covers and grabbed the box of paper clips she kept on her nightstand. “I’m coming, Smokey Joe,” she called even though the old man couldn’t hear her. He was too far away, trapped in a time and place known only to his tormented mind. She tore down the steps of the cabin and into Smokey’s bedroom.
“Safety pins! Where the hell are my safety pins?” Smokey’s hands clawed at the covers she’d tucked around him four hours ago. “Dammit to hell! I need those pins.”
Kate took one of his hands in hers and dropped a handful of paper clips onto his palm. “Here you go.”
His knobby fingers clamped around the bits of metal, and he dipped them in a frantic but practiced rhythm. Eventually his cries died off and gave way to moans. Then came the sobs. They were the worst.
As she had done dozens of times over the past six months, she sank to her knees beside his bed and gathered him in her arms. Papery skin over old bones. The sour-sweet smell of cold sweat. Her cheek rubbed against the sprigs of gray hair on his head. As the sobs tapered off and his trembling ceased, she looked at her arms and shook her head. How could a hug, nothing more than two arms, her arms, stop a war?
When the old man’s breathing returned to normal, he opened his sightless eyes. “That you, Katy-lady?”
She squeezed his bony knee. “Yes.”
Relief smoothed the lines of terror twisting his face.
She left his bedside and opened the top drawer of the bureau. “Who was it?”
He inched himself to an upright position. “Never got a name on this one. He wasn’t talking by the time ground grunts got him in the chopper. Mortar round blew off half his neck.”
“What do you remember about him?” This was another thing she didn’t understand, Smokey’s need to relive the pains of the past. Yesterday’s horrors should be bundled up and tucked away. They had no place in this world. She reached into the drawer for a clean nightshirt.
“He had red hair, color of a firecracker, and he held a picture of his momma in his hand. We lost him before we got to Da Nang, but I made sure the hospital crew got the picture and told them to tell that boy’s momma she’d been right there with her son when he needed her, offering comfort only a momma can.”
Mommas don’t offer comfort. The thought snuck up on her, a jarring uppercut to the chin.
“Katy-lady, you okay?”
The bureau drawer slammed shut. “I’m fine.”
She handed Smokey Joe the clean nightshirt and sat on the foot of the bed. That’s when she noticed the soft voices coming from the radio on the nightstand. A late-night talk show host was talking to William from Michigan about a school shooting in New Jersey that left two eleven-year-olds dead. “This!” She jabbed a hand at the radio. “What is this?”
“Don’t know.” Smokey raised his gaze to the ceiling. “Can’t see.”
She snapped off the radio, silencing the voices. “You were listening to the news before bed again, weren’t you?”
“You going to start nagging me? I don’t pay you to ride my ass.”
“No, you pay me to take care of you, and if you don’t want to take out any new help wanted ads, listen to me. Your doctor said no news before bedtime. Those stories from the Mideast bring back too many war memories.” And trigger nightmares of a time when he desperately tried to save bloody and broken bodies with only a handful of safety pins and a heart full of hope.
His gnarled fingers fumbled with the buttons of his sweat-soaked nightshirt. She reached over to help.
“I wasn’t listening to no war news. There was another one of them Barbie murders. This one right here in Colorado. All the stations are yammering about it.”
Barbie murders? What an insane world, filled with criminals without conscience, a public fascinated by the gory and gruesome, and media ready to unite the two for the sake of ratings. She didn’t miss the crazy world of broadcast news and had no regrets that she hadn’t seen a newscast in almost three years, not since she’d been the news.
She unfastened Smokey’s next two buttons. “So a Barbie was killed?”
“Yep. Course the coppers don’t call ’em Barbies. That’s just my name, but I think that makes six now, all TV gals, all stabbed to death in their homes.”
She grew still. “Broadcast journalists? Stabbed?”
“Yeah, not too pretty, either. Each gal had more than fifty knife wounds. Now why the hell does someone need to stab a body fifty times?”
Her hand sought the scar between her right eye and temple. Because twenty-five isn’t enough to kill?
“I’ll tell you why.” Smokey jabbed a crooked index finger at his temple. “He ain’t right in the head.”
Kate slipped the shirt off Smokey’s bony shoulders, her own shoulders relaxing. As an investigative reporter she’d seen up close the machinations of the criminal mind. She knew the mean and twisted and evil that perpetuated crimes against humanity. There were plenty of bad people in this world, plenty of knife-wielding crazies, and the twenty-five scars that crisscrossed her body had nothing to do with Smokey’s Barbies. “Haven’t we both determined the world in general isn’t right in the head?”
“But this guy’s sick, scary sick. He does that creepy thing with the mirrors.”
The curtains on Smokey’s window shifted with the night breeze, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. “Mirrors?”
“After he kills them Barbies, the screwball goes around breaking every mirror in the house. Shatters every single one. You ever heard of such a crazy thing?”
Sounds ricocheted through her head. The swoosh of a hammer. The crack of glass. The obscenely happy tinkle of falling mirror fragments.
Smokey’s shirt, soaked in sweat and terror, fell from her hand.
* * *
Tuesday, June 9, 2:20 a.m. Colorado Springs, Colorado
Hayden Reed stared at the shards of mirror that once covered an entire wall in Shayna Thomas’s entryway. The largest piece was no bigger than two inches square.
Insanity was one hell of a wrecking ball.
He squatted to study the destruction, looking for trace—blood, footprints, hairs, fibers, anything that would lead him to the killer he’d been tracking for five months. All he saw in the broken mirror were distorted bits of his face, a macabre reflection of a man who’d been slammed by a wrecking ball of his own.
Parker Lord’s voice echoed through his head. “Hold off on the Colorado slaying,” his boss had said. “Hatch can cover for you and bring you up to speed when you get things wrapped up in Tucson with your family.”
Hayden stood. His family was fine.
Time to hunt for the Butcher. But first he needed to track down Sergeant Lottie King.
A uniform directed Hayden through the living room and down a hallway where he came face-to-face with a short, round African American woman. Her crinkly gray hair hugged her head in a tight knot, and she wore a simple navy suit and a Glock 22 holstered under her left arm. On her feet were the highest, reddest heels he’d ever seen outside a whorehouse.
“Chief warned me some FBI hotshot was coming in, and you got hotshot written all over you.” The sergeant crossed her arms over her chest. “My boys said you’re one of Parker Lord’s men, a fucking Apostle. That true?”
Hayden noticed the tone. It happened often at the mention of Parker’s Special Criminal Investigative Unit, a small group of FBI specialists known for working outside the box and, according to some, outside the law. Some media pundit nicknamed them the Apostles. Like Parker, Hayden didn’t care about names, only justice. “Yes.”
“Heard you boys play by a different set of rules.”
He clasped his hands behind his back. “We don’t play.”
Her jaw squared in a challenge as she jutted her chin toward the shattered mirror in the hallway. “So tell me, Agent I-Don’t-Play, what’s your take?”
Shayna Thomas had been found dead in her bedroom four hours ago. Multiple stab wounds. No signs of sexual trauma. Shattered mirrors. All the earmarks of another Broadcaster Butcher slaying. Hayden pointed to a spot three feet down the hall. “The unsub stood there. One strike. Used a long-handled, blunt instrument he brought with him. Carefully positioned his body out of the glass trajectory. You’ll find no blood near this or any of the other broken mirrors. You’ll also find no footprints, no fingerprints, no trace, and no witnesses.” The other Butcher crime scenes had been freakishly void of evidence.
The sergeant locked him in a stare down. He studied the wide, steady stance of those high heels, the indignant puff of her chest, and the single corkscrew of hair that stuck out above her right ear.
“And your take, Sergeant King?”
The police sergeant’s nostrils flared. “I think we got us one fucked-up son of a bitch, and I can’t wait to nail his ass to the splintered seat of a cold, dark cell where he’ll never see the light of day.”
Early in his law enforcement career, he’d learned there were two kinds of people behind the shield: those seeking personal gain—a paycheck, ego strokes, power—and those seeking justice. Like him, the woman in the red shoes was one of the latter. Hayden unclasped his hands. “And I can’t wait to hand you a hammer.”
A smile wrinkled the corner of her eyes, and he saw what he needed: respect.
“Damn glad you’re here, Agent Reed.”
“For the record, Sergeant King, I hear you aren’t much of a slouch, either.”
“Ahh, a pretty face and a smooth talker. I think I might be able to work with you.” The smile in her eyes dimmed as she motioned him to follow her down the hall.
“Timeline?” Hayden asked.
“A man out walking his dog hears breaking glass as he passes Thomas’s house. He calls the station at 10:32. Beat officer arrives at 10:37. He makes repeated shout-outs, but no one responds. He looks through the front window, sees the broken mirror, and calls for backup. When the second uniform arrives, they enter and discover the victim in the master bedroom.”
“Positive ID?”
“Confirmed. Shayna Thomas. Homeowner.”
“Current status?”
“Crime Scene Division’s still processing.” Sergeant King’s red shoes drew to a halt. “This is one mother of a scene.”
“Blood.” Hayden didn’t frame the single word as a question. They’d found excessive amounts of blood at the other Butcher crime scenes, five since January.
“It’s the fucking Red Sea in there. You better watch those shiny shoes of yours.” Lottie pointed to the door in front of them. “I’m warning you. It ain’t pretty.”
Wrongful death never was.
Inside the bedroom, blood peppered four walls, striped the white down comforter, and clung to the fan centered on the ceiling. The victim lay on the ground in front of a dresser. Blood soaked her T-shirt and jogging shorts and matted her hair. She was a brunette, slim, probably attractive. Hard to tell. Lacerations decussated her face, arms, neck, and abdomen, but as he expected, the V at her legs was blood- and injury-free.
He saved the hands for last. He always did. It was hard to think clearly after seeing them, hard to stop being the dispassionate evaluator. Drawing air into his tightening lungs, he turned to Shayna Thomas’s bloody hands. They rested on her breasts, fingers intertwined as if in prayer, a gesture of peace amidst the chaos of murder.
For a moment he lowered his eyelids and calmed the rage that simmered in a place he refused to acknowledge.
Those bloody hands beckoned him, pulled him in, and wouldn’t let go. His boss, Parker Lord, was wrong. Hayden needed to be here.
* * *
Tuesday, June 9, 2:23 a.m. Mancos, Colorado
Run. Fast and far.
Kate’s hands shook worse than Smokey Joe’s as she yanked the saddlebags out of the closet and slammed them on her bed. From the bureau, she hauled out the few things she called her own: underwear, scarves, T-shirts, chambray overshirts, jeans, and her leathers. She jammed all but the leathers into the bags and threw in her brown contacts and hair dye. Meager belongings compared to her on-air days, a time when she wore a different face. A face not yet hacked by a madman. A madman who hadn’t stopped after the butcher job on her.
The wooden floor creaked behind her. She dropped her leathers and spun. Something shifted in the shadow of the doorway. She reached for the ceramic lamp on the nightstand then set it down when Smokey stepped out of the darkness.
He cleared his throat with a rough cough. “You taking off?”
Her hand dropped to her side, and she tried not to look into his sightless eyes, eyes filled with confusion and something else. Oh God, please don’t let him look at me like that. “Yes.” What more could she say? I’m sorry for disappointing you. I’m sorry for leaving because there’s a madman roaming the country who vowed to kill me and who has since murdered six other women.
She yanked the saddlebag zippers closed. How stupid to think she could stop running, stupid to stay in one place so long, and stupid to put an old, blind man like Smokey Joe in danger. She picked up the leather pants and jammed her legs into them. The Shayna Thomas attack had occurred in Colorado Springs, only three hundred miles from Smokey Joe’s cabin in southwestern Colorado.
Smokey scratched the stubble on his chin. “That big order? You got it done?”
“Order?” She grabbed her helmet from the top shelf of the closet.
“That gal out of San Diego who wants all them angels. You get ’em done?”
Kate couldn’t think about their online jewelry store or tourmaline angels. She thought only about getting away. “Order’s done. It’s boxed and on the table.”
“I’ll ship it.” One of Smokey’s slippers, the color and texture of beef jerky, whisked across the floor. “Where should I send your cut?”
“You keep it.” She needed no connections to Smokey Joe, no trail that could put him in the sights of a knife-wielding madman.
Smokey nodded and shuffled away. The sound of his ratty slippers on the floor she polished weekly pounded in her head and tugged at her heart.
The past six months with Smokey Joe had been peaceful, and after being on the run for more than two years, she’d needed the rest and recharge. During her time here in the scrub canyons and pine forests of southwestern Colorado, she hadn’t thought about the past or the future. She’d been simply living, living simply.
She flung her saddlebags over her shoulder—amazing how little a person needed to live—and rushed down the steps to the bottom floor. She bolted through the kitchen but ground to a halt at the backdoor.
Turning quickly, she set the timer for Smokey’s morning coffee, flicked on the bread machine, and left an urgent voice message with his case manager. Only then did she slip out of the house, deadbolt the lock, and escape into the safe cover of darkness.
Chapter Two
Tuesday, June 9, 5:07 a.m.Colorado Springs, Colorado
What’s wrong, Pretty Boy?” Sergeant Lottie King sat on the foot of the bed next to him.
Hayden pointed to the beveled mirror on the wall in Shayna Thomas’s spare bedroom. “It’s not broken.” Its wholeness slammed him in the gut, momentarily throwing him off balance.
“Maybe our killer thought eighty-four years of bad luck was enough,” Lottie added. “The SOB shattered the hell out of twelve others.”
Hayden shook his head. “It’s not consistent with his MO. He breaks every mirror in the house. In the Santa Fe slaying he even broke two mirrors in a model dollhouse. This mirror should be broken.”
“If it’s your guy.” Lottie kicked off her right shoe and rubbed her instep. “You think this might be a copycat?”
“It’s him.” For the past five months, Hayden walked in the Butcher’s shoes, invited the evil into his head. He knew how this offender worked. “Too many similarities. Victims’ professions and general looks, manner of death, complete lack of traceable evidence, and”—Hayden blinked hard, refusing to see the red—“the folded position of the hands is a holdback.”
Air rushed over Lottie’s lips. “Damn. We got us a monster right here in Colorado Springs.”
Monsters. That had been Marissa’s term for the violent criminals he spent most of his career chasing.
I’m always sharing you with monsters! Marissa had screamed at him. You never let go. Those killers you hunt are in our home, at our dinner table, in our bed.
He winced at the flash of memory and blamed it on Tucson.
Lottie poked her foot into her shoe. “Okay, Mr. FBI Profiler, get out that crystal ball of yours. Where the hell do we go now?”
In his line of work there was a proper order of things, a clear course of observation, analysis, and application. The process fortified him and drew him further away from that Tucson grave. Hayden motioned with his hand to the door. “The beginning.”
In the foyer they found Detective Scott Traynor. If Sergeant King was the head of the operation, Traynor was her hands and feet. The lead investigator was tall and lanky with straw-colored hair and freckles across his nose. Hayden pictured him sitting on a tractor in the eastern Colorado hayfields, but he wasn’t fooled by the easygoing farm-boy appearance. Lottie’s right-hand man carried a cell phone in his shirt pocket, a walkie-talkie clipped to his belt, and a small tablet in his hand. He wore a ring of sweat around his collar and dusty loafers. Scott Traynor was plugged in and running hard.
“Offender’s point of entry?” Hayden asked.
“No signs of force,” the detective said. “At this point we’re speculating he came in through the front door.”
Speculation did not solve murder investigations bathed in blood. That’s why he was here. Time to do his job. Time to become the monster.
Hayden walked to the front porch, where cool air crowded the charcoal night. “I’m Thomas’s attacker.” Hayden positioned himself in front of the door. “It’s after ten and dark, but the porch lights illuminate me. Thomas has a peephole. What do I do?”
“Is the door locked?” Detective Traynor asked.
Criminal investigative analysis started with studying the victims and their behaviors, and in the past five months, he’d spent hundreds of hours learning about the five murdered broadcasters. “Smart, successful women like Shayna Thomas don’t take safety risks. The door is locked. How do I get in?”
“You have a key,” the detective said.
Hayden reached into his pocket and took out his own set of keys, which jingled in the pre-dawn stillness. “How do I get the key?”
“You steal it.”
Lottie caught the detective’s attention. “Find out if Thomas had a recent issue with lost or stolen keys, and find out who had access to her purse both at work and home.”
“Good.” Hayden stuffed the keys in his pocket. Now from another angle, always a second angle, sometimes a third, sometimes a fourth or fifth or sixth. “I have no key. How do I get in?”
The detective frowned. “You knock on the door, and she lets you in?”
“Why would she do a dumb-ass thing like that?” Lottie asked.
Hayden asked himself that same question at the other five crime scenes, and now, like then, he faced the same chilling answer. “She knows me or has reason to trust me.”
Sergeant King opened her mouth, but before she could speak, the radio at her waist squawked. “Hey, Sarge, we need you out back. You aren’t going to believe what we found at Thomas’s bedroom window.”
* * *
Tuesday, June 9, 5:34 a.m. Mancos, Colorado
A pair of ratty, old slippers padded into the kitchen.
“Coffee’s on,” Kate said, her voice as soft as the early morning light slipping through the muslin curtains on the window over the sink.
Smokey Joe shuffled to the table and sniffed. “Tuesday.”
Yes, it was Tuesday, her baking day, and she was in Smokey’s kitchen, where swirling scents of cinnamon and yeasty bread warmed the air. A golden loaf, speckled with raisins, sat on the counter.
She poured a mug of coffee from the steaming pot and set it on Smokey’s placemat in the number three spot, right where he liked it. She pulled a serrated knifed out of the drawer, her hand tightening on the hilt as the sun glinted off the jagged metal blade. The flash of silver blinded her, but she blinked and cut two thick slices of bread, which she dropped in the toaster. “You have a doctor’s appointment this morning at nine, so we’ll need to leave here by eight.”
If Smokey was surprised she was still in the cabin, he didn’t show it. He sat and grunted. “Doctor Collins?”
“Yes.”
He took a long draw from his coffee. “Don’t like him. Pain in the ass.”
She smiled in spite of herself. “You’re going anyway.”
“Hell of a day,” Smokey said into the rim of his mug. “You riding my ass and Doctor Collins poking up it.”
A laugh joined her smile.
Smokey Joe took another swig. “You gonna tell me about it?”
The toast popped. So he wasn’t going to pretend last night never happened. She placed the toast on two plates. Nor could she.
When she had tried to leave, her bike wouldn’t start. Grounded until the parts store opened this morning, she’d tried to get some rest for the road trip ahead, but the anger coursing through her veins left her wide-eyed and wired. She ended up using Smokey’s computer to go online and learn about the Broadcaster Butcher murders. She’d discovered each attack mirrored hers except for one thing: She survived.
“Do we need to call the coppers?” Smokey continued in his worn, scratchy voice.
“No.” She’d gone that route in the beginning, and look where it got her. “Not yet.” But she would. She had to. She took the butter from the refrigerator, hacked off a chunk, and dropped it onto Smokey’s toast. But who to contact? The Colorado Springs Police would be the logical choice, but she’d relied on the local police after her own attack. Not only had they failed to capture her attacker, but also they hadn’t taken her story seriously. They all but called her a liar. More importantly, they failed to protect her when she needed them most.
“Why didn’t you take off last night?” Smokey asked when she set his plate in the number seven position.
She’d never been good at hiding her emotions, and right now, if Smokey weren’t blind, he’d see a massive dose of what was under her anger: fear mixed with guilt and shame. “Honestly?”
“Shoot straight or ditch the rifle.”
“My bike needs repair work. Ignition’s shot.” Shameful, to think she’d be taking off again if the mechanical gods hadn’t conspired against her. She’d be running from her past, from her responsibilities with Smokey, and from the fact that her attack was not the private nightmare she’d believed for three years.
Six women had died. Her stomach twisted.
Smokey Joe poked at the toast but didn’t eat. With a grumble he reached for the small glass dish that sat in the middle of the kitchen table. The little dish had an illustrated donkey and read LOST MY ASS IN LAS VEGAS.
He picked up the set of car keys that always rested there. “Here,” he said, his voice gruffer than normal.
“I can’t take your car, Smokey.” And I can’t involve you any more than you already are.
“I don’t plan on doing no driving this week.”
She couldn’t chuckle this time.
“You don’t got to keep it,” he said. “Just go into town, buy what you need at the parts store, then git.”
She started pacing. If only it were that easy. She’d stopped in Mancos because she’d run out of money and out of steam, but even with a wad of cash in her saddlebags and six months to rest her legs, she had things she needed to take care of, things that couldn’t be handled from the seat of her bike on a scenic road to nowhere.
Smokey picked up his toast. “You staying?”
She stopped behind his chair, noticing his hand shook. “For a while.” At least until she got Smokey a new aide and figured out who to talk to about her attack.
Smokey shoved back his plate of uneaten toast. “Then I got something for you.” Suddenly spry, he darted to the dented file cabinet in the corner of the kitchen and pulled out a small plastic case. Inside was a gleaming hunk of metal. “Ever shoot before?”
“No.”
“Wanna learn?”
Kate stared at the gun in the old soldier’s hand. After her attack, she’d thought about getting a gun, but that meant background checks, paperwork, lessons, all trails leading to her. Plus it meant fighting, something she’d been doing most of her life. For once she’d opted to run, and, in the end, that wrong choice had led to the horrific deaths of six broadcasters.
“Yes, I need to know how to handle a gun.”
Smokey’s fingers, steady and strong, reached for the box of ammunition in the case. “Good. I’ll teach you how to load, and we’ll head out back for target practice.” He took out five rounds and laid them in a straight line next to his coffee mug. “Then we’ll get the place ready.”
“Ready?”
“For war.”
* * *
Tuesday, June 9, 5:35 a.m. Colorado Springs, Colorado
The Crime Scene Division tech pushed aside a sun-crisped shrub, giving Hayden a clear view of the silty ground below Shayna Thomas’s bedroom window.
“By the size and shape, I’d say the print’s from a man’s running shoe,” the tech said. “Fresh. Hasn’t been disturbed by insects or wind.”
“Get a cast made.” Hayden raised both eyebrows. “You said there’s more?”
The tech directed his gaze to the windowpane above the shoeprint. “Picked up a bunch of good prints. Looks like he may have been rubbing the dirt off the glass, trying to get a better look.”
Lottie pressed her lips together. “Did some Peeping Tom work before he went in and hacked the hell out of her.”
Hayden had seen these types of guys in action, knew what was going on in their heads. Brushing back branches, he peered through twigs and studied the underside of leaves. At last he found it. “He did more than peep.” Hayden pointed to a thick, white substance on a bush to the right of the windowsill. “Ejaculate.”
“Pervert,” Lottie said with a growl.
Hayden slipped his hand in his pocket. “But one who isn’t too bright.”
Lottie nodded. “So let’s call him Mr. Stupid. He leaves behind a fucking trifecta of evidence. Shoe impression as he stands at the window. Fingerprints as he wipes the dust for a better view. And ejaculate after he gets his rocks off watching Shayna Thomas in her bedroom. Why the hell didn’t he just leave us a business card?”
Hayden’s hand curled into a fist. “Something’s not right.” Like the mirrors.
“Not right?” Lottie aimed her right hand pistol-style at the window. “Pretty Boy, we just got a helluva lot closer to finding us a butcher.”
“Have we?” Those shiny, intact mirrors winked at him. Mocked him. “No one has ever found trace or contact evidence at any of the Butcher crime scenes.”
“Maybe he’s getting sloppy.”
Hayden wanted to believe they had something on the Butcher, but he knew too much about the sick art of serial killing. “With each victim, serial killers refine their methods. They don’t suddenly get sloppy.”
“I’m assuming you already worked up a profile of Mr. Stupid,” Lottie said.
Hayden nodded. He had created the initial profile after the second murder, when the FBI had been brought on board because they were dealing with a serial killer working across state lines. Over the past five months, he added to and refined the profile. He knew this man inside and out. “We’re looking for a male between the ages of twenty and forty. Thin or small in stature. A social misfit who may live alone or with his parents or an older relative. High school education. Few if any physical relationships with women. Not gainfully employed or has a job with a good deal of flextime. Has some kind of disfigurement or handicap, possibly unseen, such as a stutter, or visible, such as acne scars or a limp. Home and person are meticulous, and he thrives on clear, written instruction. Carries around a small spiral notebook everywhere he goes. He’s methodic and craves order. There’s nothing sloppy about him.” Hayden pointed to the prints and ejaculate. “These should not be here. Something went wrong.”
* . . .
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