“You handle that,” Kate said.“I want to look at the crime scene photos again.It sucks that they’ve already turned it over.I feel like the attention to detail matters.”
“He’s shown the same attention to detail at all of his scenes, though.Why do you think this one is special?”
Kate frowned.“Maybe it’s not,” she admitted.“I just… I feel like if I could just put myself in his shoes for a minute, get an idea how he thinks, maybe I could figure out how to stop him for good.”
“I’ve got an idea how to stop him for good.”
Kate didn’t like Marcus’s tone.She liked the look on his face even less.It was oddly flat, not dark so much as emotionless.For the first time since meeting him, she saw the Navy SEAL, the trained killer who could think of human lives as targets when the mission required it.She understood the urge to apply that training to Cox, but this wasn’t war, and the FBI wasn’t the military.
“He needs to be brought tojustice, Marcus.We can’t stoop to his level, or it becomes about winning a fight and not punishing a crime.The nation needs to see our process work.”
“Well, I think Olivia Prentiss would have been just fine seeing Cox dead and her mother alive.”
Kate didn’t reply to that.What could she say?
Marcus sighed.“Relax.I’m not going to do anything stupid.I’m just mad.”
“I’m mad too,” Kate sympathized, “but being mad won’t help us either.”Marcus gave her a dry look, and she reddened.“I understand the hypocrisy, but I stand by my statement.We’ll keep each other in line, deal?”
“Deal.And on that note, why do you need to put himself in his shoes?Why does there need to be some reason he thinks the way he does other than the fact that he’s a psychopath?”
The real worry Marcus wasn’t touching was his fear that Kate would fall into her old obsession, seeing Cox as an arch-nemesis hellbent on her own destruction.The truth was that she’d already come to that conclusion.Cox had made it inescapable.
But that was an argument she’d never win, so she gave Marcus an answer more narrowly focused on the case.“We need to know why he’s choosing these exact victims.We need an idea of where to look for him.Right now, we’re following a trail of breadcrumbs.We need to figure out where he’s going, not where he’s been.”
Marcus nodded.“Fair enough.I’ll call the court and get those records.Let me know if the photos reveal anything interesting.You want the car?I’ll walk to the courthouse, and you can pick me up later.”
“Sure.”
“Cool.See you in a bit.”
“See you in a bit.”
Knoxville was the first city they’d come to where no snow had fallen.Snow wasn’t unheard of here, but it rarely stayed around.That left nothing to soften the bleached skeletons of the maples, oaks, and poplars that lined the streets and filled the barren parks.Unlike Greenfield where most of the trees were green and only a few leafless examples peeked through the green, the only evergreens here were pines, and those lived almost exclusively in the hills surrounding the city.To Kate’s eye, they looked like spectators, watching death consume the city below while keeping a safe distance away.
She stopped at a restaurant several blocks from downtown that advertised STEAKS ALL DAY!with a picture of a smiling cowboy licking his lips while grasping an oversized fork and steak knife while a saxophone player with a flattop haircut and big sunglasses performed a spirited solo, the flaps of his tuxedo flicking jauntily upward.
Kate stepped inside and found the dining room moderately full.Shockingly, most of the people in the room wore ordinary t-shirts and jeans with windbreakers rather than tuxedoes and ten-gallon hats.They all wore muddy boots, though the thick rubber soles and scuffed steel toes reminded Kate more of logging boots than ranching boots.Not that she would know the difference.
She sat at the bar, and a buxom woman of about fifty with straw-colored hair and more makeup than she needed sidled over to take her order.Kate ordered a coffee, steak, and eggs with house potatoes on the side.
The food came, and the matronly server asked, “You in town for long, honey?”
Kate wasn’t in the mood for conversation, so she politely replied, “Not long,” then pointedly started on her meal.
The server got the message and sidled along to the next guest.
She looked through the crime scene photos on her phone while she ate.Why these victims, and what was Cox’s message?What was Kate supposed to glean from these misplaced objects?
Paul Delaney’s cufflinks in the key bowl.She’d come back to that one.
Ruth Osgood's dog in her bed.Loving her sin.Being fulfilled by it.Jordan Prescott's pocket watch in his kitchen.Maybe not loving it anymore, but needing it.It was sustenance to him.Karen de Luca's music box on the outside of tightly drawn curtains.She wanted to hide her sin.She was ashamed of it.Gloria Prentiss's thimble in the bathroom window.Visible, but not out in the open.Private but not hidden.She tried to make amends, not over the thimble but the photograph.A start, but not enough.
Finally, Warren Schulz.He repented completely.He returned all of the items he stole, except one.He held onto the cardinal.Maybe that was a sign that he repented, but not with a perfect heart.
Kate poked at her potatoes while the pattern solidified in her mind.Each victim was a progression along the path to repentance.Loving sin, then not loving but needing it, then feeling shame, then starting to make amends, then making more amends.
So back to Paul Delaney.Cufflinks in the bowl right on top of his car keys.Not something to be hidden, and not something to be loved in private like Ruth Osgood in her bedroom but something he flaunted.Maybe not to others, or he wouldn’t be a very successful thief, but something about which he feltnoshame.