LITMIR.BIZ

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and the owner of a shooting range.

      Faith said, “There’s speculation in some of the newspaper articles about murder, but nothing concrete. Maybe the local cops disagreed with the coroner and leaking to the press was their way of juicing an investigation. I would need to go to the individual counties to request the case files, then we’d need to interview the investigators and witnesses to find out if there were any suspects. That’s eight different local law enforcement agencies to negotiate with.”

      Faith left unsaid the resultant shitshow. The GBI was a state agency the same way the FBI was at the federal level. With limited exceptions, they had no jurisdiction over local cases, even murder. They could not just waltz in and take over an investigation. They had to be asked by the local sheriff, the local prosecutor, or ordered in by the governor.

      “I can query some sources on an informal basis,” Amanda said. “Tell me about the victims. Blonde? Plain? Pretty? Short? Fat? Did they sing in the choir? Play the flute?”

      She was looking for a detail that connected the women. Faith said, “All I can go by is the photos that accompanied the articles. Some blonde. Some brunette. Some of them wore glasses, some didn’t. One had braces. Some kept their hair short, some wore it long.”

      “So,” Amanda summarized, “taking out Grant County, we have eight different women of different ages who were working in different fields, looked nothing alike, and were all found dead showing no discernable cause of death, located in different areas of a state where thousands of missing women cases remain open, in a country where roughly 300,000 women and girls are reported missing every single year.”

      “The woods,” Will said.

      Amanda and Faith turned to look at him.

      He said, “That’s what connects them. Their bodies were left in wooded areas.”

      Amanda said, “Two thirds of the state is covered in forests. It would be difficult not to leave a body in the woods. The phone rings off the hook during hunting season.”

      “We need to know how they died,” Will said. “They weren’t violently, visibly murdered and their bodies weren’t put on display the way you would expect with a serial killer. Murdering them was secondary to rape.”

      Faith tried to put his theory in plain English. “You’re saying he’s not a serial killer. He’s a serial rapist who kills his victims because they could identify him?”

      Amanda intervened, “Let’s not use the word serial so casually here. Daryl Nesbitt is a convicted pedophile who seems to be playing us like a fiddle. The only serial at this point is what you had for breakfast.”

      Faith looked down at her notes. She knew Amanda was right. But she’d also been a cop long enough to trust her instincts. Faith imagined if she could strip Amanda down into parts, she’d feel the same kind of tingling that was shaking Faith’s own bones right now.

      Will asked, “You know all of those backlogged rape kits that are finally being tested?”

      “Of course,” Amanda said. “We’ve made dozens of arrests off the results.”

      “Sara told me about this paper in one of her journals.” Will explained, “Some graduate students looked at the offender methodology from the solved cases. We’re talking all over the country. What they found is that, with some exceptions, the majority of serial rapists aren’t stuck on one way of doing things. Sometimes the guy is violent and sometimes he’s not. Sometimes he takes the woman to a second location and sometimes he doesn’t. The same guy might use a knife one time or a gun the other, or he might tie up one victim with rope and use zip ties on the next one. Basically, a serial rapist’s M.O. is rape.”

      Faith felt a crushing sense of futility. Every single law enforcement class taught them to investigate by M.O.

      Amanda simply asked, “And?”

      “If all of the cases from Nesbitt’s articles are linked, trying to connect the victims through their jobs or their hobbies isn’t going to lead us to the killer.”

      “We should pull rape reports from the areas.” Faith thought he was on to something. “There could be other victims out there that he raped but didn’t kill. Maybe they didn’t see his face. Maybe he decided to let them go.”

      “Do you want to cull thousands of rape reports from the last eight years?” Amanda asked. “How about the women who were raped but didn’t file reports? Should we start knocking on doors?”

      Faith sighed through the acrimony.

      Will said, “We need to find out how the victims died. He killed them without leaving a visible cause of death. That’s not always easy. Bone shows bullet and knife blade marks. Strangulation almost always results in a broken hyoid. A tox screen would show poisoning. How’s he killing them?”

      Faith still liked his theory. “If he’s a rapist who murders instead of a murderer who—”

      “The academic paper you’re relying on is just that, one academic paper.” Amanda waved them off the subject. “Let’s return to Nesbitt. What made him focus on these articles in particular?”

      “Is Nesbitt the one who focused on them?” Faith asked. “He’s working with someone on the outside. We need to know who his friend is and what criteria the friend used to select these particular articles.”

      Will suggested, “The friend could be the murderer. Or a copycat.”

      “Or a nutjob. Or an acolyte,” Faith said. “Nesbitt told us he’d know if we were ‘seriously investigating.’ He’d need a person on the outside to do that. So, a private detective. A corrections officer. God help us, law enforcement.”

      “Let’s not drive over that cliff just yet,” Amanda cautioned. “Nesbitt’s playing omniscient, but the way he would know we’re investigating is the same way the world would know about it. The news reporters would be all over a possible multiple murder case. Not just local, but national. That kind of scrutiny is exactly what I want to avoid. Everything from here on out stays between us. We need to fly so low under the radar that a snake can’t sense what we’re up to.”

      Faith couldn’t disagree, but only because her inclination was to deprive Daryl Nesbitt of anything he wanted. “It’s subjective anyway. What’s a serious investigation? Who gets to decide the definition? A convicted child predator? I don’t think so.”

      Amanda said, “For the moment, we deal with what’s in front of us. Nick will work the Vasquez murder. I’ll track down Daryl Nesbitt’s friend on the outside. You two need to get Lena’s version of the Grant County investigation. She would’ve still been in uniform then. I imagine she noted every degree in the weather. Step lightly. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. We may end up needing her. We’ll regroup this afternoon and go from there.”

      “Hold on.” What Will said next seemed to surprise Amanda as much as Faith. “Sara has a right to know what’s happening.”

      “What’s happening?” Amanda asked. “We have a pedophile making wild accusations. We have some newspaper stories that show absolutely no pattern. I’m not sure this isn’t all some inmate’s idea of a wild goose chase. Are you?”

      Will said, “Sara was the medical examiner for Grant County. She could remember—”

      “How do you think Sara is going to respond to the accusation that Jeffrey Tolliver ran a crooked shop? Look at what it did to Nick. In twenty years, I’ve never seen him so rattled. Do you think Sara’s going to take it any easier? Especially since Lena Adams is involved.” Amanda went in for the kill. “That went so well for you the last time, didn’t it?”

      Will said nothing, but they all knew that Sara had been furious the last time Will had let himself get sucked into Lena’s bullshit. Not without reason. Lena had a habit of getting the people closest to her killed.

      “We need information,

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