Page 21 of The Butterfly Killer

He pushed the files away from him in disgust. Each step he took forward, he was ending up at another roadblock. They didn’t have time for this.

“You might be looking in the wrong time frame.”

Marcus leaned forward, his hands in his hair. “How? He has a pattern. He strikes every two months.”

“Except for the fact he went cold for two years,” Burns pointed out. “He might have gone through a rest period between his first couple kills. Something could have happened that prevented him from having the time to kill.”

“So you’re saying we might have to look back years? That would take forever.”

Burns let out a snort. “That’s why we have a team working together. I’ll run it by Mercer. He’s been fine with you helping out so far. I don’t see him having a problem spending resources. We haven’t got any new leads anyway.”

Marcus didn’t feel any more relieved by the idea. It sounded to him that he’d hit a brick wall again. He just didn’t understand why it became harder and harder to put the pieces together.

Burns must have seen how the new affected him. He laid a hand on Marcus’s shoulder.

“You’ve been down here for hours, haven’t you? You should come back up to the Hell room.”

Marcus perked up at the name. “Hell room?”

Burns gave a soft laugh. “It’s a joke between me and Mercer.”

Marcus should have been happy he was being invited into the room usually reserved for detectives. But his racing thoughts of doubt and worry prevented him from having any kind of celebration.

He shouldn’t be celebrating at all when there were people being murdered. But such was this life he was living.

“What do you say? I’ll even order us some food.”

Marcus thought it was funny he seemed to attract one of two people: ones who hated his guts and ones who wanted to pamper him. He guessed one caused the other. In which order he couldn’t say.

He gave a small smile. “Yeah. I’d like that.”

He rose from the seat, grabbing the files and putting them away in the cabinets he’d pulled them from.

Another night of lost sleep wouldn’t hurt and to be close to the case as Burns was offering, that was as close to a dream come true he was ever going to get.

6

Blevins gaveMarcus the stink eye as he walked around the other side of the long table in the room. Burns leaned down and lowly spoke to Mercer who nodded his head. He motioned for Marcus to have a sit at the middle of the table which he did. Awkwardly.

Detective Thompson gave a confused look around the table as Marcus sat down. “Why is he here?”

Burns sat next to Mercer. Mercer flipped open the case file in front of him without looking up at Thompson. “He’s going to be on the case. I’ve already talked to the Chief about it. He agreed Marcus could provide some new perspectives.”

“He did?” Marcus and Blevins asked at the same time. They looked at each other and then quickly looked away.

“Yes.” Mercer looked up. “If this is going to be a problem, you two can leave. It’s up to you.”

For a second Marcus thought Mercer was talking to him as well. But Mercer was looking at Blevins and Thompson.

The two sat quietly. Blevins clenched his jaw as he glared across the table at Marcus. Marcus looked down, pretending he didn’t see the grueling look on the man’s face.

“Then, let’s start. Burns.”

Burns got up from his seat and went to the whiteboard in the front of the room. There were pictures of the victims magnetized to it and key elements to the case written in a column to the side. Marcus scanned what was written. It seemed they were in the process trying to piece together how the victims were correlated or if they were completely random.

“Marcus has brought to attention that this might be a copycat killer. If we go off of that, we might also be looking at someone who knows the Butterfly Killer personally.”

“How do you figure that?” Thompson butted in. He glanced at Marcus, but he was asking Burns. It seemed old habits die hard—he could barely acknowledge Marcus. It was like he was below him.

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