Page 3 of Pure Killers

"We've got work to do anyway."

Dirk only mock salutes me over the top of the car before ducking into the passenger seat.

***

Dirk has absorbed his coffee by the time we get back into the station, a low building surrounded by skyscrapers that seem to reach ever higher, the city itself wedged between the port and Crennick row with nowhere to go but up.

We've been in the 'team room' for a couple of hours, and my head is beginning to hurt. What does this latest attack tell us? Does it get us any closer to catching him? Dirk is standing bythe whiteboard, looking at the mess of symbols and one-word explanations linked by a network of arrows. Even he seems confused by what he's progressively made over the last two hours. I lean back on a desk at the front of the room and squint at it.

At the back of the room, our current resident student, an enthusiastic young woman by the name of Chloe, appears to still be giving us her full attention, even taking notes. Though I do not know what on. Tawill insisted she sit in on our session today.

"So, we've essentially got nothing we didn't have before," I observe.

"Do you mean did he handily leave his fingerprint on the window? No. But…"

I groan.

Sighing, Dirk puts down the marker. "Okay. Let’s look at what we've got. So far…" he picks up the marker again, using it to underline the small cluster in the top left. "So, killers he’s taken out so far: Bay Killer, Flinn White, and now, last night, the Strangler. Right?"

At the back of the room, Chloe raises her hand. Dirk frowns at her and I look back over my shoulder. "You can just speak Chloe, this isn't school." Well, it’s kind of supposed to be. But neither Dirk nor I are very good teachers.

"I have a question," she states, somewhat redundantly. "Why not the Cocooner?"

Dirk and I look at each other.

"If he's doing this for the love of the people, and the notoriety, as you suggested last time, surely the Cocooner would be a good target?"

She's got a point. The Cocooner is potentially Tregam's most notorious killer. And standing out in that crowd is no easy feat. At times like this, looking at the list of serial killers who’ve been caught or killed, then considering how many are still at large,I’m inclined to think we’re all mad forsomereason- chemicals or otherwise.

"He's been around longer than any of them, still hasn't been caught, and his method is, well, not nice. If he took out someone like that…" She beams, having made her point, and a good one at that, damn her.

"Okay," I say. "So based on that, he's not doing it to be a man of the people. He's selecting them based on some other criteria."

"Or," Dirk says. "The Needler also can't find Cocooner, just like us."

"Right." I rub my face. "How is he finding them anyway? What information does he have that we don't?"

"If I could…" Chloe raises her hand, then thinks better of it and aborts that move to suggest, "He's only found Strangler so far."

"How's that?"

She points her pen at the board. "Well, Flinn White was released on bail when he got taken out, and the Bay Killer, well, pretty much everyone knew who that was, that millionaire down on the Southside. And then there was the initial vic, Officer…" She freezes mid-note-checking, her eyes cutting up to me, seeming to realise where she was about to go. I tense at the look in her eyes, which has halted somewhere between fear and pity.

I turn away and stand, moving the topic along. "Okay, just the Strangler then." I take the marker off Dirk and circle the name. "We need to find out how the Needler found him."

"We also have a time frame," Dirk points out.

"Do we?" I squint at the list of three dates.

"Sort of," he says, leaning back on the desk, "Every three months-ish. Not super reliable."

"Yeah, not precise at all." I stare at the dates a bit longer, then something occurs to me. "Chloe, look up moon cycles. Do these dates align?"

Appearing thrilled to have been assigned a task, she taps away on her laptop, then a second later, declares, "Yep! Perfectly."

"Full moons? Like a werewolf?" Dirk raises an eyebrow.

"Absent moon," Chloe corrects, eyes on her screen. "New moon."

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