Page 56 of Catching Fire

“But you've gone to the library …”

Shehad.She'd gone back and talked to Ivy Dean again. This time, Ivy had set her up with true crime books and psychological accounts of the minds of serial killers. Seline had been consuming it like a voracious predator herself. “Yes, I have gone to the library. And yes, I have checked my bag. No, I haven't run into anyone at the library who might possibly have been Sanders.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes!I'm sure there were no males older than twenty or younger than sixty that I passed in the library or on the street and the only man that might be Sanders is my mailman and that’s Bob and you already investigated him!”

“All right then,” Watson still hadn’t gotten riled despite Seline taking out much of her frustration on the conversation. “Look, I just wanted to let you know that we are ending the tracking situation.”

“What does that mean?” But she was putting it together even as Watson spelled it out.

“The last tracker that you swallowed? That will be the last one. We took the others off their trackers a week ago. Unless we get new evidence that he’s still stalking or killing, we won’t be able to keep feeding them to you.”

Seline paused and pulled back from the phone as though this were the device’s fault. Watson must have picked up on that.

“This is incredibly expensive. Between the trackers, the people monitoring them, and so on … I’d keep doing it if I could.” She sighed. “It’s also incredibly invasive, I know. I’m sure you’ll be glad to be done with it, too.”

But would she?

Then again, it would be a horrific mistake on the part of the FBI to lose her to Sanders after they decided to stop tracking her. They must be very sure of themselves. That was cold comfort, and she was still bitchy. Her life was still upside down and the FBI was no longer interested in fixing it.

A small pause settled between them and Seline wanted to bite out, “Are we done?” but she was at least smart enough to know not to purposefully antagonize the agents. She might need them again.

Wouldn't that be the ultimate ‘fuck you’ from Sanders?To leave them all shaking in their shoes for another year or so, when he wasn't even here anymore?

Seline felt her face dip forward into her open hand. Could she survive another year of this? She couldn't, not financially. She would definitely lose her job if she wasn’t allowed back on campus.

“What kind of progress are we making?” she asked as though she were part of that process.

“Do you want the honest answer?” Watson asked.

That couldn't be good. But … “Yes.”

“Almost none.”

“What about the farmhouse?” Seline had seen the evidence with her own eyes. Surely, that was worth something!

“Yes,” Watson replied, but the tone of her voice made it clear that it wasn't good. Her next words clarified, “What was in the farmhouse is what we refer to in the business as anorgy of evidence—as in, almost too much. Meaning, it doesn't give us anything really solid. It's staged. If a criminal like Sanders leaves that much behind ...”

“He left it on purpose,” Seline filled in.

“Exactly.”

“Okay, but what did you find in the farmhouse?” Now, her tone had swung full pendulum to a different angle—needy, but scared of the answer.

“We found Marina Balero’s blood.”

Seline nodded along though she knew the agent couldn't see her. She’d already known that.

“We also found the blood of the previous two victims. So he was using the farmhouse as a killing location.”

Seline fought to keep her breakfast down. The way Watson had said “killing location” as though it were just some kind of place like, say, a grocery store or an office was more than she could handle.

Watson was still talking, unable to see that Seline needed a moment. “We found DNA from Sanders all over the place. Fingerprints and …” She let the words trail off.

Though Seline had wanted to know, she didn't have the guts to ask what other kind of DNA they might have found from the killer.

“But none of it tells us anything we didn't already know,” Watson filled her in. “Once we confirmed that the blood was Marina Balero’sa pretty much everything else was a given.”

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