Page 89 of Love Me Fierce

He cocks his head, his eyes keen. “Think she poses a danger?”

I weigh his question. He’s asking if Shawna would go after Vivian. “Unlikely.”

“Okay. She’s at the elementary school today. I’ll wait until this afternoon, when she leaves for the day.”

“I’d like to know if she had any gaps in her day last Tuesday,” I say.

Zach crosses his arms. “Me too.”

“I’m interviewing that last neighbor at The Meadows this afternoon,” I say over the coffee burbling through the filter. “Maybe she’ll give us something.”

“Got an update from the federal lab on that pendant,” Zach says, leaning back against the counter.

“Anything useful?”

He huffs a slow sigh. “Michelle’s pendant is an identical match to the other two. Like they were bought together.”

The idea of our perp buying these pendants in a batch turns my stomach. How many did he buy? Does he think he’s clever, leaving this clue for us?

I swipe down my chin with my palm, trying to center my thoughts. Marin, Michelle, and Kimberly Saxon are now irrevocably linked. The same person took their lives and left us this little keepsake. “Anything we could use to trace it?”

He shakes his head. “It’s junk jewelry. Mass produced, probably in China.”

“We need their phones,” I say.

“I went back to Bitterroot on Friday to talk to Marin’s professors,” Zach says as the coffeemaker gives its final hiss.

“How’d that go?”

Zach pours us both a cup of coffee, then slides one my way. I take my time adding milk and stirring while Zach leans back against the counter again, cradling his cup.

“Her biology teacher barely remembers Marin as her student. No surprise there, with over ninety kids enrolled in her BIO 101 lecture.She doesn’t remember Marin hanging around with anyone except for Troy.”

“How does the killer target them if not from their classes somehow?” I toss my stir stick into the trash.

“Something I’ve been wondering,” Zach says, staring into his coffee. “All the vics have some sort of connection to science or health care, right? Does that mean our perp uses that as a filter, or is it because he operates in that world somehow?”

“Like a fellow student?”

Zach glances up, his brow furrowed in concentration. “Maybe, but wouldn’t that be kind of hard to be a student at four, five different institutions in such a short timeframe?”

That’s a solid point, though not impossible. “What if he’s not actually enrolled. He just attends the classes, all the while searching for his victim?”

“How would he do that with no one noticing? Some of those upper-level classes get pretty small,” Zach says, taking a sip of his coffee. “It wouldn’t take long before the teacher figured out that one of the students sitting in their class wasn’t paying for it.”

“A teacher, maybe?”

“Would it be difficult for a professor to move around like that?”

We’re spit balling, so I keep it rolling. “Maybe a guest lecturer?”

He nods. “Both would be easy to check.”

I make a mental note to look this up later. Most college staff directories have short bios with pictures. Not sure about guest lecturers, but a phone call to each department would likely give us the answer.

“Ballard thinks the perp might be in sales.” I picture the network of highways connecting western Montana to the Bay Area in California. “But what field of science or technology sales would connect all five vics?”

“Besides pharmaceuticals?”

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