Page 372 of Cold Case, Warm Hearts

Hank had been right that this appeared—at least at first glance—to be the work of one person. Or a small group of people. If she aligned the kills in the order they were done, it did look like someone who was gaining skill.

She’d looked at the victim he’d mentioned, Thea Ackerman. Even if she didn’t see significance she planned to start there.

“Knock, knock.”

Addie flinched around to the doorway.

“Sorry.” Russ held up both hands.

She shook her head. “Don’t worry about it, I was deep in thought.”

He nodded and scanned her office. The boards had been arranged in a semi-circle. Tables in the center held all the boxes in a semblance of order, but she was going to have to fix that fast or she’d lose all sense of where anything was and what it related to.

“You’ve been busy.”

She pushed off the desk and strode to the board that listed the manner of death for each victim. “Take a look at this for me. Tell me what you think it looks like.”

He met her at the board and tugged his glasses from the pocket in his shirt. Russ slipped the readers on his nose and still squinted.

He smelled so familiar, like an old ache for a lost dog. For a moment it caught her off guard.

“What am I looking at?” he asked.

She ignored his question. “It keeps hitting me how fast this all happened. Seems like one minute I’m working with a task force in DC, and the next I’m back here, and nothing’s changed. Or everything has changed. I can’t figure out which.”

She’d been part of a team. Now it seemed like everything was riding on her being successful solo.

He studied the photos and reports on the board. “Bad thing?”

“Just different.”

“Work is a safety net. It’s familiar. It doesn’t matter where you do your job, right?”

“Yeah, that’s right.” She didn’t tell him how she might’ve made a friend. She’d never had many of those, even as the captain of the cheerleaders. At least not friends of any quality. Jake had been the best thing in her life until everything went wrong.

“What’s this?” He motioned at the crime scene and autopsy photos.

“First one was summer six years ago. She was cut up left to bleed out. Looks like slowly. Judging by what was reported by the investigating detectives.” She slid her finger to the right. “I made a timeline. Next, a couple years later, there are two more. Now we’ve gone from a blade to blunt force trauma.” It correlated with another element. “He’s got a new method to try and subdue them. Makes it messy. One he finished off with a gun. But a couple of these, I’m not even sure they’re the same guy.”

“But that one.” Russ pointed at the collection at the end. “Two years ago?”

“I think he’s trying out different methods. Experimenting. The captures are cleaner, and the manner of death is…cold.” Addie’s brain tried to connect the dots figure out some kind of pattern. “And now I think he’s started up again.”

“Okay, back up from that fact for a second.” Russ shook his head. “Why did all these get flagged?”

“I was given a lot of cases by PD. I asked for these as well, and several others. I still need to nail down what’s the same guy and what just relates in some way, but I can rule them out.”

“Okay.”

“In each autopsy, with a couple of exceptions where the death was caught up in my search for other reasons, it was noted the victim had received a bug bite prior to their death.”

“A bug bite?”

She shivered again even though she tried to stop it.

Russ turned.

“I know what you’re gonna say.”

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