Page 5 of The Girl He Crowned

Christopher put awarning hand on her arm. Even that contact felt almost electric, impossible notto react to.

“Either way, Idon’t want to present this to Sauer without more to go on. Trust me, afterLexington, this is not the moment to tell him that you went off and did yourown thing without consulting him.”

Paige winced atthat. In Lexington, they’d caught a killer, but only after Paige had publiclytaunted him without consulting anyone beforehand, placing herself in danger. Theirboss had not been happy about it, and only the fact that they’d caught thekiller had stopped him from reassigning both her and Christopher. If he wasstill angry about that, it could make things awkward, especially if she gavehim the information about Adam.

“He’s waiting forus in the conference room,” Christopher said. He still sounded worried. “Weshouldn’t keep him waiting.”

Except Paigehadkept him waiting, because she’d been off talking to Adam, rather than hereready to do her job. She winced at the thought of Agent Sauer being angry withher.

He was waiting ina large, glass-walled conference room with a long mahogany table at its heart thatlooked so solid it almost seemed like the rest of the building had been builtup around it; Paige couldn’t imagine how they’d ever gotten it in thereotherwise. There were several screens set around the room, obviously to allowfor briefing information to be pulled up on them.

Agent Sauer wassitting at the head of that table, his expression serious and unforgiving. He wasin his forties, slender and thin faced, with a dark beard. He wore a simpledark suit that might have matched Paige and Christopher’s except that it was probablyseveral times as expensive. He had a screen set up next to him, and a papercopy of a file in front of him.

“You’re late,Agent King,” he said in a disapproving tone, as Paige stepped into the room.

“Sorry sir,” shereplied. She thought about telling him the reason why, but Christopher wasright: Without a lot more to back it up, that would make things worse, notbetter. “You have a case for us?”

Sauer nodded. “Haveyou heard of the town of Eddis, Illinois?”

Paige shook herhead. “I don’t think so.”

“Neither had Iuntil two women turned up dead there in the last couple of days,” Sauer said. Hegestured for her and Christopher to sit at the conference table, then pushedthe paper file across in their direction.

“The first victimwas Siobhan Maraty, twenty-seven years old, worked as a consultant in marketing.”Sauer pulled up a picture of a woman on the screen, which looked like it hadbeen taken from a company website. She was round-faced, blonde-haired, and blue-eyed,wearing an expensive suit and several pieces of jewelry.

Sauer clicked overthe image, and it became a crime scene photograph, showing the same woman lyingface up underneath a broad oak tree in what appeared to be a public park.

Paige felt afamiliar wave of horror at the sight of someone dead like that, and had tofight to push it down. It wasn’t just the normal sympathy for the dead thatanyone would have experienced in response to the sight of the dead woman. No,in that moment, she was fourteen again, standing in the woodlands near herfamily home, staring down at the dead form of her father lying bloodlesslybeneath a tree. It seemed that Paige couldn’t look at a body now without apainful echo of that moment running through her.

“She was strangledas she took a regular shortcut through the park to go get lunch,” Sauer said.“The killer seems to have waited for her and ambushed her.”

“He could havebeen lying in wait for anyone,” Christopher said, assessing the crime scene. “Butit could also mean that he knew her route because he watched her, or he knewher personally. Has the coroner established how she was strangled?”

“It looks likesome kind of metal object pressed across the throat,” Sauer said. “Probablyfrom the front, judging from the markings on the victim’s skin, with enoughpressure to break the hyoid bone, although it would have been the pressureagainst the carotid arteries that would have caused death.”

He sounded asthough he was quoting from the coroner’s report directly. Maybe keeping thetone as professional as possible helped. He clicked over to another photographof a woman, slightly younger and dark-haired this time. The photograph hadclearly been taken from her social media accounts, being perfectly posed infront of a spectacular looking backdrop that couldn’t be local.

“This is Debbie Danton,twenty-three. She was found earlier today beneath a bridge in Eddis, althoughthe coroner is pretty sure that she was killed yesterday evening. She’d beenout running, and it seems that the killer ambushed her on her regular runningroute.”

Again, it implieda killer who watched his victims carefully, or who knew them and their habitsalready. He knew where they were going to be and when.

“She had beenstrangled in exactly the same way as Siobhan Maraty.”

Now the photographshifted to an image of her lying there, staring up with blank, dead eyes in abrick structure that must have been the underpass of the bridge. Paige couldsee pieces of scaffolding in the picture, as if the bridge were being repaired.

“Is that the onlyconnection between the deaths?” Paige asked, because a simple similarity ofmethod wouldn’t necessarily be enough to show that there was a serial killeroperating, even with the killings so close together. Even in a smaller town, itwas possible that two women had been strangled on successive days by completelydifferent people. This could all just be coincidence.

Sauer shook hishead, though, and brought up another picture, or rather, two pictures side byside. Both were of long metal objects with bulbous ends that seemed to behanging suspended, one from the brickwork of the underpass, the other from atree branch.

“Are thosependulums?” Paige asked.

She saw Sauer nod.“They were found directly above the bodies in both cases, and drag marks in thepark suggest that the killer repositioned the body to place her there, afterkilling her several feet away.”

“Meaning that partis important to him,” Paige said. It mattered to the killer to place hisvictims precisely underneath the pendulums.

“What do you thinkit means?” Christopher asked her. Paige could see Sauer looking over at herexpectantly as well, but then, that was why she was here on the team. She wasthe one with the background to try to understand killers like this, and thatunderstanding had helped them to catch several such killers so far.

Now, it was timefor Paige to prove what she could do, and try to provide some insights.

---