Page 10 of The Girl He Crowned

“Plus he arrangedthe bodies precisely,” Paige said. Yes, there was something organized andmeticulous about that, and in a way, that was the most interesting thing. Itsuggested that whatever frenzy came over the killer as he murdered the women,it fled quickly, letting him go back into a space where he was precise andconsidered, controlled and controlling.

“So a killer whoplans carefully, has one burst of extreme violence, and then settles back intobeing this quiet guy?” Christopher said.

“Exactly.” Paigehad the feeling that this killer would be some quiet, considered type in hisday to day life, probably wanting to make sure that everything was correct ineverything around them. Yet this would be someone who also had a temper whenthings went wrong, coming through in flashes that came and went with flickeringspeed. Maybe the quietness was even a part of what drove him, repressing theviolence until it appeared again.

“Is there anythingelse you can tell us, Dr. Philibert?” Christopher asked. “You say the killerwiped away all of the evidence?”

“Notallofit,” Dr. Philibert said. “He was careful, but that very care left its owntraces.”

Paige frowned atthat. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that hetook his time cleaning, but that time meant a degree of contact with the deadwomen in itself, and that contact left traces.”

“So youdohaveDNA?” Christopher asked.

“Not DNA, fabric fibers.Our killer wore gloves to try to prevent DNA deposits or fingerprints, but whatpeople forget is that gloves leave their own traces, sufficiently unique intheir way that if we were to find the pair of gloves in question, it would bepossible to prove that they were present at the crime scene.”

That possibilitybrought Paige a note of hope because it meant that they had a potential way to provethat someone was or wasn’t the killer.

“Was it the samegloves at both scenes?” Christopher asked.

Dr. Philibertnodded. “It was. One pair used in both cases. I imagine that the killer doesn’tknow that we can find these traces.”

Paige could onlyagree with that, because a killer as careful and as well-prepared as this onewould have taken steps to change gloves at each site if he’d known.

“Since you’retalking about fibers, I take it we’re not talking about just cheap latex gloves?”Paige said. “Can you tell what kind of gloves they would have been?”

Maybe the choiceof gloves could tell them something about the kind of person the killer was. Ifthey were gloves the killer used again and again, then maybe they meantsomething to him, like the pendulums.

“They would beheavy-duty work gloves, like gardening gloves, or the kind of glovescontractors use,” Dr. Philibert said.

Paige foundherself looking over to Christopher as a possibility hit her. “The bridge. Thereare contractors working on the bridge, and on the scaffolding.”

A contractor therewould have been in a perfect spot to see Debbie Danton run by every day, and toplan exactly where he was going to strike. It potentially provided all theopportunity one of them needed.

“We need to lookinto that construction company,” Paige said. “We need to see if anyone workingthere has been behaving suspiciously in the last few days.”

“I’ll make a callto them,” Christopher said. “And see if they know anything that can help us.”

CHAPTER SIX

He found that itwas important to be as thorough as possible when building up to a kill.

Oh, he was surethat many people just rushed out and picked anyone at random to kill. Possiblythat allowed them to kill a lot of people in a short space of time, butultimately, that kind of killer was always caught.

He had nointention of being caught. He had a method. He had alist.

Currently, he wassitting in a café in Eddis, sipping overpriced coffee at a table while watchingMelody Smythe chatting with a couple of her girlfriends. He kept his cupcarefully centered on the table while he did so, making sure that itspositioning was perfect, lined up precisely with the menus there and with hisphone propped against them.

He was using thephone to take snapshots when he was sure that no one was looking. And no onewaslooking his way. It was one of the perks of seeming ordinary, in a townwhere everyone seemed determined to show off how extraordinary they were,constructing elaborate, unforgivable lies around themselves.

Most of themthought that little things like rules and truth didn’t apply to them. Theythought that if they had money, they could do as they wished. They could saywhat they wished. He found that… both reprehensible and strangely enticing. Forso long in his life he’d been carefully bound by rules, hemmed in by them, untilthe moment when he’d realized that the rules others set were essentially lies.

It had been bothfreeing and terrifying, all at once. He’d been told never to lie. He’d beenmade to look at the pendulum when he did. The parts of him that had alwaysbeen dormant somewhere beneath the surface had threatened to overwhelm him.Now, though, he’d found balance by finding new rules of his own invention, newways of looking at the world.

His rules weresimple: he left no trace, he worked precisely, he planned, and he took onlyliars. Only those who had earned it through their deceit.

He checkedeveryone on his list before he killed them, to make sure that they were liars. Itwas easy enough, and he always found the proof he needed.

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