Page 44 of Just Right

"Tell me about them?" Connor said, as he swung the car in a U-turn, accelerating the other way.

"One is Meryl Steele. She lives a few miles south of Becker. She's a housewife, it looks like. She's blonde, in her forties, and she pins her location. She's home now. And the other is someone he has followed for a few weeks now. She's Jayne Bell, a model coach. She's in her forties also. Very glamorous, very fashion focused. She lives about twenty miles south of Chicago, in a smaller town. She's currently in the local school, doing coaching."

"And your algorithm can't tell which one is more likely?"

"No," Cami said, feeling frustrated. "The geolocation is too inconsistent. There's no set distance or route, it's just a southerly trajectory. He seems to be basing this more on the victims he's identifying along the way, than the places."

"Right. So people are his thing. As long as the places are within the ballpark, it works for him?"

"Yes. That seems to be his priority."

"I guess it's about the people. That's what he's trying to find. So, which one do we choose?" Connor tapped his finger thoughtfully on the wheel, glancing at the two locations.

"I'm going to go with the closer one," he said. "Let's go to Meryl Steele. I'll ask the local police to go to Jayne Bell. If she's twenty miles away, then they'll be able to get there before we will."

He swung the car along a side street, speeding to the suburb where Meryl Steele lived, barking out commands into the radio.

Cami kept her programs running and tried to keep a watch on both the women. She still felt an uneasy twist of her stomach when she thought about where they were, because in the past, he'd often targeted his victims shortly after they had traveled or moved.

She didn't want to rely on these two locations alone. If the killer had done basic research on his next target, he might know something about her movements that they didn't know.

At that moment, Connor’s phone rang again, and he picked up, speaking to the office.

“Yes? Any news?”

He switched the phone to speaker so that Cami could hear.

“We looked up the postmortem results for the Becker family accident,” the agent back in the office said.

“And? Anything to be found?”

“As you know, there were only five people in the vehicle. Not six. That’s confirmed. And the mother, who was driving, was wearing a blue armband, similar to the ones that have been found at the scenes.”

“Thanks,” Connor said. “That’s a help to us.”

The mother? Cami felt shocked.

This confirmed to her, for certain, that the killer was trying to play the accident scene out in his tortured mind again.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

The lost man knew that this was the most important target yet. This was the last one he had to choose. After this, it didn't matter. He would have finished the search for his family.

His family. The words sounded strange. It was only recently that he'd remembered he even had a family. He'd forgotten they existed. He'd forgotten so much.

It had all come back to him, of course. First in snippets, and then suddenly, in a rush, he'd remembered all of it.

Before the memories had returned, all he'd known was the face of the bearded man who'd found him in the woods.

"Who? Who are you?" There had been a gun pointed at him. He'd known what it was of course, but even that word had taken a while to filter through to his mind.

All he could do was stammer out a name that came to him, from somewhere, but he didn't know where.

"Becker. Becker."

"Becker? You a runaway? Been in a crash? A fight?"

His head was hurting. The man was frowning, his tanned forehead creased, looking at a point on his temple, with some concern.

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