Page 21 of The Girl He Wanted

It was, but was it enough? It didn't lead them anywhere new. They continued to search the area but found nothing else that stood out. The clock tower was empty.

Paige was starting to feel as though merely following the physical evidence wouldn't be enough to get them to the killer in this case. After all, in their previous cases, it had always been when she'd started to work out the intentions of the killer and their pattern that they'd managed to get ahead of the killers and stop them. That was what she’d trained for. That was what she was good at.

"I want to try to get inside the mind of the killer a little," Paige said.

"Up here?" Christopher said, gesturing around them.

Paige nodded. "We have to start somewhere, and this is the place where he chose to kill. It has to mean something to him."

She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath, and tried to imagine what the killer might be thinking. What was their motive? What did they want to achieve?

She saw flashes of images, the pictures of the victims, the Greek letters drawn on their bodies, the way they were displayed. It was like the killer was trying to create something, to tell a story through the murders he was committing. Or … trying to complete a deliberate sequence.

"I think the killer wants to create something," Paige said out loud. "Something that they can't create on their own. They're using their victims as a canvas, trying to tell a story. But what's the story they're trying to tell?"

Christopher frowned. "That's a bit abstract, isn't it?"

"I know, but it's something. We have to keep an open mind about this. We need to start thinking like the killer if we're going to catch him. We need to find the right questions to ask."

"Such as?" Christopher sounded a little doubtful.

"Such as why does he kill his victims in these places?" Paige asked. "Why is it special to him to kill them so high up?"

Christopher rubbed his chin. "Maybe there's a personal connection to these locations."

"Maybe," Paige said. It was her turn to sound doubtful. "But if there were someone with such a strong connection to the water tower and this clock tower, I feel as though we would have heard about them by now. It seems more like the height is the point of all of this."

"Why?" Christopher asked.

"I'm not sure," Paige admitted. "But the more I think about it, the more I’m certain that the height is important to the killer. Maybe it's a power thing. Maybe it's about feeling like they're above everyone else. Or maybe it's something else entirely."

Christopher nodded thoughtfully. "It’s a possibility. Maybe there's something about the height that'll give us a clue."

Paige looked back out at the view from the clock tower. She didn't see anything that would give them that clue, but she knew they had to keep searching. They couldn't let this killer get away with any more murders.

"Maybe this is just about being able to display his victims to the largest number of people," Christopher suggested.

That didn't quite work. "If he wanted to display Bea Milling to the maximum number of people, he would have picked somewhere other than an out of the way water tower."

"So, maybe it's not that," Christopher said. "Maybe it's a place where they can be in control. They can see everything, and no one can see them."

That made a little more sense, but Paige got the feeling that it didn't explain everything the killer was doing, either. If he just wanted to feel safe, then he could have killed his victims anywhere out of the way. Why on top of high places, and why leave the Greek letters? It was the combination of the two that made all of this so strange, but Paige didn’t know yet what that combination meant to the killer. There was only so far into his mindset that she could think herself without more evidence.

"We should head back down and see what else we can find," Paige said.

Paige was starting to get the feeling that they'd gotten everything they could up here. As they made their way back down the stairs, Paige's mind was racing. She couldn't shake the feeling that they were missing a crucial piece of the puzzle. But what was it?

They went back to the car, where Paige started to go through the files once more, trying to look at them in the light of the additional context of having been up the clock tower. The local police department had been thorough, interviewing everyone connected with the case, from the people who had found Ellie Kane's body to her and Bea Milling's family. They'd even talked to one of Bea's old boyfriends, who seemed to have stayed in touch with her. They'd quickly discounted him as a suspect, not least because he had an alibi, but Paige found herself going through his statement in detail anyway, hoping that she could find something that would let her pick that alibi apart.

What she found instead was a single, casual comment, but one that was enough to make her gasp as she saw it.

"What is it?" Christopher asked as he drove.

"Bea Milling's ex-boyfriend says that she was afraid of heights."

"How afraid?" Christopher asked. "And would the killer have known that?"

Paige could only shrug her shoulders at that. The answers simply weren't there in the file, but maybe there was a way to find out more.

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