Page 38 of The Girl He Claimed

Yet if she couldn't do this, whathad that research been for? She'd spent years trying to understand what droveserial killers, trying to dig into their psyches. The time she'd spent tryingto get answers from Adam Riker had been at the start of all of this. Now, maybethe things she'd learned as a result could bring about its end.

"What exactly are yousuggesting?" Paige asked Christopher.

"We interview all of them, dodeep background checks, and hope that you'll be able to spot which of them islying to us. You've studied psychopaths for years, Paige. You know how to readthem."

Paige nodded, feeling a glimmer ofhope. It was a long shot, but it was something. Maybe one of the fifteen womenwould slip up, give them a clue, or reveal something that would lead them tothe killers.

"What if they don't want tocooperate?" Paige asked.

"Then that gives us a reasonto concentrate more on those individuals," Christopher said."Besides, if all of the employees here are subject to mandatory psychevaluations, it's possible that we could simply have you run those."

It was plausible, but with so manysuspects, it still felt like too much of a long shot. And if the ExsanguinationKiller had avoided capture for so long, it seemed likely that she was good atpassing for normal. If she was working there, she had already passed at leastone such evaluation. There wouldn't be any easy tells there to spot.

"We still need some way tonarrow this down. Fifteen women is too many."

Christopher seemed to consider thatfor a moment or two. "We got to fifteen women because we worked throughthe security data to establish who was and wasn't in the St Just Institute atthe right times to have helped Adam and committed the first pair of murders,right?"

"Right," Paige said,nodding as she started to understand.

"So the new murders will giveus another set of security data to add to that mix."

Paige felt a sudden surge of hope.There would be a different shift working today than the one yesterday. Therewould be at least some different personnel in, and maybe those differenceswould be enough to let them reduce the numbers, at least to a point where Paigecould start making judgments about who their best suspects were likely to be.

Maybe, just maybe, this would beenough to give them the identity of the Exsanguination Killer.

They had to find her, before sheand Adam got a chance to kill again.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

"She has to be in here,"Paige said, feeling a surge of confidence as she went to one of the computersto start looking through the security data.

It wouldn't take long to check thenames on her list and see if any of them had been away today as well.

There were no matches. Everyone whohad been away yesterday was on shift today. Every one of them had shown up forwork, which meant that every one of them had an alibi for the two most recentmurders.

Paige shook her head, not quitebelieving what she was seeing.

"What is it?" Christopherasked.

"It looks as though, when weadd in the most recent murders, everyone here has an alibi."

That couldn't be right.Instinctively, Paige knew that it wasn't. She ran the data again, and again, andshe got the same answer.

"There has to be another wayto look at this," Paige said, determined to find a solution. "Whatabout the timing of the murders? Maybe we can find something by looking closerto the time of the last murders."

Christopher nodded thoughtfully."That's a good idea. If we're lucky, something will stand out."

Paige pulled up the timeline of themurders on her computer, studying it closely. She compared the times of themurders to the security data from the St. Just Institute.

"Does the coroner have anestimate on how long the victims had been dead before we got there yet?"Paige asked Christopher.

She saw him check on his phone.

"No more than an hour forSadie. A little longer for Daniel Beckmeyer."

Because the Exsanguination Killer'schosen MO worked a little quicker. She would have finished her grisly workwhile Adam was still watching his victim die. Would she stand there next toAdam, watching the last moments of his kill?

Paige started to look at thesecurity data for a couple of hours before the deaths. She stopped, staring atthe screen.

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