Find Her Alive (Detective Josie Quinn #8) - Lisa Regan Page 0,57

killing in Pittsburgh, was a woman. The other three victims were men. Today’s victim was a woman. Don’t serial killers usually stay with one type of victim?”

“There are always exceptions but yes, usually serial killers have a type.”

“Why, then?” Josie asked. “Why would he go all the way to the other side of the state for his next victim and choose a woman? It couldn’t be a copycat because by that point you didn’t even know you had a serial killer on your hands.”

Drake said, “That’s right. Terri Abbott was the second victim. We think perhaps he meant to zig-zag the state and alternate the sex of his victims, but for some reason, with the fourth victim, Robert Ingram, he took a man instead of a woman.”

“What would make him break his pattern?” Josie pressed.

“Some kind of personal stressor,” Drake offered. “Or he may have had to change his plans based on his ability to get away with it. Perhaps Ingram was a more convenient victim. Perhaps he meant to head west again but logistically he wasn’t able to do it, so he took someone on this side of the state. We have no way of really knowing why he changed his pattern—if his pattern was indeed to alternate male and female victims and east and west of the state.”

“You’re assuming he has patterns because of the thirty-day thing,” Mettner pointed out. “The ages of the victims are disparate. Their socioeconomic status. Some have kids and some don’t.”

“True,” Drake said. “For every pattern we can establish, there are other things that aren’t done according to a pattern. Other than the way the victims are taken, like vanishing into thin air, and the way their bones are staged exactly thirty days after they go missing, there aren’t any similarities.”

Mettner said, “He could be trying to throw us off by breaking that pattern with Nicci Webb’s murder.”

Noah said, “Were there ever any viable suspects?”

Drake pulled out another report. “The short answer is no.”

“How is that even possible?” Mettner asked.

Drake didn’t answer. Instead he said, “We concentrated our search on funeral home workers, orthopedic surgeons, hunters, taxidermists, anthropologists, archaeologists, orthotists, prosthetists, artists, and art students in the eastern area of the state. We even looked at coroners and medical examiners. We found a couple of odd birds, for sure, but no one who looked good for these killings.”

“What about ornithologists?” Josie asked.

“I’m sorry, what?” Drake said.

“Ornithologists. Bird experts.”

Drake stared at her.

Noah said, “You said he uses avian scavengers to accelerate decomposition. It makes sense that it could be someone who knows a bit about birds.”

“There are carrion birds all over this state,” Drake said. “Driving here, I saw at least two dozen groups of them feeding on roadkill. You don’t have to be a bird expert to know what scavenger birds do.”

“It’s still worth looking into,” Gretchen said.

“Did you check veterinarians or veterinarian techs?” Josie went on.

“Why would we?” Drake asked.

“Because you’ve obviously covered the bone angle, which makes sense. Look for someone who works with bones or is around bones or has some affinity for bones. Or look at artists, cause this guy thinks he’s an artist. But none of those produced any suspects. If you know he uses animals to accelerate decomposition, the next logical step would be to look at people who work with animals.”

“We looked at hunters and taxidermists,” Drake repeated.

Josie said, “Makes sense. What about anyone who worked at a zoo? Or even someone on the state game commission? They’re in charge of collecting and disposing of roadkill.”

Drake said nothing.

Mettner tapped a note into his cell phone. “We’ll look into those as well.”

“How about large properties?” Josie asked. “He would need a large enough property to leave a body out for days or weeks for the vultures to get to it without drawing attention.”

Drake took a packet of pages out of the folder and slid them across the table. “These are all the property owners we checked out. We went halfway across the state. No red flags.”

Josie remembered something she had seen among Trinity’s things when she was cleaning out the guest room. “What about the psychological profile?”

Drake sifted through the pages left in the file until he came up with the report. “Caucasian male, mid to late thirties. That was based on the sophistication of his crimes—being able to abduct adult individuals without leaving any evidence or being caught on camera; being able to accelerate the decomposition of the bodies using avian scavengers without drawing attention to