Agent Allan Peterson said to Danni when she entered the observation room where some of the agents and detectives were still huddled. Peterson was Danni’s partner on the task force formed to find and capture the killer.
“I wasn’t handling anybody,” Danni snapped. The words were out before she could catch them.
“Whoa! Excuse me,” Peterson replied. Danni realized immediately that her response was uncalled for. Peterson was trying to give her a compliment. The stress was getting to her.
“Sorry. Can we get down to business now?”
“We already have,” Peterson said. “We’re running down the Volkswagen and trying to decide what we’re going to do with the sketch besides giving it to every police officer within a hundred-mile radius.”
“Is somebody actually thinking of sitting on it?”
“Maybe. If he knows we have a good description of him, he might run.”
“And young college students may no longer be killed.”
“Be killed here, you mean. If he’s got the urge to kill, he’s going to continue no matter where he is.”
“That’s not necessarily true. Some serial killers have been known to stop for no apparent reason. If we can interrupt his pattern, he may stop.”
“Danni, we’re not in the hoping business. We’re in the catching business. And if we decide that distributing this sketch is going to cause our killer to run, we’re going to keep it on the down low.”
Danni knew he was right although she hated to admit it.
“And who’s making that decision?”
“The higher-ups,” Peterson replied. “They’re meeting as we speak. Where’s the girl?”
“Sitting at my desk waiting for her parents to arrive. I think they’re going to take her home.”
“Good decision. This guy knows she’s out there. He’s got to take another pass at her if she stays in school. She’s the only one who can identify him.”
Chapter Four
Okay, let’s take this new information and try to develop some leads from it. We’ll meet back here at eight tomorrow morning,” Captain Jeffries said as he dismissed the task force on Tuesday morning. Jeffries was the head of the homicide division at the Apache County Sheriff’s Office, and Danni had known him for over ten years. His appointment as head of the task force was a little controversial since the FBI normally liked to run its own show.
The sketch had been distributed to every police officer in the Oakville Police Department, the Apache County Sheriff’s Office, all FBI agents on the case, and all other law enforcement agencies within a 150-mile radius. That geographical limitation would expand, as would the number and type of people who would receive the information. The decision had been made not to release it to the general public at this time.
The task force had set up a hotline after the third murder and encouraged people to call into it with any information they thought might help. There were two operators assigned and trained to take the calls, which were recorded. They had a series of questions to ask. Two secretaries typed up the recorded questions and answers, which were then divvied up among the task force teams. Every morning after the briefing, Danni and Peterson would go through their allotted interviews and make callbacks if they felt the need to follow up. It was tedious work and, so far, fruitless.
The murders had taken place throughout Oakville over a four-month period of time, and there was no discernible geographical pattern—or any other pattern, for that matter. Some had occurred during the day, some at night. Victims one and four had been killed at separate student-housing facilities on Arthur Road south of the campus. Victim one had been strangled while victim four had been stabbed repeatedly in the chest and abdomen. Victim two was living in a similar complex off Thirty-ninth Street, northwest of the campus. She had been stabbed and eventually choked to death with her own pantyhose. Victims three and five lived in houses with other students: three, a few miles east of town, and five, northeast of the campus. They had both had their throats cut, victim three almost to the point of being beheaded. Two of the victims were blondes; three were brunettes.
Stacey Kincaid was the first coed the killer had attempted to make contact with on campus. He was getting bolder.
Murder number three was the one that hit Danni the hardest because of the sheer brutality. The task force was formed after that murder. Three was the magic number for the FBI to label someone a serial killer. Before that it was just murder and that