at least in method. They may be someone with advanced skills in related areas. Someone who could hack into what I assume is a fairly basic school registration system to access student and faculty information. It may even be someone who has access to paper files. A volunteer who helps out in the office. All we know for sure is that they have access to Syracuse University.”
“You’re right, it doesn’t narrow it down much,” Flynn said, rubbing his thumb across his lower lip. Zoe, who had read studies about oral fixation and the subtleties of body language in a largely failed attempt to better understand it, wondered if the gesture would have been disarming to another woman. “But at least we have a lead. We know that the next victim will be a student of the college.”
Zoe’s eyes widened fractionally as she followed the thought through. “But so does he,” she said. “And he has enough of a lead that he could be hunting her down as we speak.”
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
He glanced around before settling behind the computer, checking that he was alone. It was easy enough to be alone here. There was hardly ever anyone around that showed any interest in what he was doing. It made things so much easier.
He flexed his fingers above the keyboard for a moment, before starting to type. The records system was old and clunky, and well overdue an update; not that he was complaining. It was that old-fashioned set-up that had allowed him to easily get access, not just to current students but also to alumni and faculty. And while the search function was barely useful at all, he could at least do things the manual way.
Opening a list of alumni for a particular school within the college, he nestled further into his chair, hunching his shoulders and head forward to get a closer view of the screen. He knew that current students would be little help—mature students were few enough that needing an age this specific meant diving into past records.
And if that didn’t work, there was always faculty. He’d find someone, somewhere.
The research was long and challenging, but he didn’t mind it. It was a wholly different kind of work to the actual sacrifices, but both had their part to play in all of this. The sequence was coming together, and he had a shot at finding someone who was fifty-three years old.
He’d already figured out the range of birth dates that would work. He was scrolling through the list, checking off each one, starting with the year. Not a lot of matches. That was already apparent. It was a ripe old age. The list was long. He would find someone sooner or later.
He stopped, double-checked, triple-checked. The date worked. This woman, she was in the right age range. He looked across, checked out her last known address, and carefully jotted it down on a piece of paper along with her full name. There was even a landline number, though he wouldn’t be so stupid as to give the police a phone record link between himself and one of the victims. He knew they would be looking for him. There was no point in handing them the smoking gun.
Very interesting, this woman. Turned out she’d gone back to school eight years ago to get her master’s degree. Good for her. Self-improvement was an admirable thing. After all, that was all he was trying to do. To find new knowledge out there in the universe, the one single truth at the core of everything. In fact, she probably would have approved of his search. That would make it all the easier.
That was, of course, if he could track her down. He opened a new window, started searching on social media. It was amazing how much information people would give away about themselves on social media. She had a few accounts; she evidently wasn’t great at using the location tag feature, which was typical of an older woman who had not grown up part of the internet generation, but it didn’t matter.
It typically didn’t matter, not when they had stayed local. Because he was local too, and he recognized the sights. The image she had posted of her son and his girlfriend, strolling along on a nature walk just outside of the city. Another group shot, all of them around a table at a local restaurant that he had attended himself—probably taken at a Christmas gathering, judging by the caption.
Yes, she was