Silent Killer Page 0,87
had changed from how to catch a serial killer to the bra size of the bosomy waitress and bets on whether or not she had implants.
This morning, Jack needed caffeine. He poured himself another cup of the office sludge that vaguely resembled coffee and tasted more like thin tar. Having had way too much on his mind at bedtime, he hadn’t drifted off to sleep until after two this morning, and then he hadn’t slept worth a damn. A war-related nightmare that he preferred not to think about in the hard, cold light of day had interrupted his four hours of on-and-off sleep. And right now, he was feeling the aftereffects. He placed his mug on the desk, pulled out his chair and sat. After taking a couple of sips of the strong, hot brew, he put the mug aside and stared at the stack of file folders beside his computer.
The task force was no closer to finding their killer than when the investigation first started. Without any witnesses and with no definitive evidence linking the three murders to a specific person, they were pretty much spinning their wheels. Out there somewhere, possibly living in Dunmore, was a murderer who, according to Derek, probably seemed relatively normal. He or she could be anyone’s next-door neighbor, a regular guy or gal, someone who, on a day-today basis, looked and acted like everyone else. But a monster existed inside this killer.
“You’ve got to be a really sick bastard to be able to set another human being on fire,” Lieutenant Wayne Morgan, the ABI agent who headed the Fire and Brimstone task force, had said during their most recent meeting. His statement had been a consensus of the others on the task force.
So, how did you recognize a monster if he or she didn’t have horns and a tail? If this person spit fire, had glowing red eyes or their head twirled around and around, it would make law enforcement’s job a lot easier.
If their killer stayed true to form, he or she wouldn’t kill again for a good while. Mark Cantrell had been killed more than eighteen months ago, and then, six months later, Charles Randolph had met his maker. Father Brian Myers had become the third victim, murdered almost a year after the second clergyman’s death. Would the killer wait six months or even a year before striking again? Derek seemed to think that it would be a lot sooner.
“Call it gut instinct,” Derek had told them, “but I believe there will be another similar murder sometime in the next few months.”
“There was six months between the first two murders, then nearly a whole year before the killer struck again,” Huntsville police detective Jeremy Vaughn had said at yesterday’s meeting. “What makes you think he’s going to strike again so soon?”
“Other than going by my instincts, you mean? Nothing, really. Just an educated guess. There’s a fury inside our killer that is bound to intensify as time goes by. All that’s needed is the right incentive, and he or she could go into a killing frenzy.”
A killing frenzy!
Jack knew all about killing. When he’d been in the Rangers, he had not only witnessed horrific murders more times than he could count, but he, too, had killed—numerous times. It was all a part of being a soldier, part of being at war. It was kill or be killed. And although he was no longer a soldier, no longer living in a war zone, he was now a member of a select group of men and women who fought crime on a daily basis.
The one thing everyone on the task force agreed about was the fact that another murder was imminent. Jack couldn’t help wondering how Cathy would react when another clergyman was killed.
Damn! He didn’t want to think about her so much, but she’d been on his mind all week. Although he hadn’t seen her since Sunday night, she had phoned yesterday to tell him she had finished the preliminary plans for renovating his house. The call had been brief and to the point. They were meeting for lunch today, a strictly business lunch. Yeah, sure. He didn’t for one minute believe that anything could ever be strictly business between Cathy and him.
My life is far too complicated already to have to deal with an affair with you or anyone else. He had replayed her words over and over inside his head for the past five days and knew he had to