Amanda said, “Tell them we are studying how to streamline the reporting process. Focus on the names from our list. I need all of the witness statements, coroner reports, any photographs, recordings, forensics, maps, crime scene diagrams, investigator’s logs and the names of anyone who was on scene. And I do mean softly, Wilbur. My phone calls this morning have already caused some ripples. Our killer could go underground if he gets wind of us laying the groundwork for a task force.”
“You were making phone calls this morning to set up a task force,” Faith said. “So it wasn’t just the spreadsheet? You’ve been building up to this since the briefing, but for some reason, you not only held back that detail, you kept insisting that we ignore the obvious?”
“I’ve been working quietly since this morning, which is the operative word you seem to be missing.” Amanda put a fine point on it. “The last thing we need is some half-cocked hillbilly deputy in Butts County mouthing off to the press about how we’ve got the next Jack the Ripper in our backyard. This is how we keep that from happening. Baby steps.”
Faith blew out an exasperated sigh.
Amanda seemed ready to move on, but she recalibrated, telling Faith, “Yes, I could’ve told you earlier.”
“But?” Faith asked.
“But,” Amanda said. “I could’ve told you earlier.”
This was the closest Sara had ever heard Amanda come to admitting that she had made a mistake.
Faith did not seem mollified. There was something else. “I can’t tell her, Mandy. When it’s time, I can’t be the one to tell Callie Zanger that it wasn’t her husband.”
Amanda rubbed Faith’s back with her hand. “We’ll jump off that cliff when we get to it.”
Nick returned with the bourbon. He’d brought a ceramic mug from the kitchen. He poured a healthy serving. He offered it to Faith.
She shook her head. “I’ve got to drive.”
“I’ll drive you,” Amanda said. “Emma is still with her father. We’ll go to Evelyn’s.”
Faith took the mug. She pressed it to her mouth. From across the room, Sara could hear her swallow.
“Dr. Linton,” Amanda said. “Let’s talk about the killer returning to the victims. The Zanger story confirms a pattern.”
Sara felt caught out. Her brain was too depleted to make such a quick transition.
Amanda prompted, “Dr. Linton?”
Sara struggled to generate a working thesis.
Will saved her. “The pattern is, the killer somehow incapacitates his victims, probably with a hammer. Then he takes them to the woods. He drugs them. When the drug stops working, he punctures their spinal cords. His goal is to paralyze them, to completely control them. He keeps going back to the women until they’re found.”
Sara said, “The cut nerves in Alexandra McAllister’s brachial plexus show a progression.”
Amanda verified, “You mean from Tommi Humphrey?”
“I mean from all three Grant County victims.” Sara finally got her second wind. “I’ve always thought the three victims—Humphrey, Caterino, Truong—were a case study in escalation. The killer was trying to find the right technique, the correct dosage in the Gatorade, the best tool to paralyze them and when.”
Amanda asked, “Why the Gatorade? Why not immediately paralyze them?”
Sara could only guess. “The Rohypnol would have diminishing returns. Unless he’s a pharmacologist, that’s a very tricky drug to experiment with. Death is a severe side effect. The respiration reaches the point of hypoxia. Brain death occurs in minutes.”
Will said, “Unless he stayed with them the entire time, there must have been a point between when they were drugged and when they were physically paralyzed that they had a chance to get away.”
“He’s had a lot of women to experiment with,” Sara said. “He learns with each victim.”
Nick offered, “If you go back to the FBI profile, the guy’s a risk-taker. Could be in the beginning, he’s giving them a fighting chance.”
Will said, “For what it’s worth, Humphrey and Caterino got away. Zanger got away.”
Faith cleared her throat. She was still struggling, but she said, “Callie told me she threw up the blue liquid. Not just threw it up—she basically disgorged her stomach. That bought her some clarity so she could force herself to get up and look for help.”
Will added, “Miranda Newberry found two other women she thinks were living victims. They both walked out of the woods, but they suffered catastrophic damage.”
Sara was finally able to articulate what was bothering her about the Truong autopsy report. “Leslie Truong feels like an outlier. Her body exhibited all the signatures of the killer—the mutilation, the punctured spinal cord, the blue liquid—but