Eddison should be headed home. He’s already left the office, after an overlong day of sifting through paperwork and assessing new information from the ongoing investigation into the Garden and the MacIntosh family’s crimes. He can feel the dull heaviness in his bones, somewhere beyond tired but not quite to exhausted.
It’s not the hours, or even the deadening boredom of the paperwork that fatigues him so. It’s the content.
Some days it’s just a job. Other days . . . there are reasons so many good agents burn out. Most do, eventually.
He should be heading home, to rest, to fill his head with something other than images of dead girls in glass and resin. Instead, fresh coffee in hand from the shop down the block, he walks back to the FBI building and takes the elevator to his floor. It’s quiet there, the sea of cubicles empty except for one man snoring softly. It’s tempting to wake him up, but he’s got a pillow stuffed between his head and his desk, a blanket draped over his shoulders and chair like a cape.
You don’t prepare like that for sleeping at your desk unless there’s a reason you can’t go home. Eddison leaves him alone, and spares a hopeful thought that the poor bastard can work it out, whatever the problem is.
From the back corner of his desk, he grabs the stack of colorful folders that never gets put away, the binder clips straining to hold the papers and photos. The conference room will let him spread them all out, sixteen victim files and one that holds all their notes on the case as a whole. Sixteen is too many—far too many—but spring is coming, and another girl will die if they can’t find something to lead them to the killer.
He doesn’t want to see seventeen.
He grabs the first folder, flips it open, and starts reading to refresh all the details he can never quite forget. Maybe this will be the time he finds something new, something that connects in a way it didn’t before. Maybe this is the time he finally finds a lead.
“Looking for trouble?”
The voice makes him flinch, his elbow knocking against his cup. He makes a frantic dive for it as it tilts and wobbles, but he misses.
Aaaand there’s nothing in the cup.
Jesus, how long has he been here?
Looking up, he sees his partner’s amusement and scowls at him. “What are you doing here, Vic?”
“Came back to do some paperwork. Saw the light on.” Vic settles into a rolling chair, taking in the expanse of folders. They’ve migrated across the table, overlapping edges but kept carefully distinct. The only one out of order is Chavi’s, just to Eddison’s left.
“That’s how you always have your paperwork done?” Eddison asks. “You come back?”
“I go home for dinner so I can spend time with all my girls. Then, when the evening dissolves into homework or dates or movies on the couch, I sometimes come back to get some extra work done. You don’t need to sound so betrayed by it.”
Does he sound betrayed by it? Eddison reflects on that, then reluctantly decides that yes, yes, he probably does. Sometime over the past years, it might have been nice for the more experienced agent to give him that hint.
Vic reaches for the folder nearest him, gathering the photos into a neat stack and turning them facedown. “Do you really think you’re going to see anything you didn’t see the last twenty times you did this?”
Rather than answer, Eddison just looks at the folder in Vic’s hands.
“Fair point.” After a moment, Vic shuts the folder and slides it back in place. “Let’s try this a different way.”
“Meaning?”
“There are things that we take for granted because we already know the cases are connected. Let’s try to remove that bias. So. Here we are, slow day, an analyst researching on ViCAP brings us these folders and thinks we have a serial killer.” He looks expectantly at Eddison.
Eddison glowers back.
Sighing, Vic grabs the file with just their notes and sets it in the chair next to him. “I know you hate role-play, but it’s a useful investigative tool. Indulge me.”
“None of the cases share the same jurisdiction,” Eddison says, and his partner nods. “Different state every time, no geographic cluster or apparent comfort zone. The victims all live in or around cities, rather than more rural areas, but there’s nothing on a map to link them.”
“All right. What does link them?”
“Age clusters; they’re all in a four-year range, fourteen to seventeen. All in school, all female.”
Standing to stretch out over the table, Vic pulls the headshot to the top of each stack. Most are yearbook photos, though a few are posed at other occasions. Candid shots may say more about a person, but posed ones are more identifiable. “What else?”
Eddison tries to pretend he hasn’t seen these pictures so many times they’re emblazoned on the back of his eyelids, tries to pretend he doesn’t know anything about them. “They don’t fit a type,” he says eventually. “They’re all young and objectively pretty, but hair color, skin color, racial background, they’re all over the spectrum. Whatever makes them attractive to him as victims, it’s not how they look. Or not only how they look.”
“So we dig deeper.”
“I’m not at the academy.”
“I know.” Vic taps at a bright green folder. “And I know we did all this seven years ago with Kiersten Knowles. We came into this because someone else connected these cases, so there were things we simply assumed to be true because they were presented to us that way. What if finding something genuinely new means tucking into the things we don’t even realize we’re not seeing?”
“I need more coffee.”
“I’ll get it. You think.”
As Vic leaves the conference room, Eddison pulls one of the candids out of Chavi’s file and props it up against his empty cup. It’s almost the last picture of living Chavi, taken just two days before her murder. Priya’s twelfth birthday. All the girls and women at the neighborhood party, and some of the more obliging men, had flower crowns on, colorful ribbons spilling out from silk flowers and wire. Priya was all skin and bones then, near the end of a growth spurt that gave her height but not weight, her hips and ribs pressing against her clothing. Her too-sharp face was alight, though, bright and joyful, with her sister’s arms draped across her chest from behind. Whoever took the photo caught them in motion, their dark hair swinging around them, the red and blue streaks bold as the ribbons. Priya wore a crown of white roses, Chavi one of yellow chrysanthemums, the long petals almost like a fringed headband. Both wore cheerful sundresses and open sweaters, their feet bare in the grass.
Two days later, Chavi was dead.
So was that version of Priya.
Vic comes back and hands him a mug that says you’re my superhero. Eddison isn’t sure if that’s meant to be funny or if Vic just didn’t pay attention to what he was grabbing. The break-room kitchenette is home to any number of orphan mugs.
Lack of attention, he decides after a glance at his partner’s hand. Vic’s mug says he’s the world’s gratest mom, with a hunk of swiss cheese next to the words.
“Cause of death is the same in every case,” Eddison says, taking a cautious sip. It’s stark and bitter, definitely microwaved dregs, but it’s got a kick. “Slit throat. Most are clean, single cuts that run deep, a few are choppy, probably indicative of a higher level of rage. Multiple medical examiners suggest it’s most likely a smooth-edged hunting knife. Angle of the wound changes depending on the height of the victims, but all point to an attack from behind by someone around six feet tall. Left-to-right directionality says someone right-handed.”
“Before we get into the disposition of the bodies, what else is the same about the attacks? Physically, I mean.”
“That’s where we see two distinct victim profiles.” Eddison looks for his notes, realizes Vic still has the folder, and glares.