“That’s…” I paused. Not bad. “That’s the best idea you’ve had yet.”
“And that’s one of the worst compliments I’ve ever gotten,” said Nathan.
“Maybe all of these discrepancies stem from the fact that he’s not a cannibal,” I said. “Not innately. He’s not eating because he’s hungry or because he wants to consume the victim or anything like that. Maybe he’s eating because it’s a sign of power—not his power over the victim, but a symbol of his own ability to act. That would mean he’s not trying to hide the wound, he’s just making other wounds to commemorate the first one.”
“We need Trujillo,” said Ostler again.
“This doesn’t make sense with the hunting imagery,” I said, trying to regain their attention. But the room was already in motion.
A cop handed Ostler a phone, and she started filling in Trujillo on the situation. Nathan hunched over a counter and started pounding out notes on his computer. Diana answered her phone. Only Potash was looking at me.
“Anything else you want to tell us?” he asked.
“You look great in that suit,” I said. “It brings out your eyes.”
“Cops are en route to the husband and son,” said Diana, putting away her phone. “They’ve got the location of the car, but no one to spare on it.”
“Looks like us, then,” said Potash. “Come on, John.”
I checked my phone as we drove, logging in to the webmail server to look at the dummy account.
“Looks like they found it already,” said the e-mail. “I’ll send my official correspondence tomorrow. Anything you want me to leave out?”
Was he threatening to expose our connection? It was only the second e-mail he’d ever sent me. Or was he talking about something else?
I logged out of the server, cleared the browser history, and power cycled the phone. I might need to lose this one soon, too.
The car was abandoned on the side of the freeway; Kristin Mercer lived near the center of town, but Elijah had told the cops she drove to the outskirts to shop in the warehouse stores. We parked behind it, being careful of the cars racing by in the next lane, and it didn’t take long to find the problem: the front right tire was completely flat.
“The valve stem’s been cut,” said Diana. “It’s not a gaping slash, but it’s bigger than a thorn in the treads would have been. She probably got a few miles before she noticed.”
“And The Hunter was following the whole time,” I said. He must have slashed the valve stem while she was … dropping off her son at the neighbors? How did he do that without anyone seeing him? I looked at the cars speeding past. “The only witnesses here were going too fast to see anything, but we can ask in her home neighborhood.”
“He’s lucky she stopped here,” said Potash. “There’s no way to control exactly when a tire will go flat, and even less control over when a driver will stop because of it.”
“He had good odds that she’d stop somewhere on the freeway,” said Diana. “It’s a long drive from one exit to the next.”
“Good but not perfect,” I said. “But that might be part of his plan, too. If she’d stopped in a better place, he might have just kept going and tried to create another opportunity on another victim.” I looked at the wide, flat road, stretching out in front and behind us. “At least now we know a little more about how he thinks.”
Diana’s phone rang, and she plugged her other ear when she answered, blocking out the sound of speeding cars. “This is Agent Lucas. Okay, hang on.” She motioned us toward the car. “It’s Hess, they have some blood work back. Get in where we can hear.” We climbed back into the car, Potash taking the wheel so Diana could hold the phone. “Okay, Hess, I’m putting you on speaker.”
“It’s a sedative called etorphine hydrochloride,” said the coroner. Her voice was quiet over the speakerphone, and Diana turned up the volume. “We never would have found it if we weren’t looking for it—it’s a drug that works in incredibly small doses, and there’s barely any left in her system. But she was definitely drugged.”
“I haven’t heard of it,” said Diana. “Is it common?”
“Common but restricted,” said Hess. “It’s a synthetic opium, basically, like a superconcentrated morphine. It’s mainly used for large animals, like bear or bison. Makes sense for an attack like this because it works in seconds. Sale is restricted to veterinarians, and it gets used a lot in zoos. Around here it’s more likely to show up in the parks service, maybe a ranch—anyone who might need to sedate a moose really, really urgently.”
“Glad to know we don’t have the weirdest jobs around, then,” said Diana. She looked at Potash. “A veterinarian who works with park rangers—that’s a pretty good lead.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” I said.