Kendra thought for a moment. “Want to bet they’ve matched some of the other left-behind objects with different Ventura County murders?”
Metcalf nodded. “That crossed my mind. It was going to be my next play. The killer is obviously taunting us with his trophies. In today’s case, he intentionally echoed his earlier killing in Ventura County. Both student athletes, each living alone in an apartment. It wouldn’t surprise me if we found echoes with the other victims.” He unbuckled his seatbelt as the plane reached the jetway. “My colleagues aren’t wasting time, are they?”
“I give your new partner the credit. Gina Carson is a sharp lady. It doesn’t seem like she lets the grass grow beneath her feet.”
“You’re right. I think she’ll keep us all on our toes.” He smiled. “Just like you do.”
With no baggage and Metcalf’s car parked in the nearby short-term parking, it was a simple matter to sprint through the airport and get on the road. Less than thirty minutes later as they approached the FBI field office, Metcalf’s jaw tightened. “Uh oh.”
Kendra’s gaze flew to his face. “What’s wrong?”
He nodded toward the building. “You’re the observant one. See anything unusual with this picture?”
Her gaze shifted to the building. “Most of the office lights are still blazing.” She suddenly stiffened in her seat. “That’s very unusual for this time of night.”
“Exactly. Nobody’s gone home.” He glanced at her. “Something’s happened. This is big. Bigger than we thought.”
She couldn’t take her eyes off those blazing lights. What could have driven Griffin to keep his whole department there? “How?”
“I have no idea.” He pulled into the parking lot. “But we’re about to find out.”
CHAPTER
5
“THE CASE HAS EXPLODED!”
Gina Carson pushed Kendra and Metcalf back into the elevator before they could step out onto the third floor and punched the fourth-floor button. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes shining, and though Kendra could see that she was trying to be cool and businesslike, she could almost feel her seething excitement.
“Exploded? And just where are we going?” Kendra said.
“The large conference room. Everyone is up there. We’re turning it into our war room.”
“You matched the killer’s trophies with more of the Ventura County cases?” Metcalf guessed.
Gina shook her head. “No.”
The elevator doors opened to reveal that the large fourth floor conference room generally used for seminars, regional meetings, receptions, and other sizable gatherings, was now a whirlwind of activity, with agents and support staff rushing between the large wheeled bulletin boards that lined the walls.
The center of the room was occupied by half a dozen computer workstations and color printers that were manned by assistants who grabbed and collated printouts as soon as they were spat out.
Griffin was holding a stack of printouts in his hand as he approached them. “This is all your fault, Kendra. I hope you’re happy with yourself.”
She glanced around, dazed by the activity. “I refuse to take any blame when I’m not even sure what I’m seeing here.”
Gina motioned for them to follow her into the room. “A lot has happened in the last few hours. I started out trying to match our killings and trophies with other victims up in Ventura. It didn’t work, not like how easily our college athlete matched with the Stanford swimmer who was killed a few years ago.” She gestured to the organized chaos in the room. “So I decided to broaden the net.”
Kendra’s breath left her as she spun around and took in the images from the dozen bulletin boards around her.
More cities.
More victims.
More horror.
“My God … These are all … him?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Gina said impatiently. “The trophies match up with objects taken from victims in at least four other cities. Twenty-six victims in all.”
“Holy shit,” Metcalf whispered.
“Four separate cases,” Griffin added. “In addition to the one you discovered today. In each one, he adopted an entirely new MO. That’s why they were never linked before now.”
Gina was shepherding them on a tour of the bulletin boards, which were still being organized by the agents and assistants. “Nine years ago, he was Washington, D.C.’s Southside Strangler. Sixteen months after that he became Hartford’s Roadside Slasher. Less than three years later, he was the Jacksonville Daylight Killer. Just before that one, he was your Ventura County Killer.”
“This is incredible…” Metcalf said. “Serial killers almost never alter their methodology this way. It looks like that in some of these cases, he targeted men, in others it was women, in others it was only the elderly…”
“He changed how he did everything from town to town,” Gina said. “He was a chameleon. In Washington he set his victims on fire post-mortem, just as he did the woman we found yesterday. We have an ID on her, by the way. Her name was Amanda Robinson. The objects we found with her belonged to a young Washington woman who was murdered and burned almost nine years ago. Her name was Katrina Harmon.”
Kendra nodded absently, staring at the photo. “I’m guessing you used the supermarket loyalty card on the keychain to track her.”
“Exactly. And her former husband identified the eyeglasses as hers. We have a driver’s license photo of her wearing them and the maker and prescription is a perfect match for a pair of glasses she purchased at the Connecticut Avenue LensCrafters in D.C. a few months before she was killed.”
Kendra couldn’t take her eyes from the photo of the smiling, bespectacled young woman, just inches from nightmarish shots of her crispy corpse. Blue tape separated her case from the current San Diego case of Amanda Robinson. Here, too, were similarly grisly before-and-after shots.
“It’s the same story with the others,” Griffin said. “Each of our new killings matches the methodology of one of these old cases. He wanted to make sure we knew it was the same killer in both and not some sick copycat. So he left behind his trophies.” Griffin walked over to another board. “And look at this. Each of the victims in Florida had Revlon Matte Peach Smoked Lipstick applied post mortem.”
“The same brand as in our killings?” Kendra asked.
“We’re still waiting for our report, but it sure looks like it.”
Kendra shook her head at the sheer magnitude of what she was seeing on the boards around her. “So five of the nation’s most notorious serial killers, spanning over a decade … were actually the work of one man.”
“That’s what it looks like,” Griffin said. “And we’re still combing the database to make sure there aren’t more.”
“He could point the way to more with his very next victim,” Metcalf said. “This may not be the end.”