“No,” I said firmly. I closed the file and met Harris’s gaze. “If you have no leads, that means the person who did this—” I shook the file for emphasis, “—might not get caught.”
“That’s very true.” Harris pursed his lips thoughtfully, watching me. “You know, if you aren’t careful, I might actually start to sort of like you, Cole.”
“Perish the thought, Detective.”
“Something happened with Eli, didn’t it?”
His question made me glance up sharply. Before I could stop it, my newfound emotions surged to the surface, choking off my words. Unseemly tears—unbefitting a vicious predator like myself—stung my eyes.
I nodded sharply.
“Do you—” He hesitated, grimacing. Then he took a deep breath. “Look, do you want to talk about it? I don’t do touchy-feely stuff very well, but I’d listen, if you wanted me to.”
Not trusting myself to speak, I shook my head.
“We haven’t turned up any leads on the Mormon missionaries,” Harris said, studying me. “You could help out with that instead. You could tell us if we missed anything—any signs of violence our forensics people didn’t catch. If you don’t want to do this, you don’t have to.”
“I told you,” I said, my voice going uncomfortably thick. I avoided his gaze. “I need a kill. It’s what I do. That can’t have changed.”
I heard the doubt in my own voice—and Harris, being as perceptive as he was, no doubt heard it too.
“Cole—” Harris broke off. He paused for a long moment, then let out a breath and nodded at the case file in my hand. “Look, I don’t condone what you do. But whoever didthatdeserves it. You’d be saving innocent people from a monster.”
I closed the case file. And I realized I didn’t trust myself in his presence any longer. Another moment, and I might start bawling—right there in the middle of the police station.
“Right,” I said prosaically, trying to sound more like my old self. The shuddering breath I drew ruined the effect. “Well, off I go. Slaughter and mayhem await.”
I was certain my tone didn’t convince either of us. I turned and made for the stairs leading to the basement, where we kept the evidence. I could feel Harris’s eyes on my back the entire way there.
* * *
As it turned out, the police had very little to go on. The victim, Joseph Goldberg, had just turned twenty and had transferred to the university earlier that year from community college. He was apparently well liked among his peers, according to the interview the LAPD conducted with his roommate, Trevor Johnston. Trevor had already been ruled out as a suspect. According to him, Joseph was quiet and kept to himself for the most part. He had made no enemies. He was a business major and very studious. Apparently, he had wanted to be an accountant.
Which, albeit practical, was a little strange. After all, whowantedto stare at spreadsheets all day?
But there was nothing in the file to suggest why someone had stabbed Joseph forty-seven times. His wallet hadn’t beentaken. He hadn’t had any nasty breakups recently. No debts the police could find. No substance abuse problems. He was just an ordinary, boring young man who hadn’t deserved to die.
I drove to the neighborhood where Joseph’s body had been found, parked a block away from where the killing had taken place, and walked. The street was dark and quiet. Most of the lights in the drab stucco homes and beige apartment buildings were turned off—not surprising, given that it was the middle of the night. The Memorial Coliseum was a block away, and the university was across the street. It didn’t seem like a place where anyone should have been murdered. But then, I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised. I had seen many horrible things in my long life, hadn’t I?
Strange how none of it had ever bothered me—until now.
I found the crime scene easily. It had happened right there on the sidewalk. I could smell the blood. It had been cleaned, but not well. There was another scent there, too—faint but unmistakable. It was the same scent I had caught on Joseph’s bloodied clothing, which I had checked out of evidence after storming away from Harris.
The scent of the killer, no doubt.
Assuming this hadn’t been a random crime, they had known enough about their victim to understand his routine. According to the file Harris had given me, Joseph had worked weekends as a busser at the sports bar a few blocks from campus. He would have been walking home at nearly two in the morning after his shift ended.
His killer had clearly known that. They had been watching him long enough to learn his routine—that or they knew him personally. I doubted the killing was random. After all, you don’t stab someone forty-seven times without a very good reason.
Not unless you were a serial killer taking pleasure in the brutality. And no self-respecting serial killer would havecommitted their murder right there on a residential street, where anyone could have witnessed it. Not without first vetting their victim and the location.
Still—it was just after two in the morning now, and the house directly across the street from where the crime had taken place had a for-sale sign out front. The rest of the houses were dark. According to the file, the people who lived on either side of the murder scene were elderly. They had gone to bed early and claimed to have seen and heard nothing.
Had the murderer known that?
Well, I wouldn’t have to wonder for long. Soon, I would be able to ask Joseph’s killer myself. A dangerous smile curved across my lips, but it felt different than before.
Hotter, somehow. More filled with fury.
