I’d already gathered that Tibby loved to cook and bake—if her love for expensive mixers was any indication—but it was plain to see now that her eyes were brightening with the idea of making a grocery list. Her earlier concerns and worries were momentarily banished as she gave a little excited hop, jostling a purring Wally.
“Is there a budget?” She questioned as she put Wally on a nearby stool and the cat immediately began to groom himself. Tibby returned to the counter and accepted the pen and notepad that Matteo was holding out to her.
Aria snorted, “what do you think?”
CHAPTER 10
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It was nearly sunsetby the time I finally left the field office. The sky had just begun to turn a deep shade of red as I got into my car and drove towards Pack Simmons’s apartment. After being awake for just over forty-eight hours, my eyes had started to burn and sting every time that I blinked. Even though I was completely exhausted, I still couldn’t get rid of the pervading sense of excitement that filled me as I got closer and closer. I was excited about finally returning to the apartment that I’d very nearly called home five years ago. Being around Pack Simmons was like being home again—which both hurt something fierce...and felt really fucking good.
For the rest of the afternoon, I’d thrown myself completely into my work. We finished processing Tibby’s apartment and had all gone back to the office to wait for the profiler to complete the report he’d been compiling for two weeks. We were finally able to identify who the four victims were specifically, thanks to Lizzie who had been working around the clock to hunt down dental records for each of the witnesses and match them to a body.
Victims one and two were successfully identified through dental records as Almanzo Eckels, age forty-two, and Beatrice McMallin, age thirty-seven. Both had been the most willing witnesses during the trial and had acclimated the best to the outside world. Their testimony had been widely reported on by the media, and their faces had been splashed across newspapers and magazines. Both had also given television interviews over the past nine years. Due to their notoriety, it was likely that they had been incredibly easy for the killer to track down.
Process of elimination identified Victim Three as Victoria “Tori” Childs, age twenty-nine. She was the second youngest witness at only twenty-one years old at the time of the trial. Tori had spent most of the past eight years in and out of rehab for drug addiction as a result of growing up in Hezekiah Jordan’s cult. Last year she had finally gotten clean and even started attending community college. By all accounts, she had finally gotten her life on track. A life that had, unfortunately, been cut short when she was abducted from her apartment two days before her body was found in the middle of Golden Gate Park. The worst part was that no one had reported her missing. She had no close family or friends to notice that she had gone missing. Just a boss at a local grocery who had fired her posthumously for being a no-call-no-show.
Finally, victim number four, who we had found this morning before Theo called me. We were assuming it was Peter Landry, age sixty-two. The M.E was still waiting for dental records to be sure, but we were pretty confident about the identification as he was the only witness left other than Tibby. According to his file, he’d been the most reluctant to testify against Hezekiah Jordan, as he had been one of Jordan’s right-hand men. But when the prosecutor had threatened to hit him with charges of child abuse and accessory to murder, he’d quickly flipped for immunity and had gotten a deal instead. Landry spent four years in jail and, as soon as he was released, had gotten married to a twenty-year-old girl, popping out a kid every other year ever since. One call to his wife told me that she neither cared nor was surprised by her husband’s violent death. All she had said was: “violent men deserve violent deaths.” Which had sent chills down my spine. To be frank, out of our four victims, I held the least sympathy for Peter Landry. In fact, the world was probably a better place without him in it.
But that didn’t matter, it wasn’t my job to decide who does or does not deserve sympathy. It was my job to figure out just who the hell had ended these four people’s lives in one of the most brutal manners imaginable...and to keep Tibby from meeting the same fate.
I had stuck around the office much longer than I probably should have, waiting for the profiler to finish up their report. Once he had, I was left with more questions than answers:
One Hour Prior...
“Your suspect is going to be on the younger side. I’d be surprised if they were over the age of twenty-five.” The profiler stood in front of a captive audience of agents and analysts. Five minutes ago he had rolled in a large whiteboard that had sheets of paper taped all over it, it included crime scene photos and driver’s license photos of the victims. A poorly taken ID picture of Tibby had been pasted in the corner next to Vic #4. It didn’t sit right with me to see her next to four dead people as if we were just waiting for her to inevitably join them.
“He’s smart, but probably has had no formal education. It is likely that he works in some sort of security job or tech job as he has an intimate knowledge of cameras and camera placement. He knows when to be seen, and he knows when to show off, which goes into his probably young age. It also tells us that he is a narcissist who thinks that he is putting on some kind of great show. He wants us to see the victims still smoldering. He wants us to think that we could have saved them from him, even though there is likely no way to rescue these victims once they’ve been taken.”
“Additionally,” the agent continued. “He more than likely has an ideology that mimics that of Hezekiah Jordan’s. In that, the alpha status is supreme and there is a belief that the true nature of alphas is to have multiple omegas mated to them at once despite the fact that an omega’s nature is territorial.” Jordan had apparently had four omega wives at the time of the mass casualty event. I made a note to get their names from the files later, maybe they had some sort of connection to our killer.
Director Cruz stepped forward from the throng of agents, his graying black hair combed away from his forehead as he fixed us with a stern, brown stare. “We need to be looking into any and all connections to Hezekiah Jordan that we can. Comb through his visitor logs, his mail, anything that you can think of.”
With that, the office began to move again with people scurrying off to complete their tasks for this case or for the other cases that had taken a back burner to this.
“Collins,” Cruz called and gestured for me to join him in his office. Once the door was shut, Cruz sat down heavily at his desk. He looked like he had aged twenty years ever since we had found Victim Three and realized that we had a serial killer on our hands.
