Relief flickered through him. He’d expected voicemail, a receptionist, or some bureaucratic maze that would waste half the morning.
“Agent Winslow, this is Agent Sean Malone in Elizabeth City, North Carolina.”
“What can I do for you, Agent Malone?”
He pulled a legal pad closer and uncapped a pen. If this call gave them anything useful, he wanted every detail. “Sean, please.”
There was the faintest pause. “Then feel free to call me Karen. Now that we have the niceties out of the way, what can I help you with?”
Sean got right to it. “Well, it seems we have a serial killer down here who matches one you had last year in Philly. Pennies on the forehead and the word ‘sinner’ carved into the victims’ torsos.”
Silence. Not the distracted kind of someone skimming through paperwork while half listening. This was sharper. Focused. He could almost picture her straightening in her chair.
“How many has he killed down there?” The tension in her voice was palpable.
“Three in the past three months.”
A harsh breath crackled through the receiver. “Damn it.”
He rubbed a finger over his jaw. “How did your homicides stay out of the news up there? I never heard about them until I got the hit in N-DEx.”
“We got lucky,” Winslow admitted. “The first one was a prostitute. No one claimed the body, so she was sent to a potter’s grave. Must’ve been a busy news day, because without details about how she died, the press lost interest fast. The second one was—and still is—a Jane Doe. We think she may have been a transient passing through the area, but we couldn’t match her to any missing persons reports and got nowhere after airing a police sketch on the news. We never released the fact that she was a homicide victim. Officially, she was listed as an unattended death. She spent four months at the morgue before being buried beside the first victim.”
Sean grimaced. Three dead women, and two of them had vanished from public memory before the investigation had even gained traction.
Winslow continued. “The third one was new to the area. After the body was released, the family took her back home to Vermont. No one except the local detectives and us knew about the connection between the cases. And I think for the first time in my career, there were no leaks from the PD or medical examiner’s office.”
“You’re right,” Sean said. “You got lucky.” He leaned back in his chair and glanced toward the whiteboards covered in victim timelines and photographs. “I was hoping you could share what you have in your files.”
Paper rustled on the other end of the line. “Give me a phone number where I can reach you, your email so I can send the files, and a mailing address for anything that hasn’t been digitized. I'll overnight that stuff to you.”
Sean rattled off the information.
“I wish I could come down there and assist you,” Winslow said, frustration edging her voice. “Unfortunately, I have to appear in court this week. I want this bastard bad.”
“You and me both.” Sean glanced at the clock on the wall. “We also have a profiler driving in from Quantico.”
“Who’s coming?”
“Doctor Suki Ralston. Do you know her?”
A short laugh sounded through the receiver. “Absolutely. I’ve worked with Suki on several cases. I was hoping to get her last year for this one, but she was unavailable.” A phone rang in the background. “Listen, I have another call. I just sent you an email containing the initial reports and autopsy results. I’ll send the rest in a bit. Let me know if you have any questions or leads.”
“No problem. Wait, one more thing.” Sean glanced down at the notes in front of him. “What were the dates on the pennies? Were they all the same?”
“Yeah. They were all from 1993. Yours?”
His stomach knotted.
“Same here. Another unknown piece of the puzzle.” He reached for his pen. “All right, I’ll let you know if we find anything, and thanks.”
After ending the call, Sean turned toward his laptop just as the new email notification flashed across the screen. He opened the files and sent some of the documents to the printer, listening to the machine hum to life behind him.
Somewhere inside those reports, he hoped there was something useful. A missed detail. A pattern. Anything that might point them toward the man responsible before another woman ended up dead.
Chapter Eleven
By a quarter to eleven, Sean’s frustration had climbed to a near-constant throb behind his eyes. He’d spent the better part of the morning combing through the Philadelphia files, searching for some overlooked detail that might make sense of the killer’s pattern, but every page left him with more questions than answers.
