What did that mean for Derek?Could he not rely on modern techniques?Did he have to rely on old-fashioned investigative work instead?
They had to use everything at their disposal to find their killer.He’d killed in the past, and the detectives back then had used the methods at their disposal.Those methods hadn’t worked.Derek had to apply what he knew now to reach back in time and grab their killer.
"Sullivan!"Agent Scott called.
Derek stopped in his tracks and diverted his course to the agent he had asked to look through any CCTV footage from around the scene of the most recent crime.Perhaps there was some hope in that.If the killer was still rooted in the past, maybe they became less careful as technology advanced.Derek could only hope.
"What do you have for me?"Derek asked.
"It could be nothing," Agent Scott admitted."You wanted anything from the footage, no matter how small, right?"
"Yes, anything," Derek said."You have something?"
"Take a look at this."
The agent played a grainy CCTV clip from a camera near the park where Katrina Sands was found.They both watched together until Agent Scott paused the footage.
"Okay, do you see that van?"the agent asked.
"Yeah," Derek said, looking at a small, dark van with something written on the side.
The footage resumed.
"So, the van passed the camera, and then…sixty seconds later, it passed again, and…again, two minutes later, as if it’s looking for something.Three minutes after that, it parks outside the park, and someone gets out and walks down the street.I can't track where they go, so we don't know if they entered the park.We do know"—he moved the footage forward—"that they get back into their van twenty minutes later and drive off.The timing lines up with the Sands murder."
"Okay," Derek said."This could be something."
"That’s what I thought," the agent said."Now, we don't have any footage from the other murders that you believe might be connected.The next one goes back seven years, so there’s no chance of getting any footage from the area at that time.However, I did take all the digitized information from all the previous cases and ran it through the pattern detection software, and it did kick out something."
"Go on," Derek said.
"In the Walnut Creek murder from twelve years ago, one of the neighbors reported a van hanging around in the area before the murder, a contractor of some sort, but the old woman who reported it was a little…well, out there, so there was never any notice taken, and it was before the murder and not at the murder scene.However, she did say it was a smallish van, dark, with maybe a lock on the side?"
"Which matches with the van at the Sands scene?"
"I was able to enhance the image a little in the footage," Agent Scott said, bringing the image up on the screen."It’s blurry, but that could be a lock on the side."
Derek stared at the blurry gray shape with lettering around it."It could be.How about the letters around it?Are you able to make that any clearer?"
"That’s the best I can do," Agent Scott said."I’ve run it through the AI software, but it doesn’t give anything.It does look like a company name, though."
"Maybe a locksmith, a security company, something like that?"Derek mused.
"I made some calls," Agent Scott said."As many houses and businesses in the area at the Sands crime scene as I could, and no one reports using a contractor.I tried to go back seven years and checked with as many of the homeowners on the street where the woman saw the van, but again, nothing.If we could confirm that someone had a contractor at either scene, we might be able to discount it, but now, it’s worth looking into more."
"This is very good," Derek said."I’ll get onto looking for a company that has a lock."
"Way ahead of you," Agent Scott said."I have compiled a list of companies for you to check out.If this is the guy you’re looking for, then he’ll have been at the company for at least seven years."
"You're the best," Derek said."Please send me that list."
Seven years.
Derek thought about that as he walked away from the desk.Seven years was the starting point.If this was someone who could blend in, perhaps he had been working for the same company for the past twenty-two years and beyond.That would narrow down the list of suspects considerably.
***
"Thanks for coming down," Brian Dean said."We’ve been analyzing all of the reports the killer has left for you, and the more we have, the more we can narrow down what we are looking for."
