Brett shook his head, walking over to stand with her at the pictures. “I already thought of this. Looked for a distinct pattern in the order of the killing methods.”
Paige wrote out a list on the white board next to the pictures.
1) Strangled. 2) Stabbed. 3) Strangled. 4) Burned. 5) Strangled. 6) Stabbed. 7) Burned. 8) Strangled.
Brett nodded. “Yes, that’s correct, but there’s no pattern. Teresa Cavasos was the last and she was strangled.”
Paige looked over at him. “According to the dates, I should’ve been victim number 3. I would’ve been his ‘burn’ victim. He planned to leave me in that burning building. That’s how I got away. He’d already doused the building with gasoline and it caught on fire too early.”
Alex studied what she’d written on the board. “Even if that was true, it still wouldn’t make a consistent pattern in the killing methodology. Too many strangles.”
“It would be consistent if he has OCD. If he killed Victim C, Alexandra Dobbs, the woman after me, by strangling her, only to realize that was unacceptable to his pattern.”
Brett realized Paige was right. What looked like an inconsistency with the pattern might actually be the killer resetting it.
“You should’ve been burned. Then the next victim would’ve been strangled. But you got away so it messed him up.”
Realization dawned in Alex’s eyes. “So he strangled the next victim, but that didn’t give him the closure he needed, so he had to go back and burn someone.”
Paige nodded. “Exactly. The pattern is strangle, stab, burn.”
They all studied the pictures. It made twisted sense and tied together all the killings in a more believable way.
“A serial killer whose MO is a pattern, not just a single way of killing,” Brett murmured.
Alex nodded. “It’s not even the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“I should’ve been dead.”
Paige’s words were so soft he almost didn’t hear them. He stepped closer to put an arm around her. “Baby…”
She stepped back, arms wrapped around her middle. “I know you suggested it before, but I should’ve died.”
Brett wouldn’t let her close herself off. He wrapped his arms around her. “But you didn’t. You survived. And thank God.”
“If I had died, then one of those other women would still be alive.”
“You can’t think like that, Paige,” Alex said. “There’s only one person responsible for the death of these women. The killer.”
She didn’t look convinced. She untangled herself from Brett’s arms and walked to the table picking up the “before” picture of the woman they hadn’t identified yet. “If we’re right about the pattern then this woman will be the next victim and she’ll be stabbed.”
The woman was young, maybe late twenties, small in stature like Paige. She had black hair that fell down to the middle of her back. In the drawing she was laughing, looking at someone or something to the side. She didn’t seem to have a care in the world.
“We’ll find her,” Brett said.
Paige slid the other picture of the women over to Brett. It was another picture of violence, another brutally beaten face. By process of elimination they had determined it was the same woman, because she certainly could not be matched by appearance.
“But will she look like that when you do?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
"Hey." Paige felt a finger graze down her cheek.
She’d been sitting over at the end of the conference room table for a while now while Brett and Alex continued to talk about the case. The women.
Charlotte Winters, Heather Brown, Alexandra Dobbs, Teresa Cavasos… All these women who had just been horrible pictures in her portfolio now had names. Real identities.
Were all dead.
Paige should've been dead also.
Brett had spoken his suspicions to her before but until she had seen the pattern for herself she hadn’t truly believed it.
The man who attacked her, the man with the aura so black, had meant to kill her in the most brutal of fashions.
And more than that, Paige was connected to him in some way. Every person she had drawn had been one of his victims.
Paige didn’t know how to get rid of the panic building inside her.
She was seeing inside a killer’s mind.
Her mind was seeing what his was projecting. Her eyes saw and her hands drew what was most important to him. It was almost unbearable to be connected to him in this way.
How did Adrienne get through it? How hard she worked with the FBI all these years – being connected to the depraved thoughts and actions of multiple evil people? Paige obviously wasn't as strong as her sister was.
"Hey. Paige."
She finally focused on Brett who was crouched in front of her chair. He had obviously tried to get her attention more than once.
"You're exhausted. I already called your security team and they're sending someone to come get you."
Paige wanted to argue. Wanted to stay and help figure out anything else if she could. But Brett was right.
She couldn't remember ever feeling this exhausted before.
She would blame it on the fact that she hadn't gotten much sleep last night, worried about what was going through Brett's mind, and now she was on her second night of no sleep.
Not because she was linked in some way with a sadistic killer.
She nodded. "Yes, I'm sort of tired."
She felt his fingers trail down her cheek again. "I don't blame you. Plus, we've got to get you out of here before the normal detective workforce makes their way in. That will start happening in an hour or two."
Paige glanced over at the photos again. "I'm glad you were able to piece it all together." Paige had to face another hard truth. "If I had come forward with the pictures earlier we might've been able to save some of their lives."
Brett shook his head. "You can't think that way. There would've been no way to identify them and you've already tasted firsthand how receptive law enforcement would've been to you showing them the pictures."
"Crazy at best. Criminal at worst."
Brett shrugged. "Sadly, yes. For people who don't know you, for you to just show up with what are obviously exact replicas of crime scene photos would throw you into a very suspicious light. I can't say that I would’ve reacted any differently in the same circumstances.”
Paige wrapped her arms around herself. Despite the mild temperature in the room, she felt like she couldn't get warm. Felt like she might never be warm again.
"Hey," Brett said again. “We’re going to get through this. Going to catch this guy. For what he did to these women and for what he did to you."
She watched as Brett slipped off his jacket and wrapped it around her. It helped. The warmth of the fabric; the smell of it so uniquely Brett.
It brought her back from the void she felt so close to stumbling into.
"How are you going to catch him? You can't use these pictures. Nobody else is going to believe them."
"The pictures give us a link," he said. "Alex and me. Now that we know where to look and who to look at, we’ll find something else to prove they're all connected. We won't bring you into it."
Paige nodded.
"Our first line of business will be identifying the unknown woman in the last drawing. Once we find her we can not only put a protection detail around her, we can hopefully use her to figure out who the killer is. See who’s following her.”
"We're going to have to use some creative arguments to get protective detail around someone we hope could potentially be the next victim." Alex still stood staring at the pictures.
As she shuddered in the jacket, Brett reached and pulled her up against him so they were both standing. Now with his heat against her she almost felt warm.
“You’re going to be the one who leads us to him, sweetheart. The one person who got away will be the one who brings him down," Brett said against her forehead, his hands moving in circles on her back.
Brett's phone chirped.
"Tom's outside." Brett’s hand at the small of her back began to ease her towards the door. "The best thing you can do is get some rest."
Paige just nodded. Exhaustion weighed so heavy on her there was nothing else she could do.
“Hey," Alex called out before they made it to the conference room door. "We will get this guy, Paige. What you've done is amazing. Don't doubt that."
Paige gave him a weak smile but the doubts weighing down her mind were so great she hardly knew how to express them.
Doubts about her mental health. How could she be connected to a killer? Doubts about her courage. How could she have just put these pictures in a box and not delved into them further?
Doubts about her very sanity. The next time she drew a picture she would know exactly what it meant. Another person dead.
She wasn't sure she would ever be able to go to sleep again for fear she’d find a new picture on her easel when she awoke.
Her stomach filled with a twisting despair. She brought both of her fists to her belly in an effort to keep the despondency inside.
"Whatever it is you're thinking, stop. Right now." Brett halted their progress towards the front door and turned her to look at him. "You made the right choice with the information you had. Once you knew these were real women, real victims, you haven't shied away from it."