He reached for the phone. “Now for Dalton. Then we’ll figure out how to spend some time. What did you do in the army when you got slowed down?”
“Poker,” she answered. “And it’s not much fun with only two.”
Another smile, then he dialed the phone. She could hear only his side of the conversation, but then he started talking about potential access to the crime scene on the mountain and how they were going to speak to Craig Stone tomorrow and look at maps. “Yeah, it’ll help us get a handle on the type of guy our unsub is. How determined, and so on. Every little bit helps.”
A pause. “Really? Yeah, that would be great. Thanks, Gage.”
He hung up and looked at DeeJay. “You’ll never guess. Craig Stone is law enforcement, too. Gage thinks he should be let in on who we are and why we want to know about access to the crime scene. He thinks Craig will be a whole lot more helpful if he knows what we’re after.”
DeeJay didn’t need to think about it for long. “I agree. Why waste time talking about scenic hikes if we can come straight to the point?”
Cade nodded. “I’m with you. Gage said we should tell him as much as we choose, and he’ll back us up. As for new information...none.”
DeeJay leaned back in her chair, toying with a French fry, watching it flop soggily back and forth. “This guy’s impossible. He accelerated five years ago, toward the end, then quit. Skipped town, whatever. Maybe he just stopped, which means it could be anyone in this county.” She dropped the fry. “Then there’s what appears to be his timeline this time around. He’s taking victims closer together than five years ago. He accelerated, but is this acceleration controlled? Will he start moving faster again? We can’t count on his spacing at all.”
“I know. I hate these cases with a ticking clock, especially when I can’t see the countdown timer.”
She nodded, knowing exactly what he meant. The passing of each minute seemed like a minute lost, even though they were doing everything they could. “Then there’s his scene setting. He hung his first trophies in the middle of nowhere so they couldn’t lead back to him. I wonder if he’s doing that again.”
“I don’t know. That depends, don’t you think?”
“On what? Whether he’s furious that his first batch of trophies is gone? He might be.”
“In which case he’d keep them closer to home.”
She closed her eyes to think, and looking at Cade for some reason wasn’t helping her thought processes. She could have drowned in those eyes of his. “I keep getting hung up on that cargo netting. On the way he wrapped his victims. It’s familiar in some way, but not from a criminal case. It’s something else. Dang, I wish I could get at it.”
“All I keep thinking of at the moment is that he’s in the driver’s seat, and even if he doesn’t accelerate we haven’t got a whole lot of time. And what if he does accelerate? He could move in a matter of days. God, I hate having my hands tied.”
He sighed and went to get them more coffee. The first icy pellets rattled against the window, and the house creaked a bit as the wind hit it. “Here it comes. The only good thing I can say about this blizzard is that it will shut him down, too.”
* * *
Fifty miles away on his isolated ranch not far from the foot of the mountains, the storm had indeed shut Calvin down. He spent an hour or so with his web and his trophies, but eventually at some level his preoccupation was pierced by the blizzard. He had to get back to his house before he risked getting lost out there in a whiteout, or stay here and freeze with his chosen ones.