Undercover Hunter(57)
A damn spiderweb. What did that mean about their killer? He ran in mental circles, trying to find something.
“He wrapped the bodies the way a spider does,” DeeJay said from the table. “Plastic in lieu of silk. But now this damn display makes sense. Does this guy think he’s some kind of spider?”
“I’m asking myself the same question. Do you like grated Parmesan in your salad?”
“I like anything in my salad.”
He was stumped, as stumped as he’d ever been. “What could the connection be? Nobody knows how a spider thinks. If it thinks. For Pete’s sake, what is he thinking?” And that was what they needed to get to.
“I don’t know.” She fell quiet for a while.
He checked the chicken breasts, and turned them. Good smells had begun to fill the room, making the blizzard outside seem a little farther away.
“If he’s doing the same thing now,” she said after a bit, “then he needs to be doing it somewhere he can look down on them. That means a big building, unless he’s back in the woods.”
“Plenty of big barns out there, some of them big enough to have even a third floor. We can’t check them all.”
“Of course not. I’m thinking out loud.”
“Even if he’s not back in the woods, it doesn’t have to be a barn. There are some old silos out there to this day. Hell, he could do it inside a house somehow.”
“I know.”
He pulled the chicken out of the oven and turned off the broiler. They needed to cool down some before he cut them and tossed them in with the rest of the salad, so he rejoined her at the table.
“I wonder,” he said, “if looking at them from above makes him feel more powerful somehow.”
She lifted her gaze from the photos. “Power? You think that’s behind this?”
“At least to some extent. Power, madness, and some kind of ritual I can’t begin to imagine yet. But then I can’t imagine him thinking of himself as a spider.”
“I think I can. Not exactly, of course. But maybe he sees himself as casting a web, taking whatever comes to him. Snaring it.”
“But his last one certainly wasn’t just a target of opportunity. He had to puncture the dad’s tire.”
“So we think. But how did he know that kid was going to be waiting for a ride?”
He froze for a moment. “Everyone assumes...you’re right. No one knows, everyone is assuming. The two things seem linked, but maybe they’re not.”
“Coincidences happen.” She ran her fingers through her black hair, tousling it even more. He hoped she didn’t realize that right now she had a bad case of bed head. He thought it was cute.
Quickly he yanked himself back from that cliff.
“He’s clearly organized,” he said, forcing himself back to the task at hand. “He leaves no traces. No trail. Organized killers usually stalk their victims. Hunt them until the moment comes.”
“And not every serial killer is all one but not the other. He’s a risk taker. We agreed on that much. Coming back here after five years and resuming his pattern was a huge risk. One he didn’t have to take. We’ve got a few dozen serial killers running around the country right now. If they keep moving, we don’t catch them.”