Undercover Hunter(85)
Gage shook his head. “Might be tomorrow before we have the wireless back. They’re working on it—it’s a top priority, they tell me—but it’s tough out there. Getting to the repeaters, climbing towers in all that snow and ice...nobody wants a broken neck. Wonder why?” After he swallowed his bite of steak sandwich, he said, “Okay, what’s up?”
So they explained what DeeJay had noted about the guy’s method of displaying his trophies. For her, the worst of it was that what had sounded so brilliant when she first conceived of it now sounded stupid the second time around.
But Gage didn’t react that way. Instead, he asked to see the pictures, turned them the way she had and nodded. “I can see it. Now where did that take you?”
“That he lures his victims. He’s not snatching them, he’s getting to know them well enough that they don’t think twice about getting in a vehicle with him.”
Gage stopped eating, his gaze growing distant. “Makes sense,” he said after a moment. “They had to know him. It’s been kind of worrying me from the start. But the web?”
DeeJay let it slide. The web had been a key to her thought processes, but it wasn’t essential. Instead, she moved on to the other ugliness, including the part about him using a paralyzing drug on the victims. Now Gage put his sandwich down. He was looking more disturbed by the minute. “There’s more, isn’t there.”
“Well, that remark you made about me resembling the victims. It wouldn’t leave me alone.”
He shook his head slightly. “The resemblance is slight. It bothered me for a minute there. But—”
DeeJay interrupted him. “Lew, the FBI profiler, found what appear to be two female victims of the same killer. He’s been traveling the country, and he left a trail. But the women interested me. Serial killers often have a problem with their mothers. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say he’s continuing what was done to him by his mother with these boys. He internalized whatever she was using as a reason. But every so often he goes after his mother. Not surprising the female vics would resemble her if he does. And I resemble his known victims.”
Gage gave up on eating. DeeJay hadn’t even started, and Cade was making only minor inroads on his food.
“I can leap to conclusions,” Gage said finally. “Are you proposing to dangle yourself out there? I don’t know if I can agree to that. This guy is clearly dangerous. He might not be as easy on you as the boys because you’re a bigger threat. Besides, we’ve got a little time before this guy strikes again, right?”
Cade spoke at last. “These types accelerate. From what Lew said, he did some accelerating while he was away from here. You had five boys over nearly two years the first time. After he left, he started averaging five a year, and the last year in Boston, he really sped up, finally reaching once every couple of weeks. And since he came back, while three isn’t a great sampling, he’s taking them closer than he did here before. There’s no guarantee we have any time at all.”
Gage closed his eyes and remained still for a few minutes. “I don’t like this. What are you planning?”
“No plan yet,” DeeJay admitted. “I’m just hoping that I’ll get an approach that seems a little out of line. Someone trying to lure me in some way. At least then we’ll have a direction to look.”
After a few minutes, Gage started eating again. DeeJay finally started her own sandwich but discovered her coffee was cooling. She went to get the pot and bring it to the table.