Aim to Kill (4 page)

Four more girls killed in Atlanta.

Four in Nashville.

The list went on. Years separated his crimes, but Olivia had uncovered twenty-nine murders in thirty-four years that fit the same pattern.

Blonde girls between the ages of nine and twelve.

Sexually assaulted. Underpants taken.

Dumped facedown in a relatively public location, usually a rest stop off a sparsely traveled road, or an industrial park at night.

The reports she had access to were sparse. She wished she could view the autopsy reports and the lab notes, but most were not computerized. The older the crimes, the less information she had. But the key commonality, the factor that convinced Olivia she had found the link, was the missing lock of hair. The killer had been taking “souvenirs” from his victims, a piece of his victims he could see or touch to relive his crimes.

“What are you doing?”

Olivia jumped, her hand to her chest. “Greg! You startled me.”

“You were deep in thought. So deep you missed the senior staff meeting.”

She glanced at the clock. Noon already? How did the time escape her? “I’m sorry, I was working on . . .” She bit her cheek. She couldn’t think of a convincing lie, especially on the fly.

Greg frowned and pulled the document from her hand. His scowl deepened as he opened the file folder on her desk and realized what she’d spent the last two weeks doing.

“I can explain,” she began, though she had no idea what to say.

“You don’t need to explain to me, Olivia. I understand you need to find out who killed your sister. But why didn’t you talk to me first?”

“I don’t know. It’s kind of personal.” More than personal; guilt sat like a lead weight on her shoulders. Her testimony against Brian Hall had enabled an evil predator to go free.

“Personal?” He sat down across from her and ran his hands through his hair. “We were married for three years, we’ve been friends for ten more, and you couldn’t share this with me?”

Hurting Greg was the last thing she wanted to do. “At first, I just looked at Missy’s case. At the evidence, the DNA reports, the interviews. I thought, well, I don’t know what I was thinking, except that maybe I’d see something that could put Brian Hall back in prison.” She laughed, a hollow, sad sound.

She continued. “Then I thought, what if? What if he had a partner? There was never any indication that he worked with anyone, but he’s not all that bright—if he did have an accomplice, Hall probably would have turned on him to avoid the death penalty. But what if Hall did have a partner who he was protecting for some reason? We know he didn’t rape Missy, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t somehow involved. But then I thought, what if Hall is really innocent?”

“So you started researching similar crimes,” Greg said, holding up the paper he’d taken from her hands.

“Yes. And, well, things started falling into place. I flounder when I don’t have hard science to back me up, but now—I really think I’m on to something. Will you take a look and tell me if we have enough to go to Rick?”

Rick Stockton was their boss, director of FBI Laboratory Services. He was also a friend, and Olivia wasn’t afraid to capitalize on that friendship if it meant finding Missy’s killer.

Greg took the folder and Olivia sighed in relief. She found herself wringing her hands as she tried to avoid staring at him while he read her compiled reports.

“I don’t understand—in
Kansas
and
Kentucky
someone was convicted of the murders. In
Kansas
, the guy was a known sex offender. I don’t see where they fit into your pattern.”

“The hair,” she said. “Look at the autopsy reports.”

“I saw that, but—”

“Isolated, it doesn’t mean anything,” Olivia interrupted, anticipating Greg’s objections, “but coupled with all the other similarities, my theory holds together. This guy has killed more than two dozen girls. He can wait years between attacks, but then kills two, three, four girls in a short period of time before leaving the area. Why? I don’t know. Maybe he’s satisfied for a time. He shows excellent self-control and discipline. Maybe the police get too close for his comfort. Or in some cases they arrest another man and our guy leaves quietly. Like Hall.”

“I see your point.” Greg stared at the ceiling as if reading the tiles, but his expression was familiar. Olivia grew excited—he was seriously considering her theory. Looking at it from every angle. She held her breath. Having Greg on her side would help her with Rick—not only were Greg and Rick friends, but Greg was also assistant director of CODIS, one of the largest departments in the FBI laboratory, and well respected in the building.

He finally looked at her. “What can Rick do?”

She handed him a report. “Two girls in Seattle who fit the profile are dead, one discovered just this morning. We need to get the Seattle bureau involved. Get the local cops on our page. Profile this guy—he’s disciplined, methodical, and patient. But what else? His job? His family life? If we can trace his steps from Redwood City thirty-four years ago to now, we can learn his identity. Stop him before another girl dies.”

“It’s circumstantial, Olivia,” Greg began.

“But—”

He put his hand up. “But I’ll go with you to talk to Rick. I agree, it’s worth pursuing.”

“Olivia, Greg, come in.”

Rick Stockton glanced at his designer watch, then opened his door wide and motioned for them to enter. “I have a lunch meeting in twenty minutes, but I can be late.”

“Thank you.” Olivia glanced at Greg, who nodded. It helped having him on her side, even if he wasn’t completely convinced.

Rick closed the door behind them, then walked to his desk, sitting on the corner rather than behind it. He smiled wide, a warm smile that brightened his eyes. Rick Stockton was the talk of most of the women in the building: good-looking, sexy, and smart. Olivia didn’t pay attention to the talk—she had more important things to do than ogle men—but she had to admit that her female colleagues were right about his sex appeal.

“Sit,” he told them and she did, clutching her file like a lifeline. Greg stood behind her, his hand resting on the back of her chair. “What can I do for you?”

She bit the inside of her cheek. She and Greg had talked out how to approach Rick, but all her best-laid plans disappeared and she said, “I believe my sister’s killer is in Seattle right now. There have been two like-crimes over the last three weeks.”

Rick’s left eyebrow rose as he glanced at Greg, but that was his only reaction. “How did you come to this conclusion?”

“I followed the evidence. What little there is,” she admitted. “When Brian Harrison Hall was released two weeks ago, I ran a search—on my own time—for similar crimes throughout the country. I found a total of twenty-nine murders in ten states, including Missy’s. I believe she may have been his first.”

Rick frowned. “Ten states? And no one saw a pattern?”

“He is surprisingly patient between attacks, up to six years in one case. He goes into a community, generally a suburb of a large city, and kills up to four blonde girls before disappearing. The only time he kills fewer than four girls is when someone is arrested for the crime.” She paused, handed him her folder. “It’s all here.”

Rick took the folder and flipped through it. “You were thorough. But what about common evidence? DNA? Witness testimony?”

“Two cases had a witness mention a tattoo on the abductor. Nashville and most recently Seattle. There has been no DNA logged in any of the cases into CODIS, except the new results from the
California
lab on Missy’s case. But I was hoping we could offer assistance to help in the older, cold cases.”

“You want me to take over cold-case files in local jurisdictions?”

Greg interjected. “If a DNA sample was preserved, or any other hard evidence, perhaps we can connect them and prove that the same man was responsible for all these crimes.”

“To what end?”

Olivia blinked. “To capture him, of course.”

Rick flipped through the file in silence. “You have three cases here where someone was convicted. They got the killer.”

“I believe they were wrongfully convicted. The release of Hall proves it in that case.”

“You want me to call the district attorney in those states and tell them they put an innocent man in jail? One of these guys is on death row.” Rick shook his head. “I can see the headlines now. We have a bad enough reputation with local police that we don’t need to criticize the way their criminal justice system works.”

“I never thought of you as one to back down from a challenge.” Olivia bit her lip. She couldn’t believe she’d said that. “I—I didn’t mean . . . I’m sorry.”

Rick’s eyes flashed first with anger, then compassion. “Olivia, I know Hall’s release has been difficult for you.”

“This has nothing to do with Hall.”

“Doesn’t it?” He held up the file. “This must have taken you a hundred hours to compile. You’ve found a couple of interesting threads, but it’s circumstantial and these cases are old. We have a backlog of work here, and I’m sure the local authorities won’t want to dig up cold cases. We have no jurisdiction, no authority to go in and take charge. There’s nothing we can do at this point.”

“Yes, we can!” she pleaded. “You can contact the Seattle bureau chief and have him take over the case. Or work with the local detectives.” She hoped she didn’t sound as desperate as she felt.

“In Seattle?”

She nodded. Rick was interested, she could tell. She leaned forward in her seat. “Two girls have been murdered there. Jennifer Benedict three weeks ago, and Michelle Davidson’s body was found this morning. It was the Benedict child that told me it’s the same killer. A witness identified a tattoo on her abductor’s arm.

“That’s two girls,” she continued. “If he follows his pattern, he’ll kill two more before he moves on. This is our chance to catch him.”

“Olivia.” Rick stood, walked behind his desk, and looked out the window. “I’d like to help you put your sister’s murder behind you, but this isn’t the way. I can’t tell Seattle to take over a local investigation. We are spread so thin now we can barely cover our urgent cases.”

“But it’s the same guy!”

Rick turned to her, a quizzical look on his face. “I can see you’re passionate about this. But there is no hard evidence in this file. While the information on the surface connects the crimes, and could prove helpful when the police find a suspect, nothing leads to an individual. It’s less than circumstantial. You have my permission to monitor what’s going on in Seattle. If they find a suspect, I’ll contact the local bureau and give them what we have. But right now we have neither the time nor the money to pursue cold cases.”

“But if we use our resources to test the evidence, take apart the carpet fibers—look here.” She stood and flipped the folder open to the middle, her hands shaking. “Carpet fibers from a different truck were found on virtually every victim. I think he steals the trucks, or maybe he works in a place with access to different vehicles. I didn’t have time to run auto theft reports, and because they’re not in a federal database I don’t have immediate access, but I can write up a memo for local authorities to compare theft reports to the vehicles the killer used, and then we can—”

“Stop.”

Olivia blinked. Rick’s voice was quiet, but commanding.

He walked over to her and took her hand. She was still shaking. She resisted the urge to pull away. “Please, Rick,” she said. “I know there’s something here if we just look deeper.”

“There’s nothing we can do until the local authorities ask us to get involved.”

“But—”

He squeezed her hand. “Your research is a good start, but it doesn’t give us anything to find this guy. I’m sorry, but we just don’t have the resources for an investigation of this magnitude without being asked.” He paused. “I need you here, on my team, working for victims who are just as important as those two poor girls in Seattle. You know I care about them. In a perfect world we would have the money and staff to pursue every investigation, cold or not. But we don’t have the time, resources, or personnel to tackle this. Leave it to Seattle. If they need us, if they want us, they’ll ask.”

She looked down, afraid to meet Rick’s eyes. He’d said no. “I understand.” She did, professionally. But her heart told her to do something, anything, to find this guy.

“Thank you for hearing us out,” Greg said. “I appreciate it.”

“I’ll keep my ears open. If I hear anything from Seattle, I’ll bend over backward to help them,” Rick said. “But until then—” He threw up his hands.

“I understand,” she repeated and stood. “Thank you.”

“Olivia, do you want to take a little time off? A week, go on vacation. You haven’t had a vacation in years.”

“I just came back from
Montana
.”

“You stopped at your friend’s wedding on your way to Hall’s parole hearing months ago. I don’t consider that a vacation.”

“I can’t. I need to work.” Working helped focus her on seeking justice by doing what she could for crime victims. Or it used to, anyway. Now, she didn’t know. She couldn’t stop thinking about the two girls in Seattle. She’d followed each case in the press. Seen their pictures. Olivia had looked into their eyes.