“Then he’ll be along in his own time. Or not, knowing him. He did say he had information that would put a new light on what’s going on here.” She returned to her place at the table. To Rick, she said, “Let’s hope he makes it in the next twenty-four hours. We both know how he is once he gets a hold on something. He has a tendency to lose track of time.”

“Annie-um, Dr. McCall…” Rick started.

“Let’s keep this somewhat informal, Rick. I have no problem with first names, if everyone agrees?” She glanced around the table. Cass and Denver nodded.

“Go ahead, Rick, you were about to say…”

“I was going to ask if you’d had an opportunity to review the files we sent.”

“Not as thoroughly as I’d have liked, but I did get through most of it.” She opened her briefcase and took out a pad of yellow legal paper, skimmed several pages of notes, then folded the pages back until she came to a blank sheet. “It appears you have a serial killer-apparently the same one you had… let’s see, twenty-some years ago.”

Denver nodded. “That’s correct.”

“But no suspects, then or now.”

“Right again.”

“You were on the force at the time?”

“Yes.”

“Then I would think you’d be the obvious one to start with, Chief. Since I didn’t have time to completely read through everything, why not bring me up-to-date. From then till now.”

Annie sat back in her chair while the chief recited all the known facts about their killer. As she did so, Cass studied the profiler, who wasn’t at all what she’d expected. Dr. McCall-Annie-appeared to be in her mid-thirties, and was so petite, she made Cass feel uncomfortably like an Amazon in comparison.

A somewhat slovenly Amazon, at that. Cass looked down at the clothes she had pulled on in haste earlier in the day. Light gray sweatpants and a short-sleeved sweatshirt. At least they matched, she reminded herself.

In contrast, the profiler wore a linen suit that had yet to wilt, a pale pink tank under the unlined jacket. She wore large round gold earrings, and a gold bracelet next to a watch with a brown leather strap. The diamond on the ring finger of her left hand caught the afternoon sun from the adjacent window. Her makeup was perfect, not overly done, just enough to enhance, as Lucy would have said.

At the thought of Lucy, Cass rested her elbow on the table and her chin in her hand. Poor Lucy. That she had been attacked was bad enough. How would she feel if she was forced to recover back in Hopewell, with that miserable excuse for a husband…

“Cass?” Rick touched her arm.

“Oh. Sorry.”

“Annie was asking if there was anything else you picked up from the crime scene that you might want to add.”

Cass gave it some thought before shaking her head. “Nothing that isn’t in the reports. I tried to be as thorough as possible.”

“And the reports from the other towns…?” Annie looked back at her notes. “Dewey. Hasboro?”

“We haven’t received all the written reports yet,” Chief Denver told her, “but in speaking with the chiefs of police in each of those towns, I can tell you we have identical crime scenes.”

“With the victims posed in the same manner?” she asked.

Denver nodded.

“I wonder, Chief, if you could call those chiefs of police and request that they fax over the crime scene photos?”

“I’ve already asked, Dr. McCall. We only received the ones from Dewey.”

“I’ll take a look at those, if I could. Meanwhile, Rick, please put a call in to home base and request that someone call the Hasboro police chief and remind him Chief Denver is still waiting for copies of their files.” She smiled. “Remind him it isn’t nice to not share.”

Rick excused himself from the room.

“May I see the original photos from your crime scenes?” Annie asked. “Only the recent ones for now.”

Denver handed her several envelopes. The profiler removed the photos, one by one, studying each, occasionally glancing back at her notes.

“So we have someone who is highly organized. He’s studied his victims well enough to know where they go and when they’re most vulnerable. Obviously, the fact that these women are all of the same general physical appearance is key. He’s repeating something. Over the years, he’s perfected his technique. Brings everything he needs with him, leaves little behind.” Her voice was low, as if speaking more to herself than the others at the table. “And he’s fixated on leaving them in a particular manner. The posing, the hair fanned out…”

She tapped her fingers on the table absently, then looked at the chief.

“Are there photos of the earlier victims? The ones from 1979?”

“Not as many, and not as good. Back then, I remember we thought it was a little ghoulish to take as many pictures of the body as we do now, from all the different angles.” He passed several envelopes to the opposite end of the table. “I wish we’d taken more.”

Annie poured over the images of the old crime scenes.

“Are these in order?” She frowned. “I’d like to see them in order, to study the progression.”

Denver started out of his seat, but Cass had already slid down a few chairs.

“They should go like this,” she was saying. “Alicia Coors, she was the first one. Here in Bowers. Then Carol Jo Hughes-also in Bowers-then Cindy Shelkirk. She was the first victim in one of the other bay towns, she was killed in Tilden. Terry List, she was from Dewey. Mary Pat Engles… Tilden…”

And so on, through all thirteen victims. Annie sat quietly and watched Cass as she placed the victims in order of their deaths.

“Well, then, let’s take a look and see what these ladies have to tell us.” Annie’s eyes went from one to the next.

“He was much younger then, I’d say. Not yet an adult. He was unskilled in this business, these first times out. And he didn’t have his game on back then. He hadn’t evolved.”

“What do you mean?” Cass asked. “He hadn’t evolved into what?”

“Into the methodical killer he is now,” Annie responded without hesitation. “Here, in these early kills, these crime scenes have little in common with the recent ones. There’s no thought whatsoever to placement of the body… see how carefully the arms and legs have been positioned in these current scenes? Back then, it was all about the killing. There seems to have been an anger, a recklessness at work there that I don’t see in your latest victims. Notice the bruises on the side of this woman’s face? He smacked her around a bit before he got down to business. And this one, too. His technique was raw then, the killing had an almost desperate quality.” She paused to take a sip of water from a bottle she retrieved from her oversized handbag. “The current kills are almost passionless.”

She screwed the white plastic cap back on the bottle as Rick came into the room and gave her a thumbs-up, meaning the requested files would be on their way. She nodded an acknowledgment and continued.

“The victims themselves, though, there’s where he was making his statement back then. All around the same age, same body type, and of course, the hair. Whoever he was killing, over and over, he had been totally fixated on her hair…”

“Ah, Annie, I think there’s something you need to know that isn’t in that file we sent you,” Rick said.

“Oh?”

Rick turned to Cass as if asking a silent question, to which she responded with a slow nod.

“Cass’s mother was the victim of a murder here in Bowers Inlet twenty-six years ago. Her entire family was attacked. Cass was the only survivor.”

Denver bristled. “That was completely different, I told you. Why are you bringing it up?”

“Chief, I can’t help but see the similarities-”

“What similarities? Don’t you think if there’d been similarities, we’d have noticed?”

“-and with Lucy being attacked-Lucy, who looks so much like Cass’s mother…”

“Whoa, wait a minute. I don’t have a victim named Lucy.” Annie skimmed her notes. “Who’s Lucy?”