“All set?” she asked.

“Any time you are,” Sam replied.

“I’d invite you to come up front and sit with me,” she told him as she walked to the front of the plane, “but I don’t like to talk to anyone when I’m flying. I find it distracting.”

“Right. We don’t need a distracted pilot.”

She laughed and went into the cockpit, and prepared for takeoff.

The flight took much less time than he’d anticipated. By two in the afternoon, Sam was seated in the office of Detective Christopher Coutinho, going over statements given by the witnesses interviewed by the Lincoln police.

“Like I said,” Coutinho told him after he’d gone through nine of the fifteen statements, “no one saw anything.”

“I guess it would help me to understand that better if I could see the crime scene,” Sam said. “Can you give me directions from here? I’ll stop there on my way over to see Lynne Walker.”

“I’ll drive you. It’ll be easier for you to get around. I don’t expect your rental car came with GPS?”

“Actually, it did. And I went to college in Lincoln, though it’s been a while since I’ve been here. But I’ll take you up on the company.” Years in the Bureau had taught Sam to take advantage of any hospitality offered by the locals. Besides, he knew the more time he spent with the lead investigator on the case, the more he’d learn.

“Good. We can get started then, unless there’s something else you need to see in the file?”

“I would like to see the rest of the photos of the crime scene.”

“Oh. Sure. I didn’t email them all because there are too many.” The detective sorted through the file until he found a large, thick, brown envelope. “These aren’t pretty, but I guess pretty isn’t really an option when it comes to cases like this.”

Coutinho slid the photos from the envelope and turned them around so that they faced Sam, who studied each one, from the pictures of the kitchen and the back doorway, to the last close-ups of the dark line that ran across the victim’s throat and the burger that was half in, half out of his mouth.

“The burger was from a chain, as you can see from the paper it’s still wrapped in,” Coutinho pointed out. “Of course, we checked with every location in the city, but there were over a hundred of these things sold that night between the hours of six and nine thirty PM, which is when the ME thinks the murder occurred.”

Sam studied the photos one by one. “And since we’re dealing with an international chain, there’s no point in trying to analyze the contents, because all the food is premade before it gets to the restaurant. Gotta love that prefab fast food.”

“No fingerprints, by the way. There was some trace collected-some skin cells from under the victim’s fingernails and some hair from the front of his shirt. The results from the lab didn’t match up with the DNA we have from everyone he worked with that night, and there was no hit in the database.”

“You got people to volunteer DNA samples?”

“Yes. There was no problem getting them to swab. Usually you have to beg, but this time they all stepped up to the plate. Said they wanted to eliminate the time we’d waste trying to make one of them fit as a suspect.”

“And no one refused?” Sam asked.

“Not a one.”

Sam stared at a photo of Ross Walker. “As we discussed on the phone, this was well planned, well thought out. It took time to set this up. It’s hard to imagine someone from the mission following Walker outside, strangling him, stabbing him, changing his clothes, and then walking back into the kitchen again without anyone noticing the blood on his arms and face.” He looked up at Coutinho. “The killer would have had a tough time getting rid of all the blood while he was at the scene, but if he left by the back alley, as he most likely did, it would have been dark enough that anyone seeing him from a distance wouldn’t have seen any blood he still had on him.”

“We’ve spoken with Walker’s neighbors, with his coworkers, his family. From every account, he was a real family man. Rock of the community, devoted to his wife. Volunteered at the mission’s soup kitchen as soon as it opened, coached Little League soccer and softball. Like I said, no one knows anyone who’d want to hurt him.” Coutinho stood and folded the file. “We’ve talked to our CIs on the street, we’ve talked to everyone we could think of who has their ear to the ground out there. No one’s heard anything about Walker. There aren’t even any rumors.”

“How dependable are your informants?”

“About as dependable as everyone else’s,” admitted the detective. “But it’s unusual for no one to have heard anything. You can usually count on someone hearing at least one rumor, even if it doesn’t pan out. This time, nothing, which tells me that the killer wasn’t one of the usual suspects.”

“Have you seen anything like this MO before?”

Coutinho shook his head. “Never.”

“Did a report go in to VICAP?” Sam asked.

“Yeah, but it got in a little late.”

“How come?”

“Someone thought someone else was entering the data, while someone else thought the other guy had done it.” Coutinho shrugged. “It happens.”

“I’d be real surprised if this guy hasn’t killed before,” Sam said, almost as if thinking aloud. “He was really organized, really sure of himself. First-timers are usually nervous, they screw up somewhere. I don’t see any screwups here. I see someone who knew exactly what he wanted to do, and did it without leaving anything behind that would lead you to him. I think the burger in the mouth is important. It’s something he didn’t need to do in order to commit the crime. I think he’s done this at least a time or two before.”

“So you’re saying this was the work of a serial killer?” Coutinho frowned.

“Not in the classic sense.” Sam explained, “Very often serial murders have a sexual undertone. I don’t see that here. There was no assault, and no evidence of any sexual activity on or near the body, right? No semen found?”

“Right. Nothing like that.”

“So you don’t have that motivation, you don’t have that element of fantasy you so often see in serial crimes. But you do have other elements-again, the hamburger, for example-that makes you think there’s something more here than a simple murder.” Sam reflected on his words for a moment. “Not that murder is ever simple.”

“So you think there are other victims somewhere with hamburgers shoved in their mouths?”

“Maybe. But I guess if there were similar cases in the system, you’d have heard from the FBI by now.”

“Oh. We did.”

“You did?” Sam’s eyebrows rose. “When? Who called?”

“About a month ago, I guess. I don’t know the name of the agent. Wanted to look over the file.”

“You have the agent’s card?”

“No. I wasn’t here to take the call. My dad died and I was in St. Louis for about a week, helping my mom tie up some loose ends.”

“I’m sorry about your father.” Sam waited what he considered a respectful amount of time before asking, “Who did the agent talk to, do you know?”

“One of the other detectives. Reid, I think.”

“Is he in?”

“Not till tonight.”

“Would you ask him to call me with the name of the agent?” Sam was curious. Sooner or later, he’d have to deal with whoever the agent was. He hoped it was someone he knew well and trusted.

“Sure. If you’re ready, let’s take that ride.”

The ride through Lincoln was a step back in time for Sam, who figured out he’d attended two reunions, both of them within the first ten years of graduating. After a while, it just hadn’t seemed so important, when there was so much going on in his life. Starting his career, meeting and falling in love with Carly. Marrying her. Losing her…

“How ’bout we stop by Pilgrim’s Place first?” Coutinho asked. “It’s not far from here. Couple blocks down.”

“Sure.”

Three minutes later, Coutinho pulled his unmarked car up in front of the building from which several hundred hungry people were fed every week. Pilgrim’s Place sat in the middle of a row of two-story wooden storefronts, its name painted in red on the glass windows with plain white drapes hanging behind them. The store to the left was unoccupied, and the one to the right had a sign that read SORRY, WE ARE CLOSED.