by David Archer
“Yes, I know,” Mr. Moore said. “I'm Felix Moore. Won’t you please come in?”
He led them inside and into his living room, where they took seats on the sofa.
“So, tell me,” Felix said. “How can I help?”
“Sir,” Gabriella said, “we’re working on the assumption that the killer is targeting his victims based on symptoms of depression disorders. What we’re trying to do is find out if there is anything that all of the victims have done that might have put them on his radar.”
Felix ran a hand over his face, then shrugged. “Adrienne was one of the most wonderful women you could ever hope to meet,” he said. “She was a wonderful wife and mother, but when she miscarried during her second pregnancy, it was just too much for her. She became depressed, and for a while she wouldn’t even leave the house. That went on for a few months, up until the point where our son Bobby started school, and then I—well, I guess I just had enough. I convinced her to go to a psychiatrist, and he got her on some medication that seemed to help, but the biggest thing was getting a routine started. She got into some hobbies, started finding ways to focus her attention on things other than the fact that we had lost a baby, you know what I mean? She was always doing research on something, always getting ready to start some new project.”
“Daddy?”
The three of them turned toward the sound of the young voice as Bobby Moore entered the room.
“Are you talking about Mommy?”
“Yes, son,” Felix said. “These folks are detectives, and they’re trying to find out what happened to your mom.” He patted the arm of his chair and the little boy came and climbed up into his lap.
“Hello, Bobby,” Chance said. “I'm really sorry your mommy can’t be here for you.”
Bobby nodded. “I really miss her,” he said. “I don’t even want to go back to school. It just won’t be the same.”
“I can understand that,” Gabriella said. “Your mom used to pick you up after school?”
“Yeah,” Bobby said. “She always brought me hot chocolate from the coffee shop.”
Felix gave a wry grin. “She did love coffee,” he said. “She and her computer were always going down to the coffee shop while she was trying to figure out what to tackle next.”
They spoke a bit longer and then they thanked Felix and Bobby for their time.
They drove directly back to the substation, where the rest of the team waited in the room that had been set up for them. Lewis and Jason joined them as soon as all of them had arrived.
"What have we got on the latest victim?" Pete asked Tina and Jake.
"Well, according to her family, Zoe Castellanos was the perfect child," Tina said. "Good family relationships, devoted to her studies, and she hardly ever went out or got into any kind of trouble. Most nights she'd spend in and just study."
"Her roommates confirmed that she was a hard worker and an exemplary student," Jake agreed. "From what they told us, she spent most of her time in the library when she wasn't in class, working hard to maintain her grades. Like Tina said, she stayed out of trouble. She wouldn't take risks, and she certainly wouldn't willingly go anyplace with a complete stranger. Her roommates said something about a professor possibly hitting on her, but they seemed pretty insistent that it turned out to be nothing."
"Which professor?" Jason asked.
"Do you know all the professors at the college?" Pete asked.
"A few," Jason said honestly. "Just want to see if I know this guy."
"Harmon," Jake offered. “Professor Lance Harmon.”
Immediately Jason and Lewis exchanged a look.
"Ring any bells?" Chance asked.
The detectives hesitated before Lewis answered, "Yeah, we know him."
"You think he has anything to do with this?" Chance asked.
"Doubt it," Jason said. "He does make an unusual impression when you meet him, but I don't think he's capable of murder."
"You don’t think so?” Chance asked. “Do you have any idea how many times serial killers have been described as somebody who would never be capable of doing such a thing?”
Jason scowled at him. “Yeah, I know,” he said. “We can take a good look at him, but I'm pretty sure he won’t be involved.”
"What about the mother?" Pete asked, moving on. "Adrienne Moore. What did we get on her?"
"She was a typical wife and mother until she had a miscarriage," Gabriella said. "Her husband was almost constantly worried about her after that, said she didn’t really do anything, if it meant she had to leave the house. After seeing a counselor for a couple weeks, he suggested getting a routine down for her to help her get back on her feet, and that’s what she did. She made a strict routine that was centered around her son, and started working on some hobbies that she kinda liked. She seemed to be getting better, always starting some new project that was keeping her attention and helping her fight off the depression."
"Unfortunately,” Pete said, “that means that if our suspect was stalking her, it would have been easy to catch on to her schedule. He would always know where to find her and when the best time to take her would be."
Gabriella nodded her head in agreement. “Yes, I'm afraid so.”
"Her husband said Adrienne had also started spending a lot of time at the library," Chance continued. "She would drop off her kid at school in the morning, then head to the library to pick up some information on her latest project. Their little boy came in and said that every time she picked him up, she would always bring him a cup of hot chocolate from a cafe. Every day was exactly the same. She would drop off and pick up her son at the exact same time."
"Which library are we talking about here?" Jason asked. "The one in the city, or the university library?"
"I'm not sure, the husband didn't specify," Chance admitted.
"Probably the one in the city," Lewis said. "Her son goes to a private school that’s only about half a mile from the main branch."
“Okay, well,” Pete said, moving ahead. "Juliana Willets, according to her family, was pretty much all work and no play. She worked as a civil attorney and spent most of her waking hours on the cases that she was working on. Her friends were worried that she wasn’t getting enough sleep, and her boss said she kept herself going all day by guzzling coffee. Juliana was last seen by her boss the day before some really big case. He had dropped her off at home that evening and expected to meet her at the courthouse the following morning. She had a lot of work with her, stuff she needed to go over the case again before they actually went into court the next day. All of that stuff disappeared right along with her."
"Like our other victims, Juliana also was a frequent visitor to the library," Chance added. "Her boss said whenever she was really involved in a case, she would go to the library and look up old cases and law books to find some inspiration."
"That would most likely be the university library, like the latest victim," Jason commented. "That would be the only library that might have old court case files, and even then she’d need to have special permission to access any of them."
"The city library and the one at the university do share a lot of material, though," Lewis added. "They share their resources, with the exception of the court case files, like Jason said. Seems to me that if you frequent one library, you will at some point visit the other as well."
"This could be how the suspect is finding his victims," Pete suggested. "He could just go on with his daily routine and occasionally find himself in one library instead of the other. A woman catches his attention and distracts him from his intended target, so she’s next."
"I wonder if the reason he’s at the library so much is because the woman he really wants also goes there often," Chance said. “Could be she’s a student, or maybe even a teacher.”
"We need to build the best picture of her that we can," Pete said. "Especially now that the press has gotten hold of details from the case. The suspect is bound to be keeping an eye on the news. Knowing
that we are putting some of this together could actually pressure him to go after his real intended victim."
Everyone around the table nodded in agreement.
"Jake, see what you can work up on geographical connections. Take a look at where the victims lived, where they were last seen, and the different libraries," Pete said, and Jake nodded. "Tina and Gabriella, you can be thinking about the actual target. If we can find a way to identify her, we can probably find our killer. I’ll get Josie to look for anyone who might have a record that would fit in with this situation. Jason and Lewis, if you could get this press situation under control and find us everything you can on Lance Harmon, that would be very much appreciated. Meanwhile, Chance and I will start prowling around the libraries. Maybe we’ll spot somebody lurking around them and catch a break."
Everyone nodded as they all got up from the table, ready to do whatever it took to find and stop a madman.
* * *
Jake Claridge stood in the empty office he had been offered at the substation, staring at a board that he had put up on one wall. On the board was a map of Clark County, with color coded pins marking every move they were certain the suspect had made, but no matter how he looked at it, it just didn't make sense.
Jake wasn’t used to things not making sense. Figuring out the way a criminal thinks and getting inside of his head, as disturbing as that always turned out to be, was something that made sense to Jake. Analyzing a case was something he was extremely good at, and by studying various details of the case, he could often determine details that would elude anybody else. By looking at where the victims were taken and where their bodies were found, he could get a rough idea of where the killer must spend a great deal of his time, and sometimes it would even lead to information that could identify the perpetrator. This time, however, as he stared at the map in front of him, he couldn't make any sense of it, and he had come to realize that something was missing, something important.
He went over all his points again, working on the assumption that he had made a mistake, even though he was completely certain that he hadn’t. This was the kind of thing he was good at, and he knew it. If something was missing, it wasn’t because he failed to see it; it was because it had not even presented itself to him yet.
He had pins on the map where the bodies were found, everywhere the killer had laid them out to await discovery. Using that, and taking into consideration vehicle and pedestrian traffic in the area, Jake was able to determine roughly when each body was placed. After that, he had put pins in the last place each victim had been seen. For Juliana Willets, that was at her home, after her employer had dropped her off. Adrienne Moore had last been seen at a coffee shop, about an hour before she was to pick up her son at school. Zoe Castellanos was last seen the morning of the day she disappeared, studying in the university library. After placing another pin in the library on his chart, Jake was completely lost.
They had all come to the conclusion that the killer was using the libraries to find his next victim, but it just wasn’t making any sense. The two libraries and the 'last seen' radius were too far away from the dump sites to make any sense. There was too much traveling involved for the suspect to scout his victim, take his victim, hold his victim for a week and then finally dump the body. It was all far too much risk for him, and that simply didn't make sense for the type of killer they were looking for. Never had a geographic outline been so completely frustrating when compared to the facts they already had.
The door to the room flew open all of a sudden, and Jake turned and stared in startled surprise. He managed not to break into a huge smile as he realized just who it was that had invaded his seemingly private work area. Angela Lambert, her arms loaded down with books and reams of paper, stood there looking at him with as much surprise on her own face as he was displaying.
"Oh," she said as the door closed behind her. Finding Jake in the room that was normally empty had surprised her just as much as Jake, and she caught herself up short, dropping her books and papers all over the floor. "Oh, I'm sorry," she said, getting down on her knees to pick up the mess she made. “I didn’t realize anyone was in here.”
Jake instinctively knelt beside her and helped her gather up the things she had dropped. "Don't worry about it," he said quietly. "I didn't mean to startle you."
"Oh, it’s no problem,” she said. “This room is usually empty, that’s all, I just didn't expect to see anybody here.”
"What brings you in here, anyway?" Jake asked. “Your dad is probably in his office.”
"I’ve got like a ton of papers to grade," she said irritably, gesturing toward the mass on the floor that the pair of them were slowly gathering into a stack once more.
"Ah," Jake said, grinning at the sound of frustration in her voice. "I take it you’re a teacher, then?"
"Not yet," she replied. "I'm a teaching assistant at the university. It isn’t much, but at least it’s a paycheck."
"A teaching assistant?" Jake asked before glancing down at some of the papers in his hands. "They have those in elementary school?"
"Like I said, it’s a paycheck," she said, climbing back onto her feet again. Jake got to his own feet and stood in front of her, handing over the papers that he had gathered for her. "I wasn’t really planning to become a teacher, but life, as they say, is what happens while you’re making other plans. I'm hopeful that it’s going to change soon, though." She pushed her way past Jake to a table and began sorting through the pile.
"Teaching is a good profession," Jake said. "I guess I just figured you were a little younger than you really are."
Angela looked at him and chuckled. "Well, I'm actually twenty-three," she said with a broad smile. "And I have a PhD in genetic analysis. I heard you have a degree of your own; you don’t look all that much older than me. What are you, maybe twenty-five?"
Jake felt himself relax and actually smiled back. “I'm twenty-eight,” he said. “And I have two degrees, psych and criminal justice. I get it, though; most of the people I meet tend to think I'm still in high school.”
"That really sucks, doesn’t it? Anyway, I didn't mean to disturb you, so I’ll go find somewhere else to go through this disaster."
She started to gather everything up again, but Jake suddenly realized that he didn’t want her to leave just yet. "Why are you doing your work here at the substation?" he asked.
"What?"
"Well, I was just wondering, why are you working here? Don’t you have an office or something, someplace where you can do that kind of work without people walking in and interrupting you?"
"Oh, please, I hate my office. I don’t know why, but it always reminds me of some kind of dungeon or something, the kind of place where something bad is bound to happen sooner or later."
"That…" Jake said, then quickly cut off what he was going to say. "That sounds like maybe you need somewhere else to go, like here. And I guess you’ve probably been coming here for a long time, right?"
Jake stopped talking and realized that Angela was staring at him. "Um,” he said, “sorry. My friends are always telling me I talk too much."
"Don’t be sorry," Angela insisted. "I was just surprised that you didn’t laugh at me for not wanting to work in my office."
The room got suddenly quiet and Jake didn’t know what to say, so he decided to wing it. "What about, um, maybe the library?" he asked quickly.
"What about it?" she asked, suddenly confused.
"I was just wondering why you don’t work in the library," he said.
"Oh! Sorry, I get you now. I don’t know, I never have liked working at the library. There’s always so many people around, you never get any privacy. Back when I was working on my degree, I did most of my real studying in a local coffee shop. Always seemed nicer, maybe friendlier, and nobody gave you dirty looks if you started singing along with the music in your headphones. Besides, I drink a lot of coffee. I still go there a lot." She frowned. “I guess I could do this there.”
Jake had frozen in place, his face gone almost white. While she had been talking, he suddenly realized what was missing from his geographical outline, the one thing that did connect all of the victims perfectly.
"What did you just say?" he asked sharply.
"I don’t know, what did I say?" Her eyes were wide.
"The library, what did you say about the library? About never finding privacy there?"
"Yeah, that’s why I don’t like it there. There’s always so many people around, and it's always so damn quiet you can’t even move without everyone suddenly staring at you. If you have to sneeze, all of a sudden everybody is looking at you. If your phone rings, everybody is looking at you like they really want to beat your brains in. I giggled at something I read one time and a lady gave me a look at that almost scared me to death."
"Exactly," Jake said softly, still thinking. “In a library, it’s almost like being under a microscope. Or in the spotlight, maybe.”
"Yeah, and that really sucks," Angela agreed.
"Especially if you happen to be suffering from any kind of depression disorder," Jake said quietly, suddenly ignoring her as he looked at his map again.
Angela’s eyes went wide and she looked at him as if he had suddenly grown an extra head. “What?”
Jake continued to ignore her, thinking about the victims that were represented on the board. Each of them was a frequent visitor to the library, constantly checking out books and using the resources available, but that didn’t necessarily mean they remained in the library, did it? As Angela had said, a library could be extremely uncomfortable because it was so quiet, and that would be especially true for people who were already tense or anxious. You couldn’t even walk into a library without people noticing, so if you were the kind of person who didn’t like attention, wouldn’t you go somewhere else?
"You said you did your studying at a coffee shop?" Jake asked Angela, turning back to look at her once more. "Was it one where a lot of students went to study?"