"Good luck, you'll need it. And one other thing. I see here that Doctor Cooper has been given some firearms training. That’s an accident waiting to happen. I want his gun retrieved. He’s a consultant, remember. Not an agent."

  “But …” Valerie didn’t have a chance to argue the point as the call went dead when Heinlein hung up.

  The call ended, and Valerie rushed out of the prison to contact her team and hope they could track down the killer before the next forty-eight hours had elapsed. If they didn't, it would mean the end of the Criminal Psychopathy Unit and everything they had worked for.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Valerie needed sleep, but she needed to meet her team even more. The corridors of the Mesmer Building echoed with the quiet hum of night. This had once been a comforting sound to Valerie, but it was no longer a safe place.

  Director Heinlein was gunning for their jobs, and Valerie had only forty-eight hours to save the entire team.

  Opening the glass doors to the Criminal Psychopathy Unit, Valerie felt relief as two, wide-eyed smiles greeted her in the briefing room.

  "Hello, Valerie," Will Cooper said, walking up to her and giving her a hug. "I came as soon as I got your message."

  "And so did I," Charlie said, pushing the buttons on the room's coffee machine with frustration. "This damned thing hates me. I'm convinced of it."

  "Rise of the machines?" Will said, laughing.

  "I'm telling you," Charlie said as the machine finally spat out his coffee, "technology has it in for me. I half expect this coffee machine to come at me with a knife."

  Valerie smiled at her two partners. Will cut his usual stuffy, academic look with a tweed suit and a bright yellow tie. His brown hair was a mess, but despite the gray among it, he possessed a youthful enthusiasm that Valerie cherished.

  "No Jackson?" Will asked.

  "No," answered Valerie. "He's still on administrative leave. Heinlein is breathing down our necks on this one. He's given us forty-eight hours to get to Kansas and make a breakthrough, otherwise he's going to pull the plug."

  "I know we shouldn't talk out of turn about the higher ups," Charlie grimaced as he tasted his coffee, "but Heinlein represents everything that's wrong at the Bureau. He's all politics and policy, no experience. It's what happens when academics are in charge."

  Will cleared his throat and raised an eyebrow at Charlie.

  "Present company excluded," Charlie got in as quickly as possible.

  "How are Angela and the kids, Charlie?" asked Valerie. "I'm sorry I've not been in touch for a couple of weeks."

  "They're fine," Charlie said. "Angela is delighted that I've left our house in the middle of the night and woken up the kids."

  "I'm sorry," Valerie said moving over to the large touchscreen at the front of the room. "But time is against us. We need to show Heinlein that not only are we indispensable, but that Jackson is a critical component to how well our unit has performed."

  "Agreed," said Will. "So, what is the case?"

  Valerie brought up various files and photographs on the touchscreen. They showed more than one grisly scene of murder.

  "Three victims?" Charlie asked.

  "Yes," answered Valerie. "None of them seem connected, but local law enforcement around the Kerry County region where they were found are worried that they have a serial killer on their hands."

  Will stepped forward and considered the screen carefully. "At first glance, the kills are all different."

  "That's what I thought when I was studying the files before we all got here," Valerie said. "But I think there's a connection. Look at the bindings on the wrists."

  "That's an elaborate knot," Will observed. "The same for each victim?"

  "Very similar."

  Charlie put down his coffee and stepped up. "Zoom in between the hands."

  "Why? Is there a secondary knot between the wrists?" Will pondered.

  "That's called a sheet bend knot," Charlie explained. "It's used to join two pieces of uneven rope together. My best guess is he's tied the two wrists independently for some reason, then he's tied those together after that. It's pretty common for someone who operates a boat to know that knot."

  "I didn't put you down as a sailor, Charlie," Will quipped.

  "When I was a kid, my uncle took me and my brother, Marvin, out on a lake every summer. The boat was falling apart. I kept thinking we'd sink at any moment. But it never did. Sometimes my uncle would teach us how to do knots to pass the time as he fished."

  Valerie nodded thoughtfully; her eyes still fixed on the screen. She knew that if they were going to crack this case, they would need to look at every possible angle. And she had a feeling that Charlie and Will's keen eyes for detail were exactly what they needed.

  "What about the victims?" Charlie continued. "Any demographic similarities?"

  "Not so far," said Valerie. "All different ages, two women, one man."

  "And the proximity of the murder scenes?" Will asked, pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose.

  "Over a sixty-mile radius from the first victim," Valerie answered. "Three days between each kill."

  "Three days?" Will said, rubbing his neck. "The killer is well into his spree then. Escalation has begun."

  "We're going to move faster than normal," Valerie sighed. "Two days is all we have. Tickets are booked. Let's get to the airport."

  "I have a feeling I'm going to need a lot of these," Charlie said, tapping his coffee cup.

  "We all will," Valerie said, gravely, looking at the three butchered victims on the touchscreen.

  There was something stuck in her mind like a thorn. Something about the scenes, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it yet. In just a few hours, they would be in Kansas. She wouldn't have much time to figure out how to catch the killer before Heinlein would recall her. Every minute would count.

  And the clock was ticking.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Will felt his stomach turn as the plane rattled momentarily. He stared at the mirror in the bathroom and saw the same all-too familiar sight. The grays were getting more pronounced. And he now had some subtle wrinkles around his eyes when he smiled.

  Mortality was becoming more evident to him, and he found himself thinking about how quickly the years of his mid-life were passing by.

  The plane lurched again, and something rattled outside of the airplane bathroom.

  “Man wasn’t meant to fly,” he said, patting some water from the sink onto his face.

  He grabbed a paper towel, dried his face, and looked in the mirror again. He was looking like his father more and more with each passing day. He just hoped he didn’t turn out like him.

  A memory flashed before his eyes. His father, sick in a nursing home, shouting at his son as though he was a stranger.

  He shook the memory away as quickly as it had arrived. He’d gotten good at that. Two decades as a psychiatrist gave him equal ability to see the frailties in others as well as hide from them in himself.

  Flushing the toilet, he opened the bathroom door and headed into the aisle.

  They’re worried, too, he thought, looking at a sea of passenger faces glancing around nervously. The storm had come out of nowhere. The rain it had brought with it thrashed against the flimsy exterior of the plane.

  Thunder roared off in the distance, blue flashes of electricity cutting through the malevolent clouds.

  Everyone looked nervous, except for two faces. Charlie was snoring loudly, his head leaning backwards. Valerie sat by the window, her hair down and cradling her face. It vibrated to the rhythm of the plane engine and its struggles as she poured over the case files for the three murders they were investigating. Will’s seat was vacant between the two of them.

  Walking down the aisle, Will stopped and stood over Charlie.

  “I can see up his nose,” he said to Valerie.

  She looked up from her papers. “If only I had a clothes peg.”

  “I could pinch it shut,” Will offered sarcastically. “It would at least stop the sound he’s making. He sounds like a drowning wildebeest.”

  Charlie opened one eye. “The sexiest wildebeest this side of the Atlantic.”

  Will sighed and squeezed past him into the seat next to Valerie. Charlie began snoring again.

  “How does he do it?”

  “Do what?” asked Valerie.

  “Charlie,” said Will. “He can just jump in and out of sleep at the drop of a hat. It takes me ages to get some rest.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Racing thoughts,” Will explained. “I’ve had them since I was a child. As soon as I try to sleep, my mind decides to run through things.”

  Valerie seemed intrigued. She was now giving Will her full attention. “The great Will Cooper has hang ups?”

  A flash of blue light beyond the nearest window was followed by a clap of thunder. The storm was getting nearer. Will fought his fear of flying as best as he could.

  “Everyone has hang ups, my dear,” he said, tapping his right temple with his finger, nervously. “One must do their best to keep them from ruining one's life.”

  “Are you okay?” asked Valerie, sounding concerned.

  “I am,” said Will, pushing away any thought of his father again. He stretched out his hand. “Any luck with the case files?”

  Valerie handed some to him. “I’ve been trying to work on a profile of the killer from the three cases, but so far, it’s difficult. I hope this isn’t another killer like Frederick Pitt.”

  “You mean without a specific victim profile?” Will had considered this himself. A killer with a specific profile was easier to catch.

  “Yes,” said Valerie. “There seems little to connect them.”

  Will held the files in his hand. He rifled through some of the victim photographs. “It occurs to me,” he said as the plane juddered in the storm again, “that when faced with no discernible link between the victims, we should look for something that stands out singularly.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Valerie.

  “Perhaps,” Will continued, “there is a way to prove a deeper connection between the victims. If the killer has a type he targets, there must be something attracting him to those he’s killed already. Sometimes, you just need to find that anchor in one of the victims, something more obvious, and then that same thing suddenly becomes apparent in the others.”

  Valerie looked back down at a photo in her hand. Will could see it. It showed the most recent victim with her wrists tied to the steering wheel of an old tractor.

  “I did notice this,” Valerie said, pointing to the right wrist of the murdered woman in the photo.

  Will peered down at it and could see writing tattooed across the skin.

  “The photographs we have aren’t very clear,” Valerie commented. “I wonder what the writing says.”

  “We might have to wait until we speak with whoever’s done the autopsy.”

  “We don’t have much time, Will,” Valerie said, clearly referring to Jackson and the unit’s possible demise within forty-eight hours.

  Will watched as Valerie took out her cellphone, turned on the camera, and then pointed it at the photo. She then zoomed in on the screen.

  “It’s still hard to see,” she said. “Post … Ten …”

  But Will knew what those words were now, his mind putting them together like patchwork.

  “Post Tenebrus Lux,” he said, sighing.

  Valerie turned and looked at Will with a smile. “All those years stuck in dusty libraries doing research finally paid off. But what does it mean, do you know?”

  “It’s Latin,” Will replied.

  A loud clap of thunder shook the plane as a bright blue flash outside lit up the inside of the carriage momentarily. A passenger cried out and several more whispered worries to each other.

  Will had those worries, too, but the only way to fight them was to focus on those words on the dead woman’s wrist.

  “Post Tenebrus Lux is from the Bible,” he said, padding his forehead with a handkerchief. “From the book of Job, I believe.”

  “Would you stop pussy footing around, Doc,” Charlie said, yawning and sitting up straight.

  “I thought you were asleep?” Will asked.

  “Even I don’t like this storm.”

  Those words scared Will a little. Charlie was always so even keeled, but if the shuddering of the aircraft was of concern to a military veteran and top hunter of fugitives in the FBI, that didn’t set Will at ease at all.

  “But I’m sure we’ll be fine,” Charlie added unconvincingly. “Does this Latin tattoo tell us anything useful?”

  “Well,” Will began, quietly so the passengers around them couldn’t hear, “it tells us one thing about the third victim and perhaps suggests something about the other two. But this is speculative of course.”

  “What does it tell us?” Valerie asked, eagerly.

  “The first thing is that this victim was most probably devoutly spiritual due to that specific inscription. Secondly, the tattoo may point to a religious connection with the other victims. The killer might have some sort of anti-religion motivation.”

  “It’s not unheard of,” Charlie offered. “We’ve seen atheist serial killers before, though being religious or non-religious doesn’t make you any more likely to become one.”

  “Quite right,” Will agreed. “It’s far more today with childhood trauma more often than not.”

  “It’s a good start,” Valerie said, her face lit up for the briefest of seconds by a flash of lightning. “But the killer could be interested in any number of things about these victims. Let’s see if the victims are all devoutly religious.”

  “A lot of people might go to church in that part of Kansas,” Charlie observed. “That doesn’t mean it’s the reason our perp kills his victims. The religion angle could just be a coincidence.”

  “True,” Will said, thoughtfully, looking at the photograph of the victim’s bound hands again. “But this tattoo, there’s something about it. Something more compelling than that, and it could complicate things.”

  “Why is that?” asked Charlie.

  “Post Tenebrus Lux roughly translates as ‘light after darkness’,” Will explained. “Our victim could have undergone substantial trauma in her own life, and this motto was a way to pass through that. Sometimes killers and victims cross paths because of a shared trauma.”

  “Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your captain speaking,” a voice interrupted over the speakers. “Apologies for the difficult weather, it wasn’t on our forecast, but we will be making our approach into Turnberry Airport in about ten minutes, so please fasten your seat belts as the descent may get a little bumpy.”

  Another loud flash lit up the craft interior in a momentary neon blue, followed swiftly by an almost deafening thunderous roar.

  Will felt his hands instinctively grip the seat rests around him.

  “It’s okay,” Valerie said. “We’ll be on the ground in no time.”

  “Whether in one piece or not, that’s the question,” Charlie said with a grin.

  “Do I have to sit next to him?” Will said to Valerie.

  “It’s like traveling with a couple of children,” Valerie whispered, shaking her head.

  Charlie leaned over and patted Will on the arm. “Sorry, Will. You know I’m only playing. Seriously, I’ve been in much worse weather than this during a flight. We’ll be fine.”

  “Post Tenebrus Lux,” Will whispered under his breath. “We could all use a little light after the darkness. I’ll be glad when we’ve landed.”

  “We’ll head straight to the scene when we do,” Valerie nodded. “We’ve got to make a breakthrough as quickly as we can.

  “Agreed,” said Will. “I just hope we can make a big enough difference to save Jackson’s jobs … and our own.”

  Valerie pointed at the photograph in Will’s hand as the plane began to descend through the thunderous clouds. “Whoever did this is already several steps ahead of us. We need to get the son of a bitch before he kills again.”

  The plane juddered again as it moved down towards the airport, lashed by the rain and the elements. He didn’t believe in omens, but Will couldn’t help but feel that there was nothing but lost highways and blind turns down there in Kansas. A place where a smart killer could run them ragged in the most murderous of ways.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Valerie thought the rental car smelled of disinfectant as she drove behind Charlie and Will up ahead. She wondered why the smell was so strong but decided that she didn't want to know or even think of the details.

  All around her, the world had become a picture of yellowed cornfields and dark, brooding skies above.

  She'd never visited Kansas before, but the farmsteads of Kerry County were something to behold in the winter. The world felt decayed with the long since withered summer crops.

  Valerie suspected that, during the summer, there was vibrancy and greenery all around, but there was little sign of that now. Trees with bare and crooked branches punctuated the deep browns and yellows of the world undone by the cold.

  Charlie was driving faster than usual up ahead, though not recklessly so.

  They were headed to Marlane Farm, where the third victim had been discovered. A local County Sheriff was to meet them there as a go-between.

  Will had said he'd drawn the short straw having to sit in the car with Charlie, but that made Valerie smile. The two of them were as thick as thieves, and she knew they enjoyed making fun of each other.

  Besides, sitting in the rental car by herself, looking at the bleak yet agonizingly beautiful fields around her, Valerie was glad to get an opportunity to think things over.

  Above all, Tom was on her mind.

  There was a pain inside of her, a growing one that wouldn't relent. When she was younger, she'd always wondered if she'd ever get engaged. Valerie had watched countless romantic films and read several sentimental novels, all which shaped her expectations. But the reality was very different.

 

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