Even as he shuffled down the short hallway to his bathroom, he found his mind returning to memories of the day before.
Why the hell did they think I did it? He pulled on the shower control. I know all about being in the wrong place at the wrong time—I did almost a month in Juvie for it. But this . . .
He could see a certain logic to the sergeant’s suspicions, but he also knew that he was completely innocent—not just innocent, but totally uninvolved.
It’s not my fault I got assigned to those patrols.
He paused in mid-step out of his pajamas, trying to convince himself that the notion bubbling through his thoughts was just a side effect of not yet being fully awake.
Did someone deliberately send me to those sites?
John knew that he had not requested any of those patrol sites. They had all been assigned by his supervisor. Sure, he had expressed a desire for ones closer to where he lived, but only of them—the man in the expensive house—had been anywhere near his neighborhood. Even then, it was a good fifteen minutes distant, up in one of the more exclusive private communities up in the hills.
Frank? he wondered.
He considered the possibility whether his supervisor might have manipulated his assignments. It seemed a reach. Frank Marshall was an ex-cop, retired from the force, who had started his own security company. While it was entirely possible that the man had made enemies while he was part of the police force, John had a lot of trouble imagining that any the people he had seen killed would have been among them. It just did not feel right.
John stepped into the shower, letting his mind roam while the water ran down on him.
If they truly were not random killings—and he still had no good reason not to believe that there were not—then all of the victims must have something in common. It was not, he felt, something immediately obvious, for the victims had spanned a variety of ethnic origins and age groups. The age of the first set of victims seemed to cluster around the forties or fifties, but the most recent one was at least a decade younger than that—maybe two. It also did not seem to be a grudge against a particular gender, as was often the case, as there had been both male and female victims.
He considered next what he had seen of each of the crime scenes. For several of them, though, he had seen very little. They were all radically different: an underground parking garage, a luxury home, a corporate office complex, and an economy apartment. There had been only one snake. The cause of death for each of the other ones had been . . . what?
John realized that he did not know. Only the first one had been obvious. He had never heard the results of any testing or autopsies from the other ones.
Of course, he thought. Why would I?
If there were evidence in a trial, they would not be released. Even if they were not, they might still not be a matter of public record. Or they might be, if he knew where to look.
That could be a problem, John considered. He had never learned any of the victim’s names.
Easy enough to find out, he realized—if he was truly interested in finding them out.
He discovered that he was, particularly now that he had been dragged in for questioning about it.
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