“The girl is in critical condition,” Dixon said. “She’s not expected to make it. Just like Lisa Warwick, her eyes and mouth had been glued shut. She was strangled. Somehow he didn’t quite finish off the job. Who knows how long her brain was deprived of oxygen. She’s severely dehydrated and suffering from hypothermia.”

He stood at the front of the room, the eyes of all of his detectives, along with personnel from two neighboring counties, riveted on him. Mendez passed out new flyers with a close-up photo of the necklace Karly Vickers had probably been wearing at the time of her abduction.

“We believe she was wearing this necklace,” Dixon went on. “It’s the logo from the Thomas Center. All women who graduate the program get a gold one. Staff have the same necklace in silver. Karly Vickers was not wearing hers when she was discovered. The perp might have kept it as a souvenir.”

“Did the Warwick woman have one?” Hamilton asked.

“She was an ex-staffer. She would have owned one. Go back into her apartment to see if it’s there.”

“He took the time to bury the Vickers girl, but not to make sure she was dead?” Hicks said. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“She barely had a pulse,” Dixon said. “He probably just didn’t pick up on it.”

“Or it might not be an accident,” Vince said. “He could have left her alive as part of a taunt. He leaves a living victim and we still can’t find him. Proves his omnipotence.”

“How are we supposed to respond to that?” Dixon asked. “This guy’s running around thinking he’s God.”

“Tell him he made a mistake. Go in front of the press and announce that he made a crucial mistake and it’s only a matter of time before you close him down.”

“A bluff,” Mendez said. “But what if he calls us on it?”

“It’s got to be a damn good bluff. Something he can’t prove or disprove, something that gets under his skin and starts to make him worry a little.

“He’s intelligent. Hard science will get his attention. Something to do with trace evidence or we tell him the FBI has come up with a new method of lifting fingerprints from a human body or that he can be linked to a victim through DNA. We don’t quite have that technology yet, but it’s coming soon. We can certainly talk a good game about it, enough to make him worry a little.

“That’s what we want,” Vince said. “We want him either careless or worried. That’s when he’ll make a mistake.”

“But at whose expense?” Mendez asked. “He’s going to be trolling for another victim, isn’t he?”