He glanced at his watch. “Unless you gentlemen need me, I have a faculty meeting at nine.”

Mendez thanked him and let him go.

“Our job would be so much easier if our victims were loud, obnoxious, and talked incessantly about their sex lives,” Hicks said as he browsed the contents of Lisa Warwick’s bookshelf in the living room. “Like my wife’s sister, for instance. Every person who has ever been within earshot of that woman knows all the details about every guy she’s ever slept with.”

Mendez chuckled. Hicks was a little older than him. Tall, lean, and red-haired, he was a cowboy in his free time. He had an easygoing way about him, and never had a problem with someone else being lead on an investigation. That was not the case with everyone in the department. There were guys with more years on the job who openly resented Mendez for being Dixon’s chosen one. All Hicks cared about was working at a case until it was solved. They worked well together.

“Glad I’m not one of them,” Mendez said, snooping in a buffet drawer.

“You fail to meet her low standards,” Hicks said. “You’re employed and have all your own teeth.”

They searched in a comfortable silence for few minutes before Hicks went back to his original point.

“We have to have two vics that never said boo to anybody.”

“I’m betting that’s not a coincidence,” Mendez said. “Just like it’s not a coincidence they both had some connection to the Thomas Center. I don’t think they were random victims, do you?”

“Nope. What’s the statistic? Most victims of murder know their killer. Makes you want to put the steak knives away when your relatives come to visit, doesn’t it?”

“I wonder,” Mendez said, going to the tiny kitchen that was separated from the dining area by a counter. “Did this girl even get a look at him? Or did he grab her from behind and get the glue in her eyes first thing?”

“If he glues their eyes shut to keep them from seeing him, what’s that all about? If he knows he’s going to kill them, and it seems pretty clear that’s his intent, why bother to keep them from seeing him?”

“I don’t think he does it for practical reasons.”

As they made their way through her house, it seemed Lisa Warwick was private about her private life even with herself. They found no diary, no journal. Her travel plans for her wine country weekend were carefully noted in her day planner on the dining room table, but with no annotations as to a traveling companion.

“Even shy girls doodle hearts on their calendars,” Hicks said, paging through the book. “There’s nothing in here.”