Another possibility was that external factors might explain the differences. The Keeper might have had access to the college sub-basements for the first set of killings, but perhaps college policies had changed, or the Keeper had otherwise lost access. A similar logic could be applied to the other differences: perhaps the Keeper had been forced to speed up his timeline with Susan because he simply didn’t have the resources to hold her and torture her for days; perhaps the lack of suitable targets made switching to a straight, cis woman who was dating a trans man an acceptable alternate. After a moment, Hazard drew a line through external factors; some amount of change might be explained by outside forces, but the alterations to the Keeper’s ritual and target were too extreme. The Keeper could have found another abandoned building, targeted another drunk gay boy, and spent days or weeks torturing him before privately staging the victim.

The last option was the one Hazard liked the least because it was the one he understood the least. If some sort of internal shift had happened, it might explain the Keeper’s actions. The oldest story in the book was that homophobia masked homosexuality; perhaps the Keeper had come to accept a part of himself and had transitioned to murdering women. Perhaps he wanted Mitchell as some sort of object of sexual gratification, even though the first killings had not contained any evidence of sexual violence. If the changes were internal—which was unlikely, from what Hazard knew of serial killers and their psychopathology—then the Keeper’s actions would be unpredictable. Which was very fucking inconvenient, in Hazard’s opinion.

He examined the list again. He drew a circle around Mitchell’s name. Mitchell had now been taken by the Keeper twice. Why? Perhaps the answer was simple, some kind of closure to the first set of murders. Perhaps, in a day or two, Mitchell’s dead body would be found staged with bees, like the Keeper’s other victims. Hazard didn’t know, and his inability to answer produced a rage that he could barely tamp down.

What Hazard wanted to know, what would help make everything clear, was the Keeper’s purpose in all this, but he simply didn’t have enough information. After a final consideration of the list, Hazard decided that the best possibility—if best was the right word—was that the Keeper had an accomplice or acolyte of some kind. In some ways, though, that only postponed the initial question. They had moved from Who is the Keeper? to Who is the Keeper’s accomplice?

Hazard grabbed a new sheet of paper. He needed a list of possible traits, so he started with the first set of murders: someone who had been able to get close to Phil, Rory, and Mitchell; someone able to drug or otherwise incapacitate them; someone able to transport their bodies. He added two more: access to and familiarity with the college buildings; access to and familiarity with bees. Then Hazard’s hand stopped. He hadn’t fully thought about the implications before, but he had known that the Keeper was somehow tied up with the suicide of a woman in police custody. Cynthia Outzen had been recovering in a hospital; she had delivered a message from the Keeper and then taken potassium cyanide. Hazard added two more items to his list: access to Wahredua Regional; access to potassium cyanide.