On the bottom half of the page, he began a second list, this one detailing the recent crimes: familiar with Susan’s apartment, perhaps trusted by her; familiar with Mitchell’s apartment, perhaps trusted by him, or perhaps with the technical ability to disable or circumvent the extensive security measures.

To the right, Hazard wrote two additional words: young; new. Because Wahredua had seen its first victims less than a year before, the most likely possibilities were that either this serial killer was young, just reaching the age where this type of behavior was most common—in the United States, for males, in their late twenties—or new to the area.

Hazard’s gut told him this was someone known to both Susan and Mitchell. Somers could argue against the possibility as much as he wanted, but while Hazard didn’t like the possibility that their social circle included a killer, he was willing to face the idea. In some ways, it made sense; some serial killers enjoyed attention and games, getting satisfaction from feeling involved in the investigation and from feeling smarter than the people around them. The killer had displayed interest in Hazard and had posed the first set of killings as a challenge; it made sense that he would have made other efforts to involve himself in Hazard’s life. He hated very much what he was about to do. But then he did it.

Noah.

Dulac.

Darnell.

Wesley.

Nico.

After a moment of examining the list, Hazard starred Wesley’s name and, after another moment, Darnell’s. The others on the list deserved closer attention, but Hazard could think of immediate reasons why they were less likely to be involved: Noah was married and had children, which didn’t necessarily exonerate him, but would have made the killings much more difficult to carry out; Dulac was Somers’s partner, and Hazard trusted that Somers would have noticed strange behavior; Nico, for fuck’s sake, was so disorganized that he couldn’t put on the same pair of socks, much less plan and execute an elaborate killing.

Wesley, though. Wesley was smart. Wesley was charming but . . . distant. And Wesley had a dark, angry side. And Darnell. Well, Darnell was an enigma. He was friendly, polite, respectful. But Darnell also didn’t make any sense to Hazard. He lived in the middle of nowhere but claimed to telecommute and make a fortune working for a tech company in Silicon Valley. Darnell claimed to have a J.D. from Princeton. And strangest of all, Darnell was dating Dulac—Hazard couldn’t think of a reason someone would do that, unless it were to find a way to get closer to Hazard and Somers.

Since Wesley was already in police custody, Hazard decided to look at Darnell first. He opened his laptop, dragged his chair closer to the desk, and settled in for some digging.

It didn’t take long.

When he searched Princeton law school alumni, the first result was a Wikipedia page that explained that Princeton, Brown, and Dartmouth were the only Ivy League schools that did not have a law school.