The room went silent as Frankel wondered if Grant and Rachel were thinking along the same lines. They had spent all that time combing lists for a thief to be the next possible victim and the answer had been under their noses all along.

Grant finally spoke up. “I never imagined he would stop at eight.”

“Maybe he thought we were closing in before he could finish,” said Frankel.

“Or planned it that way all along,” countered Rachel.

“I suppose either is possible,” Grant conceded.

“Silver certainly made good on what he told Monte Ferguson,” said Frankel.

“Which would be what?” asked the commander.

“Silver specifically said that you’d know when he was done.” Frankel eyed the crate one last time. “I’d say the man stuck to his word.”

You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep, Commander.

It practically leaped off the cell phone Frankel was staring at.

They were back in Grant’s office and Frankel was scrolling through texts on the cell found in one of Silver’s pockets. It had already been dusted and fingerprinted. Two sets of prints were found; both belonged to dead men.

Stanford Hawley and Prior Silver.

Traces of the sergeant’s blood had been found on the casing as well and Frankel couldn’t avoid flashing on how it had gotten there in the first place. He willed away the disturbing images and concentrated on the text chains on the phone that Silver had purloined from his unintended victim.

Not only did he find the chats the killer had with Rachel, there were subsequent texts to a different number.

The one belonging to Monte Ferguson’s cell.

Frankel realized Silver had used Hawley’s phone to contact Ferguson and make an offer the Mail journalist could clearly not refuse.

I want to tell my story. Interested?

The text chat had started shortly after Hawley’s funeral. By scrolling through it, they quickly pieced together how the interview published in the Daily Mail came about.

It explicitly outlined Silver’s demands, those mentioned in Ferguson’s exclusive. The journalist was to show up alone and forbidden to contact the Yard; otherwise the interview was a no-go. The end of the chat shed light on why Ferguson would even consider meeting one-on-one with a serial killer.

Ferguson: How do I know I’ll be safe? Why won’t you kill me when I step through the door?

Silver: Because you haven’t violated one of the Lord’s statutes yet.

Ferguson: You mean the Ten Commandments?

Silver: Yes. Have you broken one of them?

Ferguson: No.

Silver: Then you have nothing to fear from me.

That had been enough for Ferguson to take Silver up on his one-time offer.

The chat concluded with a meeting time—six o’clock the following morning, Christmas Day. And Silver had provided Ferguson an address that turned out to be an abandoned warehouse in the East End that the MIS had just checked out.