“I should have set a wake-up call. I crashed hard last night and forgot to set my alarm. I just got off the phone with Catherine.”

“I read her email. I have a list of every high school principal in Spokane and Liberty Lake, public and private. There are twenty-eight.”

“How’d you get them so fast?”

“The internet, sir. I had the larger list that the police put together, then narrowed it down to this subgroup. I have a secondary list of assistant principals if their information is listed on the district website.”

“I’m going to call Maddox and Knolls, get them on this right now. Reach out to every principal again. I don’t know that they can spare twenty-eight units today, but we need to sit on everyone we can. Maybe convince them to spend the day at the police station. Time is running out. Actually, you call Maddox—I need to talk to Andy Knolls. Catherine is certain that the next victim the killer stalks will be a cop from Liberty Lake.”

Knolls answered on the third ring.

“Hope I didn’t wake you, Andy.”

“No. Eating breakfast.”

“How’d it go last night? Did you reach everyone on the list?”

“Yes, everyone who was in town. Your press conference had an impact. But we cleared every house and warned each person to be extremely security cautious, and encouraged them to spend the day and night with others—change their routine.”

“Good. We have a breakthrough of sorts. We believe that the target today is a principal at a Spokane or Spokane Valley high school. Ryder has a list, and he’s calling Maddox to start doing the rounds on all of them. Can you go back to the principals only? Maybe we can put them up in a hotel or something. Do you have the budget for that? One night.”

“I can make it happen.”

“Great. We’re getting that break, Andy, I feel it.”

“I’ll be in the office in twenty minutes, split the list with my officers.”

“That brings me to the other issue. Based on what we already know, our profiler believes that the killer will target a law enforcement officer who works in Liberty Lake. Do you understand what that means?”

“But wouldn’t he be targeting a Spokane cop? Because Victoria Manners is from Spokane?”

“We considered that, but he left Manners’ body in Liberty Lake. That tells me that he’s targeting either a Liberty Lake principal or a Liberty Lake cop, depending on who his primary target is and who his surrogate is.”

“Yes, but—”

“Listen to me carefully, Andy. John Marston left Spokane sixteen years ago, Anne Banks left Spokane seventeen years ago. Catherine feels that whatever set the killer on this path happened before either of them left.”

“I don’t really understand where you’re going with this,” Andy said.

How could Matt explain? “Meaning, they lived here in the area a long time ago. Whatever grudge this killer has, he’s waited ten, fifteen, maybe twenty years before tracking his victims down. He may have been a student at Spokane High School during Marston’s ten-year tenure there. We’re looking at long-ago conflicts. Can you pull old records? Both in your department and any sheriff or officer from any law enforcement agency who lived or worked in Liberty Lake...let’s start ten years ago and go back twenty-five years. Both current and retired cops.”