She leaned forward. “Remember this, though. If you resign, you’re still here in Liberty Lake, and this will fester in your gut for the rest of your life. The guilt. The failure. Do you really want to live like that?”

Slowly he shook his head.

“You’d better get to the briefing. Let me know if there’s anything new. I was with the feds last night going over the lawsuits from the hospital where Banks worked, and we pulled out a couple names to run. Maybe there’s something there, maybe there isn’t. But you need to be at the briefing.”

“The next victim is going to be a cop. It really hit me last night.”

“No. There are going to be no more victims because we’re going to find this guy and lock him up for the rest of his fucking life.”

“You believe that?”

“Yes.” She did. She had to believe with every case that the good guys would win. If she didn’t believe it, she’d turn in her shield.

“I’ll let you know if anything new comes up. Thanks, Kara. For everything.”

34

Spokane
12:00 p.m.

Michael Harris was running down the individuals they’d identified last night so he wasn’t at the briefing at Spokane PD. Matt had enough information to share with the group of cops and former cops, and hoped they had information for him. Nearly fifty men and women were in the room, and Maddox said the only people who were missing had moved from the area. “I called them all yesterday and spoke to them personally,” he said. “They will be extra cautious for the next few days.”

That was the best they could do for now, but Matt suggested that Maddox assign someone to follow up with them again tomorrow and Tuesday. “Considering that our unknown subject brought Manners from Spokane to Liberty Lake, he could very well go to another state to grab a cop.” Though he didn’t think that was likely. Matt had a sense that the killer was leaving the victims on the doorstep of his next target.

Matt had everyone settle down and jumped right into his presentation. He brought Ryder with him because he wanted to show pictures, and Matt’s advanced tech skills were nonexistent.

“You all know that the Triple Killer struck again yesterday—sometime between 1:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. on March 6.”

Matt looked around the room. He spotted Andy in the back, standing. Good, because Matt needed him—he knew everyone in this room, which was an advantage.

Matt went through all the information they had to date, starting with the first victim, Anne Banks. He wanted to make sure that each cop in this room understood that they could be the next target. Showing the victim in happier times—then the crime scene photos—put the situation in perspective.

“We’ve made a lot of inroads to identify this killer, and while we don’t have his name or address, we may have found his motivation. We have two possible suspects—but again, we have no evidence against them other than a possible motivation. Anne Banks was a specific target—the other two nurses were killed based solely on their profession.”