One of the cops asked, “Why wait so long? Why these elaborate setups?”

“Good question. Dr. Jones believes that the killer is of above-average intelligence and killed others along with his intended victim in order to throw the police off his trail, to obfuscate his true motive. And it worked—until now. In addition, we’re looking at any unsolved stabbings in multiple states—we believe that the killer may have practiced or started killing with a different MO because there were no hesitation marks on his first victim, rare in such a violent attack.”

Maddox said, “I know Hamilton.”

Matt did a double take. “How?”

“It was...oh gosh, years ago. Fifteen, sixteen maybe? I can look it up. When I was still in Liberty Lake. The bank foreclosed on his house, he refused to leave. My partner and I had to forcibly remove him. It wasn’t pretty. He was an alcoholic—like you said, he’d been in jail for drunk driving. He’d lost his wife, lost his job, Child Protective Services sent his kid to live with a relative after the second drunk driving arrest because the kid was in the car. His whole world was falling apart, and then he wouldn’t leave the house.”

That could definitely be a trigger. “Do you know where he is?”

“No. He was in jail for three days while the house was emptied and all the contents put in a storage locker. The bank paid for the locker for one month, I don’t even know if he claimed his things. He left the area and I never interacted with him again.”

“We need to find him. There are usually a series of triggers—stressors in someone’s life—that leads them to become a serial murderer.”

“What about the homeless stabbings?” a cop in the back said.

“What homeless stabbings?” Matt asked.

“You asked about unsolved murders, right? There was a series of stabbings a few years back.”

Another cop nodded. “Detective Whitman caught the case.”

Maddox said, “Whitman retired a few years back, but I remember the homicides. Three homeless men, stabbed to death in the middle of the night in Spokane, most likely while they were sleeping or passed out. Whitman thought they were thrill killings, possibly more than one perp, possibly teenagers. Little evidence at the scenes, and much of it was contaminated because of the location. No discernible pattern. One victim was killed in the winter, out by the river, and no one found his body for months. The other two were in the summer, about a month apart, found within hours.”

“I need everything about those murders,” Matt said. “And they just stopped?”

“Yeah. Three dead over eight, nine months? Nothing since.”

“If you can pull me the files, and any forensics, and the contact information for the primary detective in case I need to talk to him.”

“No problem.”

Matt called Catherine as Ryder drove them back to the hotel. “There was a series of three murders, homeless men, stabbed to death, about fifteen years ago. Unsolved.”