He was getting a headache. He refilled his coffee again and walked back to the war room, taking the stairs to release some of this frustration.

“What? How do you know?”

“You said you didn’t have time, so I’m giving you my conclusion.”

“I need more, Quinn. It’s not even nine in the morning and the media already fucked my day. You didn’t talk to the press, did you?”

“No,” she snapped. Sore spot? “And if that reporter had posted my full picture in the paper, you’d be investigating another homicide because there’s a reason I’m good at being an undercover agent—I don’t let myself get tagged. He could have blown any future cover, me standing there with a fucking federal agent. Thank God it was just the back of my head.”

“I apologize,” he mumbled. She had a point—undercover cops were very peculiar.

“Here’s my reasoning about the killer,” Quinn said. “He knows Manners’ schedule, grabs her in the hospital parking lot, immobilizes her quickly and shoves her in the trunk of her car. Drives to lake. Has an ATV stashed somewhere nearby. Why the lake? Don’t know—he probably has his own whacked reason. It’s quiet at night, no people, there’s a lot of places around here just like that. But it’s fifteen miles as the crow flies from Newman Lake, where the car was found, to Liberty and even at midnight, I’m thinking a guy on an ATV with a body somehow strapped on would attract attention. No trunk, no real way to conceal it. Plus, while she may have been unconscious, she wasn’t dead. He would have had to cross the highway. He’s too smart to expose himself that long.”

All logical. “I’m with you.”

“He stalked her earlier and knew she lived in a duplex where the walls are probably thin with lots of people nearby—not an ideal place to kill anyone, greater chance of being seen coming or going. So he comes up with this plan. Parks his own car earlier at the vacant house in Newman and takes the ATV to the lake. Leaves it...someplace, but I’m thinking within a mile or two of where he intends to kill his victim. A house, not a parking lot where it would have been found by the earlier canvass. Either he has a second car or he grabs a bus—there’s three stops near the lake or he calls a taxi—we’re near a major university here, so private taxis are thriving, too—and goes to the hospital. Maybe he transfers a couple times to cover himself, maybe he doesn’t. He grabs Manners, drugs her, drives her car to where the ATV is at the lake, loads her onto the seat of the ATV and positions himself behind her, hightails it to the shore where he kills her, jumps in the lake to clean up, drives the ATV back to her car, drives her car to the vacant house in Newman, and takes his own car back to wherever he’s staying.”