“I’ll call him right now.”

“One more thing—I’ve been going over all the original crime scene photos. The jogging stroller with her baby still in it was found about twenty feet from the body. I’ve read every report. They all indicate that the victim was stabbed and died in the same spot. Why was her baby so far away? If the killer had time to drag her off the path, why didn’t she scream? The baby was down the path from the body. Did she push the baby away to protect him?”

“There’s one thing not in the public reports,” Jacoby said.

“I should have everything, though.”

“It’s a sensitive case, and like I said, the FBI were jerks three years ago so I don’t know that my boss would have been keen on jumping through hoops for you at the time.”

Once again, interoffice jurisdictional bullshit made Matt’s head ache. “Can you tell me now?”

“Every scenario we came up with didn’t work with the evidence we had, except one. Anne was jogging on the path. It had started to rain. She had one earbud in her ear, the other out I assume to listen for traffic, as runners often do. The killer grabbed her from behind—we didn’t believe he was following her on the path because none of the witnesses saw a lone man running behind or keeping pace with a woman with a stroller. The rain both helped and hurt our investigation—we didn’t have much sign of a scuffle because the rain muddied the area, but we did have one good set of footprints, where we think the killer stood and waited for her to pass by. He must have known her route—from what we learned, she rarely deviated, which is why I’ve always told my own daughters never to run on a set schedule and to change their routes often. Anyway, we think she passed her killer but didn’t see him—a tree obscured his hiding place. When he saw her, he sprinted, grabbed her from behind, put his hand over her mouth and pulled her into the foliage only two feet away. That was the basic MO of the rapist across town. Facial evidence indicated early bruising where he held Banks’s mouth. But there were no torn clothes, no signs of attempted rape. The killer then reached around and stabbed her in the gut.”

“He stabbed her from behind?” Matt tried to picture it.

“It’s what the angle of the initial stab wound showed in the autopsy. Plus if he let her go, she would have stumbled, fallen back, screamed, done something. The thinking was, this was quick. Grab and stab. The angle of the initial stab wound lent credence to the theory. It wasn’t straight on. But he pulled the knife up toward her sternum. Cut into her lungs. She wouldn’t have been able to scream at that point. He didn’t just drop her. He laid her down on her back as she was dying and sliced her three more times. Why? Hell if I know.”