He called Catherine.

“I don’t have anything else for you, Matt.” She sounded weary.

He gave her the bare bones about what he learned from Jacoby.

“She worked at the same hospital where Victoria Manners worked?”

“Yes.”

“That’s good. That’s a connection.” Catherine now sounded more engaged, almost excited.

“That’s not why I called. When you caught the case three years ago, did you search for any possible victims prior to Anne Banks?”

“There were no crimes that fit the MO, and no similar series of murders on those same dates in any previous year—I looked back fifteen years, not just in three year intervals.”

“I’m looking at Anne Banks’s autopsy report and the crime scene photos. He didn’t hesitate.”

“You’re thinking she wasn’t the first victim. It’s certainly possible he killed before, but there would be another pattern. He is meticulous in the details.”

“What do you mean another pattern?”

“Anne Banks was the first victim killed on March 3 in this manner. If he killed before...well, I’m making a leap here, but he prefers knives, I don’t think he would deviate from his choice of weapon. Still, he may not have created this pattern until Banks.”

“Such as he may have been practicing, leading up to this method.”

“Possibly.”

“Could he have gone from animal slayings to human and not hesitate?”

“Hmm.”

“That’s noncommittal.”

“I don’t have enough information. It’s easy to say he started by killing animals, but not all serial murderers start that way. And it is a big jump from animals to people. I will say this—I’m fairly confident that he is motivated to kill for a specific reason. He’s not a thrill seeker—meaning, he didn’t set out to kill merely because it excited him. If that were the case, we’d see more violence to the bodies, less methodical precision, more time playing and cutting. It’s almost—well, he’s doing a job he thinks is necessary as quickly as he can.”

Matt mulled that over. Quick, methodical, a duty. Duty... An obligation maybe.

“Anything else?” Catherine asked.

“I think it’s possible Banks may have recognized him but didn’t see him as a threat. She was with her baby. If he was a stranger, wouldn’t she have screamed?” Matt said.

“I’ve always said that he would blend in, appear average and nonthreatening.”

“I’m going to talk to her best friend,” he said. “They worked together at Spokane General. I’m hoping she’ll give me a path to follow.”

“I’ll look into unsolved homicides on the West Coast,” Catherine said.

He heard her typing, and she said more to herself than to Matt, “Knife, double-sided blade, gutting or stabbing.”

“What are you thinking?” Matt asked. “A lot of unsolved cases are going to pop.”

“Not as many as you think, not with a knife. And I’m limiting the window. It could be he started with another type of vendetta, or he wanted to simply practice. I can’t say—but I think you’re right—based on the evidence, I don’t think that Anne Banks was the first person he killed. But still, she was important to him. She may have been the first person he killed for a specific reason and her death initiated this pattern.”