“I’d like you to give my team a profile this afternoon. I also need something for the press.”

“You can’t quote me.”

“I won’t—you know me better than that. But the press is all over this. Someone at SPD talked, most likely the chief himself. I need to calm the waters.”

“I understand, but I’m piecemealing this. Send me everything you’ve learned about Banks. Let me know after you talk to her friend if you learn anything important. I guarantee, the killer targeted her as some sort of retribution. Punishment. I haven’t quite figured out the motive, but it’s personal.”

“And the others?”

“Possibly. But Anne Banks will link directly to him in some way, while the others may be surrogates.”

“Did you get my email about Quinn’s theory on how the killer moved about?”

“Quinn?”

“Detective Kara Quinn. The LAPD cop on vacation who’s been helping us.”

“Right. I saw it, didn’t connect the name. It’s entirely plausible, though it seems extravagant for his purposes. Is there something else about that property that could be important to the killer? You might want to run a property check going back at least thirty years. I’m sure he picked it for a reason. Like the victims, it might seem random, but to him, it’s not.”

She didn’t say anything else. Matt said, “And?”

“And what?”

“I heard you thinking.”

“I’m wondering why Liberty Lake. The other locations—Portland, Missoula—the victims had a connection to the town. They either worked or lived there. Victoria Manners has no connection to Liberty Lake—she lived in Spokane and worked in Spokane, correct?”

“Liberty Lake is a suburb.”

“The killer had to transport her twenty miles. The other six victims were killed either at their home, at their work, or a location between the two. Manners is her own outlier, just like Anne Banks. He picked Liberty Lake for a reason. Unless she has a connection to the place, he picked it specifically for her murder. Why?”

Matt didn’t have an answer. But he felt closer to finding it now.

16

Liberty Lake
12:05 p.m.

“I’m hungry,” Andy said. “Gracie owns a sandwich shop on the other side of the lake—let’s get a bite.”

Kara hadn’t thought much about food since the scone this morning—and they were nearly done with their side of the lake.

“Thirty minutes and we’ll be through,” she said. “Then it’s my treat.”

“Gracie is my fiancée. She doesn’t charge me.”

Kara had guessed that, and sometimes Andy’s deceptively simple manner threw her, but she liked him.

Andy pulled over at the end of a cul-de-sac high off the main lake road. There were three houses here, all with steep drives and framed by trees. “I’ll call her and tell her we’ll be late—she knows I take my lunch at twelve-thirty, and she’ll worry, what with everything that’s been going on.”

“I’ll talk to the people on the right—these are all occupants, right?”

“Yeah—full-time residents. I don’t come up here much, but I think they’re all working folks in Spokane. Don’t know that I’ve met them.”