“But he’s been incarcerated for a year.”

“So he either escaped or we got a copycat.” He heaves a shrug. “Unless you got any other bright ideas? I sure don’t.”

“You’re not wrong.”

“I’m not wrong?” He barks a laugh. “I love how you’ll never say I’m right.”

“The blinded eye and shaved skin are consistent with Crotter’s victims, but the body art is puzzling.”

“No Bible verses this time.”

She doesn’t respond right away but stands and stretches out the kinks tightening her legs. “BTK was inspired by Son of Sam. He even modeled his own special signature after the one Berkowitz included in letters addressed to the press and police. And BTK modified the design just as he modified his murders to suit his own needs.”

“So you’re saying this is a modification? A sick riff off what Crotter was doing?”

“A modification or evolution of what he started. Yes. Instead of Bible verses carved into the skin, we have . . . a pattern.”

“But what’s the pattern? What does this stuff mean?” Chives says and waves a hand over the body. “It’s just a bunch of crazy lines.”

“It’s not just a bunch of lines,” she says. “Something is being communicated. We just don’t know what it is yet.”

“So you think we’ll find the woman—whoever she is—cut up like this as well?”

“I think we’ll find her dead, but I don’t know that she’ll be dead in the same way.”

“Because?”

“Crotter focused his attention exclusively on males. Those who reminded him of himself. By punishing them, he was punishing himself by proxy. Anyone else he murdered was usually a witness. Collateral damage.”

“So this one, wherever she is, she’s as good as collateral damage.”

“I suspect so. Yes.”

“Jesus H.” His cell rings and he fishes it out of his pocket. “Yeah?” he says, and a length of silence follows before he says, “We’ll wrap things up here and head your way.” He ends the call and stares at the dark screen.

“They found her?” she says.

“Yeah.”

“Where was the body dumped?”

“You might be right ninety-nine percent of the time, boss, but not today.”

Nora doesn’t respond except to peel off her gloves, neatly rolling them inside out and into a tight ball.

Chives has no satisfaction in his voice, only exhaustion when he says, “They picked her up walking along Fifty-Ninth. Covered in blood. Wearing nothing but a T-shirt and panties. Knife in hand.”

3

Kincaid Hall, on the University of Washington campus, is a brick building shadowed by fifty-foot evergreens. Their branches glisten with rain and sway with the wind, scraping gently at the windows of a third-story classroom where Jack paces back and forth in front of his students. He remarks on the rain and tells them a story.