“Or a man and a woman,” Hale said. “The woman might be the bait. Her partner could be someone waiting for her to lure their victims outside.”
“The guy we found yesterday did have his pants down around his knees,” Trevor remarked. “That definitely supports the theory a woman enticed them to leave the clubs with the offer of sex, then whoever she’s working with took them down while they were distracted. It’s cold-blooded but effective.”
Trey sighed. “While we’re probably right about all of this, it doesn’t help us much. STAT had their analysts go through both men’s social media accounts. There were no women—or men—in common between them. There also weren’t any bars, clubs, or restaurants in common, either. Whoever the killer or killers are, they’re smart enough to stay away from any cameras. That’s going to make it damn hard to find them.”
“We could ask STAT to use their fancy computers to create a list of all the places the two victims spent time in the weeks before their deaths, then start hitting all of them with photos of Demario and Alden,” Connor said. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and someone will remember seeing something suspicious.”
Trevor groaned at that idea.
Trey didn’t blame him. “With only the four of us and the number of places those two guys frequented, that might take a while,” he pointed out.
He left out the part about there being a good chance someone out there could get murdered this weekend, if they hadn’t already. Unfortunately, they had nothing really to go on when it came to stopping it from happening.
“You’re right,” Hale said. “We need a way to cut down the list of potential locations. If not, we could be canvassing clubs and bars for the next month and still never find anything.”
They studied the board again, running through every detail they’d listed, wondering if there was something they’d missed. It wasn’t until Trey went through the files again that he caught sight of a picture of the garbage truck where Demario’s body had been found.
“Maybe we can use the fact that the killer appears to use dumpsters to dispose of the victims to our advantage.” He dug through the photos until he found some from the DFW and McCommas Bluff sites. “I doubt the killer would have lugged those bodies very far after the murders. If we’re right and the men were killed close to the bar, restaurant, or club where the killer picked them up, maybe it’s as simple as looking for dumpsters positioned close to those kinds of places.”
Trey could practically see the lightbulbs going on as his pack mates picked up on his reasoning.
“We could have STAT dig into the landfill records,” Connor suggested. “See if they can figure out where the trash came from that the bodies had been found in. It should be easy for the truck that unloaded at Fair Oaks Transfer Station. Probably a little harder for the body at the DFW site. Once they have an ID on the body from yesterday, they could do the same for him. If they can figure out where the trash came from, they could compare that to the list of places the men went. That should give us a list of clubs, bars, and restaurants that have dumpsters nearby. It should cut way down on the number of places we have to check out.”
“That theory depends on the killer being too lazy to haul the bodies anywhere before dumping them in the garbage,” Trevor said. “That’s one hell of an assumption, but at least it gives us a place to start. It might even lead us to the actual places the men were killed.”
They spent a few more minutes talking before Trey called the number Alyssa had left for him.
“We’ll have your requested info within twenty-four hours, if not before that,” the woman on the other end of the line said. “I’ll send the spreadsheets to each of your phones.”
Trey frowned. “I’m not sure I can read spreadsheets on my phone.”
The woman laughed. “You can now. I’ve updated your phones with the app. It’s already been installed and authenticated. All you have to do is tap the document attachment when you get the email. Call if you need anything else.”
As Trey hung up, he wondered if he should be worried that STAT could apparently get into his phone and do anything they wanted, whenever they wanted. Then he decided it wasn’t worth his time to care. He had other stuff to worry about now that he and his pack mates had a plan to find the killer. Like figure out where he was going to take Samantha tonight.
Maybe he should have asked STAT if they could have helped with that.
Chapter 6
“I can’t believe I’ve never been to this part of town.” Samantha spun in a slow circle, taking in all the colorful shop fronts up and down either side of the street that ran through the middle of Bishop Arts District, surprised when she saw there was a live band playing on a stage set up at the end of the block. “I’d heard there were a few quaint shops and cafés here, but I never realized there were so many. Retail therapy is exactly what I need after spending the day dealing with those idiots on the Butcher task force.”
Trey chuckled. “What happened?”
Samantha got that little twinge in her stomach as she worried once again that the only reason he wanted to spend time with her was to grill her for information on the Butcher case. She knew that was crazy and unfair, especially since a big part of the reason she’d manipulated him into asking her out in the first place was because she wanted to sniff out whatever secrets he and his teammates were hiding. But still, there was something about all this that made her feel more than a little crappy. Mostly because Trey was the kind of guy she could easily fall for if they both weren’t so busy playing games with each other.
Trey took her hand as they walked into the brick-sided shop on the corner. It was filled from floor to ceiling and wall to wall, with vintage kitsch and knickknacks. From home decor, stationery, and candy, to collectible toys and original art pieces, the place was buried in stuff that was organized with no obvious rhyme or reason. There wasn’t a thing in the store she needed and yet she wanted to buy it all.
“The detective in charge of the task force thought it would be a good idea to spend the entire day having us go over every piece of evidence that we’ve collected so far, along with videos of the crime scenes and details from the autopsy reports on the off chance there’s something buried in there we missed,” she said in answer to Trey’s question.
“How’d it go?” He picked up a lunch box covered in cartoon bunnies and frowned at it in confusion. “Did you find any new leads?”
Samantha pushed away the thought that Trey was only asking to gather information for his own purposes. “It was horrible. We spent six hours looking at the stuff and we’re no better off than we were before. We still have no idea who the killer might be, who his victims are, or how he chooses them.”