“Her ID says that she’s Peggy Cane. She has a college ID that suggests she’s a local art major,” the coroner said. He handed over a plastic evidence bag with a driver’s license in it. Its photograph showed a spike-headed young woman in her early 20s. She was pretty but there was a hard edge to that prettiness that suggested she didn’t take nonsense from anyone.
She didn’t look anything like Meredith Park or Gisele Newbury, and if she was a student, then there was no initial reason to think that there would be a link between her life and those of the others either. Paige just had to hope that there would be something about this scene that would put her and Christopher on the right track.
“What’s your initial assessment of the cause of death?” Christopher asked.
“A single stab wound to the heart. I can’t tell you about the blade profile yet, because that will need to wait for my autopsy, but we did find this near the body.”
He lifted another evidence bag. It held another of those small iron fleur-de-lis ornaments that had been there next to the first two victims. That seemed to make it clear that it was the same killer. The only question now was if there was anything about this location that might make it possible to actually find the killer.
“There will be plenty of security cameras here in the station, right?” Paige asked Christopher.
He nodded. “Here, and on the buses. If we can identify which one Peggy was on, there might be a chance to spot the moment when the killer selects her as a target.”
It was probably their best chance for now. Paige went back to the edge of the scene, looking for the security guard who had brought them there. He was still standing just outside, as if waiting to see if there was anything else he could do that might help to resolve all of this. She was glad that he was eager to help, even if the local PD weren’t.
“Can you get us access to the security footage for the station?” she asked.
The guard nodded. “We thought you might want that, so we’ve pulled up what we have in the security room. Just follow me.”
He led the way through the station again, and now Paige saw that the press had started to gather, standing around with their cameras pointed her way. They started to call out questions as she passed.
“Agent King! Can you tell us what’s going on here?”
“We’re not releasing information at this time,” she said, reflecting for a moment that she was starting to sound like a real FBI agent now, with that deadpan tone that didn’t give anything away about the details of the investigation.
“What do you say to the accusation that the FBI isn’t making progress? That you’ve already arrested the wrong man once, and it’s costing people their lives?”
Paige flinched at those words because they hit far too close to home. The truth was that they hadn’t found answers so far, and their attempts to do so had only taken them in the wrong direction. Because of that, another woman lay dead, stabbed by a psychopath. Could the local PD have done a better job in so short a time? Paige doubted it, but it still hurt to think about.
“We are continuing to work hard to catch the killer,” Christopher said. “In spite of the Lexington PD providing no assistance.”
It wasn’t like him to say something like that, much less to say it and walk off, as he did now. Paige hurried to catch up with him.
“What was that?” Paige asked him.
“The press got here too fast for it to be a member of the public telling them that we were here,” Christopher said. “Which means the local cops must have tipped them off, trying to make us look bad. I can deal with them not helping, but I won’t put up with them playing games like this.”
“You don’t think that there will be any comebacks for a comment like that?” Paige asked.
She saw Christopher shrug, as if it didn’t matter. “I’ll deal with it.”
“No, we’ll deal with it,” Paige corrected him. They were a team, after all.
For now, though, there was still the question of the security footage for the bus station. Paige had to hope that it would show her and Christopher something they could use. They kept following the security guard, heading through the bus depot to a series of back rooms and offices. One had a security station with a large screen in front of it, various views of the station mixed in with images that were obviously coming live from some of the buses.
“Here you go,” the security guard said. “Do you think you can work it out from here? I’ll need to go make sure all the press doesn’t get in the way of the buses. My boss doesn’t want the station to stop running on time.”
“We’re fine, thank you,” Paige said. He’d given them more help than most people in this case.
Christopher was the one who sat down in front of the screen, quickly getting the hang of the controls for the different cameras, while establishing how to download the data for them to go through later. She saw him pick up a view for the entrance to the locker room, scrolling back until Peggy Cane came into view. She entered the locker room, and in just a few seconds, a man followed her in. He was wearing a long coat and a hat, both of which served to disguise his looks, making it hard to pick out much about him beyond the fact that he appeared to be a tall white male, maybe in his thirties.
That had to be the killer, although the cameras didn’t catch the moment when he killed Peggy. He’d managed to find a blind spot in the locker room for that.
“Find another angle on him,” Paige said.
“I’m trying,” Christopher said. He pulled up another piece of footage, from a few seconds before, with Peggy Cane walking across the main concourse of the depot, and their suspect following close behind, his intent seeming obvious now that Paige knew it was him.
Again, though, his features didn’t seem to be visible. He kept his head down and his hat obscured his features, making it impossible to get a clear view of him that might help to identify him.
They kept working their way back through the footage, the victim and her killer making their way across the depot in reverse, skipping from camera to camera. With each one, it was as if the suspect had a clear instinct for where those cameras were going to be, his face obscured by the hat all the time.
They followed the cameras all the way back to a bus. Paige stared at the screen, looking for just one frame of footage where the killer’s face was clear, one instant that would let them know who he was, but she couldn’t pick one out.
The bus number was clearly visible, and Paige saw Christopher go hunting for the footage from that bus. He found it, and now he scrolled back all the way to the point where Peggy first got on. The two of them started to watch that footage, searching for the moment when she had first run into her killer.
For a while, she was just sitting there in one of the front seats of the bus, taking up space with her arms spread wide to discourage anyone else from sitting there. Paige watched the bus fill up, little by little.
She saw the moment when the killer got aboard, and she hoped that now, there would be a shot of his face, but even here, he seemed to be able to obscure it; his instincts for the cameras’ locations were so perfect that it seemed uncanny.
Paige saw him step in front of Peggy, making some kind of demand, perhaps for her seat. She saw him repeat his demand, and now the expression on the young woman’s face was anything but friendly as she replied.