It did. Someone with NPD thought that they were essentially the center of the universe, or that everyone else was just a bit part player in the story of their life. Most thought that they were exceptional or special in some way: the cleverest, strongest, best human who had ever lived, or certainly better than any of the people they actually met. And when things went wrong for them, they always found someone else to blame.
Combine that narcissism with psychopathic tendencies, and they had a recipe for violence in response to the least insult. Maybe by this point, the killer was even seeking out conflict as an excuse to kill more victims. Maybe it reinforced his existing feelings of power?
It was speculation, but it seemed to fit better than any of the ways Paige had been thinking so far. The only question now was how Paige was going to use that starting point to get closer to the killer. She had an idea about that, though, one that would help her to understand his mindset better.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Paige woke the next morning more than ready to continue the investigation. She at least had an idea now of the kind of man they were looking for, and that energized her to continue the work of finding him, although she wasn’t sure how much it narrowed things down. The world was full of narcissists. One look at social media demonstrated that. Finding a specific one whose narcissism was severe enough to constitute a reason to kill was something else entirely.
Paige needed to understand more about the killer, and what motivated him. Specifically, she wanted to understand the ways in which that motivation might change now that he’d killed. Paige thought that she understood the ways in which anger at Gisele Newbury might have driven him to kill in the first instance, but how had that turned into a killing spree that had so far claimed the lives of three victims?
Paige needed to understand that better, along with how a killer like that would select his victims. In previous cases, she’d been able to find imprisoned killers who had been able to provide her with insights, so maybe she could try something similar in this case. Maybe there would be someone near here she could question to try to get a better understanding of all of this.
Paige started to look for local secure psychiatric institutions, trying to find somewhere that would house killers. It didn’t take long before she found the Brentview Hospital, there for the treatment and imprisonment of some of the most dangerous offenders Kentucky had to offer.
Paige started to compose an email to them, setting out who she was and what she wanted in the clearest terms she could think of. She was still trying to find ways to explain it all, when her phone rang. Paige didn’t recognize the number, but answered anyway. She’d given her details to so many witnesses in this case that she didn’t dare miss a call that might prove useful.
“Agent King?” a man’s voice on the other end of the line said.
“Yes, who is this?” Paige kept her tone carefully neutral.
“My name is Giles Barnes, the blacksmith from the Renaissance Faire?”
Paige remembered. She’d asked him about the iron fleur-de-lis.
“Did you find something about the ornament?” she asked.
“Not that, but I think I’ve found out about the weapon you’re looking for,” Giles said. “Can you come over to the Ren-Faire? I’m here all day.”
“I’ll be right over,” Paige promised, and ran to get Christopher. He would want to hear this, if they really did have a weapon profile.
*
The Renaissance Faire was a little quieter today than it had been the last time Paige had been there. It seemed that the initial excitement over the news of what had happened had passed, leaving behind a sense that people should stay away out of respect.
Paige doubted that it would last. Although her new job meant that she only saw locations in the immediate aftermath of deaths, she suspected that in the longer term normality washed back in, so that unless people already knew about a killing, eventually it wouldn’t do anything to change their experience.
For now, though, the quietness was obvious, fewer people making their way between the stalls and the tents of the Renaissance Faire. The jesters and the knights were still there, playing their parts within the whole, but now, Paige could make out a couple of film crews moving among them, as if hoping that there would be more on the story that had gripped the news cycle over the last few days.
Paige saw a couple of those cameras turn her way as she walked, and she cursed, knowing that it was only a matter of time before there were reporters in front of her, wanting to know what she and Christopher were doing there at the Renaissance Faire again. Given their hostility so far, they might well start demanding why she and Christopher weren’t making more progress.
“Don’t worry,” Christopher said as Paige tried to keep away from them. “We just tell them that we’re following up on our earlier investigation here. There’s no reason for them to think that there’s anything new. We certainly don’t have to tell them the real reason that we’re here.”
Paige knew he was right. Even so, she found herself keeping a careful eye on the camera crews as she made her way through the Renaissance Faire. She decided to make her path deliberately circuitous, looking around for any of the people she and Christopher had spoken to the last time they were here. She didn’t want to give away whatever information they got about the murder weapon too easily. It felt like the kind of thing that, if it got out, might risk spawning copycats, or force the killer to change his methods. Paige didn’t want to risk either.
She stopped at a jester, who looked slightly worried, as if suspecting that Paige was about to chase him down and arrest him, the way she and Christopher had with Steve the knight.
“Sorry,” she said. “We don’t want to disturb you. We were just wondering if you’ve remembered anything else about the day Meredith was killed since we were last here. Any detail, no matter how small, might be useful.”
“No, I’m sorry,” he said. At least he wasn’t trying his medieval jester routine on them this time. “I’ve been asking myself about it constantly, wondering if there was anything I could have done, but… no, there’s nothing.”
“That’s all right,” Paige said. “We just have to check.”
She wanted to make it sound like everything she was doing there was just routine, so that the press wouldn’t have a reason to crowd around too closely. Paige made her way to the next person they had spoken to on their first visit to the Renaissance Faire, the archery instructor, trying to circle closer and closer to the blacksmith, little by little.
They made it to his tent, the heat of his forge intense there. He was concentrating on the billet of steel he was currently holding using tongs, hammering it into shape with sharp, intense blows that rang from the metal.
Paige walked into his eyeline, not knowing if he would hear her over the sound of the hammering if she just called out to him. The blacksmith stopped his work as he saw her, setting aside what he was working on.
“Agent King, you came.”
“You remember Agent Marriott?” Paige said.
“Of course. Thank you both for coming down like this. Only with something like this, it’s easier to show you than to just say it.”
“Say what?” Christopher asked.