Page 47 of Deadly Cry

Penn shrugged. ‘Cos we didn’t stop him?’

Kim folded her arms. ‘That was my first thought too, but now I’m not so sure.’

‘He knows we couldn’t stop him,’ Bryant offered. ‘So I’m not sure he’s pissed off because of that.’

‘Agreed,’ Kim said.

‘Still using the name Noah,’ Penn said.

‘Yep, great observations, folks, but what are these letters telling us about the killer?’

Silence.

‘Okay, we’ll come back to that in a minute. Penn, gonna give you a break on the post-mortems, which Bryant and I will attend. I want you over at the search area. If they find anything at all, I want to be the first to know.’

‘On it, boss.’

‘Stace, I want you doing background checks on all family members of both victims.’

‘Got it, boss,’ Stacey said, making a note.

‘Okay, back to the letters. We don’t know for sure if they’re definitely from him, but we’re gonna take a bet they are. Given that, we now need to extract any detail we can find, which includes the handwriting itself as well as the content. Stace, find me someone who can help with the handwriting.’

‘Won’t forensics have an expert at the lab in Birmingham?’ Penn asked.

‘I want as little involvement over there as possible until Mitch finds his leak.’

‘No probs, boss.’

‘Now to the actual content,’ she said, focusing on Stacey.

It took the constable just three seconds to catch up with where she was heading and start shaking her head.

‘She won’t do it, boss. She hasn’t worked an active case since that last one with us. She’s writing her book.’

Alison Lowe was a profiler, or behaviourist as she liked to be called, who had consulted for them on a couple of major cases, until a year ago when her own life had been put in jeopardy by a killer who was focused on Kim.

‘She’s still writing it?’ Kim asked.

Stacey nodded.

During the investigation, the two of them had become friends and still kept in touch.

‘A lot of research, apparently.’

‘You mean, she’s hiding behind writing a book?’

‘Maybe,’ Stacey said, ‘but she still won’t do it.’

Because Alison had removed herself from the force’s list of available consultants, Kim couldn’t ask Woody to bring her in, but she needed the woman’s insight.

‘Get her on the phone,’ Kim said.

Stacey took her phone from her satchel. ‘I’m telling you, boss, she won’t do it.’

‘Put the call on speaker,’ Kim said. She wanted to hear the excuses herself.

Everyone stared at the phone as the ringing sounded out loud.