Page 66 of Pretty Broken Dolls

Katie sat down. “No, I gave you my word so here I am. What do you have to tell me?”

“No ‘Hello, how are you doing?’ first? By the way, you look great considering I just saw you barely an hour ago.”

Katie remained quiet, staring at him.

“You want to look at the menu?”

“Just coffee.”

“Okay,” he said and waved over the server. “Two coffees please.” Turning back to Katie, he said, “Good?”

She nodded but thought that she was making a mistake meeting him like this. Thinking that McGaven should be there hearing the information too, perhaps she should excuse herself and reconvene the meeting tomorrow. “I think it would be—”

“I have reason to believe,” he blurted out, interrupting her, “that we’re looking at two killers. Let me rephrase that…an original killer and a copycat.”

That was not what Katie had expected. It was like he dropped a bomb on her and the investigation.

“Wait a minute. How long have you known this?” she asked as their coffees arrived.

“We had our suspicions, but nothing solid. That’s why it wasn’t in the paperwork.”

“Suspicions? Did you think about letting us in on it?”

“There was nothing concrete—yet. I don’t like spinning tales or spreading gossip that will run investigators down false paths.”

“What changed?” Katie kept her composure, glancing around at the restaurant and noticing that no one was paying them any attention—most were engaged in their own conversations.

“I know you have had your hands full,” he said. “I wanted to update you as soon as possible so that nothing would slow down the current investigation. It’s another angle that you might want to entertain.”

Entertain?

She waited to hear more details.

“You haven’t spent much time on the first two victims, Nancy Day and Gwen Sanderson.”

Katie shook her head. “Just through the military K9 facility, but not much information that would help us.” She had skimmed the material but decided to start with the cold case in her county jurisdiction—a decision with which Sheriff Scott had agreed.

“Our second victim Gwen Sanderson killed Nancy Day.”

“What?” Katie managed to say. It was a stunning, but an interesting realization. But she didn’t know how they could have come to that conclusion. It seemed to be pulled out of thin air.

“A couple of us had our suspicions when Gwen Sanderson was killed. Some things didn’t look right with the execution of the murder, despite the general theme being close—the pose, a dramatic scene, and the jewelry being highlighted.”

“What convinced you?”

“One of my investigators noticed that Nancy Day’s scene was neat and tidy, the makeup was perfect, her hair was styled, whereas with the second and third murders, the makeup was poorly executed and the victims were made to look ugly. Also, the bruising to Nancy’s chest looked accidental, but the others seemed deliberate.”

Despite her mistrust of the man, Katie was intrigued because she had noticed some anomalies herself.

Campbell added more sugar to his coffee than he should. “We were checking what these two women were doing on the day each was murdered, and a few days before—a victimology timeline. And that’s when we noticed some strange things that led us to analyzing Sanderson and what she was doing on the day of Day’s murder.”

“What made you check Sanderson’s schedule?”

“Gwen Sanderson’s alibi for the day that Nancy Day was murdered seemed legit—three investigators checked on this. But, everything that she told her friends and family was a lie. She seemed to be leading a double life. When so many small things began to fall apart, we looked further.”

“What evidence makes you think that Gwen Sanderson killed Nancy Day? What proof?” she said, still not believing that this was a solid lead.

He leaned back, almost as if he couldn’t believe that she didn’t immediately agree with his findings. “One, Sanderson had no alibi and she was within the vicinity of the crime scene during the time of the murder. Two, knives were found near her residence that had Day’s blood on them.”