Page 45 of Return of the Spider

She hung her head. “I think I lost him almost a year ago, to be honest.”

I’d written that down, and now I stared at that sentence in my notebook, feeling the poor woman’s sadness all over again. Then I set the file aside and turned once again to the Bulldog murders, as I’d taken to calling them, after the unusual gun that had been used.

Over the past few days, Sampson and I had formed a decent alliance with Detective Matt Brady, who was damn good at his job.

In the first forty-eight hours, Brady and his partners had focused on the victims, both of whom were medical techs who worked at a hospital not far from the murder scene and who had been friends since their early teens. We checked everything they found out about the two women against our evidence in the Talbot murder case.

At first, John and I saw no definitive crossover, nocommonality save the caliber of the weapon and the angle the killer had shot from. Then, yesterday afternoon, the full ballistics report came back from the Maryland crime lab, confirming that the bullets in both attacks had been fired from the same gun.

“This is interesting, Alex,” Sampson said now.

I looked up from the ballistics report. “What’s that?”

“The medical examiner’s autopsy report,” he said. “It notes that a sizable piece of scalp and hair from Alice Ways, one of the victims, is missing.”

“Saw that last night,” I said. “And Brady confirms the piece was not found in the car.”

“You think the shooter took it?”

“That’s what it looks like.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Could be a trophy.”

“Why didn’t he do it with Conrad and Abby?”

I shrugged. “Maybe he didn’t think of it. Maybe this time he thought having that piece of scalp and hair would remind him of the event more vividly.”

“That’s disturbing. I’ve heard of killers taking little mementos like bracelets or necklaces, but not a hunk of scalp.”

“I’m not saying it’s normal behavior, John. Quite the opposite. We’re dealing with an abnormal mind at play, which is how I think he sees this. As a game.”

“Like he’s saying,Catch me if you can?” Sampson said.

“Partially. It’s also a sign of increasing boldness.”

“You’re thinking he’ll do it again soon?”

I nodded. “He’ll escalate. Broaden the number of victims taken at once or kill again sooner than he did between the first and second murders.”

“So in the next five days?”

“That’s what has me on edge.”

Sampson’s desk phone rang. He answered. I returned to the Bulldog murder book.

“Thank you, Officer,” John said a moment later, and hung up. “We’re out of here, Alex.”

“What’s up?”

“That was Donovan, the undercover working LMC Fifty-One. Patrice Prince is on the move, and she thinks she knows where he’s going.”

CHAPTER

34

Chesapeake Beach, Maryland