Beyond Reason (A Reese Link Mystery—Book One) by Molly Black

Author:Molly Black [Black, Molly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2023-04-30T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

"I'm telling you," Clay said, "this is a fool's errand. You're not going to find anything."

They were at the Bellmoor Police Department, borrowing the office of Officer Gilbert Doyle. Reese tapped away at a keyboard while Clay sat on the desk beside her, tossing an egg-shaped stress ball from hand to hand.

"And I'm telling you," Reese said, "there's no way these are his first kills. He's too careful, too confident. Three murders in two weeks, not a shred of evidence left behind—he's no rookie, and trust me, I would know."

Clay fumbled the ball, nearly lost it, and made a lurching grab to snatch it out of the air. The desk trembled beneath him.

"That's all well and good," he said as he repositioned himself, "but you're a day late and a dollar short. Couple weeks ago, when I started investigating Gibbs's murder, I had the same thought: This looks like the work of someone who's done it before."

"And?"

"And nothing. Couldn’t come up with any other killings similar enough to convince me they were related."

"Maybe his first murders didn't look like murders. Some killers start out by making their kills look accidental."

Serial killers had of course been included in Reese's classes at the academy, but she had also studied them on her own time, fascinated by a breed of individuals unaffected by empathy or concern for their fellow human beings. She was curious about anyone who lived on the fringes of society, and serial killers certainly fit into that group, even if some of them were remarkably skilled at blending in.

Clay said nothing, a tacit admission that he had not thought to look into such a connection himself. He let out a world-weary sigh and tossed the ball high in the air, end-over-end.

"You just can't admit that I might have thought of something you didn't, can you?" Reese asked, unable to resist the urge to rib him a little.

Clay grunted. "Doesn't do you much good if you don't find anything, does it?"

Reese smiled sweetly at him. "Guess I'd better find something, then."

She started by searching for suspicious deaths of lobstermen in the area, specifically anyone who had been drowned and cut by an object, perhaps a pick or some other kind of tool—anything that would look like an accident.

The system coughed up three cases, two of which were on the West Coast.

"Now we're looking out in California, are we?" Clay asked, leaning forward to study the screen.

Ignoring Clay's skepticism, Reese scrolled down to the third case and started reading.

The victim, twenty-seven-year-old Rita Flowers, had been found along a rocky shore just north of Bar Harbor six years earlier, her body bruised and battered. The ME had been unable to determine whether the injuries had been accidental – a consequence of her body being repeatedly thrown against the rocks – or the effects of a severe beating.

"Went missing from her home while her parents were out of town," Clay read, summarizing as he went. "Investigators suspected she decided to go wake boarding

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