Free Profiled by Renee Andrews

that since 1992, the first murder has always happened on a Tuesday?” Captain Pierce asked.
    “No, what I’m saying is—” Lexie started, but stopped when Angel, flipping through her pages, nodded her head. Her eyes widened as she got it.
    “What she’s saying is the first murder always occurred on the same weekday. And that, in fact, every murder in the series occurred on the same day of the week.”
    “Yes.” Lexie nodded. “The first murder in the series seems to have always occurred on Tuesday, except for the very first murder in 1985, on Easter. And the third murder is always on a Friday, the fourth on a Wednesday, and so on. But even though that’s what I noticed, I don’t think that’s the pattern.”
    “You said you believe it has to do with religion.” Lou’s interest tuned in on Lexie’s observation.
    “It does. His first kill is always forty days prior to Easter, isn’t it?” Angel directed the question to Lexie.
    “It looks that way. And even though the remaining dates each year don’t appear to hit any religious holidays,” Lexie continued, while everyone at the table searched through the murder dates with renewed interest, “they all occur on the same day of the week, with response to the previous murder.”
    “Because they’re all forty days apart.” Angel wrote several notes in her file. “Forty days and forty nights. I should’ve looked for more Biblical references. Good job, McCain. This gives us something to work with. The guy’s got a knowledge of religion, albeit a sick interpretation, and it goes deeper than including an Easter kill in each series. He’s following a pattern, and we need to figure out why that pattern was established, what it means.”
    “Then why didn’t he follow it the first year?” Lou asked. “It makes no sense. There was no murder that year forty days before Easter. Everything started with Molly Taylor on Easter Sunday.”
    “Maybe not.” Papers stopped rattling and whispers ceased as everyone turned their attention to John Tucker.
    Angel looked up. “What are you saying, Detective?”
    But Lexie knew, and she agreed. She turned in her chair to hear him convey the same thing she’d been thinking since she’d first noted the pattern in the past three series.
    “I’m thinking they missed a murder that first year. Yeah, I know his MO changed, and I think you’re right about him humanizing his victims after that point, due to a marriage, or a kid, or something along that line, but I don’t think he changed the number of women killed between '85 and '92. Someone was murdered on that Tuesday, forty days before Easter in 1985, and that’s the real first victim. That’s why you haven’t been able to match any suspects to Molly Taylor.”
    “She wasn’t the first victim.” Angel nodded as though the theory had potential.
    John agreed. “After hearing what Ms. McCain brought to light tonight, I think there was another woman murdered in 1985. It makes more sense than any of our previous theories, I’m surprised we didn’t question it earlier.”
    “Kind of hard to say a murder was committed when you haven’t got a body,” Ed Pierce droned from his seat.
    Lexie watched John Tucker’s jaw twitch, listened to his deep inhalation, then the steady whoosh of air as he released the breath. She’d bet money he had counted to ten. Or a fast twenty.
    “No, we didn’t find another body, but after the following series, we should’ve gone back and taken a better look at that year.”
    “We did. I’ve got the reports right here.” Ryan Sims lifted his copy of the information the police had gathered throughout the past twenty-eight years, information on the murders, autopsies, victimology and crime scene photos.
    “We checked out the information on the murders and the victims,” John corrected. “We should have looked more at the year in question to determine if there could’ve been an additional murder, as Ms. McCain suggested. Missing