Free Redheads by Jonathan Moore Page B

in Buenos Aires. Other than the fact that each city was on the water, there was no connection between the dots on the map. Putting the locations in a chronological context didn’t help at all. Mike read out the date and location of each victim, along with her name. Chris wrote each date on a small post-it note with a black marker and affixed each tag next to its correct pushpin. But this added nothing. The killings skipped from Asia to Denmark to Canada to the Caribbean. They had all come around the table to look.
    “There’s no organization,” Westfield said.
    “Maybe we can take something away from that,” Julissa said. “Maybe he’s not travelling all the time, from country to country like some kind of…I don’t know…Lonely Planet backpacker who murders people. He has a home. He travels to kill, and then he goes home.”
    “That makes sense,” Chris said. “If he were travelling all the time like a backpacker, you’d think we’d see a whole string of them on one continent for a couple years, then on a different continent for a few more years.”
    “On the other hand,” Mike said, “he can’t be travelling just to kill. Or at least, not all the time. I mean, if you’re only interested in finding redheads, why go to Nigeria, or anywhere in Asia?”
    “That’s true,” Westfield said. “He’s probably traveling from a home base somewhere, but he must be traveling for some other reason. Trips to Western countries, maybe he’s trying to find a victim. But the others must have another reason. Like business.”
    Chris got out one of the dry erase markers and went to the white board.
    “Let’s write down things we know. Maybe we can put that in one column. Then we can have another column for things we suspect.”
    He turned to the white board and in neat letters wrote, Tries to hide his DNA in the column he marked Suspected . Underneath that, he wrote, Has a home base . He shrugged. It was a start. But the column labeled Known was empty.
    “Here’s something we know: he’s male,” said Julissa. “The semen pretty much solved that mystery. If there ever was one.”
    Chris wrote it on the board.
    “Victims are all redheads with green eyes,” Westfield said. Chris wrote, Redheads / Green Eyes on the board.
    “Rapist,” Julissa said. “Cannibal.”
    “He’s strong,” Mike said. “I think we know that.”
    “It’s fair to say we know he’s at least middle aged,” Westfield said.
    “And we suspect he’s probably older,” Chris added. “Aaron and I talked about that.”
    Chris wrote all this down. He looked at them. Now they were all thinking, and that was good. Julissa was writing on a pad of hotel stationery. Mike was scrolling through files on his laptop. He thought if they could fight and move just one foot forward along the killer’s trail, it would be easier to take the next step, and the one after.
    “If we’re talking about suspicions,” Julissa said, “let’s talk about why all these things happen near the water. That seems like our best lead by far.”
    “And if we’re going to talk about the water connection,” Westfield said, “I want to tell you what I did this morning.”
    They all looked at him. Westfield reached into his jacket pocket and brought out his FBI badge. He tossed it on the table.
    “This is a fake. I bought it at a flea market in Seattle. Reason I’m wearing the suit is I went down to the shipyard across the channel from Allison’s condo and spent the morning interviewing the nightshift crew. They got welders working on a rig over there twenty-four hours a day. Thought some of them might’ve seen something.”
    “You found someone?” Chris asked.
    Westfield told them Jimmy Hutchinson’s story, ending with Hutchinson’s guess that the man was swimming twenty miles an hour.
    “You think Jimmy Hutchinson is credible?” Mike asked.
    “Credibility sounds like something you need in court,” Westfield said. “I wouldn’t bring Hutchinson to