Free The Prophet by Ethan Cross Page B

“No forced entry.”
    He nodded. Then he felt round the door but found no box for a hidden key. His gaze traveled across the small porch. There were a few potted plants scattered around. There was also an area on the outside of the porch filled with small rocks of assorted colors and dried-up flowers covered in snow. Red landscaping bricks surrounded the sectioned-out area and separated the rock from the grass. A key could have been hidden beneath any of the bricks, but that would have made getting to it more difficult. It would have been filthy, covered in dirt, surrounded by bugs and worms.
    He walked over to the potted plants and started tilting them over. Beneath the third pot sat a small black box with white letters on it spelling out the words Hide-a-Key .
    “Has this been dusted for prints? Maybe we’d get lucky. Maybe he forgot to put on the gloves until after he had the key.” Marcus doubted it, but everyone made mistakes.
    Vasques said, “They might have checked it already, but I’ll find out for sure.”
    Marcus pulled open the back door and stepped inside. He took in the red and white kitchen, the dining room, the living room. He absorbed the smells, the sounds. A few typical pops and groans. A faint trace of something in the air. Butterscotch. A candle showing signs of recent use sat nearby on an old oak hutch. The plain white label on its face read Maple Valley Candles .
    He followed the path through the living room and up the stairs to the bedrooms. The stairs creaked loudly beneath his feet. He tested each step to find which ones made noise. He wondered if the killer would have known this as well. Was he that good?
    At the top of the stairs, Marcus moved to Jessie’s bedroom and imagined her sleeping peacefully in the bed. The files and notes he had read climbed to the front of his mind. The killer drugged them to make sure there was no struggle. Marcus imagined inserting the syringe, scooping her into his arms, and humming softly to keep her feeling calm and safe.
    But how did I know for sure that she would be asleep? he thought.
    The Anarchist was too attentive to every detail to leave that to chance. If he opened the door and she was reading a book or had worries weighing on her mind that kept her from getting to sleep, there would be a violent struggle. She would fight him. She would scratch and bite. She would run, throw things at him. But that had never happened at any of the abduction scenes.
    More questions came to mind. How did he know her husband wouldn’t be home? How did he know that no one would be stopping by to disturb them? What time did she go to bed? What time did she have to be at work in the morning?
    The answer was simple. The killer knew those things because he had studied her. He knew all her habits and routines. He was a highly organized offender. Calculating, leaving nothing to chance.
    But it still seemed as if he was missing something.
    How did I know for sure that she would be asleep?
    Marcus’s gaze centered on the three-foot-tall red capital letter A within a circle written in spray paint on the wall of the bedroom. It was the killer’s signature, his calling card, and it had earned him his nickname. The Anarchist .
    Marcus imagined carrying the girl through the doorway, down the hall, down the stairs, to the back porch. At that point, he would once again have had to move exposed through the backyard.
    “Have there been any witnesses at all?”
    “We put the time of all the abductions and killings at around three in the morning. Most people are asleep. We did have one guy on the previous set of murders that went out for a smoke and saw a car pulling down the alley. It was a dead end. The best one was from the scene of the last girl’s abduction. A woman saw a guy park in the alley and approach the house. But she didn’t think anything of it at the time, so she couldn’t give us many details beyond what we already know.”
    “I’d like to talk to her