Free Sarah Armstrong - 01 - Singularity by Kathryn Casey

bathroom, and it looked like maybe he cleaned up right here in the house before he took off. He was careful though. We closed the house up and had the forensics people come in from Beaumont P.D. They didn’t find a thing.”
    David glanced over at me and I knew what he was thinking. With the cross, the positioning of the body, and the similarities in the victims’ wounds, we hadn’t needed more, but here, too, the killer had taken his time on the murder scene, then meticulously cleaned up all evidence. It was another piece of the puzzle that fit perfectly, aswell as further evidence of our killer’s bravado. This guy wasn’t spooked. Dead body in the next room and the killer hung around and made himself presentable.
    It was past eight when we finished at the house. The sheriff went home, and David and I found the only non-fast-food place in town, a small dimly lit restaurant with wood tables and a lunch counter. Someone, it seemed, had apparently put a couple rolls of quarters in the jukebox and a George Strait marathon was playing over the tinny speakers.
    David ordered a brisket sandwich. When it came, it dripped with a sweet barbecue sauce and shared the plate with mayonnaise-and-mustard potato salad and a pickle. I’d been meaning to start watching my cholesterol but ordered the chicken-fried steak. Together with mashed potatoes and white gravy, it hung over the chipped white plate like a bedspread over a mattress. The gravy had all the finesse of Elmer’s glue, which left me nibbling at the peas and carrots. I ordered a Shiner Bock and figured that gave me enough calories for the night.
    “We’ve got two murdered adulterers and a gossip,” I said, putting into words what I knew we’d both been thinking. “So we’ve got a murderer on a mission from God, placed on earth to smite the sinners?”
    “Undoubtedly, tells himself he is,” said Garrity as he consumed the last fork of potato salad and got ready to start on a bowl of apple cobbler in a puddle of half-melted vanilla ice cream. He’d chosen one of the two wine choices the place offered, the red one, although it actually looked more pink. “Of course, the truth is that he’s just a pathetic loser carting around a lifetime of anger, of not fitting in, and a twisted perversion that mixes sexual fantasy with an obsession for power and violence,” he said. “What do we know so far?”
    “Not much. The guy is blond and most likely white, probably twenty-five or younger,” I said, based on the found hairs and nationalprofiling statistics. “My guess is he’s from somewhere around here. He had to have known of Louise to know she was a gossip. Lucas and Knowles, on the other hand; he would have known she wasn’t his wife just by following either one of them for any period of time. He could even have come to that conclusion from the photo of Priscilla and the kids on the nightstand.”
    “Anything else?”
    “These aren’t his only victims,” I ventured. “This guy’s enjoying it too much to wait more than a year in between.”
    “Good point,” he said. “We’ve done the ViCAP search, though. It’s hard to understand why more victims aren’t coming up.”
    “True,” I said. “But I’d be willing to bet a month’s pay that they’re out there.”
    David nodded. He concentrated on the cobbler, scraping out the last of the ice cream with his spoon, and then glanced up at me across the table.
    “I know I didn’t mention this before, but I knew Bill,” he said. “Scroggins and I both met him in Waco.”
    “Garrity,” I said. “You know, I remember…” Suddenly David Garrity’s name surfaced in my memory. Bill ranting and raving about the FBI, complaining that they’d taken over the scene. He was irate with Scroggins, but sometimes he mentioned an agent named Garrity. Bill respected him. Once he paid him what, coming from Bill, was the highest compliment: Bill called Garrity a good cop.
    “Those were long days and nights in Waco.