Free The Night Caller by John Lutz

computer literate. I can work the Internet like a wizard and find out anything.”
    Coop knew she was being reasonable, but he didn’t trust her. She was hoping to write a sensational best-seller, and she wouldn’t care whom she trashed along the way.
    But maybe she was on to something, and had information he wasn’t aware of. He had little choice but to team up with her, at least until her avenue of investigation arrived at a dead end.
    “If we’re going to work together,” Coop said, “I want to know everything you know. Organize it and make copies, put it in a file folder and get it all to me; then we’ll meet and discuss the case.”
    “Will I know everything you know? I have to point out that so far I’ve been very forthcoming with you, Coop, and you’ve told me diddly-squat.”
    “Am I right in assuming you need me more than I need you?”
    “I get the point,” Deni said, making it clear that she didn’t like the point or maybe didn’t even necessarily agree with it.
    “I might be retired, but I can’t go around blabbing certain police business or I’ll lose my credibility and sources. You should understand that.”
    “I do,” Deni said. “We’ve got ourselves a deal.” She extended her hand and they shook on the agreement.
    Coop noticed her hand, broad with blunt fingers, nails chewed almost to nonexistence. And with the strength of a man’s.
    “There’s something else obvious about this killer,” Deni said. “Ellen Banta was killed in New York, Marlee Clark in Florida, Ofelia Valdez in California, and your daughter was killed in New York. This killer began in New York, though he probably killed elsewhere for years, and now he’s come home.”
    Coop was afraid she might be right.
    “See,” she said, guessing she’d been a step ahead of him, “you’ll find that I’m an asset.”
    As well as a liability, Coop thought.
    He watched her grin and tear into her bagel as if it were alive and might escape.
    She hadn’t mentioned any plastic saints. And he couldn’t.

Chapter Ten
    The Night Caller had read all the available material on the subject, how law enforcement defined serial killers, how they divided them into “organized” and “disorganized” types by analyzing crime scenes, how they worked up psychological and physical profiles that usually turned out to be amazingly accurate. Or so they said.
    From the much maligned point of view of the killer, there were, of course, some common denominators that simply couldn’t be avoided. But there were others that were controllable. Variables could be introduced, as well as misleading consistencies. Then the threads the police sought, the compulsions that must be served, would be lost in the maze of conflicting and misleading information.
    It was not, for instance, always necessary for a serial killer to use the same sort of weapon or dispose of bodies the same way, to be known as “the .44-Caliber Killer” or “the Hillside Strangler.” How many different types of firearms there were! How many different ways and places to dispose of bodies!
    How many different kinds of cutting instruments.
    Cut to the chase. Shortcut. Cutlery.
    The Night Caller opened Georgianna’s kitchen drawers until the overhead fluorescent fixture’s pale glare glinted off a clutter of bright steel blades.
    What would it be? A chef’s knife? No, that was too similar to a previous deletion. A paring or steak knife? Their blades were short, flexible, and uncertain. An ice pick? Possibly, possibly…. But what was this? A sharp edge that cut, a cutting instrument, a cutter that could cut through metal—a hand-operated can opener. Here was a change yet not a change in modus operandi. Once a manual can opener snagged skin, entire sections of flesh could be peeled off, in layers if necessary, vital organs exposed.
    Messy? Of course messy. But controllable. The victim could be unconscious in a bathtub, heartbeat and blood flow minimal. Initial cutting could be done