Page 58 of Chameleon Killer

“Too broad.” Like Colin. “Figures?”

“No.”

“Dates?”

“No.”

“Named victims?”

“No.”

There it was again.

Mallory opened her eyes. “Guy didn’t fit either.”

“We already treated him as an imperfect match because he was corporate.” I exhaled slowly.

She plucked the red marker from my fingertips. “He was a counterfeit.”

She boxed Guy’s name beside Colin’s.

The last two victims. Both with vague accusations, both seemingly attributed to the Auditor, but it wasn’t enough.

Mallory drew a line between the boxes.

I took her black marker and wrote: SAME KILLER?

She added beneath it, in red: SAME PURPOSE?

We stared at both questions. The implications expanded faster than the evidence.

If Colin and Guy hadn’t been selected according to the Auditor’s original victimology, someone had killed them for another reason.

Someone who knew the Auditor’s methods well enough to reproduce them.

Someone who trusted the FBI, the press, and the public to see the signature and stop looking. The fuck of it all, that someone had been right.

“We need the autopsies,” Mallory said.

“We need more than that.”

“Scene reports. Toxicology. Coroner’s photographs. Chain of custody. Anything that shows differences the Bureau didn’t release.”

“Mal, they aren’t just going to hand over the active case files.” We had a lot of pull, but this was just too damn high profile.

“We request them.”

“They deny us.”

“We appeal.”

“That takes months.” I didn’t need to remind her, she knew. But she just wanted to keep chipping away until the barriers gave.

“Then we find people who already have access.”

I looked at her.

She looked back. “No.”