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“So how can you just drive away from here and leave it alone, when you know there’s one out there, stalking the streets? How are you going to feel when you read the news report about his next victim?”
Silence met Laura’s words. For a long moment, she thought she might have gone too far. But then Nate shifted, clearing his throat, and looked at her.
“If we get fired because of this,” he said. “You’re getting me a new job.”
“Absolutely,” Laura deadpanned. “I’ll set up a psychic private detective agency and you can be my number two. The brawns to my brains.”
Nate frowned. “What about my brains?” he asked.
“You won’t need them. Easiest job you’ll ever work,” Laura said. “Deal?”
Nate looked up at the sky. “I must be crazy,” he said. “Deal.”
Laura smiled. He wasn’t crazy. He just knew, like she did, that saving lives was the whole point of the job. And if you weren’t saving lives – if you just went on working on other things knowing that you could have saved lives – then what was the point in doing it any longer?
“We need to find out if there’s anyone who is connected to all of these bars, preferably someone with a record,” Laura said. “Maybe we should check drunk and disorderly records, start there.”
“Good idea,” Nate said. “Search radius for the last eight years, though? That’s going to cause problems. We’ll get hundreds, if not thousands, of results.”
Laura thought about it. “You’re right,” she said. “He can’t be someone who has so much of a problem with drinking that he can’t handle himself. That wouldn’t work. Our killer isn’t an alcoholic. I think we need some local knowledge, not just police knowledge.”
Nate pulled something out of his pocket. “I’ll call the manager from the Major Hart and ask.”
Laura stared at the piece of paper he was holding. “What is that?” she asked.
“Her number,” Nate said. A slow grin crept across his face.
“When did she sneak you that?” Laura exclaimed.
Nate chuckled. “Apparently, I’ve still got it,” he said, putting his cell phone to his ear. A moment later, his tone changed, clearly in response to the call being answered. “Oh, hi – this is Agent Lavoie. We met earlier… Yes, that’s right. Look, I was wondering if you could tell me if anyone comes to mind when I give you this description. We’re looking for someone who hangs around or used to hang around in the bar, someone who goes to a lot of the bars in town. He wouldn’t necessarily be suspicious – just someone who is around a lot.”
Laura tuned out Nate’s hums of appreciation as the manager replied to him. She got up and went over to the printer, gathering up all the reports they had printed. All these pages of loose paper, signifying the lives of people who had slipped through the cracks. No one had tried to find justice for them yet. Or, at least, they hadn’t tried hard enough to make it stick. But that was going to change.
She was going to bring the person who killed these women down – and he was never going to get the chance to do it again. Not while she was here.
She was having the visions for a reason, and she wasn’t going to ignore them. What she had said to Nate was absolutely true: They did have a responsibility, something that came along with their badges, to make sure that killers were stopped and caught. Preferably in that order, because it wasn’t even really about making arrests or putting people away for life. It was just, when it was all boiled down, about making sure that people weren’t murdered.
But above that, above all of it, was something else. Even if Laura hadn’t been able to establish a serial killer here by looking at the cases – even if it was two different killers she was pursuing. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that her visions had sent her here, and they had sent her here for a reason.
She didn’t know why her visions came. She didn’t know how to control them. She didn’t know why she was the one to get them, and not someone else, or what any of it meant.
But what she did know was that the visions came to her, and she alone had a responsibility to act on them. She alone could see the final moments of these women.
She alone could look into the face of their killer and know, finally, for a fact, that he was the one – and know what his victims had gone through as if she had experienced it herself.
Who else was going to fight harder for them than she would?
“Alright, thanks,” Nate was saying. Laura came back over and grabbed a spare folder from the desk that the last occupant had left behind, shoving the printouts inside it. “Yeah, that’s great. No, I definitely will. Alright, bye then.”
“You got something?” Laura asked as he hung up.
“A promise to call back again if I need absolutely anything?” Nate said with his eyes twinkling. “And yes, also, the name of someone we need to talk to. She says he hangs out at the bar sometimes, but she’s seen him at other places too, and he doesn’t really drink much.”
“Someone who spends their time hanging out in bars but doesn’t drink?” Laura frowned.
“Exactly my thoughts,” Nate said, typing rapidly and hitting the enter button on his keyboard. “She said his name is Ellis Long… let me see… ha! He has a record.”
Laura leaned in to see the screen again. “Assault,” she read. “One charge, let off with community service. This could be him.”
