We had to.
For Petra.
“Where do we go from here?” I asked.
“I’d appreciate a rundown of the case and all the evidence you have gathered so far.”
“I’ve compiled notes.”
“Which is good, but I want to hear from you exactly what happened.”
“When do we begin?”
“Now seems like a perfect time as any. The governor needs to be assured that he’s safe, and until we catch the maniac responsible for all these murders on your streets, we can’t guarantee him that. He’s had to cancel one public engagement already. If many more follow, we’ll have to make a statement to the public about the threat, and we’d rather not alert the criminal that we’re after him and send them into hiding.”
I rose to my feet. “We can go over my notes and talk in detail in the office, Special Agent Knight.”
The agent stood as well. “Please call me Knight or Gavin, since we’re going to be working closely together. Special Agent Knight is a mouthful.” He smiled, which softened his features. But I made no mistake about this man who’d been trained to use his hands to kill and his brains to outsmart criminals.
I led Knight to the office I used for my investigative work, and he took a seat at the conference-style table while I dug through the file cabinet for the dossier on the Handkerchief Murderer.
“How much do you know about the murders?” I asked.
“Pretty much what’s been printed in the newspaper. The killer started ten years ago. The victims were all killed by a single gunshot wound to the head.”
“Yes, which is why we think this man might be a professional marksman.”
“Someone from the army?”
“Possibly. Your guess is as good as mine. They never miss, and the bodies are usually left somewhere in the open to find.”
“With a handkerchief in the pocket.”
“Yes.” I grabbed the thick file I’d compiled over the years and laid it out on the table before him. Like making a scrapbook, I’d clipped pieces of information I had gathered about the killer. “There has been a progression of sorts to the murders.”
“What do you mean?”
I opened to the first page. “Armin Wolff was the first murder victim that we can trace back because of the weapon used. He owned a drug operation disguised as a laundromat. His death caused quite a turf war that left our streets bloody for a while. At first, we thought a rival gang had killed him, but on further investigation, that wasn’t the case.”
“And the weapon used?”
“A 9mm pistol with a suppressor and optics, given the range of some of the shootings for such accuracy. Somehow, the killer gets the victim alone long enough to approach the body and leave a handkerchief on the corpse.”
“Which means he probably knew these victims. What do you make of the handkerchief?”
I skipped a few pages farther. “The handkerchiefs started appearing a few years after the first murder. At first, it was just the one found on the corpse, but eventually, he started using two. He sent the other to the victim’s family just before the murder’s about to go down.”
“Why change their strategy?”
“Our profiler thinks it’s become a game to him. That they became bored with us not getting anywhere on the case. By sending those handkerchiefs, they were taunting us, daring us to save the victim before they carry out their crimes.”
“Have you saved any of their victims?”
“No.” Not even Petra. “They’re usually already murdered by the time the handkerchief arrives.”
“But that didn’t happen with the governor.”
“Maybe he found out the governor is not as easy to assassinate as he thought.” I shrugged. I didn’t have all the information yet about the governor’s case to come to any conclusion.