Marcus exited the Olague house and made his way through the backyard. The snowfall crunched beneath his feet, and the cold irritated his cheeks. He reached the alley and released a deep breath. It hung in the air as a puff of white vapor. His eyes closed, and he tried to shut out all the distractions and center himself. Somewhere in the distance, he heard Vasques complaining to Andrew and Andrew playing the role of the diplomat, but he ignored them.
He reached down inside and felt the hunger churning in his gut. It waited for him down in the depths, in the dark place, and he called it to the surface.
When his eyes opened, he was ready. He looked at the house with new awareness.
From his vantage point, he could see into part of the kitchen and dining room but not clearly enough to know when Jessie Olague had gone to bed. They had left the lights on. He could see many of them burning in the windows, but from the alley, he couldn’t see her bedroom window on the far side of the house. Maybe from the front? No, a large hard maple tree blocked the view from there.
The killer would want to see her. That was part of the game, part of the excitement. To violate her privacy. Watch her and then own her, possess her.
The alleyway was on a slant. Maybe farther up it? Marcus walked up the slight incline and turned round. From here, he would have had a better view of the kitchen and some of the other rooms if he’d used binoculars. Marcus flipped on his flashlight and scanned the ground, looking for anything out of place—cigarette butts, candy-bar wrapper, coffee cup. But no such luck.
It still didn’t feel right. This woman hadn’t been chosen at random. She’d been selected for a reason, and every aspect of the crime was planned out carefully. He would want to see her, Marcus thought again. Maybe even know her, or at least feel as though he did.
“What the hell is he doing? It’s freezing out here,” Vasques said to Andrew.
Marcus ignored her and moved back to his original position. He would have wanted to know the lay of the land in order to ensure that he wasn’t seen as he approached the house. He was very careful. Every movement calculated, analyzed. Marcus made a mental note that the killer might work with numbers or variables, but he knew that was pure conjecture at this point.
As he examined the area—the alley, the position of the Olague house, viewpoints from the homes of neighbors, fences, trees, obstructions—the killer knew that there would be no way to make sure that no one saw him or his vehicle. He took them in the night, so most of the neighbors would be sleeping, but that couldn’t be guaranteed. Too many variables, not a risk he would take.
He would wear a mask or hood, obscure his face and hair in some way. And he would have taken precautions to make sure that his vehicle was untraceable.
Marcus moved toward the house, following the path the killer would have taken, until he reached the back porch and the sliding glass door. The porch was just an elevated concrete slab with an awning over the top. It provided no cover from watching eyes. A credit card wouldn’t work in a sliding glass door. He could pick the lock—as Marcus and Andrew had done earlier—but that would leave him very exposed. If someone was observing, he would want his entry to seem casual, not like a burglary. Picking the lock was risky, especially if the back-porch light had been left on. It would’ve been best to have a key.
“No signs of forced entry, right?”
“Oh, so you’re talking to me now?” Agent Vasques said.
Marcus shot her a withering glance and waited. After a moment she gave up on the staring contest and replied, “No forced entry.”
He nodded. Then he felt round the door but found no box for a hidden key. His gaze traveled across the small porch. There were a few potted plants scattered around. There was also an area on the outside of the porch filled with small rocks of assorted colors and dried-up flowers covered in snow. Red landscaping bricks surrounded the sectioned-out area and separated the rock from the grass. A key could have been hidden beneath any of the bricks, but that would have made getting to it more difficult. It would have been filthy, covered in dirt, surrounded by bugs and worms.
He walked over to the potted plants and started tilting them over. Beneath the third pot sat a small black box with white letters on it spelling out the words Hide-a-Key.
“Has this been dusted for prints? Maybe we’d get lucky. Maybe he forgot to put on the gloves until after he had the key.” Marcus doubted it, but everyone made mistakes.
Vasques said, “They might have checked it already, but I’ll find out for sure.”
Marcus pulled open the back door and stepped inside. He took in the red and white kitchen, the dining room, the living room. He absorbed the smells, the sounds. A few typical pops and groans. A faint trace of something in the air. Butterscotch. A candle showing signs of recent use sat nearby on an old oak hutch. The plain white label on its face read Maple Valley Candles.
He followed the path through the living room and up the stairs to the bedrooms. The stairs creaked loudly beneath his feet. He tested each step to find which ones made noise. He wondered if the killer would have known this as well. Was he that good?
At the top of the stairs, Marcus moved to Jessie’s bedroom and imagined her sleeping peacefully in the bed. The files and notes he had read climbed to the front of his mind. The killer drugged them to make sure there was no struggle. Marcus imagined inserting the syringe, scooping her into his arms, and humming softly to keep her feeling calm and safe.
But how did I know for sure that she would be asleep? he thought.
The Anarchist was too attentive to every detail to leave that to chance. If he opened the door and she was reading a book or had worries weighing on her mind that kept her from getting to sleep, there would be a violent struggle. She would fight him. She would scratch and bite. She would run, throw things at him. But that had never happened at any of the abduction scenes.
More questions came to mind. How did he know her husband wouldn’t be home? How did he know that no one would be stopping by to disturb them? What time did she go to bed? What time did she have to be at work in the morning?
The answer was simple. The killer knew those things because he had studied her. He knew all her habits and routines. He was a highly organized offender. Calculating, leaving nothing to chance.
But it still seemed as if he was missing something.
How did I know for sure that she would be asleep?
Marcus’s gaze centered on the three-foot-tall red capital letter A within a circle written in spray paint on the wall of the bedroom. It was the killer’s signature, his calling card, and it had earned him his nickname. The Anarchist.
Marcus imagined carrying the girl through the doorway, down the hall, down the stairs, to the back porch. At that point, he would once again have had to move exposed through the backyard.
“Have there been any witnesses at all?”
“We put the time of all the abductions and killings at around three in the morning. Most people are asleep. We did have one guy on the previous set of murders that went out for a smoke and saw a car pulling down the alley. It was a dead end. The best one was from the scene of the last girl’s abduction. A woman saw a guy park in the alley and approach the house. But she didn’t think anything of it at the time, so she couldn’t give us many details beyond what we already know.”
“I’d like to talk to her myself.”
Vasques pressed two fingers against her temple and rubbed. Then she took a piece of gum from her pocket and shoved it into her mouth, adding it to at least two other pieces already there. “Whatever,” she said. “I’ll arrange it. Are we done here? I’m going to turn off the lights and lock up.”
Marcus glanced around the room and then nodded. “Yeah, we’re done.”
As he stepped into the cold on the back porch, he fought down a wave of despair. He had learned a few things, gained a few insights. But it wasn’t much. The Anarchist was a pro, and Marcus had a terrible feeling that there was no way to stop him before more innocent people died.