Then, when he had his victims incapacitated, he would go to work.
The second victim. Tasha Hunt. That’s when Adele had determined the killer was using a scalpel. His cuts had become steadier, more confident. Rehearsed. Though, with the single mother from Indiana, he had also used a machete.
Adele gritted her teeth as the memories cycled through her mind. Local enforcement had initially thought the killer was overpowering his victims through other means. But he’d taken off his gloves.
Those gloves by the fire hydrant. A mistake. An oversight—the unforced error of a rookie in his first big game. Except they hadn’t been the killer’s gloves. She’d determined they’d belonged to the victim, to Jeremy. So why had the killer removed Jeremy’s gloves? Such a strange choice. He hadn’t cut Jeremy’s fingers…
Between the fingers, nearly imperceptible—that’s where she’d found the injection mark. She’d once dated a guy who hid his drug habit by injecting between the toes and fingers. She’d missed it with her boyfriend, all those years ago.
But she hadn’t missed it this time. The Benjamin Killer was careful, calculated… But not perfect. No killers were.
Adele knew she hadn’t missed anything in the files. But, at Lee’s insistence, she had done her due diligence on the drive to the airport.
In the past, she thought perhaps the killer was involved in the medical field, and the drug he used was some sort of dentist’s nitrous or some type of anesthetic. But those theories were quickly debunked by the lab. The scalpel was perhaps too obvious a weapon for a surgeon or anesthesiologist.
Still, the most horrifying part: despite whatever substance the killer was using, though it incapacitated their bodies, the victims retained complete use of their minds. They could feel and sense everything done to them.
The killer would cut them in a private setting, then watch. He would witness, for his own viewing pleasure, the slow exsanguination of the chosen target, and then he would leave, long before they were dead.
He never struck a killing blow. He never struck any vital organs or veins or arteries that would allow the victims to bleed out quickly. A weak man? Adele wasn’t sure. A clever man? Certainly.
He liked to take it slow. By the third victim, he’d perfected his craft: he’d bled Agatha Mencia for nearly four hours before she finally died.
“Sick twist,” said Adele, muttering beneath her breath, her mild accent twisting the “i” sound into “ee.” Adele often tried to maintain professionalism. It was the only way to stay sane in a job like this. But every so often, she would come across killers, psychopaths, that beggared one’s ability to maintain sanity.
Steadying her breathing once more, Adele flicked through the files on her download folder. Finally, wedged up against the window, blocking anyone behind her from seeing the pictures or content of the report, she clicked the newest file uploaded by Sam.
She studied the pictures with cold, clinical calculations, refusing to miss anything. She cataloged as much of the information as she could, her eyes flicking from frame to frame, reading the doctor’s notes beneath each image.
A young woman—shirtless, shoeless. The killer thought he was being clever. But the missing shoes weren’t a fetish. He’d injected her between the toes; Adele would have put money on it.
She skimmed to an image of the scene—beneath a dark, dank bridge. Lonely, out of sight. Adele’s gaze flitted back to the image of the girl. Not a streetwalker, nor a girl from a low-rent part of town. A nice girl—a city girl. How had the killer lured her beneath the bridge?
Did she know him?
Adele shook her head, her hair rubbing against the headrest of the airplane seat. Unlikely. The killer wouldn’t have risked traveling halfway around the world to kill someone he knew.
Could the killer speak French? Maybe he’d lured her. Bundy used to pull a trick, pretending to be a cripple, or pretending to look for a lost pet. Preying on the compassion of his victims.
Perhaps the Benjamin Killer was doing the same?
The bridge underpass was dark in the pictures of the crime scene, and two rows of cement dividers shielded Marion’s corpse from view. Planned then, rehearsed. The killer knew where he was taking her.
Just like with Jeremy. Like with Agatha. The murderer plotted his kills well in advance, choosing the perfect location, like a lover preparing for a first date.
Adele stared at Marion’s crumpled body. She could see how he’d shoved her, and then he would have threatened her with a gun? No—she doubted it. Not in France. Though it was still a possibility.
A knife would be enough. Maybe even the murder weapon. Then he would remove her shoes and prick her with the needle.
The lighting was too poor to tell much beyond that. Perhaps this was a mercy.
The killer’s handiwork was visible across the Parisian’s half naked corpse.
Adele thought she could see the young woman’s eyes strained in their sockets, conveying a cry for help. Her pupils dilated, though she would have been unable to move. Adele gritted her teeth yet again; she could only imagine the fear, the pain, the sheer sense of loneliness and helplessness.
Adele flipped through the notes and pictures a second time, refused to skip any of it. Any scene, any moment, any fragment of an instance could hold a clue.
She shook her head, sighing softly. Then she read the report again. Nothing new, simply detailing what it was she’d already seen. Adele read the report once more, and then another time, and another. Each time her eyes perused the words on the screen, reading the horrific crime described in clinical detail, she scanned it for clues, keeping her eyes open, her mind attentive, cataloging every second, every pixel, every discarded cigarette butt and graffiti tag beneath the bridge.
She refused to let him get away. Marion Lucas’s pleading, motionless eyes demanded justice. The blood pooling around the young girl cried out for vengeance. And Adele, more than ever, was determined to provide it.
CHAPTER SIX
The Charles De Gaulle international airport was one of the largest ones in Europe. Her shoes tapped against the tiles, and then paused on the whirring escalator. She passed through customs and reached the gate.
Adele scanned the waiting room, her eyes flicking from happy families embracing some new arrival, or chauffeurs in dark hats and glasses holding up small signs, to other travelers who set off alone, their luggage trundling behind them.
Her own briefcase rested on top of her suitcase handle, which she’d extended and held tight, rolling her suitcase along behind her.
“Adele Sharp,” said a soft, polite voice. Surprisingly, a voice she recognized.
For a moment, if only that, the thoughts of the case were chased from her mind. The way the person pronounced her name, the words plucked from the air, like a florist cutting flowers and presenting them to a customer, brought back memories.
She looked in the direction of the voice and a smile stretched her face.
“Robert?” she said, her cheeks bunching. “Of course they would send you. Of course!”
Robert Henry stood straight-backed and stiff. He wore an immaculately pressed suit, and had a curved, perfectly manicured mustache on his upper lip. His hair was thicker than she remembered it back in their days working at the DGSI—hair plugs, perhaps? Robert had been the one who’d taken her under his wing. He’d saved her life on at least two separate occasions.