She blended in well enough, and could speak the language to a degree few people suspected her of being a tourist.
Adele shifted, readjusting her position against the headrest. She steadied herself, breathing softly, inhaling for seven seconds, then exhaling for eight. A small breathing exercise her psychologist boyfriend had once taught her. The same boyfriend she’d come back stateside with.
That relationship had plummeted in a fiery crash. Adele had never been great at dealing with other people’s character flaws. Some thought of her as self-righteous, but she considered herself determined.
And when the psych had cheated on her with a mutual friend, she’d decided the relationship had run its course.
Adele reached beneath her seat, pulling out her briefcase and fumbling for the laptop.
Sam had downloaded the report and the files from DGSI before she left. She hadn’t wanted to look at them in the car, on the way to the airport. She’d been permitted to pack a small suitcase, which had taken her all of twenty minutes. She didn’t travel with much luxury; besides the few changes of clothes and toiletries, Adele had only packed her plastic cereal bowl and a spoon.
She felt her fingers trembling a bit as she clicked the latch to her laptop and opened the computer. She shifted, turning the screen toward the window and away from the aisle. Her eyes flicked up and spotted a couple of children sitting in business class six rows back. It wouldn’t do for them to see the screen, and so she shielded it with her body and turned the lid even further.
Of course, she hadn’t wasted the drive to the airport. Going over the files of the previous victims had been no enjoyable task, but it had been a necessary one. The killer seemed to have no particular taste Adele could spot. He chose his victims at random, except for their ages.
Her head pounded, and Adele closed her eyes, loath to witness what she knew she’d find. Images played on repeat across the insides of her eyelids. Angus had accused her of being married to the job.
He was only half right.
She was married to the ghosts of victims past. Wed in sheer will to those whose voiceless lips cried for justice.
Jeremy Benthen. Twenty-nine. Father of two. The Benjamin Killer had rushed this time—his first kill. At least, the first that Adele could trace to him. She could see, in her mind, as clear as if a video were playing before her: Jeremy’s body on the ground, shoved between the middle-school gym and the dumpster. He was the head coach of the junior basketball team. Two gloves discarded near a fire hydrant. The lab had failed to pull prints.
Jeremy had been cut along his chest and groin, and one of his eyes had been slashed. Shaky cuts—adrenaline from the killer’s first. None of the wounds were enough to kill the middle-school coach. Rather, the killer would incapacitate his victims. He was using a substance, but the toxicology reports still weren’t clear. It wasn’t chloroform, and it wasn’t Rohypnol. Whatever he was administering was a combination of sorts, a home brew.
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.