A power line sparked and collapsed.
Students grouped tighter at the windows facing a distant Main Street, flinching as one at the impact. Low murmurs expressed disbelief and sorrow at the destruction tearing through town. The storm wasn’t passing. If anything, conditions had somehow gotten worse over the last hour. Hail had reached golf-ball-sized proportions, and Leigh thanked foresight for getting the insurance on her rental car. There was no way she was driving out of here with a car that didn’t resemble Swiss cheese.
Ford took up one side of the bench she’d occupied last night, her on the other, as they crowded into Professor Morrow’s space. Cutting him off from escape. How the hell did he manage to look put together after swamping through the basement with her twelve hours ago when it took everything she had not to smell her own breath?
“All right, Professor. Let’s talk. Setting aside your personal connection to Alice Dietz, we believe you are the killer’s target. Have you noticed anything out of the usual recently?”
Morrow interlaced his hands between his knees. Exhaustion had puffed the bags under his eyes to monumental proportions. Leigh wasn’t sure she’d ever seen him like this. So very… ordinary. He would hate that. To admit he was human like the rest of his puny subjects. “You mean other than the fact you hold information which could cost me my job at this university?”
“Marshal Ford is asking if there’s been anyone new in your life? Maybe someone who’s been asking personal questions or become interested in your work?” She hadn’t meant that last one to sound so biting, but she didn’t feel bad about it either. Pierce Morrow had gone out of his way to obstruct the investigation into Alice Dietz’s murder. He’d broken a cardinal rule as a criminologist, one he’d instilled in her from the very beginning of their mentorship, and had cost himself her respect in a record amount of hours. “Or have you noticed anything missing or moved from your apartment or office?”
“No. Nothing like that.” Weariness coated the professor’s voice. He shook his head, but it didn’t have the same effect as it used to with his eyes cast between his feet. The case was getting to him—all of them. Or was this sudden surrender something else? “I mean, except my driver’s license.”
Leigh snapped her gaze to Ford. “What about your driver’s license?”
“It’s missing. Has been since the night Alice and I… fought.” Morrow rubbed at his face, aging in front of her eyes. Where he’d been a perfect picture of calm and collected yesterday morning in the president’s office, the mask vanished. Leaving nothing but a shell of the man she’d known. “I thought I must’ve dropped it leaving campus. I didn’t think anything of it until now. You think someone is trying to impersonate my identity?”
“While we can’t share details of our investigation, we believe the killer has a personal connection to Agent Brody.” She didn’t miss the twitch of Ford’s mouth. Concern? The marshal’s eyes lifted to hers. No. Not concern. Defeat. As if the mere thought of her working this case cut him on a physical level. “And may be trying to use you to get to her.”
Well, that certainly didn’t sound insane.
Except they had an entire wall of newspaper clippings, dates, photos, and details about her career and life from the time she’d been seventeen years old. Forensics was still running an inventory, but the killer had done a thorough job. Even down to a mere mention of her name as a consultant for a past police department. Leigh stopped herself from shoving her hand into her blazer for the article she’d taken from the board. One neither Ford nor the techs would ever see. But the killer had. He’d left it where she would find it. Like he’d known she’d step into that room. Calling her out.
“Leigh and I haven’t been in touch in years,” Morrow said.
“But you said you followed my career. That you’ve read about every case, that you used your law enforcement and federal contacts to get copies of my case files.” The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end as those nights in his office took shape. Memories and feelings she’d shoved to the back of her mind. She’d worshiped the ground her mentor had walked on for so long. Wanted nothing more than his approval. At least up until she’d learned his nasty little secret.
“I did.” Morrow nodded, his eyebrows arching to deepen the age lines streaking across his forehead in uneven patterns. “You were one of my favorite students. I was proud of the work you’d done as a consultant and then for the FBI. Of course I followed your career.”
Right. Because in his mind he’d made her. Thought that he deserved the credit for her success. It wasn’t her meritsand personal study of more than two hundred serial cases that shaped her into the investigator she was today. It was him. “Or were you looking to gain my insights again by showing interest in my work?”
Blood drained from the professor’s face as he shoved to stand. Escape. That was what the guilty did. They tried to escape. “I don’t know what you’re talking?—”
“That’s why you reached out so many times over the years, right?” Law enforcement had stopped requesting his contributions. Just as journals had stopped publishing his research. The problem was, it’d all been done before. It’d all been said. Pierce Morrow was stuck in the past and refused to adapt to or embrace changing policies and technologies. He preferred to live in an outdated and underserving landscape that had no use for him. And it was only now hitting him how useless he’d become to the field. “Why you’d send me case files you’d been asked to consult on. Just like the Elborne case.” Leigh kept her seat and her voice rose. It was enough to draw him back in. To try to contain her accusations. “Don’t you remember? Asking me to come to your office and get my take on the case. Why the victim had been targeted. Helping you to understand the killer’s motive. Of course, at the time, I wanted to impress you. I trusted you. I’d known Durham PD asked you to look at the case. What I didn’t know was that you’d take credit for my insights. I also didn’t know you’d had a personal relationship with Teshia Elborne, just as you did with Alice Dietz.”
Ford craned his head up toward Morrow, all emotion void from his expression. It looked as though the marshal was doing everything in his power to remain seated, hands tense in fists. And that absolute stillness. She saw it for what it was now. An attempt at control. “Is that so?”
“The insights you made, while noteworthy, Agent Brody, were child’s play compared to those I’ve made over my career.I have been integral in helping police solve upwards of fifty homicides over the course of my career. Not to mention been published in a dozen criminology and abnormal psychology journals.” Morrow was practically shaking now. Exposed for the fraud he’d become and not even a little bit comfortable with it. He must’ve seen the end in sight. And now… Now he was trying to save himself by any means possible. “I never needed a college freshman’s insights. I saw something in you. Something great, and I fed it. I turned you into the agent you are today. You needed me.”
“No. You used me. And you used Teshia Elborne and Alice Dietz.” Leigh straightened, a full head shorter than the professor but more than capable of putting him on his ass if necessary. What would’ve happened had she agreed to stay to assist with his research instead of joining the Concord police academy? Would she be dead now, too?
“What do you think, Ford?” She couldn’t deny the connection to both victims, then and now.
“I think the killer we’re hunting becomes his victims.” Ford rose from the bench, closing in on the professor. “Who better to steal someone else’s identity than a professor who’s lost his own?”
NINETEEN
Durham, New Hampshire
Thursday, October 10
8:41 a.m.
Pierce Morrow was under arrest.
Well, confined to one of the classrooms on the main floor by force. Turned out, those handcuffs did come in handy. Leigh could still hear her former mentor yelling as she and Ford made their way back toward the lobby. Students and staff alike tried to keep their stares brief, but there was no hiding the shock. Or the confusion plastered on Ava’s face. One of this university’s professors may have been involved in the deaths of two students. Officially, they couldn’t charge Morrow with anything until the storm retreated and they got him to the station, but cuffing the man who’d used her profiling insights without giving her credit to solve those fifty-plus cases he’d bragged about sure put an extra pep in her step.
“Anything from the forensic techs?” She’d been so focused on not dying from hypothermia, she’d almost forgotten theevidence they’d pulled from the basement. Priority number one: avoid any and all reflective surfaces. She didn’t want to think about what she looked like right then in mismatched sweats, frizzed-out hair, black semicircles under eyes, and with a permanent blue tint to her skin. Probably less FBI agent, more carnival psycho. It was a promising career change.
