He Kills Me, He Kills Me Not

ignoring the startled looks of the people he passed as he sprinted down the hallway and out the front doors of the hospital.
    “H e fits the profile perfectly. Absolutely perfectly.” Pierce folded his arms over his chest and leaned back in the conference room chair, watching Nelson update Bennett’s details on the white board.
    Logan bleakly watched Nelson write, but he couldn’t focus on the words. All he could think about was Amanda. Where was she? Was she hurt? He clenched his hands into fists and tried to concentrate on the lists on the board. There had to be a pattern. There was always a pattern, something to tell him where Amanda had been taken. But damned if he could see it.
    Detectives were clustered in small groups around the room, strategizing, planning new searches. A pair of them on the other side of the table leaned over a map of Walton County, writing the names of the men leading search parties in each area.
    “His father drank and beat his wife,” Pierce continued. “That’s why she left him. There’s also evidence Tom and Riley’s father abused them, too, although charges were never filed. Tom was a social outcast at school. After Anna Northwood rejected him and cut his face, his father moved them to a small town in Alabama. Five years later the father disappeared. No trace of him was ever found. I’ll bet Bennett killed him.”
    Logan critically eyed the board, reading what Nelson had written. “You’ve established Bennett in the same towns, at the same time five of the attacks occurred. What about the other four? Why are you being so stubborn about agreeing that Riley might be guilty?”
    “Because witnesses identified the security badge picture of Bennett as the man who attacked Karen and abducted Amanda. They didn’t finger Riley. Bennett had access to police cars and could have pretended to be a cop to abduct his victims. Everyone who knew Tom Bennett said the same thing. He was “off,” antisocial, talked to himself half the time. He was a brilliant mechanic, which is the only reason they didn’t fire him, but everyone who worked with him said he was nuts.”
    “Which means he probably couldn’t focus enough to plan the murders and leave the scenes so clean we didn’t find any forensic evidence. Even if he was involved, someone else had to have helped him,” Logan said.
    Pierce shook his head. “All right, all right. Go ahead, Nelson. Put up what we’ve found about Riley.”
    Nelson added five more bullets to the board.
    * Victim #3—Riley on vacation; Credit card records show him in same town as victim
    * Victim #6—Riley on vacation; Hotel records show him in same town as victim
    * Victim #8—Riley on vacation; no receipts yet, but was out of town, had opportunity
    * Frank Branson—Unable to establish Riley’s whereabouts at the time of Branson’s abduction and later murder
    * Born David Riley Bennett, legally changed his name to David Riley at age eighteen
    * Dysfunctional family (evidence of abuse, abandoned by his mother), intelligent, organized
    “It looks damning, Logan, but even if you think Bennett and Riley are some kind of serial-killer tag team, which is extremely rare, Riley doesn’t fit the profile. He’s a police officer, no reprimands on his record, no trouble with authority.”
    “Profiles can be wrong.” Logan held up his hand to stop Pierce’s response. “He’s not answering his phone and he disappeared after hearing that we suspected Bennett. He knew Bennett would lead us to him. That’s the only reason he would have run off.”
    “Or maybe Riley realized his brother might be the murderer and he went off to find him on his own, to stop him. There’s no reason to think Bennett didn’t commit all of the murders. We just haven’t proved it yet,” Pierce insisted.
    “And Riley just happened to be on vacation and in the same towns when three of the killings occurred. And he had time to drive back and forth between some of the other victims’ locations and Shadow Falls and still make it in time for work each day.” Logan grabbed his jacket off the back of a chair and shrugged into it. “If Bennett killed Branson, how do you think he found my house? He wouldn’t have been in the station when my sister came looking for me. He wouldn’t have known to follow her. Either Riley told him where I was, or Riley was the shooter. Like it or not, Riley’s in this up to his neck.” He headed toward the door.
    “Bennett could have just as