He Kills Me, He Kills Me Not

Branson case before now. Is your station set up on VICAP?”
    Logan hesitated. The previous chief of police hadn’t bothered to link the Shadow Falls PD with the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program database. As a result, the Branson case was never reported to the FBI. If it had been, the FBI would have sent an automatic notification back to the SFPD when a similar murder occurred. The SFPD could have teamed up with the FBI years ago. Maybe they could have solved the case and prevented Carolyn O’Donnell’s death.
    “We’re set up with VICAP now,” he said, not willing to air his grievances with the former police chief in front of his men.
    Pierce gave him an assessing glance. “You weren’t the chief when the Branson case happened?”
    It sounded more like a statement than a question, but Logan answered anyway. “I worked in New York City for most of the past decade.”
    “New York? I thought your name sounded familiar. You cracked the Metzger case, didn’t you? Hell of a job.”
    Silence filled the room, and every eye turned to Logan. Metzger was a serial killer who’d plagued New York for fifteen months, killing a dozen women before Logan was put on the case. He’d solved it in less than three weeks. But he was never comfortable with the accolades he’d received. He’d simply come at the case with fresh eyes, saw a pattern others would have seen if they weren’t so close to it.
    “What can you tell us about the killer?” Logan asked, steering the conversation back to what was important.
    Pierce nodded, not looking the least bit offended by the gruff response. He was all business as he turned to his men and directed them at tacking up pieces of paper and pictures on the dry erase board. By now, it was covered with photographs of women who looked remarkably similar. They were all young, slim, white females with long brown hair.
    A stab of guilt shot through Logan when a picture of Carolyn O’Donnell was added to the board. He didn’t know what else he could have done to find her in time, but it still bothered him that he hadn’t saved her.
    He now realized that even if his men had told him about the Branson/Stockton case right when O’Donnell went missing, it wouldn’t have mattered. After reading through the old case file yesterday afternoon and learning that Dana Branson was killed in one of the cabins on Black Lake, he’d sent his men to search that area. The cabins were rotting and run-down, unused for years since a drought had dried up most of the lake. There was no sign that the killer had taken O’Donnell to one of those cabins. And the case files had yielded no other leads that could have helped them find her in time.
    Logan looked past O’Donnell’s pictures to the pictures of Amanda. The first one was her college graduation photo from before the attack. Logan didn’t think she looked all that different now. She was still beautiful, even with her scar. She had the same mass of thick, cinnamon colored hair and deep blue eyes that tilted up at the corners.
    The main difference between the woman in that photo and the woman he’d met this morning was her smile, or lack of one. He hated that a stranger had taken away the joy and hope that had filled her college picture.
    The second photo was from the crime scene at Black Lake. Amanda was balled up inside a hollowed out oak tree where the police had found her after she’d escaped and hid from Dana’s killer. It wasn’t the first time Logan had seen that photo. But now that he’d met Amanda, seeing her skin so deathly pale and smeared with blood was far more disturbing. When an agent handed him a sheet of paper, Logan was grateful for the excuse to look away from that haunting picture.
    “Special Agent Nelson is passing out the profile he put together on the killer,” Pierce said. “We’ll update it with information from the O’Donnell and Branson/Stockton cases, but we believe it’s still a viable profile.”
    When everyone had a copy, he stepped to the white board. “We’ll review the profile in a few minutes. First, look at the pictures of the women he killed, or left for dead.”
    “What do you mean, left for dead ?” Riley asked from his seat on Logan’s left.
    Pierce drew red circles around the faces of Dana, Amanda, and another woman.
    “The killer’s pattern is to stab and strangle his victims, except for these three cases. He stabbed these women, but he didn’t kill them. He left them to bleed to