He Kills Me, He Kills Me Not

not the man we’re after.”
    “Are you absolutely certain? I have a hard time believing vagrants started this fire, especially since we didn’t see any signs of vagrants near the warehouse when we were here.”
    “Riley was at the conference. I can tell you every workshop he attended, every meal he ate, when he arrived, when he checked out.”
    “Okay, okay. He didn’t kill Carolyn. What about the other women?”
    “Has anyone ever told you you’re stubborn?”
    “Every day.” Logan turned away from the burned-out structure and trudged toward his car.
    “I can prove where he was for half the murders.”
    Logan paused with his hand on the door handle. “Prove?”
    “Absolutely.”
    “Damn.” Logan slid behind the wheel and slammed the driver’s door shut.
    Pierce got into the passenger seat and gave him a sideways glance as he fastened his seatbelt. “Why do you look so disappointed? I would have thought you’d be happy to know your lead detective isn’t the killer.”
    Logan gunned the engine. “Yeah, but now I don’t have a suspect anymore. The killer is probably out there right now stalking his next victim. If we don’t figure out who he is, soon, another woman is going to pay a horrible price.”

 
     
    Chapter Nine
     
    T wo weeks after Carolyn O’Donnell was killed, Logan stood with Riley and Pierce in the same spot where her body had been found. The yellow crime scene tape was only a memory, but Logan couldn’t help thinking the park had a desolate, mournful feel, as if the trees themselves were weeping at the horrible injustice that had taken place here.
    On this beautiful Sunday morning, this park should have been full of children laughing and playing, but families no longer brought their children here. Joggers didn’t travel the manicured paths of which the city had once been so proud. What had been a place of joy was now a place of fear.
    “You don’t expect to find any more evidence here, do you?” Riley asked. “The entire area has been picked clean, by our guys and Pierce’s guys.”
    “No, that’s not why we’re here.”
    “Then why did you ask us to meet you here?” Pierce asked. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and leaned back against one of the majestic oaks that dated back to the days of the Civil War.
    “I wanted to get us away from distractions.”
    “A conference room wouldn’t have been sufficient?” Riley snickered.
    Logan gave him a sharp look and Riley quickly sobered.
    “It’s been nearly two weeks since Carolyn O’Donnell’s death and we don’t have any leads. Based on the profile, the next murder is due any time now. I’ve been walking the scene for over an hour, trying to put myself in the killer’s mind, trying to think like he does. But I’m not getting anywhere. We need to take a fresh look at the case. We’re missing something.”
    Pierce shoved away from the oak tree and joined the others next to a strand of palmettos. “After finding out Gerald Mason was from FSU, I had my team re-look at everything we’d gathered from the school. We couldn’t find any connection to Carolyn, and he had alibis both for the day she was abducted and the day she was killed.”
    “What about Carolyn’s friend you re-interviewed,” Logan asked Riley. “The one you and Clayton drove up to Tallahassee for? Did you re-interview any of her other friends or professors while you were there? Did anyone see her talking to someone they didn’t know? Maybe somebody was calling her, emailing her.”
    Riley shook his head. “False alarm on the friend. I reviewed everything from the school too. We subpoenaed cell phone records, internet accounts, and interviewed everyone she came into contact with the past semester. She was popular, well-liked, so that was a lot of interviews. But through all of them, nothing came up to point to her having contact with anyone suspicious. Nothing.”
    Pierce wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead. “We traced every call in or out of her dorm for the past six months. No red flags.”
    “Visitors to the dorm?” Logan asked.
    “Not even a fake name on a visitor log that couldn’t be verified,” Pierce replied. “It all checks out. If she caught the perp’s attention on campus, he didn’t do anything to make himself noticed by anyone.”
    “So, you’re convinced the killer didn’t target her at school,” Logan said.
    Pierce shook his head. “FSU has thousands of students, but the investigation into