He Kills Me, He Kills Me Not

him. He didn’t think she knew when he got up in the middle of the night and went down to his study to pore over his files. But she did, mainly because she couldn’t sleep either. She was just as worried about identifying the killer as he was, for much the same reason. They both had their personal demons to slay, and solving this case might be the key to freeing them both.
    With that justification egging her on, she sat at his desk. She ignored the laptop for now, pushing it out of her way. Instead, she concentrated on the stacks of files. After looking through each stack, Amanda realized that Logan was a stickler for detail and organization. Every report, every interview, was meticulously documented. No sloppy police work here. No case he handed the DA would be resulting in a mistrial because someone didn’t follow procedure.
    There were twelve different cases in all. Apparently, Logan was reviewing other similar abductions and murders, including two missing persons cases, looking for a pattern. Since she wasn’t familiar with those other cases, she decided instead to focus only on the ones she was certain were connected—Carolyn O’Donnell’s and hers. There were several new interviews and reports she hadn’t seen yet. She’d read those first, see if she could find that elusive connection her computer program had failed to find.
    She opened the top drawer in Logan’s desk and was unsurprised to find everything neatly organized inside: envelopes, stamps, pens, a tray that kept paperclips from scattering all over the inside of the drawer. She took out a pen and opened the second drawer. A stack of legal pads and spiral notebooks sat side-by-side. Taking one of the legal pads, she set it on the desk and closed the drawer. With her pen and paper at the ready, she dug into the files.
    When she came across an older report that described the scene where Carolyn O’Donnell’s body was found, it struck her how pristine everything was. No trace evidence of any kind that could be linked back to a specific person was found. No fingerprints, not even DNA. The killer had to be smart, methodical, and hyper-aware of evidentiary techniques so he wouldn’t leave any evidence behind.
    Comparing that to the description of Frank Branson’s apartment when he was arrested, she couldn’t reconcile the two. There was no way Branson could be the killer. His apartment was a goldmine of trace evidence. He would have had to transfer something to the victim, something that could be used to identify him. He was too disorganized and didn’t appear to have the intelligence to pull off the immaculate scene where O’Donnell was found.
    Amanda drew a column on the legal pad and labeled it “Potential Suspects.” Frank Branson’s name went underneath the heading. She drew a line through his name, crossing it out. Beside it she listed her reasons for eliminating him as a suspect.
    Flipping another page in the file, she began to methodically go through the interviews of people who’d known Carolyn.
    When her back started aching she straightened and stretched, surprised to see that the sun was high in the sky. It was late afternoon. She’d been working over the files for hours. Her stomach rumbled, demanding attention.
    Karen checked on her a few minutes later. They shared a quick lunch of ham sandwiches and chips on the back deck. Then Karen headed back into the mother-in-law suite she’d commandeered while Amanda went back into the study.
    As she reread the list she’d compiled on her legal pad, one conclusion kept popping up in her mind. The killer was a cop, or someone who worked with cops. He had to be, or how else could he keep the crime scenes so pristine? He’d have access to stun guns, too. And how better to move around and target victims than in a police car? No one called in suspicious person reports on a cop car driving around in their neighborhood. That would explain how the killer had selected his victims without anyone noticing.
    On the top of the page she wrote “cop?”. What if it wasn’t a police officer, though? Who else would have access to a police car? She wrote “mechanic?” on the page as well.
    Assuming Logan was right, that the first case was the most important and told the most about the killer, she wrote “grew up in Shadow Falls or neighboring community.” She wished she could review the human resources files on each of the policemen in Shadow Falls. She could compare their vacation days to the