Don't Touch Me! - 17

While working on other cases he needed to handle, Brent managed to find time to check out where the one murder victim lived who hadn't had a physician in the medical building. He wasn't terribly surprised to find out she had lived in a nice home three blocks away from there, in a relatively upscale residential area at the edge of the business district.

He decided, before going to see Cody, he'd stop by the police station to talk with Walt. Arriving just as Walt was about to leave for the day, Brent managed to convince his friend to give him a few minutes time first.

"Now what?" Walt asked, once they were seated at this desk.

"Two things to consider which might make you rethink the idea Cody Paige killed his mother. One, as you told me last night, all of the women were overweight. Secondly, all four of them frequented the neighborhood of the medical building. The one woman lived close by." He paused when something occurred to him. "Was she by any chance the first victim?"

Walt nodded. "She was. What are you thinking?"

"What if…" Brent replied slowly, "these aren't really serial killings? Who stood to profit from the first woman's death?"

Walt took a thick file from a desk drawer, opening it. After a moment he replied, "Just as I remembered. Her husband."

"Only him?"

"Yes. The victim was childless, with no family other than her husband. We did look hard at him until the second murder happened."

"Then with the third one, you wrote him off completely, since you thought there was a serial killer on the loose."

"Yes," Walt replied, frowning. "Are you suggesting he's our man?"

"It might be possible. Everyone knows the police always look at the husband when a wife has been murdered. Suppose he did kill her—trying to make it look like someone broke in to rob the place and she caught the burglar in the act."

"So he decides to kill a few more women to make it seem like part of a serial killing? That's pretty far-fetched, Brent."

"True, but it's a popular trope in books and movies, and one of them may have given him the idea. Since they lived close to the medical building, and she was overweight, he decides to target women like her he sees coming and going from there."

"You are really reaching." Walt smiled knowingly. "Is this kid that important to you?"

"Cody? He's just a client—one I don't want to see arrested for something he didn't do," Brent protested. "Despite whatever it was you found that makes you think his mother's death isn't connected to the others, there are two things he couldn't have known if he was trying to copy the other killings. First, the fact the other women were overweight, and secondly, their connection to the medical building."

"What if he's the serial killer? What works for the first victim's husband would work for him as well. He wants his mother dead, so he kills a few other women first to cover it up."

"One big thing, Walt, Cody's phobia. You can't strangle someone without their touching you when they're struggling to stay alive. He would have freaked and that would have been that."

Walt huffed out a breath. "Okay. As much as I hate to admit it, you got me on that one. I talked to Ashlie about him and she says there was no way he was faking his reaction to her touching him."

"And as I pointed out, that happened well before the killings started."

"Yep. All right, I'll dig deeper into the first victim's husband. There's no guarantee you're right, but it is a feasible scenario." He stood, grinning slightly. "Now can I go home?"

Brent laughed. "Be my guest."