Elysium Dreams

Five

                  

Morning broke with no news of a new dead body.  This meant our killer was two days off his mark.  Something had changed his pattern.  We were assembled at breakfast with our FBI liaison, Special Agent Arons, Commander Neilsen, and Sheriff Rybolt to figure out the "why" behind the time shift.

"Maybe he is being distracted," I finally offered after they had been throwing ideas back and forth for several minutes while my French Toast got cold and the waitress assured me for a fourth time that they did not in fact carry Karo Syrup.

"By what?"  Special Agent Arons asked.

"By us," I suggested as I forked a mouthful of the unsyruped and rather plain French Toast into my mouth.  "We did finally arrive and you said it yourself, he has been killing in state parks, not federal ones."

"She has a point," Gabriel backed me up.  "Not only did we arrive, but we kind of took over.  As long as this stayed a local case, he was free to kill as he pleased; now that it's federal, we may be throwing up some roadblocks."

"Like what?"  Sheriff Rybolt asked.

"I don't know, if I did, we'd be that much closer to catching him.  However, our presence didn't go unnoticed by the news, so I'm sure it didn't go unnoticed by the killer.  It wouldn't be the first time a killer changed his timetable just because we arrived," Gabriel told him.

I gave up on the French Toast and moved to eating a piece of toast with strawberry-like jam on it.  I was pretty sure it wasn't real strawberry or jam, but the packet had proclaimed it to be so.  At the moment, I was more interested in my food than what any of them had to say.  The killer had changed.  There was a reason, but I didn't know what the reason was.  They could theorize until they were blue in the face and it wouldn't help us.

As a matter of fact, I was pretty sure this meeting was all about who had the biggest set of balls.  The Feds were here, worse, the Marshals "Death Squad," as I had heard one uniformed officer call us, were involved.  The locals in this area were used to dealing with things a certain way.  Everyone could tell that.  They were also used to US Marshals, but they were used to the sort that banged down doors and served warrants and made arrests of known fugitives.  That was certainly not us.

Even the FBI Liaison, Special Agent Fred Arons, was more local than we were.  Sure, they had called for our help, but I think they had thought we would magically swoop in and catch their killer from the moment we arrived.  The possibility of that happening was pretty much zero.  It took time to catch a serial killer, no matter how crazy the hunters were.

"Ok, so if it isn't us, maybe it's something else," I interrupted again, finishing off the toast.  "Lucas thinks he has a home life.  Maybe something in that home life is creating a disturbance in the pattern."

"But it didn't happen until you arrived," Sheriff Rybolt reminded me.

"That's not true," I looked at him, remembering the case file.  "There was a time period in December when it happened.  It picked up again in January, after the holidays.  Maybe he was visiting relatives in another town or state."

"Do most serial killers have family?"  Special Agent Arons gave me a doubtful look.

"Almost everyone has family, this guy is probably married with children," Lucas answered for me.  "This is a man who is highly functional, that means he has a job, a life, killing is an outlet for something, but aside from that, he is probably just like anyone else.  He could be a neighbor, a church deacon, hell, just about anything.  One thing we know for sure is that he is psychopathic, this means he is a highly functioning psychopath.  He could be anyone and he is probably popular with his circle of friends and well respected."