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Maybe he’d watch through the windows for a bit.

The last week had been exhausting and he wondered if his quarry would have anywhere he had to be tonight. He hoped not. He was tired and ready for a break.

12

“What do we got?” Nora asked.

Mason leaned against the wall, trying to blend in with the paint. Nora hadn’t looked in his direction, and he was determined to keep it that way. Zander, Ava, and Henry Becker, the detective who shared Nora’s office, sat at the conference room table. Henry was also a new transfer from Salem whom Mason didn’t know that well. He’d been added to the case that morning after OSP learned another of its officers had been murdered. Investigators from Vancouver, Lincoln County, Multnomah County, and the Portland Police Department also had joined. One from each location where a murder had been committed.

The task force had been formed within the last few hours, but across the country, officers had been feeling targeted. Several states had experienced sensationalized murders, and new ones were cropping up every month. This week it’d struck Portland. The nationwide hate and panic felt like an erupting volcano, impossible to stop or cool down.

The local media had been digging as hard as possible into Denny’s murder and the Samuelson murder. National media correspondents had arrived and crawled through the small town of Depoe Bay like scavengers. Others had set up down the street from the Samuelson home, interviewing willing neighbors. So far the task force had kept Vance Weldon’s case from being connected in the news. The investigators still weren’t certain if it’d been suicide or murder. They’d all agreed the masks needed to be kept out of the news before the detail caught the imagination of every wannabe cop killer in the country.

The conference room was being transformed. A picture of each victim had been tacked to a bulletin board, along with crime scene photos, a timeline, and maps.

“We haven’t found what was used to strike Samuelson in the back of the head. Careful inspection of the gravestones indicated they hadn’t been moved for several days,” said Ava.

“It looks like we were right that our killer brought a weapon with him. And took it when he left,” said Zander. “What else appears to be missing from the scenes? What’s been done to the bodies or scenes that we don’t see the source of?”

“Good question,” said Nora as she wrote, What’s missing? on a whiteboard.

Mason thought back to the cabin at the coast and to today’s early-morning scene. Then he mentally flipped through the crime scene photos from the FBI murder. “Two of the bodies were lifted. One was hung and the other was lifted to the wall. What did we miss that could have helped with that?” he asked.

The investigators exchanged looks. “In the Weldon hanging, I could see how a pulley could have been used and removed,” said Henry Becker. “But there’s no location for that in this morning’s case. The body didn’t have to be lifted that high and there was a chair nearby that we suspect he used.”

“That’s assuming Weldon wasn’t a suicide,” reminded Ava. “The medical examiner is reviewing the case again and we haven’t found anything to indicate otherwise.”

“The masks are the link,” stated Henry. “I think we need to treat it as a murder for now.”

“That’s why the case is on the board with the other two,” said Nora. “Let’s keep a mental asterisk near all the evidence from that case. We’ll view that evidence with a grain of salt until we have confirmation.”

Mason’s gut told him she’d have that confirmation soon.

“I had officers do a canvass of Samuelson’s neighbors this morning,” Nora said. “No one noticed anything unusual at the property yesterday. The owner directly behind Samuelson’s mentioned that the backyard motion sensor lights go off and on several times a night because of small animals. He told us he refused to complain about it because there’d been a rash of burglaries in the neighborhood about six months ago, and he wanted everyone to do what they felt was needed to stay safe. He knew Samuelson was a state trooper. He liked having him in the neighborhood and wasn’t about to cause problems with him over what he felt was a reasonable security precaution. Instead he invested in blackout shades for his bedroom and keeps them drawn at night. He couldn’t say if the lights had been activated last night.”

“Nothing else from the canvass? No strange cars parked on the road?” Zander asked.

“No,” said Nora. “It’s so damn clean, it’s spooky. I want to live in this perfect neighborhood.”

“What about home security systems? Did any of his neighbors have cameras running outdoors?”

“None,” stated Nora.

“No one saw Brian Wasco jogging at night?” Ava asked.

“No one mentioned him,” said Nora. “Some neighbors didn’t even hear the police cars respond at one A.M. They woke up at their regular time and were surprised at the activity on their street.”

“We found three sets of footprints in the backyard,” said Zander. “One set was next to that larger indentation in the barkdust that we saw from the deck. The evidence guys say they look similar to what stocking feet would make.”

“They can see prints in that choppy mess?” Ava asked.

“Samuelson’s sprinklers are set to run twice a week. The ground was pretty soft right near the deck.” Zander shook his head. “I could barely see them when they pointed them out, but our guys are used to looking for things like that. It was clear to them.”