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like that from him. At this point, I believed the rumors that preceded him were unfounded nonsense. I loved Wilcrest as much as my own father.
                  Sadly, it was growing easier to work these horrific murder scenes, almost like the victims weren’t people anymore. To me they had become cases, numbers, and evidence. A sad state of affairs, true, but I couldn’t allow my emotions to get involved at a crime scene. Wilcrest had been right—this one was pretty bad.
                  I looked up into the crowd. Maybe my killer was somewhere close admiring his work. That’d happened once on another case a few years back. Turned out to be our big break in the case, too. I shook my head.
                  “With so many footprints, it’s hard to tell what’s going on here. But from what I can tell, you got one perp. Indention depth of the shoes says possible female, but whatever was done to this girl was done somewhere else. The scene is too controlled for it to have happened here. She was placed here to be found. The cuts on her are surgical. So, again, it‘s probably someone with medical training. This is our killer, for sure. Make sure we interview all the people who live in those houses,” I said, jerking my head toward a section of houses across the street.
                  “David, we’re already on that. I almost forgot; there was another note,” Wilcrest commented.
                  “Who moved it? Where is it now?”
                  The captain sent one of the officers to retrieve the note, which had already been bagged and tagged.  I took the plastic evidence bag from him and held it up. The note read:
                  Hello, David. We meet again, and all of this is to show you what I am capable of. This blood is on your hands. It could have been your girl. Maybe next time it will be. Good luck solving this case, superstar. You always have to be the best, don’t you? Until you beat me, kids will keep dying.
                  This wasn’t the first perp trying to prove he was better than me, and after I caught this one, it wouldn’t be the last. I didn’t even allow it to affect me on a personal level anymore. In some sick way, I almost took it as a compliment.
                  Could this be the same person who had been seen talking to Karen at her school a few months earlier? The redhead? Or the blonde? The same person who’d almost made away with her in Florida? I had to believe the woman in both locations had been the same person. Her special-needs act in the playground had been just that—an act.
                  “All right, Cap,” I said with a sigh. “I’m not sure if there’s much else for me to get out of this. Make sure I get the reports from the rape kit and forensics.”
                  I left the scene without waiting for a response and drove to the diner. It was my place to unwind and ponder. As I entered, Judy called to me.
                  “Hey, David. Two sugars, two creams, honey?”
                  I nodded. I slid into a booth, weary, as the crime scene played over and over in my mind. What kind of creep could do that to a child? What had happened to the perp to make him so insensitive, turn him into such a cruel human being?  I had a gut feeling I had a woman serial on my hands, but I’d keep my options open.
                  One thing being a cop had taught me over the years was that perps justified a lot. They really made themselves believe whatever crooked, diabolical scheme they’d hatched was somehow okay and the victims deserved what happened to them. Whatever pain or cruelty had been dealt out to the perps in their past gave them a golden ticket to hurt others.
                  “I heard there was a pretty ugly scene down at the bridge,” Judy said, placing the steaming cup of coffee on the