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Women who didn’t walk dogs were safe, but he couldn’t totally rule out that they weren’t until he had more information.
    Before he could stop himself, Langham said, “What does he look like? Where did he take her?”
    “She doesn’t know. He drugged her. She wasn’t with it for the whole journey, mainly spent it with her eyes closed. She’d tried to work out where he was taking her by judging the turns he took, but she went spaced out and lost track. As for what he looks like… He wore a mask. One of those latex things. Dark peach with wrinkles all over it, except the cheeks are smooth. She remembered thinking that was weird. It’s got eye holes, so she could see his eyes. Green, dark green.”
    “A mouth hole?” Langham sipped his tea, trying not to lean forward, invade Oliver’s space, put pressure on him.
    “Yeah, like a scream, like someone’s screaming. Wonky.” Oliver closed his eyes.
    Langham held his breath, waiting for the images to fill Oliver’s mind. That was a recent development, Oliver being able to see—or rather, know things. He’d said it was like an information dump, data swooping into his head so that he just knew, as though someone had told him. Langham had to admit that Oliver’s talent progressing was a godsend. With the Sugar Strands case it had just been words spoken by the dead, none of this seeing things shit, but now, having Oliver being able to literally watch what had gone on, yeah, that was a massive bonus. Like having an eye witness.
    Oliver shuddered. “Shit, it isn’t nice. The eye holes sort of droop down, like one of those Hush Puppy dogs, and the mouth is the same, except it’s a sideways version. He has pink lips, dark pink—no idea whether he wears lipstick or what—and blond stubble, like, a day or two’s worth. Possibly from him being too lazy to shave, but I get the impression he prefers it like that. Makes him feel manly, less of a kid—and that’s a key point. He doesn’t want to feel like a kid.”
    This was good, a major breakthrough. But what did that mean? Were they dealing with a youth? It wasn’t unheard of that teenagers or those just entering manhood killed, but to such a degree… Shit, were they dealing with someone who’d just gone out on a whim to kill before he’d nurtured his needs like other serial killers usually did? Or had he been having thoughts of killing like this since he’d been a young kid? What sobering thoughts. Damn scary ones too.
    “He’s…young,” Oliver said. “I get the sense he’s no more than twenty-five to thirty.”
    “Jesus,” Langham breathed.
    To find out a serial killer was so adept at that age was frightening. If they never found him, if he continued on this path, the man would grow in confidence to such a degree that his acts might become unparalleled by the time he hit forty. A force to be reckoned with.
    A force Langham intended to stop before it got any stronger.
    “So, like I said,” Oliver went on. “He jabbed her with something sharp, and it made her woozy. Got to rewind a second… Jabbed her at the bloody dog-walking field. She couldn’t walk. He dragged her through the forest to his car—he parks it on the other side of the woods—shoved her on the back seat. She wanted to call out but couldn’t speak, like her mouth wasn’t working properly. She couldn’t get up, couldn’t move.”
    Langham gritted his teeth. A sharp pain shot up into his head so he relaxed his jaw. Took another sip of tea while jotting down notes. So this man had access to drugs, needles. Was he a doctor? Langham wrote down that he’d need to take a look at how long it took for someone to become a doctor, what the youngest age was. Or was he an assistant, some bloke who worked in a doctor’s office or hospital?
    Oliver sniffed. “She wasn’t sure how long they’d traveled, and like I said before, she lost track of where they might be going, and by the time they arrived at his place she couldn’t open her