Hide and Seek (Criminal Profiler #1)(66)

“As Grandpa used to say, no one ever expects one.” He selected a glass from open shelving and filled it with water before handing it to her.

“Thank you.”

He opened the double-door, subzero refrigerator and pulled out several precooked meals. He set the temperature on a convection oven and unwrapped the meals. “Do you eat meat?”

“Don’t I strike you as a carnivore?”

He laughed. “No comment.”

She set her bag down and got out a bottle of ibuprofen. She popped two and drained the glass of water.

“How’s the leg?”

“Surprisingly good.”

“Would you tell me if it weren’t?”

“Probably not.”

While the oven came to temp, he removed cheese and bread from the refrigerator and sliced pieces of both. He placed them on a plate in the center of the island.

The oven now ready, he popped the two meals in. “Grab a piece of cheese, and I’ll show you around while dinner cooks.”

“This is not what I expected.”

“What did you expect?”

“Let’s say I shouldn’t assume anymore.”

He moved into another room and flipped on lights. This room was smaller with a lower ceiling and painted in a dark-navy color. In the center was a tall stone fireplace, its firebox blackened by decades of use. Beside it was a neat stack of wood. Across the room was a large mahogany desk covered in more piles of papers. “Now that it’s getting cooler, I’m gravitating toward this room.”

“Snow on the trees and a crackling fire. You’re on the verge of being a holiday greeting card.”

Again he smiled as he showed her several more rooms on the first floor, including a room with a pool table and another with gun cases displaying shotguns that ranged from modern era to antique.

“Very nice, Nevada.”

“It’s a work in progress.” He walked down the hallway back into the kitchen and flipped on more lights.

She settled on a barstool around the large kitchen island made of reclaimed barnwood. Industrial pendant lights hung above. The place smelled faintly of fresh paint. “If you’d told me in Kansas City we’d be sitting here now, I’d have laughed.”

“You and me both.” He glanced at the timer on the convection oven, which had five minutes remaining. He removed two plates from the cabinet and set them on the table.

Whatever he was cooking smelled delicious. “So what are we eating?”

“Steak and potatoes.”

“My two favorite food groups.” As he set out silverware and two cloth napkins, she said, “Did you ask Ramsey for me on this case?”

He stood still for an instant as he placed a fork on a gray napkin. “I called him when the DNA results came back. He told me he’d received your application. He also told me in the few weeks you’d been at ViCAP you’d connected the dots linking six stabbing cases in five different cities to one offender.”

“It wasn’t all me. If local law enforcement hadn’t entered the case data, we wouldn’t have had anything to analyze.”

“That offender liked to use a serrated knife.”

So he had done more homework than she’d imagined. “He stabbed his victims in the lower left portion of their backs.” There was little correlation between the victims other than a method of death that was very specific.

When the timer dinged, he grabbed a set of hot mitts and removed the steaming food packages. Removing the top seal filled the room with the scents of beef, butter, and fresh herbs.

“I know my frozen foods, Nevada, and this is a cut above.”

“I special order it.” He set one on each plate and placed one before her. “The killer made knives for a living.”

“His blades have a national reputation with his customers.”

“What brought your attention to the case?”

“Two stabbings occurred in Raleigh, North Carolina, in a ten-hour period. Local law enforcement sensed he’d done this before and filed a report with ViCAP. My colleague Andy and I pulled up all stabbing deaths and then narrowed our search from there. Once we identified ten possibly related cases, we sent the case to a forensic pathologist to look at the images taken of the wounds and then created a likely weapon profile from there.”

“How did you trace it to him?”

“I visited several knife experts in the area. Our boy has a fan following in the world of handcrafted weapons. I checked out his website and then cross-checked dates of the murders with the trade shows on his events page. He was picked up in Tennessee five days ago.”

“You’re smart as hell, Macy.”

“If I were so smart, I wouldn’t have connected Debbie Roberson’s romantic getaway to the serial offender we’re hunting.”

“Better you sounded the alarm and she ended up fine than the other way around.”

“Nice of you to say, but I still feel foolish.”

“You are nobody’s fool, Macy.”

She ate in silence and realized she was hungrier than she had thought. When she finished off the last slice of steak and drained her soda, Nevada looked pleased.

“Once again, you’ve fed me when I didn’t realize I needed to eat.”

“Here to serve.”