The Kill Read Online Free PDF

it’s worth pursuing.”
     
     
    “Olivia, Greg, come in.”
    Rick Stockton glanced at his designer watch, then opened his door wide and motioned for them to enter. “I have a lunch meeting in twenty minutes, but I can be late.”
    “Thank you.” Olivia glanced at Greg, who nodded. It helped having him on her side, even if he wasn’t completely convinced.
    Rick closed the door behind them, then walked to his desk, sitting on the corner rather than behind it. He smiled wide, a warm smile that brightened his eyes. Rick Stockton was the talk of most of the women in the building: good-looking, sexy, and smart. Olivia didn’t pay attention to the talk—she had more important things to do than ogle men—but she had to admit that her female colleagues were right about his sex appeal.
    “Sit,” he told them and she did, clutching her file like a lifeline. Greg stood behind her, his hand resting on the back of her chair. “What can I do for you?”
    She bit the inside of her cheek. She and Greg had talked out how to approach Rick, but all her best-laid plans disappeared and she said, “I believe my sister’s killer is in Seattle right now. There have been two like-crimes over the last three weeks.”
    Rick’s left eyebrow rose as he glanced at Greg, but that was his only reaction. “How did you come to this conclusion?”
    “I followed the evidence. What little there is,” she admitted. “When Brian Harrison Hall was released two weeks ago, I ran a search—on my own time—for similar crimes throughout the country. I found a total of twenty-nine murders in ten states, including Missy’s. I believe she may have been his first.”
    Rick frowned. “Ten states? And no one saw a pattern?”
    “He is surprisingly patient between attacks, up to six years in one case. He goes into a community, generally a suburb of a large city, and kills up to four blonde girls before disappearing. The only time he kills fewer than four girls is when someone is arrested for the crime.” She paused, handed him her folder. “It’s all here.”
    Rick took the folder and flipped through it. “You were thorough. But what about common evidence? DNA? Witness testimony?”
    “Two cases had a witness mention a tattoo on the abductor. Nashville and most recently Seattle. There has been no DNA logged in any of the cases into CODIS, except the new results from the California lab on Missy’s case. But I was hoping we could offer assistance to help in the older, cold cases.”
    “You want me to take over cold-case files in local jurisdictions?”
    Greg interjected. “If a DNA sample was preserved, or any other hard evidence, perhaps we can connect them and prove that the same man was responsible for all these crimes.”
    “To what end?”
    Olivia blinked. “To capture him, of course.”
    Rick flipped through the file in silence. “You have three cases here where someone was convicted. They got the killer.”
    “I believe they were wrongfully convicted. The release of Hall proves it in that case.”
    “You want me to call the district attorney in those states and tell them they put an innocent man in jail? One of these guys is on death row.” Rick shook his head. “I can see the headlines now. We have a bad enough reputation with local police that we don’t need to criticize the way their criminal justice system works.”
    “I never thought of you as one to back down from a challenge.” Olivia bit her lip. She couldn’t believe she’d said that. “I—I didn’t mean . . . I’m sorry.”
    Rick’s eyes flashed first with anger, then compassion. “Olivia, I know Hall’s release has been difficult for you.”
    “This has nothing to do with Hall.”
    “Doesn’t it?” He held up the file. “This must have taken you a hundred hours to compile. You’ve found a couple of interesting threads, but it’s circumstantial and these cases are old. We have a backlog of work here, and I’m sure the local authorities won’t want to