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Damien’s drive home was tense and frustrating.

He knew motive was the most important part of an investigation, but he and the rest of the Hayeston police department were so busy watching the clock, trying to find Darlene before it was too late, that they never stopped to ask the simple question of why.

During their conversation with Mark, he was surprisingly honest and consistent. What he told Damien from his holding cell was what he told Dr. Moira Jones years earlier. He had a specific type of victim and the consuming need to kill as many of them as possible.

As Mark had said, the copycat would be driven by a different compulsion. Even if they had a deep-seated urge to hurt blonde, blue-eyed, big breasted teen girls, the odds of them finding fulfillment by killing them exactly as Mark was astronomical.

Deep-rooted desires, whether positive or negative, were as individual as the person wanting their fulfillment. So, this person wasn’t killing the girls because he hated them.

He wanted something else.

As his home remained over an hour away, Damien mulled a few reasons why.

If the person was truly a budding serial killer, their choice of hiding their identity by mimicking Mark’s MO would have been a brilliant stroke. Yet, it would seem odd to choose to emulate someone whose killing streak ended at two. Serial killers’ violent urges were never satisfied. Mark’s spree ended because he was caught, not because he had satiated his demon’s appetite.

From the long list of the nation’s known serial killers, Mark wasn’t the best decision if killing was your goal.

Assuming the person wasn’t a serial killer who hated the Darlenes and Mandys of the world, then what were the girls’ deaths giving him? Recognition? A way to honor their hero? A connection to Mark’s infamy?

Perhaps it was something else entirely. Something specifically tied to Hayeston.

The police department had a sordid history of corruption and leveraging uneven scales of justice. Perhaps the killer was trying to make local law enforcement look foolish, forcing them to sprint from one murder to the next, amping up each crime by its speed, mocking their power by choosing the mayor’s daughter, turning the department’s greatest achievement, Mark’s conviction, into their latest failure.

Whether the motive was glory or public vengeance, the killer was fueled by something deeply personal and it wasn’t just the missing “why” that was troubling Damien, it was the more timely “why now?”

What pushed them over the edge? What was the catalyst that turned their fantasies into a violent reality?

Dr. Jones had presented to the cadets examples of psychological triggers that often accompanied violent outbursts. Job loss. Impending divorce. Lost custody of children. The culmination of long-term drug use on the brain. The death of a loved one.

In short, their world was collapsing, changing in ways they couldn’t control, falling toward a destination they couldn’t accept. They would need to release those pent up feelings of rage and betrayal and would take it out on whomever they believed were personally, or figuratively, responsible.

Those examples resonated with Damien. There were many times when his father was at his worst that Damien needed an outlet for his pain. He knew, as a small child, he didn’t have the power to inflict his suffering on his father, and often fought the desire to unleash his fury on the next best thing, his hapless mother.

If the murderer were anything like Damien, then killing those teen girls made their anguish disappear, if only for a short time.

The killer’s why resided in that wellspring of pain.

As he continued his drive, Damien needed facts to back up his gut instinct and there were still too many open questions.

The answers must be hidden somewhere in Sanders’ original files. This time Damien wasn’t going to look for the similarities to Mark’s crimes, but why this killer had chosen to be different. Maybe those distinctions would lead to the killer’s motive.

Mark quickly saw what made this killer different from him. Damien needed the same certainty, because the same gut that was leading him back to Sanders’ files was telling him there was going to be at least one more victim if Damien didn’t stop him first.

Despite Raquel’s objections, Damien brought all the boxes of Sanders’ files inside the house and laid them out in their entirety. He sat on his couch and read every document, even the ones he had read before. Case files. Personal notes. Dead ends. Cold leads. Witness statements. Autopsy reports.

By the time he had finished, the sun was about to set. He’d been up over twenty-four hours and his mind was swirling with flashes of dead girls and childhood memories of Mark.

He had consumed twelve boxes of information and was rewarded with nothing.

Sanders was a bulldog and a hell of a detective, yet nothing he had written a decade ago gave Damien any insight into the mind of the killer currently walking Hayeston’s streets.

Whatever clue Mark noticed wasn’t there.

Damien leaned his head against the couch, his body pleading for sleep, but his mind was unable to rest.

What if Mark was lying? Was he playing Damien for a fool again?

It was possible. Probable, even. Damien didn’t care.

Not right now. There was still a killer to catch. Revisiting the original crimes wasn’t a waste of time. It just hadn’t bore fruit yet.

Raquel had promised to make tacos for dinner, but Damien found her asleep on their bed, the toll of their growing baby within her sapping her strength.

That was okay with him. He wasn’t hungry.

Instead of Tex-Mex, Damien popped open a cold brew, sat back on the couch, and turned on the television. His mind needed a break and watching rich housewives bitch and backstab each other seemed like the perfect antidote.

Within a few minutes, his eyes quickly looked past the television, its sound muted by persistent thoughts, and his mind drifted.

He thought of their small rental house and wondered where they would fit a new baby. He wondered what it would be like to hold his child, both excited and terrified by being a father.

He imagined all the things Raquel would want to buy for their baby. Toys. Diapers. Bottles. Car seat. A changing table. Play pen. A teething ring. Baby clothes.

Where would they get the money? They were barely getting by.

He knew the birth of his child was going to fundamentally change his life, but had no clear understanding how, as if approaching a threshold into another world without knowing what awaited him on the other side.

As he slowly drew himself back to the present, sitting on his couch, the sweat from his beer bottle dripping over his knuckles, Damien realized he was smiling. Whatever being a parent meant, he knew it was going to be okay.

He and Raquel would figure it out.

More importantly, it would give him the chance to right all the wrongs of his own childhood, to shower his child with the love he never received from his dad, and raise the child to succeed in the world, not fear it.

Amazing.

Not too long ago he was a high school dropout making minimum wage at a bookstore. Then Raquel happened and everything changed.

Everything.

His dark life had grown bright in her presence and she led him forward with her hope.

He was the luckiest man in the world.

He grew up with a lot of bad wiring, but, with his wife and child, nothing seemed impossible.

Not even the idea of being a better man, of replacing his long festering rage with something as simple as love.

The television flashed in front of him and Casey Lane, a local television reporter, appeared on the screen, listing the station’s top news stories.

“A new serial killer in Hayeston?” she asked. “That’s what authorities are asking themselves as they find similarities in the death of Mandy Templeton and Darlene Willis, the mayor’s daughter. Coming up at eleven, we’ll tell you what the police are saying about these crimes and what they may be hiding from the public.”

Damien sat up. That was it.

He left his beer on the coffee table, grabbed his keys, and raced out of the house.