DEAD BY
MORNING
“Do you think you can put together a
profile with what little information we have?” Maleah
asked.
“I’m going to try,” Derek said. “The
Copycat Carver has gone to a great deal of trouble to copy Jerome
Browning’s MO and yet he deliberately sent the pieces of flesh he
removed from the victims’ bodies to you instead of hiding them away
somewhere the way Browning did. Why?”
“The reason he didn’t stick to
Browning’s MO was because he wanted to send me a
message.”
“Very good reasoning. We’ve agreed that
for some reason, it’s important to the copycat for you to be
personally involved in this case. That’s why he chose Browning to
emulate.”
“Because Browning killed Noah Laborde,
my former boyfriend. But the question is why me? If Nic or Griff is
the real target, then . . .” She paused for a full minute. “Could
it really be that simple? Is he making me jump through hoops simply
because he can and he wants Nic to know he can control her best
friend?”
“It’s definitely what Griff thinks and
it does make a crazy kind of sense. If tormenting Nic and Griff is
his objective, then he’s punishing them for some reason. He’s going
to strike again and again, possibly getting closer and closer to
his ultimate target with each kill, eventually discarding the
Carver’s MO.”
“If that’s the case, then what are the
odds that he’ll try to kill me before he moves on to Nic and Griff
. . .”