Darker Still by T. S. Worthington Read Free Book Online

in their heads, so he could have his way with the family.
    He has an inferiority complex. That’s what was going on. He had a strong narcissistic need to control and to feel important and powerful, but he made sure that there was no way that he was going to be undermined or overpowered. He never abducted people from anywhere close by. From what John had studied of the case files and what he had gleaned doing endless research on the net many years ago the killer kept wallets and drivers licenses as trophies as well. Many of his victims were from at least five or six hour drives away.
    That was why law enforcement wasn’t looking for anyone close to him. He had that well-kept buffer zone. His method of attack or the method he used to lure his victims into a position where he could abduct them had never been determined, but thinking on it now John was pretty confident that he abducted people from their home when they were asleep.
    That had to be it. Somehow he was able to sneak in, after probably studying the house for some time, and then possibly inject them with something that kept them asleep while he was free to abduct them. They never knew what hit them and they woke up in some dark basement somewhere.
    But where?
    It was all but impossible to know where he was going to strike next. John leaned back in his chair, stretching his spine trying to jump start his brain to work in that next gear, but it wasn’t having much effect. He knew that a good night’s sleep would probably work wonders, but he doubted that he was going to get it.
    What about the house where the killer was living? Before he had killed the home owner and basically assumed her identity. He had chosen carefully someone who would not be missed without many friends or family. Of course that would be like finding a needle in a haystack. The killer might not even be living in Belpre; he could be living anywhere in a hundred mile radius.
    John got up and paced around a few minutes trying to get the blood going in his veins. He usually thought better on his feet. After several minutes of deep thought he realized that was the only way; they had to find out how he had secured his place of lodging.
    John realized he was limited at home. He got in his car and drove to the station. It was late in the evening and the place looked like a ghost town, but he was fine with that. He didn’t want any distractions bogging him down.
    John fired up the computer and logged into the database. He was searching for a few things. He was not able to access these databases at home. It was silly of him to think that he would have been able to do much there. He was seeing himself turn into that cop who never left the station. That was the guy he used to be and that was one of the reasons his fiancée had left him. He tried to clear his mind and focus on the task at hand.
    He was searching for people in a fifty mile area who were home owners who had no living relatives and lived by themselves. This was hopefully going to narrow the search down. The computer finished the configuration and it came down to fifty-three names. He narrowed it down further to how many of these people were elderly women. That seemed to match the killers M.O. It seemed like he wanted someone that was not expected to leave the house much.
    The configuration dropped down to twenty-four. He then narrowed it down even further by people who lived in isolated houses with no close neighbors. The house that he had used previously was at the end of the street and it was hidden by a group of trees. The killer would need privacy and the ability to leave the house on occasion without arising suspicion.
    This dropped the number down to eighteen. That was doable. They just needed to get officers to investigate these eighteen properties and that would most likely give them a pretty good indicator of where he might be hiding out, unless he decided to change his pattern. That was always a possibility, but John felt that this was