No Rest for the Wicked

Chapter Forty-Two

"... so let me get this straight," Jack began, his eyes narrowed as he continued to pace the briefing room, his footsteps echoing loudly off the walls. "The devil has been killing in other states!?"

"Unfortunately." Agent Cruz  responded simply, his hands clasped behind his back as he watched the restless detective pace around like a dog locked in a kennel.

Agent Gabriel Cruz seemed like a good man to work with. He had been assigned to the devil case by the FBI, now working alongside several precincts across the south in an attempt to catch the devil. Jack knew he wouldn't be around much, but he was relieved that finally someone competent was now going to be helping with the hunt, especially since at the moment all he had was Riggs. He might as well just have a rock for a partner as this point.

Jack continued to move about the room, both the agent and the newly appointed sheriff watching him closely as he stewed in his thoughts. Of course the devil had been striking in other areas, why hadn't Jack taken that into consideration? Now that he knew the devil was taking his show on the road, it was going to be so much harder to pinpoint where he might be living... and where he was keeping Cassidy.

"Well, I'm not surprised," Riggs added to the conversation, his legs and arms crossed as he leaned back in his seat. "We haven't had a body pop up in about a week or two. He's probably been focusing on some other areas."

Cruz nodded. "I believe the killings started in your town before he slowly branched outward. That means the killer is probably a local or at the very least lives close by. Offenders like this typically start out somewhere close to where they reside, somewhere comfortable that they're familiar with until they start to get a little braver."

"We figured that much," Riggs muttered, now leaning back in his seat and spreading his legs lazily. "But if he's been moving around, how many girls has he killed really?"

Cruz pulled a remote out of his coat pocket for the projector he had brought and pressed the power button, the projector whirring to life as it displayed an image of a map with several dots scattered across it onto the blank wall of the briefing room. 

"The man you call 'the devil' has taken the lives of eight victims." Cruz explained as he motioned to the map displaying the states the killer had struck in. "But that's not considering the possible victims we just haven't found yet."

Cruz turned back to the projector and clicked the remote at the small box perched on the table and switched to a different image, this one now obviously being a crime scene photo. The photo was much more high quality than the photos the sheriff and detective were used to since they'd been taken by an actual camera, not some cheap one that used to belong to a teenager.

A blonde woman hung from a thick tree branch, her body dangling and barely being suspended by a purple scarf as she hung loosely from her neck. The scarf was wrapped around her like a noose, the woman's swollen tongue sticking out of her mouth on display. Despite it being a morbid sight, it was probably one of the tamest executions done by the devil to date.

"This is Jackie Carson, age thirty-two. Her body was found less than twenty-four hours after her death up in the Great Smoky Mountains by a group of hikers." Cruz explained, beginning to pace as he went into more detail about the image.

Riggs tilted his head, his eyebrows furrowing as he motioned to the purple cloth around her neck. "What's with the scarf?"

"Considering our killer has an obsession with Christianity and bible stories, I believe the purple scarf represents the scarf that Christian's drape over the cross on Palm Sunday." Cruz presented.

Cruz clicked the button on the remote again, skipping to another crime scene. This woman was much younger, her bare body bloody and covered in claw and bite marks. It appeared as if she'd been mauled by some kind of animal.