Chapter 20

Grace and Jason started to look into the files that they had gotten from the coroner. Jason wanted to make sure that they had not missed out on anything. It appeared to be very strange that there were no connections, minus the tattoo, to link these people to each other. It could not be as random as it appeared. Jason could not figure out how it could be this random, there just had to be a connection that they were not finding. It was frustrating him.

He had not really known his neighbor all that well, but he was not aware that she had attended a private school. He knew that she worked at the local bank and had lived a pretty quiet life. The only thing that had not been quiet about her had been her television watching; that which had caused her murder to go unnoticed by him as it was occurring. That still bothered him because he knew that he was a better detective than that. He knew that he was not going to truly rest until there was closer on this case. He was hoping that with the help of Grace and the others, they would be able to bring this monster to justice.

"Do you notice anything here that we have not already seen, Grace?"

"Not really. The only thing consistent between each of these victims is that they are relatively close in age, within a five year range, and the fact that they all have what appears to be the same tattoo on their right ankle. I guess that we could assume that they all knew each other in some sort of capacity, but I am not sure what that would be."

It appeared that they had an daunting task in front of them. They needed to figure out how they were all connected. It was true that Veronica seemed to think that they all had some connection with The Xavier School; Grace was skeptical that this was the true reason behind the killings. There had to be something else. It was possible that they all attended the same school, but what would be the likelihood that they would all then choose to move to Grangeville.

That was the one thing that seemed to be stumping them the most. If these people were all connected by way of a boarding school in Connecticut what made them all want to move to the same town together. They all came from different walks of life. Not one of them worked with another. There was something very strange going on here and neither of them liked that it was so hard to find a consistency.

The files did not appear to offer anything to them. Jason decided that it would be best if they mapped out what they knew about each of the victims and that it might lead them down the path that would help them solve the case. Veronica and William were under strict instructions to contact him if they found anything out. He did not care how small it appeared, it might be the needle in the haystack that they had been seeking for.

While Jason was at the whiteboard writing down each of the victim’s names, Grace was taking notes on each of the cases. She was hoping that she was going to be able to find the connections between the victims but she was not sure if she would be able to. She told Jason each of the victim’s birth dates, addresses, place of employment, and also their dates and times of death. Nothing of these stood out to either of them. It was good to have a map of the case to help them see if there was any pattern at all.

They both realized that the victims were all murdered around the same time, or at least the time of death that the coroner had given them. That was one consistency between all of the victims; although it was not really a consistency between victims it was more of one by the murderer. He was always killing at the same time. There might be something to that, but that did not help them figure out how he choose who he was going to kill. The choice of victim was more critical to them breaking the case, rather than the time of the killings. The time may be consistent because he always wanted to work under the veil of darkness. That was not uncommon with those who murdered, they did not want to be caught and so they would work however it was best for them.

The only other thing that was apparent was that after he had killed Victor Ramos, he had only murdered women. This wasn’t really a pattern but it was an area of interest. It made both of them try to figure out what Victor had in common with the women. That was something that had not been answered when Grace and Veronica had spoken to his mother. Grace figured that maybe she should give Mrs. Ramos a call and see if any of the women’s names rang a bell to her.

Grace picked up the phone, after the fifth ring, Mrs. Ramos picked up. "Hello there Mrs. Ramos this is Grace Winters. We spoke just yesterday about your son Victor. Yes, I know you told me everything that you could tell me about the last time you spoke to him. What I was wondering was if any of the other victim’s names struck a cord with you.

"You say that you think that they all went to school together. Okay, I am sorry to bother you. No I don’t have any further questions; if I do I will contact you again. Okay, thank you once again, Mrs. Ramos."

"Jason, it would appear that all of our victims went to school together," Grace shouted to Jason, as he was in the other room.

"Really. Then maybe Veronica is correct in going to the school and seeing what she can find out there."

Grace hated to admit it but maybe Veronica had been correct. It cut her to the quick to realize that maybe she had been too quick to judge on her. She did not like to think that she was the type of person who would pre-judge a person, but maybe she was. She was going to have to rethink about what she thought about people.
She decided that she needed to give Veronica a second chance. Once she got back into Grangeville, she was going to do that. She only hoped that Veronica would accept her apology and realize that she was going to try her hardest to work well with her and not to compete with her.

Once they realized that the victims all knew each other, at least from having attended the same school, it gave them a sense of hope. They thought that maybe they would be able to figure out what else connected them thought the investigation that Veronica and William were doing in Connecticut. It was not going to be easy to find out what other connections they had with each other, but there had to be more. If there wasn’t then it was the connection with the school that they were going to have to go with. They would have to wait and see what Veronica and William found out and if it would be enough for them to find out who the next victim would be.

Grace decided that the best course of action would be for her to look at the files again. She often found that if she looked at things over and over again the unobvious would pop out at her. She was hoping that the third time would be a charm. She took the files into the back room and laid them out in front of her. She was not sure how she wanted to tackle this task. Having now four files in front of her made the task seem unsurmountable. She knew that she could do it but she needed to have some sort of game plan.

With the files in front of her, she decided that she was going to look at each one as an individual case and take notes. As she was taking notes she started to see something, but she did not want to get her hopes up; she kept the ideas to herself. She did not want to give Jason any false sense of hope. She wanted to make sure that what she was thinking was correct. It is often hard when looking at is so closely, but it did not appear that it could be any other way. She may have found the one thing that connected all of these people together.

As she looked deeper into the files, there was something that jumped out to Grace. She did not want to say anything until she was certain that there was truly something. She knew that she needed to get down to the coroner’s office without Jason knowing. If he found out, she knew that he would want to go with her and that it might ruin the element of surprised.

What she had found was something very surprising. It was not the way that the two of them had been leaning at all. It was something so far off the charts that it was going to require finesse in the way that it was handled. If she wanted to investigate without anyone knowing what she was doing she was going to have to do it without the help of the Chief of Police. If he knew what she knew, it would cause him to put her under the protection of the police, and right now she needed to investigate without being noticed.