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pointed at the cigarette. “Not down here please.”
    Jack’s eyes narrowed, and he perched it unlit in his lips. “Well, I suggest you and your CSI buddies get on finding the connection between the rooms. It’s got to be a large enough opening that the freezer could fit through it—”
    “Could it be this easy?” I left the group, following the wiring on the ceiling and rounded a bend to the left.
    “Slingshot, don’t go wandering off—” Jack came up behind me, his words dying on his tongue as looked on what I had found.
    Smoothed concrete filled a space in the wall the size of a doorway.
    “This location would line up with the tunnel that seemed to lead nowhere,” Zachery said.
    Did I actually sense excitement in his voice? My chest tightened and my next breath stalled. I needed out of this place. I needed to go above ground.
    “This would make sense,” the CSI said. “In the tunnel that’s a dead end, the wire disappears up into the dirt.”
    “Hmm.” Jack glared at the investigator. “The killer knew we’d catch on to what he had going. If the last murder was done after Bingham was in prison, his apprentice—” Jack glanced at me, and Zachery smirked. “—He came back to clean up the mess. He knew that Bingham’s sister died and the property would be reclaimed.”
    “But why not close off access to everything?” I asked the question. “Why not cover over the empty grave? Why not block off the entrance from the cellar?”
    Jack’s lips curled upward. “You have to ask that?”
    “He had a message to send,” Paige said, stepping forward. “This isn’t over yet. The unsub plans to kill at least one more, and they want us to know it.”
    “But why wouldn’t they just keep up the payments. He had something going here,” I countered.
    “It was time to move on. Maybe the apprentice isn’t from this area but traveled here? With Bingham in prison, they could have started to kill in their hometown?”
    “So this other killer has money for travel. It fits the profile for a serial killer—mobile,” Zachery observed.
    “And by all appearances the unsub plans to kill again if he hasn’t already. They saw merit in what Bingham had done and respected him. Someone like that would want to let Bingham know. They’d likely be in contact. We’ll need to get a copy of Bingham’s visitor log at the prison.” Jack passed a glance to the CSI and flicked his lighter.
    “Please, don’t—”
    Jack put the lighter back in his pocket but continued to let the cigarette bob on his lips as he spoke. “We’ll get a media blackout in place and call it a night. We don’t need details of the find getting out. It would cause panic, and worse case, scare off the unsub. He’ll lay low, and we’ll never find him. In the morning, the kid and I will go to the prison. I want you two,” he addressed Paige and Zach, “to talk to the man Bingham assaulted.”

 
     
    CHAPTER 5

     
    The Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex is a medium security prison and thirty-one miles from Salt Lick. Some prisons in Kentucky house death row, a punishment still enforced down here. I had no doubt that once all was proven Lance Bingham would have his suite upgraded, a last meal granted, and a lethal injection shot straight through his veins.
    A guard at the front gate let us pass with a flash of Jack’s creds, and after we relinquished our guns we were on our way to meet with a monster. I had studied a lot of serial killers, their methods, their means, their trophies, and their messages. I had spent hours studying their faces and peering into their lifeless eyes void of compassion, but that was through the pages of literature or through video. I wondered how much different it would be in person.
    We were led into a meeting room used by lawyers to confer with their clients. Jack offered me the chair, and he paced behind me. The door opened and two security guards came in securing the prisoner by a grip on both of his arms.