The Other Daniel - A Camille Grisham Novella Read Online Free Page B

assured
her. Just hands-off consulting with the current field agents
assigned to the case. Crawley was right to think that she couldn’t
be trusted in the field. He was wrong to think that she could do
anything to help him. But with four murders that looked
depressingly similar to the ones committed by Daniel Sykes, and a
Bureau full of anxious figureheads, Crawley may have felt that he
didn’t have much choice.
    The possibility that someone had decided to
pick up where the Circle Killer left off angered Camille in ways
she couldn’t describe. But she knew there was nothing she could do
about it. Why she hadn’t told Crawley that right away was a
question she couldn’t answer. She wanted to. She needed to. But she
didn’t. Instead, she told him she would need time to consider his
offer.
    Crawley not so gently informed her that he
didn’t have the luxury of waiting while she considered his offer.
If the copycat held true to Sykes’ pattern, the next event could
occur within the month, which meant he needed an answer, and he
needed it immediately.
    No matter how much Camille dreaded the idea
of another murder, an immediate answer was something she simply
couldn’t commit to. This required due deliberation, she told him;
an adequate weighing of the pros and cons. The Bureau may have
thought it had a lot to gain by bringing Camille back into the
fold, but she had even more to lose.
    Crawley eventually relented, but ended the
conversation with yet another reminder of how important her prompt
response was.
    Camille bought the
notebook with the hope that a pros and cons list would help
facilitate a quick decision. It didn’t. In fact, she was no closer
to a resolution now than when she started. And the longer that
notebook remained blank, the longer it took to come up with even a
single legitimate item to write on the con side of the page, the more
Camille doubted her ability to tell Crawley no.
    She sat at her desk after returning from the
City Perk with a pen firmly pressed against the paper, as if the
sheer force of her grip would summon the words that had thus far
eluded her. An hour later she had nothing to show for her efforts
other than a jagged hole in the paper created by the sharp fountain
tip. Agent Crawley would have to wait at least one more day for her
decision, and if Camille were being honest with herself, she would
admit that tomorrow would most likely produce the same result.
    Burying the notebook as far down in her desk
drawer as she could, she allowed her thoughts to drift back to
Jacob Deaver.
    Curious to know more about him, she turned
to her computer for the requisite Google search of his name. All
she managed to find were two Boston Globe articles written in 2011
and 2013 respectively. Standard crime beat material. There were no
images of Jacob or other bibliographical references. The results
for Daniel Sykes’s supposed autobiography were similarly scarce.
There was no title, publisher, or author information. If the book
was as close to publication as Jacob claimed, there should have at
least been some noise on the tabloid sites. But there was
nothing.
    Camille wanted to take this lack of
information as proof that the details Jacob provided were not
truthful, or, at the very least, grossly exaggerated. But she knew
that when it came to anything related to Daniel Sykes, there was no
such thing as a gross exaggeration.
    Given the narcissistic, attention-seeking
nature of most serial killers, Sykes’ desire to keep himself in the
news made absolute sense, as did the timing of the book’s release.
If he had any inkling of the potential copycat, he would do
anything necessary to maintain his stranglehold on headlines that
would certainly be taken from him once the details of the crimes
became widespread.
    There was also the matter of the copycat
himself. Much like Sykes, he would be driven, at least in part, by
the insatiable need to be noticed, feared, and admired. He would
feel a connection to