"Another dead end, but at least he spared the girl. She has no clue where he kept her on any helpful information?"
"The doctors think he somehow traumatized her . . . maybe with threats against her of her family. In any event, she's got one story and she's sticking to it like a nightly prayer, at least for now. Perhaps in time when she feels more secure she'll open up."
I churned the matter over in my mind. "What's next? We just wait until he snatches another child?"
Brennan paused before responding. "I'm trying to guess what he might do; put myself in his boots. He has to believe you guys truly exist and he may guess some of your limits and capabilities."
"How do you figure?"
"He knows you can see where you can't be physically present. Would he surmise you're as limited by the dark as the rest of us earthlings? He knows you can pop up anywhere, geographically; you've proved that to him. Let's hope he doesn't figure you can't go back more than a day or two. That's when all the weird tips occur, not further back in the past, but he doesn't know that. He may understand you need the specific time of the incident. Let's hope not because he'll try to take advantage of that and do his deeds where you can't pin-point the abduction exactly. Then you're screwed. He recognizes you can't physically stop him; otherwise you would have when you've had the chance. He must sense you're limited to observing what happens."
"He's learning more about us than we're learning about him!"
"Good point. And he's using that knowledge to his advantage . . . better disguises, changing his MO, carefully executing his abductions."
"But not stopping the heinous acts he's committing. The way you tell it, it sounds nearly impossible for us to catch him if he learns everything we can and might do."
"Remember, we're not fools at my end," Brennan said with a hint of defensiveness. "Give us some credit. We've been stalking guys like him with some success for years, the old fashioned way. Progress is being made."
"In what way?"
"There are a few older cases that bear similarities to these kidnapping- murders. Then there's a break of several years. There's a theory he may have spent time behind bars and been released a year or so ago and started up again."
"Great!"
"Yeah, but remember a lot of guys go in the joint and a lot of guys get out. We don't even have a specific state. Besides, if he was imprisoned for a crime like these murders, he'd still be rotting behind bars. The gap in the abductions we're looking at is under ten years, meaning he was probably sent up for a lesser crime that could be anything from robbery, burglary, serious assault or rape. That covers a lot of bad guys."