"Tokyo?" Rebecca echoed, pausing in her methodical stapling of police reports. "Carlton, what do you mean, you're going to Tokyo?"
"I mean that that's where Aurora is going next," Lassiter replied. "We found a receipt for a one-way plane ticket to Japan in her hotel room. If we don't catch her before she leaves Santa Barbara, we'll have to chase her."
"I'm not sure that that's a good idea. It's not your job to chase a serial killer to another country. Especially when she seems to have taken an interest in you!"
"What else am I supposed to do? We have to stop her! And besides, it's not just me. Spencer and Guster are the ones that thought of it."
"I don't know. I just don't know. Have you talked to the Chief about it?"
"Well, no. Not yet."
"Then that might be a good place to start. What does Juliet think?"
"Uh..."
"Oh, my gosh, Carlton. You're seriously telling me that you haven't talked to Juliet about this yet?"
"I'm assuming that Spencer is going to take on that responsibility."
"Well, you know what they say about assuming."
Lassiter couldn't stifle a small smile. "And what do they say, Williams?"
Rebecca raised an eyebrow. "To not to. Of course."
"Of course."
"You need to go to work. And then you need to start discussing. And I don't want you to blow this off. I'm serious. If that's what you're planning, you need to have a real plan. And speaking of plans, since when do you take advice from Shawn Spencer?"
"Since I started running out of options."
"Well, you could always become a monk."
"What?"
"Never mind. Go to work, you lazy bum."
"Lazy? I don't think anyone's ever called me that."
"Well, there's a first time for everything. Coffee's on your desk."
Lassiter took a drink of coffee and decided to bite the bullet. He found Juliet in the evidence locker and started to say, "We should---"
"Talk to the Chief about going to Tokyo?" she finished. "I know. Shawn told me."
"I told Williams he would, but she didn't listen."
"Shawn and Gus will be here in about half an hour. They want us to talk to her together."
As Lassiter and his partner left the evidence locker, Buzz McNab came dashing down the hall, skidding to a clumsy stop in front of them.
"We just got a call," McNab said. "There's been a sixth victim."
Aurora walked away from UCSB with her head held high and a camera in hand, stopping to snap a photo of herself in front of a cute little tourist shop before continuing on. She was wearing bright colors and carrying a backpack, certainly not the type to draw suspicion. In Santa Barbara in the middle of the summer, no one who saw her would think twice. To everyone who passed by, she was just another tourist.
But her outer facade hid her internal fear. Panic was gnawing at her still, in a way she'd never known since her very first kill in a city all the way across the United States. She blamed Lassiter. He was the only difference in the equation, the only variable unaccounted for by her near-perfect formula for murder.
It should have been so simple. Find a man, draw him in, kill him, clean him up, and move on. One plus one equals two. But Lassiter was the radical seven in the equation. One plus one plus the square root of seven equals what? Aurora had never been good at math.
She'd killed the college student quickly enough. He was tall, blond, and a football player. She knew he'd be soon missed, and that was part of the allure of killing him: the risk and adrenaline coupled with the taste of revenge. But she had to admit that she was starting to take far too many risks in this town, and she didn't even know why. She knew that she needed to kill her last victims as soon as possible so she could escape, but why she suddenly felt the need to murder her fifth victim in broad daylight was something she couldn't fathom. She'd always been a creature of the night before, coming and going unseen. Killing by day required a whole new set of camouflage and a whole new set of perceptions.
She'd killed him in a supply closet. Stereotypical enough, but she had watched the place the day before and knew well enough when the janitor would be busy. She'd lured him in by asking him to help lift something heavy. It was the most challenging murder she'd completed yet, but it was still so easy. She needed something real.
She faked sightseeing until she got back to the parking lot where she'd stashed her rental car, all the way across the city. Six down. One to go.
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