The media initially ignored the fact that this incident had nothing to do with the two math teacher killings. The early evening headlines read: SERIAL KILLER DEAD? And underneath, in smaller letters, because math teachers weren’t very sexy:
MATH TEACHERS TARGETED. The first two murders were detailed yet again. Only way down the page was it mentioned that the kidnapping and attempted murder of James Marple by Marvin Phelps of Mount Pleasant, Virginia, had nothing to do with the two other math teacher killings.
Par for the course.
2
S avich wasn’t stupid. He knew it when he saw it, and the gorgeous woman with the long black hair pinned up with a big clip, wearing a hot-pink leotard, was coming on to him.
He didn’t know her name, but he’d seen her around the gym a couple of times, both times in the last week, now that he thought about it. She was strong, supple, and fit, all qualities he admired in anyone, male or female.
He nodded to her, pressed the incline pad higher on the treadmill, and went back to reading the report Dane Carver, one of his CAU agents, had slipped under his arm as he’d walked out of the office that evening.
Bernice Ward, murdered six days before, was shot in the forehead at close range as she was walking out of the 7- Eleven on Grand Street in Oxford, Maryland, at ten o’clock at night, carrying a bag that held a half-gallon of nonfat milk and two packages of rice cakes, something Savich believed should be used for packing boxes, not eating.
There had been no witnesses, nothing captured on the 7-Eleven video camera or the United Maryland Bank ATM camera diagonally across the street. The 7-Eleven clerk heard the shot, found Mrs. Ward, and called it in. It was a.38 caliber bullet, directly between Bernice Ward’s eyes. She’d been married, no children. The police were all over the husband. As yet, there was no motive in sight.