Brett gave Paige a little bit of time to look over the pictures as he grabbed his phone to call Alex, even knowing he would’ve already gone home by now.

"I need you to meet me at the station in a few minutes."

"Wagner, you know we’re not dating, right? This is two nights in a row you're dragging me out of my apartment."

Brett chuckled. "Just do it. Get a conference room where we can spread out and make sure Captain Ameling is gone. I'm going to be bringing Paige with me."

“This is sounding dirtier and dirtier. “

“In your dreams, Olivier. We’ve got a serial killer on our hands. I'm sure of it now."

Alex whistled through his teeth. "All right, I'll see you in a few."

Brett walked back to where Paige was still studying the pictures.

"I can only recognize some of them because of their files,” he told her. “If I hadn't already seen pictures of them like this I would never be able to reconcile them with the earlier pictures either. There's no reason to think you should've been able to."

"I really had hoped I was just crazy. That my brain was broken after the attack or whatever. That I just had something dark inside me that needed to get out while I was sleeping and I was just drawing violence against pretend women.”

He knew it had to be hard. "I wish they were just figments of your imagination too." Not only because of the loss of human life but because it would've made Paige feel so much better.

"Don't you think it's really freaky that I did this? Aren't you tempted to arrest me or question me further?"

Brett took her hand and led her out of the room.

"No. Not at all."

Her eyes narrowed as she looked at him. "How can you say that? There has to be some sort of doubt. That I had to be present at these crimes or something like that."

Brett sat her down at the table so that he could face her eye to eye. 

"This is why I left last night. I had to work through what I saw to be my three options."

"That I was a criminal had to be one option."

Brett nodded. "Yes, that was an option. Actually, honestly, it was really less that I thought you were involved in the crimes and more that I thought you could've hacked into the Portland PD computer files or something."

Realization dawned in her eyes. "That I saw the pictures and then drew them. That I lied about being asleep when I did it."

Brett could see the possibility of it hurt her. But this conversation was necessary. He had to let her know that he had considered all the options, but when it was all said and done, he trusted her.

"Yes. That was actually the most logical choice. Nobody could blame you if you needed law enforcement attention focused back on you. "

He hated that tears welled in her eyes.

"You thought I was crazy." 

Brett smiled at her gently. "Actually, wanting attention made you not crazy. Believing you drew murder victims in your sleep? That made both of us a little crazy. I needed something that was a possible logical explanation."

"I can't blame you for that. I know I'm telling the truth and it still sounds completely nuts to me."

"It was less about believing you and more about it going against everything I knew about law enforcement. If you could do this, Paige.” Brett gripped her arms gently, wanting to make sure she knew how difficult this was for him. “If I accepted that you could draw murder victims in your sleep, then it had to change how I looked at law enforcement in general.”

Paige nodded. “Adrienne’s husband said the same thing when he first worked with her."

"Yeah, I talked to Conner Perigo today.”

"To see if I was a nut case?"

Brett chuckled. "No. More to deal with what I was just saying. I needed someone to tell me that there were other ways of solving crimes than just the way I've always done it."

"So you believe me because Conner said I wasn't a murderer."

She wasn't understanding him at all. "No, the opposite. The reason I called him was because I knew I could trust you. That you were not a murderer, crazy, or someone just seeking attention."

"Really?"

"Yes. I knew I had to either be all in –completely believe in you– or just walk away altogether. Once I decided I trusted you? Then it was just a question about how to best use the information you could provide. While also protecting you."

Brett had no idea how much his faith in her had meant to her until that moment.

"Thank you," she whispered.

He reached over and grabbed her hands. "Thank you for trusting me. I can't believe you've carried this burden alone for so long. No more. We're going to use your gift to catch a killer.”

“I hope so.”

* * *

As planned, the homicide area of the Portland police department was almost empty by the time Brett arrived with Paige. Brett wasn't exactly sneaking her in, there wasn't anything illegal about what he was doing, but he knew Captain Ameling would throw an absolute fit if the other man knew Paige was here.

Which was nothing compared to the seizure he would have if he saw Paige's pictures.

Alex was waiting for them when Brett ushered Paige into the conference room.

"I feel like I'm doing something risqué," Alex chuckled. He turned to Paige, shaking her hand. “Glad to see again the lady who is going to get both of us fired."

Paige turned alarmed eyes to Brett. "I don't want anyone to get into trouble."

Brett slipped an arm around her shoulder, to reassure her, but also because Alex hadn't let go of her hand yet and was still smiling charmingly at her.

“Nobody’s going to get fired. But Olivier may get a punch in the jaw if he doesn’t let go of you.”

Alex grinned and dropped her hand. "And trust me, we’ll take the risk of getting in trouble if it means catching a killer. So what have you guys got?"

Brett took out the drawings and began placing them in groupings around the conference room table.

He had to give Alex credit, the man took the drawings pretty well.

While he studied them, Brett went to his desk to get the files he’d been working on last week. When he came back he was able to place a file on top of three different groupings of pictures.

"Victim A, Charlotte Winters. Victim B, Heather Brown. Victim C, Alexandra Dobbs. All three of these women have been murdered in the last two years."

Alex picked up the pictures Paige had drawn of victim A and compared it to the case file. He then did the same with victim B and victim C. There was no doubt that these pictures and cases belonged to the same women.

"No arrests for any of them. Different causes of death and no seeming connection between the victims," Alex said.

"That's basically what Ameling told me when I thought these might all be the work of the same killer."

Alex shrugged. "Honestly, outside of the fact that Paige drew them all I don't see much connection between them either."

"Let's try to identify the women in these other drawings and see what we’re looking at once we've got all the information."

It took hours and it was why Brett had taken the chance at bringing Paige and the drawings into the station. Only here could they access the information and databases they needed to try to identify the other women based solely on a picture.

Because most of them had been declared missing before they were murdered, they were all in the facial recognition database. Four hours later they had identified the women in every picture Paige had drawn except for one.

"OK, we’ll come back to her in a minute," Brett said. "Let's see what patterns we can find with the others."

They had a total of eight dead women. Alex and Brett had rearranged the piles on the table and arranged them in chronological order.

"I know you think this is all the same killer," Alex said, looking over the photos again. "But it's possible that Paige is just drawing women who die." He turned to Paige. "Which still sucks for you, so I'm sorry. I can't imagine that drawing these are any fun."

Paige had helped them in any way she could for the last few hours, but as they became more and more certain that all the women were dead she had withdrawn. She was now sitting in a chair at the side of the room.

"I'm not really consciously aware of what I'm drawing when I'm drawing it. It's only afterwards that I realize how gruesome it is."

"Regardless, it still has to be jarring."

Paige nodded, not saying anything further. Brett knew for a fact what a toll it took on her, at least physically. The fact that she hadn't ever looked back through these pictures attested to the toll it took on her emotionally. How could it not?

She looked exhausted. He moved over to her and kissed her on her forehead. “I’ll take you home soon, okay? We've got the identity of these women and that's what we needed to do in stealth. The rest Alex and I can work on without you here.”

"I'm all right. Let's see if we can spot a pattern. I'm good with patterns."

Brett knew he would need to get her out of the station in the next couple hours just to make sure no one came in early and spotted her. It was better to keep Paige out of everyone's line of sight as much as possible.

The three of them took a “before” picture of each of the women and placed them on a whiteboard in the conference room, ending with Teresa Cavasos. Underneath, they put the date of death, the cause of death, and the location of death. Pertinent details about each woman –age, marital status, height and weight– followed underneath.

Then they all leaned back against the conference room table and studied the white board.

"Let's start with the obvious," Brett said. "All women, between the ages of 25 and 35, all relatively similar in stature and weight."

Alex nodded. "But different colored hair, and really not similar in appearance. Although I agree, they are all pretty small. Probably wouldn't be able to put up as much of a fight."

Paige's petite stature also met that requisite, but Brett didn't say anything to that effect.

"They're all unmarried," Paige said softly. "None of them had children. I'm not sure if that's important or not."

"Let's assume everything is important right now," Brett said.

"And, actually, that's an important distinction and goes towards proving Brett's theory that this is all the same guy. It's not impossible, but eight women killed, all who are that age and not married nor have kids? That goes a little further than coincidence."

"They all lived in west coast states. Three in California, three here in Oregon, and two were in Washington State.” Brett knew that didn't necessarily mean anything conclusive.

"The reason it doesn't fit as a serial killer pattern is because of the different causes of death." Alex pointed out.

"That's what Ameling said too." Brett nodded as he sighed. He looked over at Paige. "Killers tend to stick with one MO when it comes to killing. Don’t tend to deviate from that method. The same killer probably wouldn't jump between strangulation," – he pointed to the picture of the third victim – "stabbing, and burning.”

“Different causes of death but they were all severely beaten before they were killed,” Alex offered.

Brett saw Paige wince from the corner of his eye. This couldn’t be easy for her.

"They were killed on different days of the week," Paige said.

“Yeah, but look, all the dates are somewhat similar," Alex offered. “Not exactly the same but close. Five were towards the end of the month, two are on the 15th, and one is on the 13th."

Alex's words reminded Brett of why he had thought about this case being similar in the first place.

"Paydays," he murmured. "I need a calendar." While Brett brought one up on his phone, Alex looked more closely at the date of each murder. 

"You could be right," he said. "Look up April 13 of last year. Was that a Friday?"

Brett found it and turned to Alex. "Yes. So on that month someone who got paid twice a month would've been paid on the 13th rather than the normal 15th, because the 15th fell on a Sunday."

Brett looked up the other dates. "They are definitely all paydays. The last day of the month, or closest Friday to it or the 15th of the month or the closest Friday to it."

"If it wasn't for the different methods of death, I would be in full support of your one killer theory. But serial killers are almost always consistent. We both know that. "

Paige stood up from where she'd been leaning against the table and began studying the whiteboard more closely. “He is consistent. So consistent he can’t change his own pattern.”

Brett stood too. “How so? He kills in three different ways.”

She walked over to the wall and put her finger on the corner of the picture of the first victim. “Strangled.” She touched the second. “Stabbed.” She touched the third. “Burned.”

Brett shook his head, walking over to stand with her at the pictures. “I already thought of this. Looked for a distinct pattern in the order of the killing methods.”

Paige wrote out a list on the white board next to the pictures.

1) Strangled. 2) Stabbed. 3) Strangled. 4) Burned. 5) Strangled. 6) Stabbed. 7) Burned. 8) Strangled.

Brett nodded. “Yes, that’s correct, but there’s no pattern. Teresa Cavasos was the last and she was strangled.”

Paige looked over at him. “According to the dates, I should’ve been victim number 3. I would’ve been his ‘burn’ victim. He planned to leave me in that burning building. That’s how I got away. He’d already doused the building with gasoline and it caught on fire too early.”

Alex studied what she’d written on the board. “Even if that was true, it still wouldn’t make a consistent pattern in the killing methodology. Too many strangles.”

“It would be consistent if he has OCD. If he killed Victim C, Alexandra Dobbs, the woman after me, by strangling her, only to realize that was unacceptable to his pattern.”

Brett realized Paige was right. What looked like an inconsistency with the pattern might actually be the killer resetting it.

“You should’ve been burned. Then the next victim would’ve been strangled. But you got away so it messed him up.”

Realization dawned in Alex’s eyes. “So he strangled the next victim, but that didn’t give him the closure he needed, so he had to go back and burn someone.”

Paige nodded. “Exactly. The pattern is strangle, stab, burn.”

They all studied the pictures. It made twisted sense and tied together all the killings in a more believable way.

“A serial killer whose MO is a pattern, not just a single way of killing,” Brett murmured.

Alex nodded. “It’s not even the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“I should’ve been dead.”

Paige’s words were so soft he almost didn’t hear them. He stepped closer to put an arm around her. “Baby…”

She stepped back, arms wrapped around her middle. “I know you suggested it before, but I should’ve died.”

Brett wouldn’t let her close herself off. He wrapped his arms around her. “But you didn’t. You survived. And thank God.”

“If I had died, then one of those other women would still be alive.”

“You can’t think like that, Paige,” Alex said. “There’s only one person responsible for the death of these women. The killer.”

She didn’t look convinced. She untangled herself from Brett’s arms and walked to the table picking up the “before” picture of the woman they hadn’t identified yet. “If we’re right about the pattern then this woman will be the next victim and she’ll be stabbed.”

The woman was young, maybe late twenties, small in stature like Paige. She had black hair that fell down to the middle of her back. In the drawing she was laughing, looking at someone or something to the side. She didn’t seem to have a care in the world.

“We’ll find her,” Brett said.

Paige slid the other picture of the women over to Brett. It was another picture of violence, another brutally beaten face. By process of elimination they had determined it was the same woman, because she certainly could not be matched by appearance.

“But will she look like that when you do?”