And that was it. That was all the pertinent information in the file. The police had interviewed Sandra’s friends and family and had taken a long, hard look at her boyfriend, but none of them seemed likely to have killed her, and the cops didn’t have any other leads. No one with a grudge against Sandra, no one she owed money to, no one with any reason to hurt her.
I flipped back to the beginning of the file and read through all the info again, but nothing changed, and I didn’t get any brilliant new insights.
I examined a photo of Sandra’s swollen face that was included in the file. Young, blond, pretty. At least before the Dollmaker had gotten his hands on her. I knew rage when I saw it, and this bastard was chock-full of it. Once he’d started beating Sandra, he hadn’t stopped until she was dead, and he hadn’t been too particular about where or how hard he hit her. He’d broken her nose, her ribs, and both of her collarbones.
But there was no real clue in anything that the killer had done to Sandra. In fact, the only real, tangible clue we had was the spider runes that had been drawn on the palms of Lacey Lawrence, the latest victim.
Silvio had given me photos of the marks, and I picked them up and studied them. But in each one, I saw the exact same thing as before: a circle with eight thin rays radiating out of it, all done in blood-red lipstick.
Disgusted, I threw down the photos, and they both glided to a stop right next to that photo of Sandra Reeves’s beaten face. I glared at all three pictures, but then I noticed the one, single, striking difference between them.
How battered and broken the girl was compared with how very neat and precise the spider runes were.
At some point during his sadistic ritual, the Dollmaker had flown into a deadly rage and killed the poor girl he’d abducted. Girl after girl beaten and strangled, with no change in the pattern at all.
But the spider runes were different. These marks had been drawn with a cold, steady, dispassionate hand. No smudges, no hesitation lines, no places where he’d stopped and started or traced over the runes. It was almost as if . . . maybe . . . possibly . . . the symbols had been drawn by someone other than the Dollmaker.
I frowned and rocked back in my chair, mulling over that disturbing new possibility. But how could that have even happened? The Dollmaker had dumped Lacey Lawrence at Northern Aggression and had kidnapped Elissa to take her place. So if a second person was involved, he would have had to come across Lacey’s body at Northern Aggression sometime after the killer had left it there, pulled out a tube of lipstick, and drawn the marks on her palms. What kind of person would do that? And who went around carrying blood-red lipstick in their pocket?
But if there was a second person involved and he knew who the Dollmaker was and had maybe even followed the killer to Northern Aggression, then why didn’t he call in an anonymous tip to the police? Why not try to save Elissa himself? Why draw my runes on the dead girl instead?
My head pounded with all the questions, speculations, and what-ifs. I felt like I was snared in someone else’s spiderweb, and everything I did only made the sticky threads twist and tangle tighter and tighter around me. Nothing about this made any sense, and Elissa was running out of time for me to figure it out.
“Does anyone have anything useful?” Finn growled, throwing down a stack of papers on top of his desk. “Because I have fuck-all nothing. No fingerprints, no DNA, nothing that could lead us back to the killer. This guy is a ghost. He’s a sick fucking ghost, and I have no idea how we’re going to find him.”
Owen shook his head. “I don’t have anything either. Nothing that would tell us who or where this guy is.”
Silvio shook his head too. “Nor do I.”
Ryan sighed. “Nothing here that I haven’t seen a dozen times before.”
Bria also tossed her papers down, as disgusted and frustrated as everyone else. “How do you think Ryan, Xavier, and I feel? We’ve been looking into this guy for months now, and he’s killed several more women in that time span. Soon he’ll have another murder on his résumé, and we’ll be getting a call about Elissa’s body being found somewhere.”
A tense, heavy silence dropped over the office. Bria winced, knowing that she’d said the wrong thing. Jade slowly pushed back from her desk and got to her feet, a sick, stricken look on her face. Bria opened her mouth to apologize, but Jade held out her hand and shook her head. She left the office and went into the back of the house. A second later, a door banged shut, making all of us flinch.
“Dammit,” Bria snarled, massaging her temples. “I wasn’t thinking.”
To my surprise, Ryan got to his feet. “It’s okay. Jade knows that. We all know that. I’ll go talk to her.” A grim smile twisted his lips. “I’m good at dealing with grieving folks.”
He too disappeared into the back of the house. A soft knock sounded, and a few seconds later, a door creaked open. A short, muffled conversation took place, and the door shut much more quietly than it had before.
That left Bria, Finn, Owen, Silvio, and me in the office. That tense, heavy silence fell over us for a second time, but Bria sighed and picked up her files again. So did Finn, Owen, and Silvio, and we all went back to work.
Since I hadn’t found anything in the first box of information, I grabbed a second one from the stacks in the corner, took it over to my desk, and cracked it open. The very first thing that caught my eye was the victim’s name: Joanna Mosley.
Mosley? As in Stuart Mosley, the president of First Trust bank? The man who’d hired Elissa to be his date the night she disappeared? No, no way. It couldn’t be.
But it was.
Sure enough, Stuart Mosley was listed as Joanna’s great-grandfather, and he’d leaned on the police hard, demanding that they find out who’d murdered her, according to the detectives’ notes. But those detectives hadn’t had any more luck than Bria and Xavier, and the case had gone unsolved, much to Mosley’s frustration and disappointment.
I flipped back to the beginning of the file and read through all the info again, but nothing changed, and I didn’t get any brilliant new insights.
I examined a photo of Sandra’s swollen face that was included in the file. Young, blond, pretty. At least before the Dollmaker had gotten his hands on her. I knew rage when I saw it, and this bastard was chock-full of it. Once he’d started beating Sandra, he hadn’t stopped until she was dead, and he hadn’t been too particular about where or how hard he hit her. He’d broken her nose, her ribs, and both of her collarbones.
But there was no real clue in anything that the killer had done to Sandra. In fact, the only real, tangible clue we had was the spider runes that had been drawn on the palms of Lacey Lawrence, the latest victim.
Silvio had given me photos of the marks, and I picked them up and studied them. But in each one, I saw the exact same thing as before: a circle with eight thin rays radiating out of it, all done in blood-red lipstick.
Disgusted, I threw down the photos, and they both glided to a stop right next to that photo of Sandra Reeves’s beaten face. I glared at all three pictures, but then I noticed the one, single, striking difference between them.
How battered and broken the girl was compared with how very neat and precise the spider runes were.
At some point during his sadistic ritual, the Dollmaker had flown into a deadly rage and killed the poor girl he’d abducted. Girl after girl beaten and strangled, with no change in the pattern at all.
But the spider runes were different. These marks had been drawn with a cold, steady, dispassionate hand. No smudges, no hesitation lines, no places where he’d stopped and started or traced over the runes. It was almost as if . . . maybe . . . possibly . . . the symbols had been drawn by someone other than the Dollmaker.
I frowned and rocked back in my chair, mulling over that disturbing new possibility. But how could that have even happened? The Dollmaker had dumped Lacey Lawrence at Northern Aggression and had kidnapped Elissa to take her place. So if a second person was involved, he would have had to come across Lacey’s body at Northern Aggression sometime after the killer had left it there, pulled out a tube of lipstick, and drawn the marks on her palms. What kind of person would do that? And who went around carrying blood-red lipstick in their pocket?
But if there was a second person involved and he knew who the Dollmaker was and had maybe even followed the killer to Northern Aggression, then why didn’t he call in an anonymous tip to the police? Why not try to save Elissa himself? Why draw my runes on the dead girl instead?
My head pounded with all the questions, speculations, and what-ifs. I felt like I was snared in someone else’s spiderweb, and everything I did only made the sticky threads twist and tangle tighter and tighter around me. Nothing about this made any sense, and Elissa was running out of time for me to figure it out.
“Does anyone have anything useful?” Finn growled, throwing down a stack of papers on top of his desk. “Because I have fuck-all nothing. No fingerprints, no DNA, nothing that could lead us back to the killer. This guy is a ghost. He’s a sick fucking ghost, and I have no idea how we’re going to find him.”
Owen shook his head. “I don’t have anything either. Nothing that would tell us who or where this guy is.”
Silvio shook his head too. “Nor do I.”
Ryan sighed. “Nothing here that I haven’t seen a dozen times before.”
Bria also tossed her papers down, as disgusted and frustrated as everyone else. “How do you think Ryan, Xavier, and I feel? We’ve been looking into this guy for months now, and he’s killed several more women in that time span. Soon he’ll have another murder on his résumé, and we’ll be getting a call about Elissa’s body being found somewhere.”
A tense, heavy silence dropped over the office. Bria winced, knowing that she’d said the wrong thing. Jade slowly pushed back from her desk and got to her feet, a sick, stricken look on her face. Bria opened her mouth to apologize, but Jade held out her hand and shook her head. She left the office and went into the back of the house. A second later, a door banged shut, making all of us flinch.
“Dammit,” Bria snarled, massaging her temples. “I wasn’t thinking.”
To my surprise, Ryan got to his feet. “It’s okay. Jade knows that. We all know that. I’ll go talk to her.” A grim smile twisted his lips. “I’m good at dealing with grieving folks.”
He too disappeared into the back of the house. A soft knock sounded, and a few seconds later, a door creaked open. A short, muffled conversation took place, and the door shut much more quietly than it had before.
That left Bria, Finn, Owen, Silvio, and me in the office. That tense, heavy silence fell over us for a second time, but Bria sighed and picked up her files again. So did Finn, Owen, and Silvio, and we all went back to work.
Since I hadn’t found anything in the first box of information, I grabbed a second one from the stacks in the corner, took it over to my desk, and cracked it open. The very first thing that caught my eye was the victim’s name: Joanna Mosley.
Mosley? As in Stuart Mosley, the president of First Trust bank? The man who’d hired Elissa to be his date the night she disappeared? No, no way. It couldn’t be.
But it was.
Sure enough, Stuart Mosley was listed as Joanna’s great-grandfather, and he’d leaned on the police hard, demanding that they find out who’d murdered her, according to the detectives’ notes. But those detectives hadn’t had any more luck than Bria and Xavier, and the case had gone unsolved, much to Mosley’s frustration and disappointment.
