“Umm,” she said. “I’m not sure. I guess I wasn’t really paying that much attention because I was in a hurry to leave. Tom was waiting for me. What’s this about?” she asked, starting to sound worried.
“Lily’s missing,” Jack said. “Do me a favor and close your eyes. Tell me anything about the delivery man that you can. How tall was he?”
“Taller than me,” she said automatically. “A lot taller. But not as tall as you, Jack.
He had on black pants and a black and purple shirt. Looked like the regular FedEx uniform.”
“White, black, Asian?”
“White,” she said definitively. “Kind of pale. He wore a hat too.”
“What about hair color?”
“He had a ponytail,” she said. “Long, like a girl. Strawberry blond. I noticed it when he turned around to go down the steps because you don’t see many people with that hair color.”
“Any facial hair?”
“No,” she said. “I didn’t really get a good look at his face. The hat was down low over his eyes.”
“Okay, thanks, Emmy Lu,” Jack said.
“Don’t hang up,” Emmy Lu said hurriedly. “Is this the same guy that killed those other people? He was there at the funeral home today?”
“We think so,” Jack said. “I’ve got to let you go. We’ve got to find Lily.”
He hung up and handed me his knife, and I ran it under the edge of the box, lifting the bottom flap. Once it was open, I upended the box, but only a single piece of paper came out.
“Shame, shame,” I read aloud. “Low self-esteem? Unnoticed? Second best? Not a star? Well, who’s the star now? I told you this was my masterpiece and you mock me. You’re no better than that old hag Burkett. Twenty years ago she told me the theater wasn’t for me. That I didn’t have what it took. But I showed her. Did you enjoy the video I sent to the news station? I guess the lighting could have been better, but sometimes less is more.
“You think I’m not good enough to write my own story? Consider this the beginning of a fresh chapter. A story unlike any of the others. My fifth victim was out of spite. I could have chosen better, but really, killing Trest was quite satisfying in the end. Just because he thinks he’s God doesn’t mean the world revolves around him. He added a certain completeness to the close of my second act.
“But now it’s time for the third act. Lily is lovely. Her beauty will shine for all the world to see, and the curtain will fall when her last breath is taken. She deserves to be center stage. I have something special planned for her. I don’t want to mar her pretty face. Or maybe it’s best to pick up the pieces of her in the aftermath. It seems fitting for a final chapter. To end it all where we began. I don’t mind dying for my art. All the great artists do.
“Just remember that it was you who drove me to this. I should probably thank you. I’m exploring my genius. Really stepping into who I’m supposed to be. Imitation is good. It’s how we learn. I was an apprentice, but now I’m the master. Hurry, the clock is ticking.”
“Colburn, get on the phone with the bomb squad and have them meet us at the Curtain Call,” Jack said.
Jack’s phone rang and he said, “Riley. What have you got?”
Jack’s face hardened and he looked at me before he answered Riley. “Call in a team and work the scene. We’re going to be tied up for a while.”
When Jack hung up he said, “It looks like Trest isn’t our killer. Riley found him in the kitchen with a GSW to the head. On the refrigerator was a circle with a cross inside of it drawn with black marker.”
“Zodiac killer,” I said. I’d seen enough serial killer calling cards in the last forty-eight hours I knew them by heart. “If it’s not Trest then who can it be?”
“Think about it,” Jack said. “The killer referred to Trest as God.”
And then I remembered. Someone else had referred to Peter Trest with the same irritated reverence. “Rick Early,” I said. “It’s been him the whole time. He called him the almighty Trest. Said he had a god complex.
“Got it in one,” Jack said. “Let’s roll.” And then he looked at me, debating whether or not I should go with him, and I solved the issue for him.
“I’m going,” I said. “I’m with you all the way.”
“You’ll wear a vest and do exactly what I say,” he said.
I nodded and followed him to the Tahoe. Cole and Martinez were already speeding away. It was a twenty-minute drive to the Curtain Call following the speed limit, so I figured we’d shave several minutes off that with the speed Jack was going. I used the time to call Sheldon back.
“Hello, Dr. Graves,” he said. “I said that because your name was on the display screen again. I’m not a psychic.”
“Sheldon,” I said, breaking in before he could give me an obscure fact about psychics. “I need you to come to the funeral home. Lily has been taken and we’re headed to find her now.”
“Lily?” he asked, his voice soft. And then he bellowed, “He took Lily? I’m on my way.” His volume took me by surprise. I’d never heard Sheldon yell before.
“Sheldon!” I said. “Sheldon, listen for a second. Don’t touch the bodies downstairs. Jack is sending a crime scene team over to process them.”
“I don’t understand,” he said. “They’ve already been processed. That’s why they’re downstairs.”
“You’ll figure it out once you get there,” I said. “Once they’ve cleared the area you can put them away. We should be back with Lily by then.” I tried to put an optimistic note in my voice for Sheldon’s sake, but I wasn’t sure I succeeded.
“I won’t let you down, Dr. Graves,” Sheldon said soberly. “Just go get Lily. She’s my best friend.”
I hung up and stared out the window, blinking tears from my eyes. This was the hard part of the job. This thing called family and knowing how quickly life could turn to death. Jack was still on the phone, barking orders and making sure a crime scene team was on the way to the funeral home, and that another team was heading to Rick Early’s residence.
“He’s not going to want to go out alive,” I said. “And the more people who go out with him the more successful his story will be.”
“I know,” Jack said. “We’re going to help him do a rewrite. Because I don’t want to think what might happen if he succeeds in following the script.”
Chapter Eighteen
Old Towne Newcastle was empty this late on a Tuesday night, and all the restaurants and bars were closed. The bomb squad for the sheriff’s office had an office out of King George, so they were already on the scene by the time we arrived.
“We’ve got a potential hostage situation inside,” Jack told Commander Rikes. “Just you and the dog go in.”
Rikes was somewhere in his early forties and looked like he’d spent some time in the military. He wore a protective suit and his silver hair was in a buzz cut.
“Dojo and I can’t cover the ground the whole team can,” Rikes said.