She scrutinized the handwriting more closely. You didn’t think I’d forgotten about you, did you? The words were straight with no slant. The apostrophes bowed slightly to the left. The dots and crosses were penned in a straight line. There was no curvature on the k. The n’s had sharp corners instead of arches. From her limited graphology knowledge, this was the handwriting of a middle-aged man. Tobias was fifty-one. It could easily be his. She had to compare it with the old letter to find out for sure.
Where had she put it? Like everything else that meant something to her, she’d put it in the gray box in her wardrobe. Maybe Jenna could retrieve it for her and send a picture.
As she grabbed her phone, another concern jumped into her head. What if this wasn’t a threat at all? What if this was something else?
What if this was a request? Did Tobias want to see her in person again?
The idea chilled her nerve endings to the core. The idea of stepping in that prison again was enough to make her wretch after everything he’d put her through. Once was enough, twice was reprising the role of the fool, but three times was absolute absurdity. She wasn’t going to play his games anymore, and if he was coming for her, so be it. Whether it was him, one of his minions or anyone else, she’d be ready and waiting with a chamber full of bullets for the unlucky bastard who found her.
But she had to know if this was him or not. If she had an answer, she could prepare herself for what might lie ahead. If it was a mystery, it would eat her up. She scrolled through her contacts until she found Jenna’s number in her phonebook, but just as she was about to push CALL, a different number flashed up on the screen.
A cell number, one she didn’t recognize.
“Hello?” she answered.
She knew the voice. It simply said, “There was another murder last night.”
Ella pinched the root of her nose and sighed. Another layer of grief to the pile.
“I’ll be right there, Sheriff,” she said.
***
Ella and Byford got to the crime scene at just after seven am. The home of Barry Windham was located at 23 Hartshone Avenue, a suburban neighborhood tucked away behind a Newark Reservoir. The home in question was located on the end row but visibility from the surrounding homes was high.
“Not as discreet as the other houses,” Byford said, straightening his tie as they exited the car.
“No. On first impressions, he must have targeted this house specifically.”
“Agreed. Let”s see what we have.”
Uniformed police officers bordered the garden to keep away onlookers. At the gate, Ella and Byford flashed their badges to the officer in charge. He waved them through.
“Hold on,” he said. He clicked on his radio and pulled it to his mouth. “Feds are here.”
A second later, Sheriff Hunter appeared at the front door and waved the agents up. The red ring around his eyes suggested he hadn’t slept well for a while, Ella thought.
“We got a bad one,” Sheriff Hunter said. “Bloodbath.”
The dread began to mount. In a situation like this, the absolute best-case scenario was that the crime scene mimicked the others down to a tee. Patterns were easier to follow than chaos. If things were different, it meant the killer was evolving or experimenting, both of which made things much more difficult for investigators.
“Masks and gloves please, ladies and gentlemen.” Sheriff Hunter handed them the hardware. They put them on and walked into the home, first entering onto a carpeted hallway. The smell of coppery blood took center stage, overwhelming the faint aroma of mahogany Ella picked up from the furniture. Even with his mask on, Byford covered his nose.
When they turned the corner into the lounge, the true horror made itself known. This time, the coins were yet to be removed from the victim’s eye sockets, so Ella was able to see this monstrosity in the flesh.
“Christ,” she said, averting her eyes for a moment. “This is atrocious. This poor man.” The victim must have been in his sixties or older, on the slightly larger side too. He lay sprawled on the couch, two glimmering coins concealing his eyes, three wounds decorating his body. She turned to Byford, who was consuming the scene with a look of unease.
“You okay, Nigel?”
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s just unbelievable. The things we can do. This doesn’t even look like something from this world.”
Ella was a little surprised at his display of emotion. Maybe he was human after all. “What do we know so far?” She directed her question to the sheriff.
“This is Barry Windham, 62 years old, lives alone. He worked as an electrician until last year.”
Banker, antique dealer, electrician. When it came to the world of coins, one of those things was not like the others.
“Who called it in?” asked Byford.
“The next door neighbor. She heard a scream around one am, then she heard some banging. That’s when she called us. We got here pretty quickly but didn’t catch sight of anyone. We patrolled the area all night too. Nothing.”
“A disturbance. That didn’t happen with the others,” Ella said. Up by the sofa, a technician knelt down and took some close-up photos of Barry’s wounds. When she left, she signaled to the agents that the scene was theirs.
Ella moved closer to the body and started at the familiar part – the neck. All of the victims, including this one, had deep lacerations to the neck. But here, something was different. The other cuts had been precise, intended, almost surgically accurate. But the deep cut across Barry Windham’s neck was anything but. Fragments of bone and muscle tissue were visible, and if death was the goal, there was no need for this to be the case. In contrast to the precision shown with the other victims, Barry Windham’s death blow was chaotic and uncontrolled.
“A lot more stabbing went on,” Sheriff Hunter said.
Ella continued down the body, coming to the next wound near the heart. Not quite through the heart, maybe an inch away. She suddenly remembered what Daniel Garcia had said about Santerian sacrifices and panicked a little, wondering for a second if she hadn’t made another grave mistake. She looked at the coins in the eyes, finding these ones were both facing tails.
She took a moment to consider it. These were the facts. She couldn’t change them, but the other victims didn’t follow suit. If Ripley was here, she would tell Ella exactly that. Mold the theories to fit the facts, not the other way around. With that in mind, she erased the word Santeria from her head and focused on the dead body in front of her.
Next in line was a puncture to the victim’s stomach. About two inches wide, meaning the blade had penetrated the flesh and then been dragged down. This wasn’t an indication of a planned attack. Again, it was untidy, almost desperate.
“These two got into a fight, but our unsub managed to subdue him.”
“This blood spatter runs from the couch to the wall,” Byford added. “At some point, they battled over here, then our killer moved him back to the couch.”
“I think so. We know our killer strikes people when they’re sleeping, so maybe Barry managed to catch him before the killer attacked.”
“Either that or he cut him off at the pass.” Byford inspected the blood stains against the wall. “The spatter is lighter here, so he most likely stabbed him here first. Either they got into an altercation, or Barry was waiting for him when he turned this corner.”