He left the store and carried on down the street, smelling the flowers as he went. They were delightful. Fresh and fragrant, like a spring day on a picnic blanket. The girl had a good eye, even if she didn’t know it yet.
There was a spring in his step, a pep and bounce that made him almost want to cartwheel down the street. He smiled and nodded at an older lady walking with a cane, surprising her into returning it. She looked like the kind of woman who had fallen out of the habit of smiling at younger people. A shame. If he’d had the time, he would have stopped and helped her with her shopping, shown her that they weren’t all bad.
Still, he couldn’t keep her waiting. His lady love. He took another sniff of the blooms, cradling them carefully in his arms to be sure that they wouldn’t get crushed. He would do the movie trope gag, he decided—hold them behind his back when she answered the door and then pull them out as a surprise. Until the last minute, she wouldn’t know whether he was going to pull out the flowers or a knife. Oh, how they would laugh! He imagined her clutching her cheeks in joy, gabbling on about finding a vase and some water, setting them up in pride of place on the table. Then he’d know he was in her good books, every time he looked over and saw the flowers.
He wondered who would be his next. He was always on the lookout, always eagerly waiting. He was expecting to be able to find out soon—after all, two in a row was a new rush for him, and he didn’t want it to end. Perhaps the afternoon was going to bring some new kind of fun. He hoped for it—wished for it. He was still riding this high, and he didn’t want it to end.
He daydreamed as he walked, trying to picture another woman who would fall victim to his machete next. Perhaps she would be a blonde again. He did enjoy doing the blondes the most. Some little blonde who would be completely unaware until he was right upon her.
“Afternoon,” he called out cheerfully to a man who was just coming out of a nearby door, one of his girlfriend’s neighbors. “Nice day, isn’t it?”
The man looked around, startled—as everyone always seemed to be—to be addressed by someone in the street. What was the world coming to, that such simple social niceties had been almost utterly discarded. “Lovely day,” the man agreed. “You have a good one.”
He tipped his hand into the air, acknowledgment and thanks rolled into one, as he arrived at the doorstep. He pressed the buzzer and waited, humming to himself, just remembering at the last minute to stick the flowers behind his back to hide them.
CHAPTER TEN
Zoe swore as they rounded a bend and reached up to adjust the shade across the windshield, swinging it around to cover the driver’s side window. The sun was brutal, hot despite the air conditioning turned on full blast inside their rental car, and so bright that she was squinting through her sunglasses.
“I forgot how bad it gets this time of year,” she muttered.
“It’s not that different from D.C.,” Shelley said mildly. “There’s a heatwave on across the country right now. I think you have to turn left up ahead.”
Zoe knew where she needed to turn, though she held back from saying as much. This place was bringing back too many memories. She’d traveled this road before, remembered the twists and turns the way her mind always grabbed onto patterns and distances. The town of White Arrow was up ahead, less of a destination than Broken Ridge with fewer stores and amenities, but still a thriving settlement in its own right. The population was around 2,500; a smaller number than they were used to dealing with in most cases, but still a sobering reminder that, for now, almost all of that figure added to their potential suspect pool.
Zoe turned left, slowing the pace of their vehicle as they moved away from the highway into the populated center. A few stores lined the road, a school, a library. A parking lot bustling with occupants, a few restaurants. Zoe passed all of it by; they had already arranged to meet Sheriff Hawthorne at the first murder scene, Michelle Young’s own home.
“It’s busy,” Shelley noted. “Busier than I expected.”
Zoe glanced down at the GPS, programmed for the exact address they wanted. “It will thin out.” She knew this area, knew what it would be like once they’d gotten out past the hub of the town.
Shelley didn’t comment on the fact that she was right as they pulled away from the stores and visitors and into a more residential area. Here, there was space between buildings. Yards were wide even when the houses were small. The one thing there always seemed to be an abundance of in Nebraska was space, unless you were a teenage girl cloistered away with your psychotic mother for most of each day, waiting for the moment you could finally make your escape.
Zoe pushed away the dark clouds of her past as she pulled up the car onto the sidewalk outside a neat two-story property with a closely manicured front yard and yellow-painted door. The parking space outside the home was already occupied—first with an unremarkable sedan, and behind it, the sheriff’s car. Evidently, he was already waiting for them.
Opening the car door, Zoe stepped out into the full heat of the day. She hated this. Summers always made her think of the worst times of her life: stuck with her mother for long months, without friends to play with, without at least the diversion of school—even if that had never been a place of particular welcome, either. The heat oppressive in their small home, the A/C not always working. Reading textbooks by the light of a candle because her dad had lost his job again and got drunk and walked out, and the cool of the night the only time of welcome relief.
Exactly the kind of memory that would do her no good here, when she needed to focus on the crime scene and learn what she could to stop a killer from striking again.
Shelley joined her on the sidewalk, both of them glancing up and down the neighborhood. There was only an empty space opposite, the houses here built in such a way that no one had to feel particularly close to their neighbors, alternating at spread-out distances. Zoe noted someone watching from the upstairs window of the nearest house on the left side, hanging out on the windowsill to get a breath of air, the light glinting off their spectacles. The distance was far enough that she wasn’t tempted to yell to get their attention. That would be why, despite the fact that Michelle Young was murdered in the middle of the day, the sheriff had as yet turned up no witnesses at all.
The front door was propped open by a large white stone, apparently painted that color. Zoe glanced down at the edging of the property and noticed where a line of matching stones ended in an abrupt disturbance of brown earth against the green turf, no doubt pried out by one of the sheriff’s men to stop the place from locking.
Without discussing it, Zoe and Shelley walked inside. They needed to examine the property—the whole of it, in case there was further evidence inside. “Sheriff Hawthorne?” Zoe called out, pushing the door aside and stepping into the cooler shade of the hall.
She breathed a sigh of relief momentarily. It was nicer in here. The air was still warm as it lingered near the doorway, but the interior of the house was cool, shades still drawn over most of the windows. It was darker, and her eyes took a moment to fully adjust, but it was not dim enough that she would be tempted to draw open the shades. The sheriff stepped out of the kitchen, his white hair slicked down to his head with sweat when he lifted his hat in greeting.