“I bet.”
“I think … shit. I think I have to, we have to make it official. Start looking. I mean. Jesus,” he whispered, and it was somewhere between a prayer and a curse. “I don’t know what to think,” he admitted. “Don’t know what to do.” He sounded befuddled. Worried. So unlike the confident, ambitious Jamison Kittle that Reed knew.
“I’ll do whatever you think best,” Reed said, but he was already forming a plan.
“Give me an hour to pull myself together. The girls … they’re okay. I talked to Roxanne, and she knows that Naomi’s missing, but she’s keeping it from the kids. For now. I, um, I just don’t want to worry them unnecessarily, you know.”
“Right.”
“If we could keep this within the department, away from the press?”
“I’ll try.” But, of course, it would be impossible. Sometimes he thought the station was a sieve of leaks.
Jamison said, “Your wife …”
“Doesn’t know anything. Not from me.”
“Good. I mean, I didn’t think so. But …”
“It’s gonna come out,” Reed warned. Not only were there leaks, but once the police started looking for Naomi, the media would know it. They would have to. They had their own resources and could get information to the public.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Just not yet.”
“Okay.” He hung up, but felt the weight of responsibility settle on his shoulders.
“What was that all about?” Sol asked, her dark eyes concerned.
“Nothing I can discuss. At least not yet. And it has nothing to do with our cases.”
“If you say so.” But her eyes belied her words. That was the trouble with her, she was intuitive, seemed to sense things that othersdidn’t. He’d told himself that her perception was a good thing, that she might catch things he didn’t, but when her concentration was tuned in to him and what he might need to keep close to the vest, it was uncomfortable.
“What else do we know?” he asked, leaning back in his chair and drinking his coffee as they discussed the facts of the case. Jeanne LaRoux’s preliminary autopsy had come through. The murderer’s MO seemed to rely on a brain injury to kill his victims, and he seemed to use whatever was handy. The tiller, in Billy Huber’s case, the marble floor for Mavis Greenlee, and some kind of jagged implement, most likely a rock, for Jeanne LaRoux. But then the killer would add a personal touch by cutting them with what seemed to be a serrated knife of some kind, though no weapon had been found at any of the crime scenes. The stones, with their cryptic numbers engraved on them, had been left on or near the bodies, each with a different digit engraved, then enhanced with the blood of a female human, a goat, and a cow.
This, apparently, was the killer’s calling card. Significant. He/she wanted to make a statement to the police and whoever found the victims.
Was Billy Huber the first victim?
Or were there more, perhaps the woman whose blood had been mixed into the macabre paint.
“So far, all the victims were found in or around their home, the bodies not transported. Killed on the spot,” Sol pointed out. “Easy enough to do with Huber and LaRoux; they lived alone and kept to themselves. But Mavis Greenlee is the odd one out.” She pointed to the map of the area that showed where the victims were found. “She lived in town, with her husband. At least part-time, as we now know; he spent a lot of days and nights with his girlfriend, Annabelle Van Camp, out on Tybee. So the killer had to have known her schedule and his, or else just got lucky, but that’s a stretch, I think.”
“Agreed.” He examined the map. “And LaRoux and Huber live not far from each other, at least as the crow flies,” he pointed out.
“But Greenlee is in town.” She frowned at the map and tapped her fingers on her desk as she thought aloud, “In a way, they were alike, in that all the victims were isolated.” He was about to arguethat Mavis Greenlee lived close to her neighbors, but Sol went on. “I’m not talking about physical location, I’m saying emotionally. Both LaRoux and Huber were loners, keeping to themselves for the most part. I can’t find anyone who had a kind word to say about Billy Huber, and that includes his kid and brothers. The same with Mavis Greenlee. She had three husbands and no real friends. Even the women in that church’s ladies’-aid society, the Birds of Paradise, didn’t sing her praises. All in all, I get the impression that she didn’t have anyone close, and that includes her brother and mother.”
What she was saying was true. In the interviews they’d conducted, most people thought Billy Huber was a cheat and a grifter, that Jeanne LaRoux was weird as hell, some psychic who practiced the dark arts, someone to avoid. And Mavis Greenlee, despite all her work with the church and her societal connections, was a self-centered snob.
“So, what’re you saying?” he asked.
Sol frowned and reached into her backpack for a Red Bull. “I don’t know yet, but I’m getting kind of a vibe about them.”
When he didn’t respond, she flashed him a smile, showing off a dimple. She cracked the energy drink. “Call it women’s intuition.”
He snorted.
“Y’all would call it a ‘hunch,’ right? Cops are supposed to have ‘hunches’ or gut instincts. I’ll go with that.” She laughed a little, and it was refreshing to see a humorous glint in her gold eyes. “Oh, by the way, thought you should know that I’ve got dibs on the cat.”
“What?”