CHAPTER THIRTY NINE
Outside Victor Ashford's studio, the wind carried the sickly-sweet aroma of burned human flesh. She kept her back to the building and watched a flock of crows circle overhead, drawn by death and tragedy like nature's cleanup crew.
The world narrowed to this single point in time - to this grassy parking lot, to Ross looking like he'd lost a fight with a cement mixer, to Luca using those steel doors as a barrier between himself and everything that waited inside. But beyond the immediate horror of Victor Ashford's final moments, Ella's mind blazed with something that felt like revelation.
Ross said, ‘Make sense, Ella. What makes this killer a woman?’
‘The method. Every killer has a signature, but we've been looking at these murders backward. We saw earth, water, air, fire - but those were just the end results. The real signature was there from the start.’
‘Which is?’ Luca asked. At least he was looking her in the eye when he talked to her now. Progress.
‘Killing from a distance.’
Ross scrunched his face up. ‘Explain.’
‘We know our unsub wasn’t present for the murders of Marcus Thornton and Tessa Webster. Probably not Victor Ashford, at least until the disposal. We don’t know about Sarah Chen, but we can presume it followed the same M.O.’
‘Okay. And?’
‘Sarah Chen's toxicology screen came back positive for sodium pentobarbital. Old school anesthetic, barely used anymore. The kind of thing that would knock you out cold before you even knew what hit you.’
‘Right.’
‘At Tessa’s crash, I looked in her basket and saw a steel thermos. I thought nothing of it, but now it makes sense. Our killer – this Hermes person – poisoned her drink before her flight, probably with sodium pentobarbital. Timed it perfectly - wait for her to get high enough, then lights out. No struggle, no mess, no chance of the body being found until it was too late.’
‘That's stretching it pretty thin. ’
‘Is it?’ She jerked a thumb toward the inferno they'd just left. ‘Victor Ashford vomits before he dies. Not during a struggle, not while being forced into that furnace. Before. Because someone brought him a thoughtful gift of bottled water. Stuck around to watch the poison take effect, then came back later to finish staging the scene.’
The implications started to sink in. She could see it in Ross's face - that slow-dawning realization that they'd been running down the wrong trail. Luca caught it, too. He pushed off from the wall and moved closer, professional curiosity winning out over personal grudges.
‘That's why there were no symbols at Webster's crash site,’ Ella continued. ‘Our killer couldn't know where that balloon would come down. Had to wait until the body was found before marking it.’
‘Okay.’ Ross ran fingers through hair that needed a trim three weeks ago. ‘Say you're right. What does this tell us about the killer?’
'Everything.' Ella felt the pieces clicking together faster now. 'We've been profiling a male suspect. Someone physically capable of overpowering victims, moving bodies. But Poison is a whole different game. That's about control, about distance, about making sure your victims never see it coming.'
‘And that means our killer is a woman?’
‘Think about it.’ Ella started pacing, burning off the energy that came with breakthrough. ‘Female serial killers are rare, but when they do kill, they follow specific patterns. Belle Gunness poisoned her husbands for insurance money. Amy Archer-Gilligan took out residents in her nursing home. Kristen Gilbert killed patients with epinephrine injections.’
‘Statistics class is fascinating,’ Ross said, ‘but-’
‘It's not just statistics. It's psychology. Women choose methods that minimize physical confrontation. Methods that give them complete control over the situation. Our killer needed that control - needed each death to represent its element perfectly. Poison let her orchestrate everything down to the last detail.’
Luca's expression shifted. ‘The cult meeting. You think-’
‘How many women were there, Hawkins? Under those masks, those hoods – how many could have been female?’
‘I couldn't tell. We all looked the same.’
‘Exactly. Perfect cover. Perfect way to hide in plain sight.’ She turned to Ross. ‘And it explains something else. Ezra said to me in the holding cells, 'None of my brothers are killers.'‘
‘Son of a bitch,’ Luca said.
‘Exactly. He didn’t say anything about his sisters. ’
The wind picked up and carried woodsmoke from distant chimneys. Ella watched understanding dawn on both men's faces. The case was realigning itself around this new axis, all the pieces shifting to accommodate fresh perspective.
‘That woman, whoever she is, she's our killer. She left that note for Ezra to find, the one with Tessa Webster's name on it. She planted the Corpus Hermeticum for us, to make us think it was Ezra's. She's been framing him from the start.’
Ross looked like he'd been slapped with a wet fish. ‘But why? What's her angle?’
‘I don't know,’ Ella admitted. ‘Jealousy? Revenge? Some twisted sense of competition?’ The motives would come later, once they had a suspect to grill. ‘But I know one thing - killers can't hide their psychology. A man would have just shot these people, stabbed them, bashed their heads in. But poison? That's a woman's weapon through and through.’
She could see the whole grim ordeal unfurling in her mind. This hadn't been some impulsive thrill kill spree or the work of a psychotic break. This was a cold, calculated slaughter. The work of a precise, obsessive mind.
And they were running out of time to stop her, because by Ella’s math, there was still one victim to go.
Luca's voice cut through. ‘We need to talk to Ezra again. Get the names of his female followers. If he’s giving us cryptic clues like that, he knows who the killer is.’
But Ross was already shaking his head. ‘No can do. Crowley's lawyer just filed a motion to suppress his statements. We're looking at forty-eight hours minimum before we can even think about questioning him.’
Ella swore under her breath. She'd been afraid of that. Ezra might be a raving egomaniac, but he was smart enough to know when to shut his mouth and let his advocate do the talking.
'Forty-eight hours. She could grab another victim by then.’
‘Welcome to the system. Sometimes the wheels of justice need grease.’
They could wait him out, try to gather enough evidence to charge him as a co-conspirator, but that could take days they didn't have.
Ella's mind raced through options. They needed names, faces, some way to identify the female members of Ezra's twisted philosophical club. Even if they got a list of followers, tracking them down would take time they didn't have. How could they crack that particular nut without tipping off their real quarry?
The idea hit her like lightning.
‘Felix Blackwood.’ She grabbed Luca's arm. He flinched a little. ‘He's out of custody. Back at that farm.’
‘What about him?’
‘We cut him loose this morning,’ Ross said. ‘Couldn’t hold him any longer.’
Ella was already fishing for her keys. ‘If Ezra won’t give me the names, maybe Felix will. His farm’s only about ten minutes from here.’
Luca reached out. ‘You want me with you?’
She remembered her partner’s reaction last time they went to the farm. She’d already pissed him off once this morning. She didn’t need to add another transgression to the list.
‘No. I won’t be long. You can go back to the precinct. Maybe carry on translating that book for me. The final victim will represent the fifth element. Spirit, aether, quintessence - whatever they called it. There might be clues about who she'll target next.’
‘Okay. Be safe,’ Luca said.
She climbed into her SUV and fired the engine. In her rearview, Luca and Ross dwindled to dots. But Ella's mind raced ahead to what waited at the Blackwood farm. To the answers Felix might provide. To the killer who'd been hiding in plain sight all along.
Let me be right. Let Felix be the key. And let me find this bitch before she kills again.