25. Judy
JUDY
The dead woman was smiling.
That was the first thing I noticed when I walked into the bedroom.
The second was that someone had forced her mouth into that smile after she died.
I stopped just inside the doorway and pulled in a slow breath through my nose. The smell of bleach burned the back of my throat. Beneath it lingered the unmistakable metallic scent of blood.
Blood.
There wasn’t much of it.
There never was.
“Detective Langley.”
I looked toward the crime scene technician kneeling beside the bed. Will Forester had worked four of these scenes with me. He no longer asked whether they were connected.
We both knew they were.
“What did he leave us?” I asked.
Will glanced at the woman stretched across the white comforter.
“A clean room.”
“He always leaves a clean room.”
“This one is cleaner.”
I stepped farther inside, careful to place my feet on the paper path the technicians had laid across the carpet. The victim wore a pale blue dress. Her blond hair had been brushed until every strand lay perfectly across the pillow.
Her hands were folded over her stomach.
Her fingernails had been painted a glossy pink.
The polish looked wet.
My stomach tightened.
“How long has she been dead?”
“Medical examiner’s preliminary estimate is between six and eight hours. We’ll know more after the autopsy.”
I studied the room.
No overturned furniture. No broken windows. No sign the victim had fought for her life. A glass of water sat on the nightstand beside a closed book. Her shoes had been placed neatly beneath a chair.
The killer hadn’t murdered her here.
He had brought her here afterward.
Just like the others.
“Do we have an identification?”
“The homeowner says he rented the place through a vacation rental site."
The reservation was made using a stolen identity. The victim didn’t have a purse, phone, or identification.”
“Of course she didn’t.”
The killer took everything that could tell us who his victims were.
Then he waited.
Sometimes hours. Sometimes days. Sometimes we were lucky enough to find out who she was from her fingerprints.
But eventually, someone reported them missing. We matched the face to the body and gave the woman back her name.
The killer enjoyed making us wait.
Captain Mills stood near the window with his arms crossed. His dress shirt was already stained beneath the arms, and the sun hadn’t fully risen.
“Tell me this isn’t number seven,” he said.
I looked at the dead woman.
“It’s number seven.”
“Damn it, Langley.”
I didn’t bother reminding him I wasn’t the one killing them.
Mills had been taking heat from the chief, the mayor, and every television station in Texas. Seven women had vanished in eleven months. Six of them had been discovered posed in bedrooms across the Dallas area.
Now we had another.
Each victim was between thirty and forty-five. All had dark hair. All lived alone. None had known each other. We hadn’t found a single connection that tied them together.
Except him.
The man we had started calling the Keeper.
He washed them, dressed them, brushed their hair, painted their fingernails, then arranged them as though they were sleeping before disappearing without leaving so much as a partial print.
No witnesses.
No usable DNA.
No mistakes.
Until now.
Will rose from beside the bed.
“You need to see this.”
I followed him around the foot of the mattress. He pointed toward the woman’s left hand.
Her fingers were curled around something.
It looked like a piece of folded paper.
“Did you photograph it?”
“From every angle.”
“Open her hand.”
Will gently released the victim’s fingers. The paper had been folded into a square no larger than a Post-it.
He lifted it with tweezers and placed it inside a clear evidence tray.
“Do you want the honors?” he asked.
“Absolutely.”
I unfolded it carefully.
The paper was thick and yellowed with age. It looked like it had been torn from an old letter. A few handwritten words stretched across it in faded black ink.
I leaned closer.
“I’ll be waiting where it began.”
Beneath the message was a hand-drawn symbol.
A tree with a river flowing beneath it.
My heart slammed once against my ribs.
“He’s leaving us a clue.”
Will looked at me. “Do you recognize it?”
I didn’t answer. My brain was trying to remember where I’d seen this.
I stared at the symbol and felt the room close around me.
“This is painted on the sign going into Eagle River.”
“How do you know?” Will asked.
I went to college with a girl named Rylie Tate. Once, during our freshman year, I spent the Fourth of July with her family in Eagle River.
It was painted on the old welcome sign outside Eagle River.
“Judy?” Mills stepped closer. “You need to get to Eagle River.”
“Bag that note.”
Will hesitated. “We still need?—”
“Bag it now.”
Something in my voice made him stop arguing.
He slid the paper into an evidence sleeve and sealed it.
Mills watched me. “You know what that means.”
It wasn’t a question.
I looked at the dead woman again. Her painted smile seemed different now. Less like part of his ritual and more like a warning meant specifically for someone in Eagle River.
“He wants us to know where he’s going.”
Mills frowned.
"Eagle River..."
His expression hardened.
“I haven't heard that name in years.”
“It’s a small town on the river.”
I looked back through the bedroom doorway.
The victim’s smile was aimed directly at me.
The Keeper had made this personal.
“We need to identify her,” I said.
“And then?”
“Then I’m going to Eagle River.”
“You aren’t going alone.”
“I don’t need a babysitter.”
“You’re still not going alone. Take Carson with you, and Will.”
Before I could answer, Will called from the bedroom.
“You both need to come back in here.”
I returned to the bedroom with Mills behind me. Will stood beside the open closet, holding an evidence bag.
Inside it was a photograph.
The picture had faded around the edges, but I recognized the wooden sign immediately. A painted tree stood above a winding blue river.
WELCOME TO EAGLE RIVER.
Nine women stood beneath it.
Someone had drawn a black line through eight of their faces.
Only one remained untouched.
Mills moved closer. “Do you know her?”
I stared at the woman in the center of the photograph.
Eighteen years had passed since I had seen her, but I knew exactly who she was.
“Rylie Tate.”
“The college friend you mentioned?”
I nodded.
Mills looked from the photograph to the dead woman on the bed. “Where does she live now?”
“Eagle River.”
My phone was already in my hand.
The Keeper wasn’t returning to where his killing began.
He was going back to finish it.