CHAPTER SEVEN
There was no FBI field office in Austin, so they followed Kowalski back to his precinct on Eighth Street.
There, they were set up in a spare room off the main detective bullpen.
The room held two folding tables, an aging printer, and a whiteboard that still had someone else's case notes on it in dry-erase marker.
Kowalski had someone from maintenance and janitorial clear them a corner and gotten them credentials for the building's wi-fi.
Miles and Vic had accepted this without comment because it was better than a rental car and a hotspot.
Vic had the forensic report and the electrical contractor's written assessment spread across the table in front of her.
She was working through the technical sections methodically, her laptop open to a search on transformer circuit design.
Miles watched her at work as she prepared to hop on a Zoom call with Sarah.
He and Vic had been working together for long enough that their rhythms were largely automatic by now.
She moved through an unfamiliar workspace the same way she moved through a familiar one, efficiently and without complaint.
And she had a quality during early stages of a case of being able to sit with incomplete information without forcing an idea.
That was rarer than it sounded; Miles had worked with agents who needed to be doing something visible at every moment, who filled the silence with activity that looked like progress but wasn't. Vic wasn't like that.
She read what was in front of her, thought about it, and waited until she had something worth saying.
He trusted her completely, which was not a thing he said lightly or had arrived at quickly. It had accumulated over time, through cases and airports and crime scenes all linked by one single maniac: Gabriel Kane.
The Zoom call connected, and Sarah's image was clear on his screen. They shared a quick, slightly private smile and then, as usual, Sarah dove immediately into work.
“Well, it seems like Donna Clements, also known as Madame Celestine, had quite the following," Sarah said.
She had a second laptop open to her right and was reading from it.
"She has consistent five-star reviews going back years, mostly on Yelp and Google.
People describe her as warm, intuitive, someone who really listened.
A few even mention that they are regulars who had been seeing her weekly.
" She looked up and gave a little shrug.
"No complaints. No disputes on record, no legal trouble, not even a bad review that I can find. The community around her, the South Congress spiritual crowd, apparently loved her. And in terms of criminal records, she’s squeaky clean. "
"Any personal relationships that you could find?” Miles asked. “Business partnerships, disputes?"
"I found a former business partner from about ten years ago.
They co-ran a different shop before Celestine opened on her own.
I reached out to the partner this morning and she said the split was completely amicable.
She actually cried a little on the phone but managed to mostly keep it together.
I also went through her social media. No public arguments, no beef with anyone, nothing that reads as a threat or a grievance.
She posted tarot card readings and neighborhood events.
Her last post was a photo of the South Congress bridge bats. "
Miles looked at his own screen for a moment. "Enemies?"
"None that I can find."
"Well, that fits,” Vic said absently from the other side of the room, letting them know that she had been listening in as well.
Miles nodded in agreement. It wasn't entirely what he'd been hoping for, but it was what he had expected.
A disciple who selected victims because of something he saw in them, or believed he saw, didn't need to know them.
He didn't need to have been wronged by them.
He needed a framework and a target, and Kane had given him the framework.
"Keep pulling. I want to know if there's anything in her client records, specifically anyone who had a negative interaction or dispute. "
"Kowalski's people are still working through those,” she said. “I'll coordinate with them on it."
"Good." He glanced across the table at Vic, who was running her finger along a paragraph in the contractor's assessment. "Anything on the transformer itself? The model, where it was purchased?"
"Still waiting on that," Sarah said. "Kowalski's forensics team sent the unit out for examination. The model number is visible in the photos from the scene, but I haven't been able to trace a purchase yet."
"Let’s run it against local neon and sign suppliers,” Miles said. “Whoever did this knew how to modify that unit. They may have a professional background in it."
"Already started it," Sarah said with some satisfaction. She made a note on her laptop. "But both of you should know that this woman’s client records…well, there are a lot of them. She had a steady book. It's going to take time to go through them properly."
"I know. Do what you can. And thanks, Sa—Agent Kim,” he said, catching himself and feeling a bit of red creep into his cheeks.
After he signed off, he sat back in his chair and looked at the whiteboard with its leftover case notes. The room smelled faintly of old coffee and dry-erase marker, and from the bullpen outside came the ordinary sounds of a working precinct, phones, low conversation, the periodic thunk of a door.
Vic looked up from the contractor's report. "Our guy knows electrical systems, that’s for sure. And it’s not that he just knows them; this guy is sophisticated.
This section here on the impedance modification, for instance…
the contractor's saying this isn't someone who picked it up as a hobby.
He adjusted the wiring connections inside the unit, which means he had to know the internal architecture of that specific transformer model well enough to make targeted changes without shorting it out.
" She set the report down and leaned back in her rickety chair.
"This is either professional training or a lot of dedicated self-study. "
"Or both."
"Yeah. And the other thing is the execution of it all. He got into that shop, made modifications to an active electrical installation without leaving any sign of forced entry, and got out clean. And I wonder if they even knew her routines, right down to when she would touch the switch on that crystal ball.”
Miles was quiet for a moment, his thoughts landing back on the brief manifesto. The language in it was specific enough that it wasn't generic anti-psychic sentiment and loose enough so that it didn’t point to just one single complaint or grievance.
False illumination. The element does not lie.
Neon was the through line, he was pretty sure of that.
That was where this began, not with the victim and not with any personal connection between killer and target, but with the element itself—and with what the killer saw when he looked at neon and the people who used it.
The other disciples had found their method in helium, mercury, and argon.
This one had found it in the lit tubes of a sign hanging in a fortune teller's window.
"The victim profile is going to be secondary to the method," Miles said.
"He chose her because of the neon. Because of the element, just like all of the others.
I seriously doubt Clements was chosen because of who she specifically was, or who she had wronged, or anything personal. The neon was the signal."
Vic looked at him, giving a small and hesitant nod. He understood it; it was an approach that butted up against traditional investigative thinking. "If that's right, then anyone with a prominent neon sign in their business is a potential target,” she said.
"Which is most of South Congress and half of downtown Austin.
" He stood and walked to the whiteboard, starting to erase the old content that was already there.
"We need a tighter frame than that. The note called her false light and referenced a charlatan glow.
The language was about authenticity, about people who fake luminosity to attract believers.
If we take that seriously as a selection framework, we're looking at businesses that use neon to project a spiritual or mystical image.
Psychics, tarot readers, energy workers, that type. "
Vic pulled up a browser tab and instantly started typing. "There's a fairly dense community of that in Austin. It's that kind of city."
Miles uncapped the dry-erase marker from the ledge of the whiteboard and wrote NEON at the top. Below it: SPIRITUAL / MYSTICAL STOREFRONTS. Below that: SOUTH CONGRESS / DOWNTOWN.
"We start there,” he said. “We find out how many businesses in that profile are operating with neon signage, and we figure out what Kowalski's department can do to put eyes on them.
" He capped the marker. "In the meantime, we wait on the transformer trace and the client records, and we see if Sarah turns up anything in the victim's background that gives us a narrower lens. "
Vic looked at the whiteboard and then to Miles. "You think he's already picked the next one."
It wasn't a question, and Miles didn't treat it like one.
"Yes," he said. "He has a plan and he's following it, just like the others.
Nothing is accidental or by chance. That's clear from the modification on that transformer.
You don't build something that carefully unless you've built it before…
or unless you're going to build it again. "
“So, what can we do while we wait?” she asked.
Miled didn’t have to think about it for long. He thought of the manipulated wiring, the manifesto, and the place where the neon in question had been installed.
“I think we need to head back to Madame Celestine’s.”