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“Ivy? Ivy, wait!”

  The phone tumbled to the floor as Ivy leaped from her bed toward the locked bedroom door. Her hands clutched at the key, shaking. Another creak, much louder than before. She knew what it was: the bathroom door opening.

  He was coming. Oh God… Oh God…. ohgodohgodohgod…

  The key clicked. She flung the door open and stumbled outside, whimpering.

  Tanessa glanced at Sergio. He moved slowly toward the front door, his gun in his hand. Tanessa drew her own gun, the cold metal reassuring in her palm. She walked toward the back door, as they’d agreed beforehand. Her senses were alert for any noise. Had the killer already entered the house? Candace had reassured them that Ivy was still alive, locked in her bedroom, when they’d parked the car.

  She heard a thump from inside the house. A small scream. Both she and Sergio bolted forward, each to his assigned position. She reached the back door in six steps. Shook the handle; it was locked. She took a step back, preparing to kick the lock open, hoping to hell she’d manage to do it before it was too late. She took a deep breath…

  The door burst open. A dark figure ran at her. She raised her gun, and nearly pulling the trigger, when the light hit the figure’s face. It was a young woman, a terrified look on her face. She almost ran into Tanessa, and screamed in horror. Realization dawned in her eyes.

  “He’s inside!” she screamed. “He’s still inside!”

  Tanessa heard something crash. Sergio, kicking in the front door? She hesitated for a moment. Should she stay with the girl and protect her? Or should she back up her partner?

  She pointed at the patrol car. “Inside!” she barked at the terrified girl “Lock the doors!”

  The girl nodded and ran to the car. Tanessa held her place, listening carefully for any sound, until she saw the girl get into the car. Then she moved into the house, pulling out her flashlight.

  The house was dark. Had the killer killed the electricity? No. She could see a light from a room down the corridor. She saw another flashlight beam—Sergio. She aimed the light at his feet to avoid blinding him, and saw him nod at her then point to the corridor. She nodded back.

  With Sergio in front, they crept toward the light coming through the half-open door. When they reached it, Sergio kicked the door open and pointed his gun inside.

  “Clear,” he whispered.

  She walked in after him. It was the girl’s bedroom. The bathroom door was shut. They both approached it. Tanessa put her back against the wall beside the door. Sergio gently twisted the doorknob, then kicked the door open and pointed the gun and flashlight inside.

  “Clear,” he said, louder this time.

  They searched the rest of the house. It was empty. The killer wasn’t there.

  He approached the girl, his heart beating wildly. She was fast asleep, her rich brown hair spread out on the pillow like a halo. She was facing away from him, but when he towered over her he could see her profile, her small nose, her angelic closed eyes. She really was beautiful. So innocent. So clueless.

  He quivered with excitement. So close!

  He hefted the rope, carefully bringing it closer.

  When he abruptly tightened it, her eyes flew open. But no sound emerged from her mouth.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Tanessa and Sergio leaned against the patrol car, watching as a medic inspected Ivy. She’d been hyperventilating so badly that Sergio had called an ambulance.

  “What do you think,” Sergio asked Tanessa. “Was the message from the killer? Did we stop it?”

  Tanessa shrugged. “I have no idea,” she said. “It doesn’t look like the rest of the messages. It has no text at all. Also, well…”

  “What?” Sergio asked.

  “She doesn’t exactly match the type. Of the victims.” Tanessa squirmed uncomfortably. She knew, as a woman who was widely considered outrageously beautiful, that it was not her place to call another girl homely. After all, beauty was in the eye of the beholder, and what mattered was what was on the inside and so on and so forth. Fine, yeah.

  But beauty had some standards, even if those standards were crappy and unfair. Ivy was not beautiful. She was far from it. She had a long, sharp nose, and thick, neglected eyebrows. Her teeth were uneven and slightly yellow. She was clearly overweight. Tanessa wasn’t judging, and God knew she was lucky to have her mother’s genes, but, well…

  Up until now, the killer had only killed beautiful women. Not beautiful on the inside. Beautiful on the shallow, discriminating outside. Then again, maybe the killer had a different taste. Or maybe he thought women should be treated equally, no matter how they looked.

  “Yeah, but it’s a weird message,” Sergio said.

  Tanessa nodded. Had she saved a life tonight? She wanted to believe that. But it was strange that such a careful killer would simply decide not to show up because he saw a patrol car. It was strange that he would choose to break a very clear pattern. Was he simply messing with them? She wondered if she should call Mitchell. Maybe he’d want to question Ivy.

  “Four fifty one, dispatch,” her radio rattled.

  She pressed the PTT button. “Go ahead,” she said.

  “Are you still at 27 Sharon Drive?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “There’s a reported breaking and entering at 17 Roxbury Drive. A neighbor saw a man climb out a window. It’s just two blocks from your location.”

  “Dispatch, no problem, we’re on our way.”

  Roxbury Drive was indeed just a short distance from Ivy’s home, and they reached it in three minutes. They found number 17 easily, parked in front, and got out of the car.

  The house was small and a bit shabby-looking. The front yard was unkempt, with weeds growing everywhere. The windows were dark. A dusty white Pontiac was parked in the driveway, so Tanessa figured the residents were inside, probably sleeping. Sergio touched her arm softly. One of the house’s windows was wide open.

  “Do you think they didn’t wake up from the noise of the burglary?” Tanessa asked.

  Sergio shrugged. “It’s possible. I once answered a morning call, for a burglary. The residents woke up to find the burglars had taken almost all the valuables in the house. Their phones were lying on their night tables, just by their heads, and the burglars took those, too.”

  “Ugh. Creepy.”

  “Come on.”

  They approached the front door. Sergio knocked on it firmly. They waited.

  There was no sound. He knocked louder, his fist clenched. “Open up,” he said. “Police!”

  There was no movement from inside the house. They circled the house, glancing through the windows, and eventually reached a window that looked into the bedroom. Though it was dark, Tanessa could see the silhouette of a woman, lying on the bed, the angle of her body very wrong.

  They ran back to the front door. Sergio kicked it open—Second time in one night, Tanessa thought— and they entered the house, guns ready. Tanessa turned on the light.

  “This is the police,” Sergio said loudly. There was no sound. They both hurried to the bedroom, switching on the light as they walked inside.

  A young woman lay on the bed, her eyes wide, her body still. There was a rope tied around her throat. As Tanessa ran to her side, horrified, she could easily tell it was the same type of rope as the image Ivy had received.

  Mitchell parked his car by the ambulance. He was the last guest to arrive to this morbid party. There was a patrol car nearby, as well as Jacob’s car and the crime scene unit van. He walked toward the front door, where Tanessa and Sergio stood with somber looks on their faces. Mitchell looked at his sister closely. Her eyes were empty; her shoulders slumped. She seemed deflated somehow, as if this night had taken a heavy toll. She isn’t built for this line of work, he thought, once again. It will end up breaking her.

  “Sergio.” He nodded at the cop, who nodded back. Mitchell looked at his sister. “Tanessa. What happened here?”

  Sergio answered. “A neighbor called at oh-f
orty. He saw someone leave the house from that window over there.” He pointed, and Mitchell glanced over. It was a narrow horizontal window, through which Mitchell could see a small kitchen. Violet stood inside, photographing something. “We arrived at the scene at oh-fifty. We found the resident, a woman named Skyler Gaines, dead in her bedroom, a rope around her neck.”

  Skyler Gaines. The name triggered something in Mitchell’s brain. Where had he seen that name? Then he recalled. She was on Atticus Hoffman’s list, another model wannabe. He had talked to her briefly, but couldn’t remember what she had said. There was a recording of that phone call back at the station.

  “We administered emergency CPR until the medics arrived a few minutes later, but they pronounced her dead on-scene,” Sergio said.

  “Everyone showed up incredibly fast,” Mitchell said, frowning.

  “We were answering a call two blocks from here,” Tanessa said in a hollow voice, her eyes avoiding his.

  “Could the neighbor give a description of the burglar?”

  “He said the guy was dressed in black and wearing a mask. He thought he was tall.”

  “Okay…” Mitchell looked at both of them. “Dispatch told me this could be our serial killer. Was there a message on the victim’s phone?”

  “No,” Tanessa said. “Uh… Maybe, I don’t know. We didn’t look. But Ivy… the other call… she had a message—”

  “I don’t understand,” Mitchell interrupted her. “What other call?”

  “A woman named Ivy O’Brien called dispatch at oh-five,” Sergio said.

  Tanessa turned away, looking at Violet through the kitchen’s window.

  “She received a message, with an image of a rope,” Sergio continued. “The rope matches the one found on the murder victim’s neck. We answered the call at Ivy’s, but there was no one there.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “At home,” Tanessa said, turning to face him. “We called the other patrol to monitor her house.”

  “I see,” Mitchell nodded. “Thanks, Officers.”

  He signed the crime scene logbook in Tanessa’s hand and walked inside. Jacob was in the bedroom, along with Matt and Annie. The body of Skyler Gaines lay on the bed, looking empty-eyed at the ceiling. She was dressed in blue silk pajamas with the top two buttons undone. She had been beautiful, Mitchell saw immediately. Despite the grim mask of death, it was easy to see the delicate, perfect features of her face.

  The room was in disarray, with the bedsheets crumpled in one corner of the bed and a pillow lying on the floor. A small pile of books was scattered by the night table and, discarded next to them, the girl’s phone. Mitchell guessed the books and the phone had been struck during a struggle, and tumbled off the small night table. Annie was carefully checking Skyler’s hair. Jacob crouched by her side, examining the bed.

  Matt was snapping photographs of the room. Mitchell approached him. “Matt,” he said, “I want to check her phone for messages. Can you please process it?”

  Matt nodded and put down the camera. Turning toward his kit, which was lying on the floor, he said. “Gloves, Detective. Don’t mess up the crime scene.”

  “Here,” Jacob said, passing Mitchell a pair.

  Mitchell slid the gloves on. “What do you think?” he asked Jacob. “Do you think it’s him?”

  “Too soon to tell,” Jacob said.

  “Did Tanessa tell you about the message on the other woman’s phone?”

  Jacob nodded.

  “Do you think it could be a wrong number?” Mitchell asked.

  “A wrong number that just happens to belong to a woman who lives two blocks from the murder victim?” Jacob asked. “Doesn’t sound likely.”

  “Maybe he’s messing with us.”

  “Could be. Let’s not let him. We should approach this just like any other murder. Follow all the leads. Examine all the evidence.”

  “Yes, but… There’s context here, Jacob. We can’t just ignore—”

  “We don’t know that it’s him yet.” Jacob said sharply.

  “This girl was on Atticus’s list,” Mitchell said. “Is he still…”

  Jacob nodded. “The surveillance team is still on him. I just talked to them. He’s sleeping in a motel on the other side of the city.”

  They had decided to trail Atticus after the previous murder. He didn’t match the sketches they had, but he’d still been their number one suspect.

  Not any more, it seemed.

  “There,” Annie said.

  Mitchell turned toward her. She was holding a section of the victim’s hair. It was much shorter than the rest.

  “He cut her hair,” Annie said. “This matches the pattern of the previous killings.”

  “Then there should be a message on her phone,” Mitchell muttered.

  “Here, have a look,” Matt said, handing him the phone. “I got a set of fingerprints from it.”

  Mitchell took the phone, and checked it. The earliest message was from six hours before. It was a message from Skyler’s Mom, reminding her that it was her aunt’s birthday. No image from the killer. Mitchell frowned, scanning the earlier messages. Perhaps the killer had sent it earlier this time…

  His eyes caught a familiar name. Ivy O’Brien.

  “Jacob,” he said. “Check this out. Skyler and the woman who got the message were friends.” He showed the phone to Jacob.

  “Huh,” Jacob said. “That’s interesting. Maybe they switched phones? So her friend had Skyler’s phone and vice versa?”

  “No one does that,” Mitchell muttered. “That’s like… switching underwear.”

  Jacob stared at him.

  “What?” Mitchell said. “A phone is private.”

  “I am never touching your phone again,” Jacob said.

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  “I’m done here, Detectives,” Annie said. “This woman died in the past hour. You can see a few red spots in her eyes; those are petechial hemorrhages, which are consistent with death by strangulation. There’s some blood and skin under her fingernails, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up—there are scratches on her neck that seem to indicate she clawed at her own neck, trying to remove the rope. I doubt it’s the killer’s. I’ll send them for testing, of course.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Annie,” Jacob said.

  “Yeah, thanks, Annie,” Matt blurted.

  Annie blushed, looking away from Matt. “Sure,” she said, and quickly left the room. Matt looked after her longingly.

  Mitchell sighed. “Matt, is there anything you can tell us?” he asked.

  “What? Oh… no. Not yet. I’m just getting started.”

  “I think we should talk to Ms. O’Brien,” Jacob said.

  Mitchell nodded heavily.

  Ivy was still shaken up from the night’s ordeal. She glanced out the window once again, making sure the patrol car was there. She felt completely exhausted. After the medics had calmed her down, helping her to control her breathing, she had excused herself and gone inside, bursting into tears as soon as she closed the door behind her. The lock on the front door was broken; the cop had bashed it in when he barged inside. The door wouldn’t close properly, and finally she propped a chair against it to hold it closed.

  She’d gone to the bathroom, in which no killer had ever hidden, despite her fears. She washed her face, hiccupping and sobbing as she did so. She missed Tom. They’d broken up two months before, because… well because of many reasons, most of which could be summed up with the fact that he was an asshole. But she needed someone to hold her and hug her right now, and Tom could have done that.

  The cops had promised her someone would be watching her home until morning. They’d also suggested taking her to the police station. Maybe that was a good idea, she thought. There was no way she was falling asleep after tonight.

  Someone knocked on the front door. She sighed and glanced at herself in the mirror. Ugh. Terrible. Her eyes were blotchy and red, her hair a mess. There was another knock. She wen
t over and looked through the peephole. Two men in cheap suits stood on the doorstep.

  “Yes?” she asked, not opening the door. It was all a ridiculous charade. The lock was busted. Anyone could walk in.

  One of them, a man with a fedora, flipped a badge in front of the peephole. “Detectives Cooper and Lonnie, Ma’am. Mind if we come in?”

  She pulled back the chair and the door swung open.

  She led them to her small kitchen, where she made them coffee. They gratefully accepted the mugs, and the three of them sat around the small, round table she had bought at a garage sale two years before.

  “Do you know if it’s him?” she asked them. “The serial killer? Is he the one who sent me the message?”

  “It’s too early to tell,” said the one with the fedora, who had turned out to be bald once he took it off. Detective Cooper, she remembered. “Would you mind if we ask you some questions?”

  “Not at all,” she said. She was happy for the company. As long as the detectives were here, she was safe from thoughts about lurking killers.

  “Do you know a woman named Skyler Gaines?” Detective Cooper asked.

  “Of course I do,” she said, surprised. She definitely hadn’t thought this would be their first question. “She’s a good friend of mine.”

  “When was the last time you talked to Skyler?”

  “Uh…” she tried to think. “Two days ago, I guess. Why? What does Skyler have to do with this?”

  “We understand that Skyler wanted to be a model.”

  “Yes, she does,” Ivy smiled. “She’s really beautiful. She has the perfect face. And her body? I mean… she’s probably the most gorgeous woman I know.”

  “Did she ever manage to find a modeling job?” Detective Cooper asked.

  “Not yet,” Ivy said. She didn’t tell them about the hospital. No point in telling them that. Why were they asking about Skyler, anyway?

  “Don’t you want to ask me about the message?” she asked.

  “We’ll get to that,” Detective Cooper said, his face serious. “Did Skyler tell you if she met anyone unusual lately? Perhaps she saw someone following her? Was she approached by a stranger online?”