Page 37 of The Killer You Know

Hale offers a forlorn smile our way before glancing at his laptop.

“The body of a thirty-eight-year-old female was found on a remote hiking trail out in Deer Lick Flats. A couple of joggers found her early this morning. Coroner says she died from a stab wound to the chest. She also had significant carvings to her forehead.”

“Carvings?” I cock my head his way and he nods.

“Yes,” he says. “The coroner is sending me photos as we speak.” He sighs heavily at Jack. “Her name was Sophie Clarke. Did you date our latest corpse?”

Jack’s eyes grow in size. “I—yes, I knew a Sophie Clarke.”

“Good grief.” Nikki leans back as she inspects him. “You’re not our killer, are you?”

“No,” Jack growls and Buddy growls right back in response. “What the hell?” He shakes his head at Hale. “This cinches it. This is all related.”

“Agree,” I say. “And now I want to see those carvings on her head. Maybe we can finally make sense of the chicken scratch on Robin’s forehead.”

“And the photos are here,” Hale says, fiddling with his laptop. Sheriff says the woman was recently divorced, changed her name back to where she started. Her mother says the victim seemed happy as of late, not dating, not looking, did medical billing from home.”

The screen behind him comes to life as the first photo flickers into view, casting a somber light across the room.

It’s a woman lying on the metal bed at the coroner’s office. Her dark hair is mussed and the carvings on her forehead are far more visible than those that Robin had.

I pull out my phone and click over the pictures I took of Robin that day at her home and at the coroner’s office.

“Some of these lines match,” I say, looking from Robin to Sophie.

Nikki leans into Jack’s phone as they do the same thing.

“There’s definitely a similarity,” she says. “Hale, pull up the picture of both women’s faces. Let’s superimpose them on another screen.”

The screen to Hale’s left lights up, and soon Robin Hanson’s lifeless body is staring back at us as well. It takes less than a few seconds for him to superimpose the images and enlarge Sophie’s picture until the writing is about the same size.

“Looks almost like a lightning bolt to the left,” Hale says.

“Then a slash.” Jack nods. “A square cut U.”

“Slut,” I say so fast it elicits a bark from Buddy. “It says slut.” I shake my head in disbelief.

“Slut.” Nikki sighs. “Were all three of our victims sluts once upon a time?” She turns to Jack for answers.

“All three were friends,” he says.

A thought comes to me. “In that yearbook you lent me, Mitch’s yearbook, there was a page where Robin was in a group photo with a bunch of girls. The caption read Queens of Aspen Heights, but someone scratched out the words Aspen Heights and wrote in the word mean, so it read Queens of Mean.”

“That’s what people called them, mostly the girls.” He blows out a breath, glancing back at the screen. “It was all in fun, just a play on words.”

“No way,” Nikki says. “If other girls called them mean, then that’s probably what they were.”

I nod. “We tend to call it like we see it. Do you remember anything they did that could qualify as mean? Any big incident at school?”

“None,” he says without hesitation.

Hale chuckles. “His head was too busy buried between?—”

“Whoa.” Jack holds up a hand to stop him.

“I was going to say books,” Hale finishes. “We’ve got ladies in the room. What kind of a gentleman do you think I am?”

“You weren’t exactly a gentleman,” I say to Jack. “And to that point, you were exceptionally busy honing your skills. We need a gossip, someone who can fill us in on all the dirt. Who do we call?”

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