Page 65 of Dropping Like Flies

Mapplewell didn’t need to check her notes for that one. “The same neighbors. The male of the couple said he’d borrowed a DVD from Mr. Cassidy. He admitted with a bit of prodding that returning it was an excuse to find out whether he or his wife had won tonight’s wager.” When I frowned, she elaborated. “Man or woman.”

I nodded. “Right.”

“And instead,” she waved a hand at the bedroom door we’d stalled a few steps away from. “He found this and called us.”

“Thanks.”

When I ran out of questions, she left us to it. I caught Griffin’s eye, reminded again that this wasn’t his world, that he hadn’t asked to be dragged into it. Even so, I was glad he was here. “Are you ready?”

His nod was less than convincing, but we took the few steps needed to enter the bedroom, anyway, both looking to the bloody symbols on the wall first. Despite not having memorized them, I instinctively knew they were the same, my heart sinking. Unless someone had been very indiscreet with photographic evidence, it ruled out a copycat.

The body lay on the floor, a meter from the bed, Patrick lifting his head from his examination as we stepped over the threshold to meet my gaze. An utter weariness that reflected my own had replaced his earlier antagonism. “I thought you had the bastard in custody and we were done with this.”

I kneeled at the other side of the corpse, ignoring the waxy skin and the eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling to take in all the other information I could. Red hair. The first red-headed victim. Blue eyes. Freckles. Lots of freckles. Even dead, you could tell he’d been cute. Definitely someone who’d catch your eye at a club. Had he gone to Eclipse? Was that really the murderer’s hunting ground, or had Dougie led us down yet another cul-de-sac?

My still damp hair fell into my eyes, forcing me to brush it back as I lowered my gaze, simultaneously knowing what I would find, even as I prayed I might be wrong and find something different. Sure enough, where there should have been fingers, there was nothing but bloody stubs. Despite Griffin’s words in the car, guilt threatened to swamp me. “I thought that too. We all did.” My words sounded flat, stripped of any emotion, and I hated that—the professional front I’d always hidden behind seeming an affront to a dead Aaron Cassidy who deserved better.

Patrick straightened and took a step back, the droop of his shoulders telling the story of a man who’d just about reached the end of his tether. “Well… do your stuff.”

I shook my head. “Griffin doesn’t have the things he needs with him. We were…” I aborted what I’d been about to say. It wasn’t the time nor the place to be outing ourselves as a couple. Should we have detoured back to Griffin’s place to get his bag? Probably. But neither of us had been thinking straight. It had seemed more important to get here as quick as we could.

Griffin lowered himself to a crouch so we were at the same height. “I don’t need it. I can do it without. It just takes longer.”

“Yeah?” That felt like something I should already have known.

Griffin nodded and then waited. I knew what the hold-up was. Technically, he was off the case. He was supposed to be returning to work in a couple of days, back to far simpler corpses who didn’t have their fingers missing and who had died of natural causes. “I need your permission,” he pointed out when I said nothing.

What he really needed was me agreeing to take the flak if this came back to bite us in the ass. I could call Baros, but as it wasn’t him who’d called me, the chances of him being awake were slim. And what if he said no? If I asked him, I was giving him the opportunity to say we’d exhausted our use of Griffin, that it had given us nothing except a nightclub that was looking less and less useful. I stared at Aaron Cassidy, a man who was still dead and still missing his fingers despite us supposedly having the perpetrator in custody. “You have it,” I said before I could think better of it. “Do what you need to do.”

Griffin’s stare was intense. He waited for a few moments, like he thought I might change my mind. When I didn’t, he nodded and stood to look around the room. “I need a knife or something sharp.”

Amidst the confused looks—some of the crime scene investigators not having gotten the memo about what it was Griffin did, or probably how he did it—someone produced a pair of scissors. By the time I’d cleared the room and Patrick had retreated to the far wall without a single complaint, Griffin had already pulled the blade of the scissors across his palm.

Apart from the lack of candles, the process was the same. “Part of the show,” Griffin said, like he could read my mind, as he pressed a hand to the sigil he’d drawn on Aaron’s chest. My phone rang as he closed his eyes, more concentration seeming to be needed than previously. I switched it to silent without answering it. If it was the DCS on the other end telling me not to do this, I didn’t need to hear it. That way, I had plausible deniability. And if it wasn’t him, I couldn’t think of anything else that couldn’t wait.

The process took longer, concern setting in that this would be yet another fail.

Just as I was ready to give up, Aaron’s eyes opened and he sat up, the movement so sudden that Patrick, who’d been blessedly silent throughout, let out a little gasp. We’d covered Aaron’s hands again, but he didn’t seem to notice as he stared around the room, his breathing labored like a panic attack wasn’t far away. “Where is he?”

Despite my heart almost beating out of my chest, I forced myself to stay calm. “Who?”

His gaze flicked my way briefly before he continued his scrutiny of the dark corners of the room. “Noah. He said his name was Noah. He even made a joke about not having an ark.” Aaron swallowed, the action seeming to take a superhuman effort. “He was nice. Really nice. I hadn’t met anyone nice for a while. He bought all the drinks. Not that I was wasted,” he said somewhat defensively. “I’ve always had a high alcohol tolerance. Ask my friends, they’ll tell you. I can drink all of them under the table. Unless you give me wine. I have zero tolerance for wine. But we weren’t drinking wine, we were drinking vodka. I had Red Bull, and he had Coke. I told him I wouldn’t sleep, and he told me he had no intention of letting me sleep, that”—he swallowed again, this one looking no easier than the first—“well, you know… he had plans for us.” Color leached into his cheeks, the contrast startling when only a few minutes ago he’d borne the pallor of death.

His scrutiny stilled when he reached the wall with the symbols, his eyes widening. “Fucking hell! Is that paint? I’m going to have to redo that wall. Did he do that? Fucking animal!”

He was far more animated than Rupert had been, but with that animation came a frenzied torrent of words I was struggling to keep up with. I kneeled next to him, Aaron thankfully not having made any attempt to stand after sitting up. “Aaron?” When he didn’t immediately turn my way, I repeated his name, Aaron finally turning his head to look at me. “Tell me more about Noah?” I urged.

“Is he still here?” Aaron’s breathing escalated again, the thought apparently not a comfortable one.

“No, he’s not,” I said. Aaron looked to Griffin, only relaxing when Griffin confirmed what I’d said with a nod. “Listen…” I didn’t know how long we had before Aaron either slipped away or questioned why he was naked save for a few artfully draped towels, and on the floor when the bed was only a few feet away. “Tell me where you met him. Tell me everything you can remember about him.”

“At Eclipse,” Aaron said slowly. “He was dancing with someone else. I was watching him because he was hot. I was envious,” he admitted. “But I didn’t need to be because when he saw me watching, he came over and started dancing with me instead. We hit it off immediately.”

If nothing else, we had confirmation that Eclipse was a focal point of Satanic Romeo’s attention. If we cross-referenced, we’d no doubt find that all the victims had frequented the same club.

“He was nice until we got back here and then he suddenly changed.”

My head snapped up, and I stared at him. “You remember that?” I looked to Griffin, seeking confirmation it was possible.

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