Page 35 of Her Last Secret

“Yeah. The scene is secure.”

“You mind staying out here a bit longer?” Jack asked.

“Not at all.”

Rachel and Jack stepped forward, Rachel opening the door and stepping into Rebecca Clarke’s house. The air was thick with the metallic tang of blood as they stepped inside. The scene before them was one of calculated brutality—one of the worst Rachel had ever seen.

There were splatters of blood on the walls, the furniture, the floors. In the center lay Rebecca Clarke, her once shining eyes now dull and lifeless. She’s been beaten so badly that her forehead seemed to have vanished beneath a bloody smear of red. A single brick, edges caked with gore, lay nearby.

"Jesus," Jack exhaled, the word barely a whisper yet laden with a weight that seemed to echo through the space.

"This is incredibly recent," Rachel observed, noting the way the blood still glistened wetly, a slow trickle seeping from the wound on Rebecca's head. A few splatters of it on the wall also continued to run downward in thin rivulets. Rachel crouched beside the body, careful not to disturb the scene, her gaze tracing the chaotic patterns left by the killer's rage.

"No more than an hour ago—tops," she said.

“Cause of death is pretty apparent,” Jack said with disgust, his eyes taking in the brick.

"Yeah. And that does us a favor; he couldn't have killed her any more than an hour ago. Let's look the place over, find any clues we can. We're practically already on the bastard's heels."

It took a considerable amount of effort to look away from the bloody mess that had once been Rebecca Clarke. When Rachel had finally turned back toward the rest of the apartment, she found it tidy and clean. Almost right away, her eyes went to the small coffee table, where two folded sheets of paper lay on top of one another. One was a sheet of notebook paper with an amount of money scrawled on it, along with a bill to her internet service provider. Beneath that, though, was a sheet in a style that she and Jack and become quite familiar with during the past two days.

It was a playbill for a play titled The Chai Gospels. Rachel picked it up and scanned the cast list on the inside. Sure enough, Rebecca’s name was included with the cast. She then turned to the cover and saw the date that the play was performed.

“Jack…there was a showing of this tonight. She was on stage earlier tonight. Showtime at 7:00.”

Jack checked his watch. “It’s 10:45 right now.”

“He was in the audience,” Rachel said, feeling very certain of it. “I’m sure of it, Jack.”

“You think he followed her home?”

“Yes. And I think it was probably the same with the others. Each actress was murdered post-performance in a manner they used on stage to act out the murder of another character.”

"Someone's been watching them, waiting to see them kill on stage and then carrying it out in real life on those actresses,” Jack said. "The obvious question is why?”

“No way to know right now. But we have to act fast. This is only an hour or so ago…”

“We can try compiling a list of everyone who was there tonight, purchase histories from the theater’s payment system. But that would take a long time.”

“A very long time,” Rachel said. “But I think it has to be done. And another thing…I want to go to the station where these calls came in. I know they couldn’t be traced, but they were recorded. Maybe there’s something on those calls that can point us in the right direction.”

“Maybe," Jack said, but his tone made it clear that he thought it was a long shot.

“Do you want to head out and speak to the officer?” Rachel suggested. “Maybe try to line up the effort of getting the ticket purchase information with him? I’ll take a look around here, see if we can find anything else.”

“Yeah, sounds good.”

Jack stepped back outside, casting one last weary glance back down to Rebecca. As he stepped out, Rachel saw and heard another patrol car pull up to the curb with its bubble lights flashing. She took a breath, not too deep to avoid inhaling the pungent smell of freshly spilled blood, and looked back to the wrecked body of Rebecca Clarke. She assumed that tonight's performance had Rebecca acting out the murder of someone by beating them in the head with a brick…not exactly the sort of scene she'd expect from a play titled The Chai Gospels. But she knew this could be verified easily.

Rachel stepped gingerly around the pooling blood, careful not to disturb the grotesque scene. It had been done with ruthless violence, making her think the killer had enjoyed it—that it went beyond whatever message or pattern he was trying to communicate.

We need to shut the theaters down, she thought. We may get some pushback, but we can handle it. All performances of local theater production need to be shut down until we find this guy.

And with that thought came another. She wondered how hard it might be to find any actresses in the city who were currently playing or rehearsing a part in which their character committed a murder on stage. If they could determine that information, they’d not only save lives but maybe even track down the killer at the same time.

***

“Who would we even call to make that happen?” Jack asked. “I don’t think shutting down local theater productions is a big ask considering what we’re working on, but where does that chain of command even start?”

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