Page 14 of So Hollow

“If anything, she would have started out folded even more tightly. To be honest, if it weren’t for Samantha Reynard suffering the same injury, I would have said that the killer broke Cassidy Holt’s neck to make it easier to fold her into that pose.”

Faith crossed her arms and bit her lip again. “The powder means something. I think that whatever it means, it’s coordinated to those poses. Black with turtling, White with starfishing.”

“Do you have to say it like that?” Michael asked irritably. Apparently, he didn’t like the analogy anymore than Dr. Test did.

Faith ignored his complaint and stood. “Is there anything else you can tell us, doctor?”

He shook his head. “I’m afraid not. I wish you two luck, though.” Turk barked, and he corrected himself. “You three. Ihave a niece who’s attending Brown this fall. I hate to imagine that there are people out there who would do something so sick to her.”

Faith didn’t point it out, but their killer was hardly the first person in history to prey on lone women. Society had come a long way from living in caves and hitting people with clubs to solve arguments, but women living alone were still the most vulnerable and preyed upon group on Earth.

And some people hadn’t left the violence of prehistoric man behind.

***

“I think we look into the symbolism first,” Michael said. “We can rule out sex and we won’t know if the powder’s composition means anything until we get that report back. We’re still waiting for Samantha’s boyfriend to get back from Brazil, and we're waiting for Hilary to tell us if anyone in Cassidy's life could help us. The poses are what we have now. We need to figure out if they mean anything."

“How do we do that?” Faith asked. “Search for ‘what’s the meaning of murdering someone then forcing them to hug their knees?’”

Michael frowned and sipped his coffee. The three of them were eating breakfast at a café near the medical examiner’s office. Their cruiser was still at their hotel, and while that was only a few minutes away by bus, they decided to eat and brainstorm before they decided their next move.

“Maybe not the composition of the powder,” he said, “but the color. Let’s see if looking up black powder and white powder gives us anything.”

“Well, it’ll give us something,” Faith quipped, “but I don’t think it’s the thing we’re looking for.”

Michael’s frown deepened into a scowl. “Could you possibly not be a pessimist right now? We just got started. Let’s try something other than waiting around for the cops to give us a lead.”

“All right,” Faith said, lifting her hand placatingly. “I’m not trying to be pessimistic. I’m just venting. I don’t know, something about this case is just disturbing to me. More than usual. I think it’s the fact that he snapped their necks. It just feels so… clinical. But brutal too. Like they were tools to him, and he had to be careful not to make them unusable by staining them.”

“See? That’s something already,” Michael said. “That’s the beginning of a profile. That fits with the lack of sexual deviancy. You might admire a hammer for its usefulness, but you don’t want to have sex with a hammer.”

“A clumsy analogy,” Faith said, “but an accurate one. Okay, so he sees them as tools. Now let’s figure out what he’s trying to build.”

The two of them began searching on their phones for anything that might help them. The first few searches turned up the results Faith expected. Putting naked into any search essentially meant that search engines gave you porn. White and black powder, not surprisingly, brought up images of various drugs. Combining the two showed Faith a lot of pictures of people doing said drugs in various states of undress.

“Geez, people are sick,” Michael said. “Are we really that barbaric when it comes down to it?”

“I mean, I’m not condoning,” Faith said, “but I think snorting coke off of someone’s stomach is a little bit better than murdering them.”

“I know, I just mean… why are we so obsessed with sensation? Hell, forget it. I’m just an old fogey. I don’t know what I’m—hold on.”

Faith lifted her gaze from her own phone. Even Turk lifted his head and stared intently at Michael. “What is it? Do you have something?”

“Maybe. Have you ever heard of the Magnum Opus?”

Faith’s brow furrowed. “Like in music?”

“No. Like in alchemy?”

“Alchemy? Like turning lead into gold?”

“Yes. That’s what the Magnum Opus is. It means Great Work, and it’s the name of the ritual to turn lead into gold.”

“Our killer’s trying to turn lead into gold?”

“Well, I don’t know, but I found something about the Magnum Opus that talks about using different powders to use magic to transmute lead into gold.”

“You’ve lost me.”

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