Page 19 of The Butterfly Killer

Burns shook his head in disbelief. “He’s got some balls.”

“More like he doesn’t have a shameful bone in his body,” Marcus muttered.

Mercer didn’t comment as he turned to go into the house. Marcus stopped thinking about Blevins entirely as he saw the house in a new light. He hadn’t been able to see anything past the kitchen. The living room was spotless which was strange with a toddler running around.

“Did Miss…”

“Miss Gomez. Age 35, single mom, unmarried. She hired Miss Catherine Yolts a week ago to babysit her son while she worked the weekend. Her mom usually babysits, but she was out of town. Gomez found her son unharmed in the living room. The kitchen was gated so there was no way he saw the body.”

Mercer gave a run down of the case as he lead Marcus and Burns to the kitchen where the body was.

Marcus tried to look at everything as they passed by. He wanted to collect as many details as possible. “And she didn’t have a cleaner?”

“I thought you might notice that.” They stepped into the kitchen. “No, she didn’t. She thought maybe Catherine had done it over the weekend.”

“Unlikely since Catherine’s mom mentioned Catherine hated when parents asked her to do things outside her job description,” Burns added.

Someone from the forensics team walked past them. The forensics seemed to have gotten everything they needed and were packing up.

Marcus felt a little more at ease. He didn’t like the possibility that he might disturb evidence. What he’d done back at the Calloway residence, getting close to the body when it was obvious she was long gone, had been a fluke. He couldn’t believe he’d done something so reckless.

“May I?” He motioned to her body.

“Go ahead.” Mercer didn’t seem worried about Marcus taking a lead. Though, the agents probably already looked at everything they needed.

Marcus ignored the gut-wrenching feeling rising in him. Slowly the world outside him and Yolts’s body disappeared. Time seemed to reverse. The sun rose back up in the sky and it was like when Marcus had found her body.

But the time went back further than that. As he kneeled at her side, the killer came back into the room in reverse. Marcus could see it so vividly it almost took his breath away.

He did the same as he did before. He took his time killing her, paying attention to each detail like his life depended on it. Because it did in some way. This was more than about the kill. It was almost as if the meaning and thrill he got relied more so on the aftermath.

Finding her body like this was more important to him than the initial kill.

Marcus turned away from the killer and the body. He looked into the living room.

“Why did you pick this house?” Why did you pick this girl? The Butterfly Killer had never gone after his victims while the children were home. He always struck when there were no kids in the house.

Marcus stilled when he reached the gate. Inside the living room, the TV was on and the boy was watching cartoons. He was none-the-wiser about what gruesome act was being done in the next room over.

Marcus went to touch the gate, but it disappeared before his fingers could graze it. The mirage he’d been witnessing blew away like mist. It was night time and the only people in the house were him, the agents, and the medical staff taking her body to the morgue.

“Did you notice something?”

Burns curiously poked his head into the living room, looking for what Marcus noticed. Marcus blinked away the last of the dream-like thoughts from his eyes. He rubbed them with the palms of his hands until he was seeing black spots.

“I don’t know. Sorry. This was a waste of your time.”

“You’ve give us new insight. That’s not a waste of time. It’s always good to have fresh eyes when the trail is going stale.”

Marcus hated the sound of that. A murderer was hitting the streets like he had something to prove—they had two new murders in a week and they didn’t have anything to show for the work they’d put in.

He was angry at both the agents and himself for not pulling something up. All he had was a theory of a copycat.

“Go home and get some rest. You’ll think more clearly once you do.”

He knew Burns was right. He didn’t want him to be though. It felt like he was pressed for time. And each time he looked at that girl’s body, the sentiment was more solidified.

The killer was out there and he was already planning his next murder.

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