Page 22 of Girl, Sought

‘Collectors,’ Ella repeated. ‘They represent something he either covets or despises. If we can figure out what that is, we might have a chance of protecting the next potential victim.’

‘Well, no doors show no sign of forced entry, and call me crazy but Alfred Finch doesn’t strike me as the kind of person to leave his door unlocked.’

‘Definitely not. Not with all these specimens in here. These things must be worth a fortune.’

‘Maybe that’s it,’ Reeves said. ‘Could he be boosting these things for cash?’

‘Doubt it, otherwise he wouldn’t go to the lengths he did. I hate to say it, but there’s somethingpersonalabout these kills. Serial killers – male ones, at least – rarely kill for financial gain. This is a pure power trip.'

Something crunched under Ella’s boot. Glass. She crouched down and found fragments of what might have been a display case. Among the shards lay a single cockroach, its label still clinging on like a dying declaration:Saltoblattella montistabularis.

‘Anyone know what this is?’

Luca leaned in. ‘I can’t even pronounce it, but any creature with a Latin name must be worth something.’

‘Even a dead one?’ asked Reeves. ‘Why do people keep this weird shit?’

Ella didn’t know. She’d never been one for collector’s items. Hoarding stuff for the sake of it seemed pointless.

‘More importantly, why’s it the only thing here that’s been smashed? Everything else is pristine.’

Luca said, ‘Collateral damage? It might have been knocked over in the struggle.’

Ella glanced around. There weren't any tables or stands on this side of the room. 'But where the hell did it come from? This is in a shadow box, whereas everything else is in a frame.'

‘Could have been a fight. We don’t know.’ Luca pointed to the victim. ‘There’s no blood, so our killer must have strangled him. Same as he did with Eleanor.’

‘It’s possible.’ Ella put the cockroach back where she found it then snapped a picture with her phone. When she got back to the precinct, she had some serious searching to do.

Luca said, ‘I’m gonna take a look around. See if I spot anything out of the ordinary.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ said Reeves.

Ella nodded and went about her own search, beginning in the living room. For now, it was just her and Alfred Finch, the human butterfly. She stopped and stared at the poor man, tried to imagine what his last moments alive might have been like. Was he ambushed? Did he have time to contemplate his demise, or was it over in a flash? Strangulation took many forms, some quicker than others.

Alfred’s collection seemed to cover three of the walls in his living room. The wall facing the window was devoid of creatures, although it now had a human being attached to it. If Ella was guessing, maybe Alfred kept that wall free of specimens so that people couldn’t glimpse his insect museum from the street. Wise choice. Advertising rare stuff like this was asking for burglaries, which suggested Alfred was security-conscious, and security-conscious meant locked doors.

So how did the killer get inside?

Something about the layout of the specimens on the walls nagged at Ella’s subconscious, and then she thought about Eleanor Calloway’s collection room. The way everything was arranged to the millimeter, except for that blank space in her trophy case that seemed at odds with everything else in the room.

Just like the blank space above Alfred Finch’s fireplace.

It was like a missing tooth in an otherwise perfect smile. It noticeably skewed the symmetry, even more so when Ella saw that the mounting bracket was still in the wall.

The killer had removed something.

But why?

Taking trophies was par for the course with serial killers, but removing something from the victim's prized collection didn't fit the typical trophy-taking M.O. A lock of hair, a driver's license, a piece of jewelry. Something personal and intimate that would help them relive the kill long after the body went cold.

But this felt like a different approach completely. The unsub wasn't just grabbing a souvenir - he was curating these scenes with the same obsessive attention to detail as the collectors themselves. Plucking the centerpiece from a carefully arranged display and leaving a void that screamed its own meaning into the silence.

Unless this killer didn’t fall prey to the typical serial killer mindset.

Maybe to this killer, the collectionswerethe most personal thing about his victims. These carefully curated displays were extensions of their owners' souls - their passions, their obsessions, their life's work distilled into glass cases and careful labels.

By taking pieces of the collections, was he collecting pieces of them?

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