Page 33 of Girl, Sought

‘You know,’ Luca said, tapping the photo of their killer in his insect mask, ‘we could try running this through the system too.’

Ella adjusted the search parameters on her screen. ‘Image quality's too poor. Besides, that thing probably came from some Halloween shop or costume website. We'd get thousands of similar hits.’

‘Yeah, you're right.’ He stepped back from the board. ‘Should we head over to the museum? Talk to Finch's colleagues ourselves?’

‘Reeves is there now, breaking the news to Finch's colleagues.’ She pictured the detective delivering that particular gut punch. No easy way to tell people their bug-loving coworker had been transformed into a human specimen. ‘Let him handle the notification. We've got bigger roaches to fry.’

Luca raised an eyebrow. ‘Getting poetic in your old age?’

‘Lack of sleep. Makes me hallucinate in metaphor.’

The software said:1,000,000 images searched.

Ella drummed her fingers on the desk. The precinct's ancient heating system kicked in with a sound like someone trying to strangle a trumpet. Outside their window, Chesapeake went about its business, oblivious to the fact that a collector of collectors walked its streets.

5,000,000 images searched.

‘How long's this gonna take?’ Luca had abandoned the whiteboard in favor of hovering over her shoulder.

‘However long it takes to find our needle in the digital haystack.’ She squinted at the screen. ‘The software crawls everything - social media, email attachments, archived websites. If that roach ever showed its ugly face online, we'll find it.’

12,000,000 images searched.

The software kept churning through the digital universe, comparing pixels and patterns, looking for matches anywhere their rare roach might have made an appearance. Ella watched the numbers climb while her mind wandered down darker paths.

26,000,000 images searched.

What kind of person spent their time crafting insect masks and studying collector habits? Someone patient. Detail-oriented. The kind of mind that could plan elaborate murders while maintaining a façade of normalcy. Their killer probably had a day job, paid taxes, maybe even had a family. Monsters didn't always look like monsters in the daylight.

‘This could take all day,’ Luca said, dropping into the chair beside her. ‘Want me to make another coffee run? Or maybe we should-’

‘Don't jinx it.’ She held up a hand. ‘Never suggest alternate plans while tech is running. That's how you anger the computer gods.’

47,000,000 images searched.

The precinct's background noise faded to white as Ella watched numbers climb. Each million represented another layer of the internet parsed and analyzed. She'd seen this software crack cases before - finding stolen artwork on obscure auction sites, tracking down missing persons through vacation photos in strangers' social media posts.

But this wasn't just about finding a picture. This was about finding the exact moment their killer had first reached out to Alfred Finch.

89,000,000 images searched.

94,000,000 images searched.

113,000,000 images searched.

Ella's eyes burned from staring at the screen. How many images of insects could there possibly be on the internet?

‘Come on,’ she muttered. ‘Show me something.’

The search parameters expanded outward like ripples in a pond, hopefully touching every corner of the accessible internet. Somewhere in that vast ocean of data, their killer must have left a wake.

164,000,000 images searched.

Then everything stopped.

Ella's heart seized in her chest as red text flashed across the screen:

1 MATCH FOUND.

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