Page 19 of Girl, Accused

‘Yeah. What’s the message here?’

‘You tell me,’ Ripley said.

Ella tore her gaze from the photos. ‘Maybe you ought to tell me this time. Prove that five months off hasn’t dulled your edge.’

‘Well, I can see his front door in this first photo. A slit throat means instant death, instant dominion. Put those two elements together and chances are this killer jumped him the moment he answered his front door.’

‘Blitz attack,’ Ella said.

‘Yup. So our killer’s on the weaker side. Cutting the throat is the easiest way to kill someone without a fight.’

‘He doesn’t have the social skills to befriend his victims either. He has to get in and out.’

Ripley flipped through the photos. ‘I’m not sure about getting out. Have you seen what he left at the scene?’

Ella went through each photo one by one. Close-ups of the wounds and blood spatter and branding on the forehead. Then she came to a wide-angle shot of the whole room. At first glance, it showed exactly what she expected - a dead middle-aged gentleman with his blood painting abstractions up the cream wallpaper.

But as her eyes adjusted to the carnage, Ella noticed something else.

A strange pattern on the wall behind the corpse. A series of dark streaks and splatters that didn't quite match the arterial spray everywhere else.

She squinted and the marks resolved into letters.

‘NO EYE WILL SEE ME.’

The killer had left a message behind. And given the rust-brown color of the letters, the ink could only have come from one source.

‘Jesus, he wrote a message in blood.’

‘Yup,’ Ripley said. ‘No eye will see me. Any idea what that means?’

‘Sounds Shakespearian.’

‘Well, Macbeth here wasn’t in any hurry to leave the scene, so he’s got an air of confidence about him, which is a contrast to his killing method. So we’re looking at someone who hasn’t figured themselves out yet.’

Ella turned the phrase over in her head. A taunt? A challenge? The killer’s declaration of his own invincibility? She couldn’t place it.

‘No signs of sexual assault. No other bruises or lacerations, so sadism and lust killing is out of the question.’

Ripley said, ‘Depends at what point he branded this guy’s forehead. If the vic was still alive, then… have you ever been burned, Dark?’

Ella had done a good job of ignoring the pain in her legs for the past twelve hours. Ripley's comment brought it all back. Ella caught her partner's stare, and her expression said that Ripley already knew the answer. 'Yes, I have.'

‘It’s torture. Let’s hope for Chester’s sake he was dead when it happened.’

‘Who brings a branding iron to a murder scene? And how did he heat it up?’

Ripley threw a photograph down on the table. ‘Look in the background. Victim had a fireplace.’

‘What if he didn’t? This killer’s a ritualist, so the killing is secondary. He wouldn’t risknotcarrying out his ritual.’

‘So what does that suggest?’

‘That heknewChester Grant had a fireplace in his house.’

‘Put it in the profile. What about victim number two?’

Ella peeled back the first report to reveal a thinner one beneath it. Not much to this one. Just a couple sheets of preliminary findings with none of the glossy documentation that told the real story.

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