Page 108 of Reading Between the Lines
“Found what?”
“Sculthorpe Marsh. That’s what I read on the board. It’s the spot where they found that woman’s body. It has to be. Oh my god, D. It’s southeast of town, less than ten minutes from here. And she was missing fingernails and died from strangulation, just like the victim in the book. This isn’t a coincidence. If I had time to read the book and view the case, I bet there would be more matching evidence. Hell, it might give clues as to who was responsible.”
“But you said the killer in the series is never caught, so how does this help us?”
His face screwed up in contemplation. “I don’t know, but if the books aren’t fiction, if all of them are real, who’s to say these kids aren’t…”
His eyes blew wide, and he frantically changed screens to view the book on Amazon again. He scrolled and stabbed the screen. “Publishaven.” His voice went high-pitched. “Holy fuck. Nicholas’s dad’s publishing house. D, holy fuck. The kids are acting as a killer/author unit. They’re writing under the pseudonym Ambrose Whitaker, and Irvin is helping them get published. Oh my god, I just figured it out.”
My brain was a soupy mess thanks to high doses of prescription pain meds, but I had enough sensibility to see Tallus was jumping to wild conclusions with little or no evidence to back up his claim.
“I admit. It sounds… plausible.”
“Plausible? D, it’s a fact. Black-and-white. I bet if we read the blurbs of the other stories in the series, they will match the othervictims on that police board. Damn, I wish I’d been able to see more.”
He was about to pick up his fork when he gasped again. “They said they were going to call in the bigwigs.”
“Who?”
“The officers in the room. That’s homicide, right? We need to call Doyle. Hell, if this series is eight books long, that’s eight freaking murders. That’s a real serial killer, and we have a key piece of evidence. A link. The police might not have even discovered some of the bodies yet. We could help, and—”
I removed the iPad from his hand and pointed at his plate. “Your breakfast is getting cold.”
“Can we call Doyle?”
“No.”
“Just to see if they’ve been called in.”
“No.”
“Can we go to the police station and tell them what we discovered?”
I snorted. “Absolutely not.”
“Can we—”
“Eat, Tallus. Let me think.”
He ate—distractedly—his gaze continuously shifting to the iPad. “What about the library?” he said midway through our meal. “We could at least get copies of the books and have them as proof. We could make lists of details. See if there are unsolved murders in the area that match. We have connections back home who could—”
“Eat.”
He glared petulantly, nose wrinkled.
“The library is a good idea. Seeing if we can match plot lines to real cases is solid. But we still don’t know who’s behind it.”
“The kids are.”
“It’s… plausible.” But felt a tad outrageous, and I had a feeling I could prove Tallus was wrong with a simple question. “How long has Ambrose Whitaker been publishing?”
Tallus turned contemplative and pointed at the iPad. “May I?”
I slid it back, and he looked it up, clucking his tongue the entire time. When he slumped in his seat, I had my answer. “His first book came out in 2015.”
“And those kids are all about sixteen and seventeen years old. That would put them under ten at first publication. Not possible.”
“Well, fuck. It has to be old man McConaughy then. He worked at Publishaven, where these books are published. He pointed a gun at us. Chett’s his kid. Maybe… maybe he’s impressed with what these kids are doing and is mentoring them.” Tallus slapped the table as though he’d once again solved it all. “That’s it.”
