Page 25 of 1st Shock
A chime sounds and my shoulders tense. The new alarm system has beeps, chimes, and gongs for just about every function. When the front door is opened, it beeps. Back door is a chime. Activating and deactivating involves loud gongs.
The whole thing is annoying and slices at my nerves like a saber, but Charlie has gone into precaution overload. I can't blame her. Not after the fear that gripped me when Haley could’ve been the next victim of a serial killer.
And we'd failed to protect her.
"Meg?"
Matt's voice. My shoulders unhunch and I curse yesterday's intruder.Fucker.
A second later, Matt pokes his head into my studio. "Whoa. What did I do?"
"What?"
"You called me a fucker."
Sighing, I toss the tissue depth marker into the small tray on my worktable and silence Mozart. "Not you. The fucker that broke in yesterday."
Technically, he didn't. He walked right through the damned door.
"Ah," Matt says.
In his studious way, he fixes his blue gaze on Avery then slowly turns back to me. "When do you think you'll be done with her?"
Down deep, he also feels the pull. He just doesn't show it the way Charlie and I do. Matt doesn't speak of it, he simply does the work of hitting the street and asking questions. Digging until something pops.
"Barring any interruptions, maybe a week. Two at the most."
Silence once again descends, and I wait for him to meet my eye. He likes activity. Part of his coping mechanism I'm sure. Long stretches of quiet are definitely not his thing.
"Just heard from my guy at the FBI."
"The wig?"
He nods. "Yeah."
Damn. If Matt had good news, his excitement, like every other time he had pertinent info and couldn't wait to share, would’ve propelled him to call me on his way over.
"It's synthetic," he says.
This doesn't shock me. I've done enough reconstructions to recognize the differences between that and human hair wigs. Although the former have come a long way in recent years, the one I found on Emily had an unnatural shine to it, leading me to believe it was not only synthetic, but cheap as well.
"Let me guess," I say. "It came from a costume shop."
Matt shrugs. "Probably. No identifying labels. Without the person who purchased it—or a receipt—it's gonna be hard to run it down."
I know him too well. "But you'll try."
He smiles. "Of course. I pulled a list of all the party stores and costume shops in a sixty mile radius. Who knew there were so many of those suckers?"
"He also could have bought it online."
"Well, yeah, but I'm thinking it was an impulse thing. Even with overnight shipping, he’d have to wait. I'm going with him being too amped up for that. The idea came to him, he got har...er...pumped over it and hauled ass to the closest wig place. Either that, or he already had it. A prop or something."
Or something. I appreciate his attempt to clean up his language, but I don't have time for that. I want this investigation to be fast-moving and if that requires Matt, or anyone else to be painfully blunt, so be it.
"You can say he got hard. I've heard worse and we can't get hung up on propriety. Bigger battles to fight." I hold out my hands. "So, you're chasing down wigs. Can I do anything?"
"Not right now. Let me get into this. Maybe we'll get some video or a credit card receipt from the purchase. Any word from Teeg on a facial match?"
