Page 40 of Royal
Naomi stood at the marker board, and Luke, another agent, looked at the pictures of the eleven total victims on the push-pin board—nine from the previous year and the two from Addersfield. The others rifled through the papers spread out over the long table.
“Good morning,” I said, entering the room with a large coffee in hand.
Once again, I hadn’t slept much the night before. It had been three days since I’d gone over to Royal’s house, and within those three days, I’d maybe had ten hours of sleep total. I functioned well enough, but when the crash eventually came—as it always did—I’d sleep way too long.
For now, I’ll just drink a shit ton of coffee.
“Morning, Detective Riley,” Agent Stone returned my greeting. “We were just going over the facts again.” His gaze landed on me. “I had a thought early this morning. The killer appears to choose his victims at random, but there seems to be a pattern.”
I strode forward and examined the paper he slid across the table. It was a diagram of each victim, with dates written beside their names.
“Each of the eleven victims was in the spotlight leading up to their abduction. Beth Monroe attended a banquet where she won an award for best female news anchor. One week later, she was found dead. Model Jeffrey Holland made the news for coming to Addersfield, and he had a televised interview only days following Beth’s murder. Was killed a week later.”
“So, the psycho has a time frame,” I said, going to sit down but stopping before my ass hit the seat. If I sat down, I might not get back up. I drank more coffee. “That’s something to go off at least.”
Ruby arrived minutes after me. She greeted the agents before standing beside me and looking over the victim diagram.
“Weird that the killings stopped for a year and then picked back up again,” she muttered, running a finger over the names and dates.
A lightbulb went off in my head.
“Hey, Agent Stone.” I joined him at the board. “Have you thought about why this guy stopped for a year?”
“We’ve considered it,” he answered. His fair complexion gave him a rare beauty when added to his dark blue eyes, black hair, and chiseled face. Almost like a doll. “The first murder last year was on April second. The last one was June nineteenth.”
“And Beth Monroe’s body was found the morning of April third,” I added. “Maybe it wasn’t a random gap.”
Agent Stone’s gaze burned into mine. “He waited for spring before he killed again.”
“That means we have until June to find this guy. Otherwise, he’ll disappear for another year.”
“It also means he has two more months to kill,” the agent said. “He’ll be finding a new victim soon.”
“Do you think he’s still in Addersfield?” I asked, looking at the photos of the victims. “Doesn’t seem to be a set pattern of how many he kills before moving on to a different state. Two were in Washington, three in Oregon, one in Idaho, and three in Nevada. There’s no rhyme or reason to it.”
“We’re keeping tabs on similar crimes in other states,” he answered, not sounding concerned. “If he leaves Addersfield and kills elsewhere, we’ll know about it.”
As the agents continued looking over the information and speculating over the killer’s profile, Ruby and I visited the flower shops in town.
Beth Monroe had been sent flowers leading up to her death, and after speaking with Jeffrey Holland’s agent, we learned he’d been sent them, as well. The model had thought the flowers were from a fan and hadn’t thought anything suspicious about receiving them. The perpetrator had to get the flowers from somewhere, so we were going to visit all the shops and check if anyone had purchased daffodils lately.
“God, I didn’t know we had so many florists,” Ruby muttered after we left the fifth shop of the morning with no luck.
“We have four more to go.” I got into the driver’s seat and sneezed. Fucking flowers were making my allergies act up again. The killer targeting people in the spring was just another reason to hate the season. “I doubt the killer would be sloppy and leave a paper trail, but we have to check anyway.”
The guy was too smart to ever be caught so easily.
Ruby and I checked out three more shops, finding nothing to help us in our investigation. My sleepless nights were making me grouchier than usual, so I stopped and got another large coffee from a convenience store before driving to the last shop.
“Keep downing those and you’ll be bouncing off the walls,” Ruby said, eyeing me as we walked through the front door of Pam’s Floristry.
“Unlikely.” I took a drink.
My nose tickled as we walked past the vast assortment of flowers.Ugh.We approached the lady at the front counter. Her name was Mary, according to her nametag.
Since I was in a bad mood and would probably scare away the poor old lady, Ruby made the introductions and asked if anyone had bought any daffodils, specifically theNarcissusWhite Lion, which was what we’d concluded the killer used as his signature.
“No. No one’s bought any White Lions,” Mary answered. “But I had some stolen a while back.”
