Page 19 of The Girl He Crowned

Love the look inthis one. Good to see you’re doing so well.

Did the twovictims know one another?

That possibilityhadn’t even occurred to her. It hadn’t been the case with any of the othercases Paige had worked. The killers had been selecting their victims accordingto criteria that made sense only to them, but if there was evidence that two ofthe victims knew one another, even a little, then there was a chance that therewas some more straightforward motive to all of this that Paige might be able tounravel. The methods might be bizarre, but maybe there was some relativelynormal, human conflict at the heart of this, rather than just the bizarre needof a serial killer to murder.

The first thingshe did was start to go through the material the FBI’s techs had providedaccess to, going through Debbie and Siobhan’s messages, looking for any betweenthe two of them. It didn’t take long to find a thread of messages back andforth that definitely seemed to indicate that they knew one another.

To Paige, most ofit looked pretty casual, with one or the other asking if it would be good tomeet up for coffee in the town, or each of them asking how the other was. Itsuggested that they knew one another in real life, not just online, but thequestion now was how well they knew one another, and in what context. Thatcontext might be the key to what was really going on here.

The casual natureof the conversations suggested that it wasn’t a business relationship. Therewas nothing in the message threads about their respective work, which suggestedthat they knew each other socially. The fact that they met up pointed to thetwo of them being friends, but to Paige, the tone of the conversationssuggested that they weren’t close friends, just acquaintances who met up fromtime to time.

The last messagehad come a couple of days before Siobhan’s murder.

Let’s meet upagain. It would be good to talk things over with someone who gets it.

Who got what?There was no context to it, but Paige found herself wondering if it pointed tosomething more serious going on in Siobhan’s life, something that might havegotten her killed and swept up Debbie too.

Was it possiblethat while this looked exactly like a normal serial killer, whatever one ofthose was, there was some more mundane reason behind it all? Was the businesswith the pendulums linked to whatever had gotten them killed? Paige didn’t know,but she wanted to look closer at their lives to see if there might be someexplanation for what had happened to them.

Paige was stillconsidering it when Christopher burst back into the office, his expression sograve that it was impossible not to stare.

“What is it?”Paige asked. “Did you get something when you asked Mr. Willis for the securityfootage?”

“It’s not that,”Christopher said. “Sheriff May just came to get me. There’s been anothermurder.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

It was fully dark bythe time Paige and Christopher got to the address of the crime scene. It was alarge mansion on the edge of Eddis, with pristine gardens and a driveway thatseemed to meander down to the street.

That driveway was alreadyfull of police cars as Paige and Christopher pulled up, Sheriff May’s people workingto secure the crime scene and collect any evidence. She’d obviously sent thembefore she’d said anything about the killing to Christopher. The coroner’s vanwas there too, and they seemed to be moving the body out to it now. It seemedthat they’d worked quickly. Paige was grateful for that, because she didn’twant to have to stare at a body in situ, not with everything that would bringup. It would be bad enough just looking at the crime scene.

The press seemedto have worked just as swiftly, with several reporters pointing cameras in theirdirection even as the two of them arrived.

“Lucille Bale,EddisGazette,” one called out. Paige remembered her from the bridge. “Can youtell us why there’s been another killing in our town? Why isn’t the FBI doingsomething to protect Eddis’s women against this killer?”

Paige did her bestto ignore the question and headed for the house, even though she could almostagree with the sentiment behind the question. Sheshouldbe doing moreto ensure that the killer didn’t murder any more women.

Sheriff May hadbeaten them to the scene, obviously leaving as soon as she’d told Christopherabout the situation. She was talking to one of her deputies as Paige andChristopher walked up.

“What do we have?”Christopher asked her.

“The deceased isMelody Smythe, 32, works as an art curator in town.”

Paige lookedaround at the mansion. “She bought all of this on an art curator’s salary?”

“From what I know,her husband William Smythe works for a hedge fund. They have an office in town.He’s the one who found the body. One of my deputies is with him in the poolhouse, making sure he’s ok.”

“We’re sure thisis the same killer?” Paige asked, because there was one obvious discrepancyfrom the first two scenes. “He hasn’t struck in someone’s home before.”

“Melody wasstrangled, and there’s a pendulum.”

The sheriff hadobviously worked quickly, or just knew her town well, to get so muchinformation so quickly. The deputies seemed to know their jobs now too, unlikeat the bridge, working to secure the crime scene while a forensics team movedin.

“I want to go inand look at the scene,” Christopher said. He looked over to Paige. “Does itmake a difference that this guy has gone from killing in the open air to killingin someone’s home?”

He soundedworried. He was obviously worried about this getting worse. He wasn’t the onlyone.

“It might,” Paigesaid. “If the coroner thinks it’s consistent with the first two killings, it’sprobably the same guy, but this feels like a change in MO, almost anescalation. It’s a change in his pattern. Or it means that we haven’t fullyunderstood his pattern yet.”

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