Page 44 of Prodigal Son

“The killer was interrupted. Her children found her.”

His eyes widened. “Seriously? Did they see it happen?”

“The son said it was a wild animal, and the little girl wouldn’t talk.”

“At all?”

Destiny shook her head. “It’s called selective mutism. It’s a form of PTSD caused by anxiety after a trauma.”

She tried to get a statement from the son after the mother’s funeral, but some guy gave her a hard time. She frowned, her memory of the man who approached her wilting from her mind as if it never happened. But it had happened. She even knew his name. It was…

“What’s wrong?”

“I… Nothing. I must have really whacked my head. Did you see my log book?” She was sure she would have written down the guy’s name in her notes. And she would have definitely taken a picture of him on her phone.

She unlocked her iPad and opened her photo library.

“I don’t believe this is a wild animal,” Vito said, sorting through crime scene photos as Destiny scrolled through her own personal shots. “Here, look at this. Natasha Price. She was one of the ones that were defiled. See that mark on her leg?”

“Yeah.” She only glanced at the grotesque image, having studied each body before. Her attention went back to the screen of her iPad, her mind playing such tricks on her, she wasn’t sure if there was a guy at the cemetery that day or she dreamt the whole episode up.

But it wasn’t a dream. The man had a name. She just couldn’t remember it at the moment.

“What does it look like?”

Destiny hated looking at the crime scene pictures, but did so for her brother’s sake. “It looks like a bruise.”

“Look closer. See here, these small spaces where the blood vessels are still intact?”

She stopped scrolling through the iPad photos and gave him her full attention. Her stomach twisted, and chills raced down her arm when she saw what he was trying to point out. “It’s a handprint.”

“Yes!” Vito cheered, a little too detached. “Now, look at this one.” He spread several photos out on the cluttered coffee table.

Destiny set down her iPad and squinted, trying to blur some of the carnage. This was one of the victims that had been tortured. The sight of what looked like claw marks made her back tingle.

“See there?” He pointed with the tip of a pencil. Another handprint. “Now, look at them side by side. What do you notice that’s different?”

She swallowed. “I don’t know.” Her hand went to her shoulder as phantom pain knotted up her back.

“Look at the handprints. Look how this one wraps around the girl’s hip and how the other barely fits around this girl’s arm.”

“It’s smaller.”

“Exactly. Like a girl’s hand.”

“You think this…thing is working with a woman?”

“Maybe several. What if it’s a cult?”

“I doubt there’s a secret cult hiding in the woods that’s murdering women.”

“I know it sounds crazy, but when I searched the public police records from Jim Thorpe, I came across a lot of missing person reports—most of them young women. Did you know there was a massacre there around the 1930’s? They never caught the killer and several missing victims went unfound.”

“That was almost a hundred years ago. Do you think we have a copycat killer?”

Vito shook his head and pushed all the photos off the coffee table, revealing a collection of books tossed in a messy pile, Salem’s Lot, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and several by Anne Rice and other science fiction writers. “What the hell’s this?”

“Vampires, Destiny. I think they’re vampires.”

---