Page 22 of Crossing Lines

“Wait!” Menda’s voice was laced with panic. “There is something that could be more help.”

“What?”

Menda nodded toward the letter. “It’s a strawberry pie.”

“Yeah, so?”

“See how he—or she—describes the strawberries? Ripe and red. juicy.” Menda smiled.

“Uh huh… still not helpful,” Sam said.

Menda rolled his eyes. “I think he’s trying to tell us that he likes redheads.”

Sam’s heart turned over. Kirsten Stillwater had had red hair. Finally, they were getting somewhere.

“And the pink filling….” Menda made a show of leaning back and looking at the ceiling. “Was the victim wearing pink?” He looked forward directly at Sam.

Crap!

“Wait… you said he or she,” Jo said.

Menda shrugged, looking innocent. “Yeah, you never heard of a woman serial killer? There’s been a few. And women would know all about pies, right?”

Jo glanced at Sam. Could the killer be a woman? There had been no sexual assault, just murder. One thing for sure, if Kirsten was killed by the same person who killed the girls five years ago, then that ruled Thorne out, because he was in jail when Kirsten was killed. Other than the similar method of death, there was no evidence Kirsten was killed by the same killer from five years ago or even that Kirsten’s killer would kill again.

“Is that good enough?” Menda gave Sam a flat look, his dark eyes devoid of emotion. “Now I need you to talk to the warden about my exercise time.”

Sam pulled out his phone and made the call. He’d already made arrangements with the warden about Menda’s extra exercise time if the lead panned out.

“Good to see you are a man of your word,” Menda said.

Sam grunted and got up to end the interview. He turned back just before he reached the door.

“How do you know the person that wrote the letter is not just some whacko?”

“I don’t, not really. Just a gut feeling. That’s your job to figure out if I’m right. Better hurry. I get the impression this guy is twitchy, and it won’t be long before another girl goes missing.”

* * *

“We need to get Wyatt to trace the origins of that email,” Sam said as they left the interrogation room. That’s exactly what Jo had been thinking. Wyatt was a video game addict and had proven to be a whiz at computer forensics and tracing anything online.

“Do you think it’s really from the killer, or was Menda just making it sound that way?” Jo asked.

“Menda could have been grandstanding. He seemed quite pleased with himself.” Sam pushed open the heavy steel industrial door and gestured for Jo to go through first.

“Do you think the part about the red hair is true?” Jo tucked one of her own red curls under her police hat. “If we know he’s going to pick a redhead, then maybe we can put surveillance on any that fit the description. There aren’t that many young redheads in town.”

“But then what if it’s not? What if he decides he wants a brunette, or this whole email is a hoax or something to throw us off track? Plenty of people know Kirsten had red hair and was wearing pink. We have limited resources. We need to take it seriously, though, because if this guy is looking for another victim, we need to do what we can to prevent him from finding one.”

“Might not be a him.”

“Huh?” Sam turned to look at her.

“Menda said him or her.”

Sam looked thoughtful. “Well, I guess that increases the pool of suspects.”

Jo stepped out into the parking lot and started toward the Tahoe. She hesitated and turned back to the prison. Thorne was in there, but for how long? “Too bad. I guess this means it wasn’t Thorne… unless the letter came from the prison, but why would Thorne send it? He can’t stalk or kill anyone from prison.”

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