“Maybe we’ll get lucky and find a link in the third CPS file.”
“Do you think we’d be able to partner with the FBI on this going forward?”
“Probably, given that there’s really no reason to expect she’ll stop,” Eddison answers. “It’ll have to be with a different team.”
“Conflict of interest.”
He nods.
The silence resumes, and I find myself looking at the splotches of rusty brown where blood has dried on the porch. By the end of this I’ll probably have to repaint, and what a stupid thing to be thinking of, but we just washed it Sunday.
Sunday. “Less time between kills, this round,” I note. “Nine days between the first two, only five between the next.”
“How do we know if that’s significant?”
“If there’s less time before the next,” Eddison replies, not intending to be a dick but kind of coming off that way.
Holmes’s face pinches, but she doesn’t retort. Instead, she pulls her notebook back out and flips to a fresh page. “All right, Ramirez. Start with the morning. Was today a normal day?”
With Eddison leaning into my side, a warm press of support, I start. We used to have to role-play this stuff at the academy, practicing interview techniques on other trainees, and I think almost all of us hated it. You have to be detailed without being irrelevant, you have to be approachable without being cold or sentimental, you have to, you have to, you have to.
I fire up my laptop so we can sift through the security-camera footage leading up to Emilia knocking on my door. I recognize the car of one of the quiet college students sharing a house on the curve of the cul-de-sac, then the young parents three doors down, followed by the departure of their regular babysitter. Just a few minutes before the knock, an unfamiliar car drives slowly by, pausing near the end of my driveway, and continues on. A minute later, it’s heading out.
Not long after that, the porch camera picks up Emilia stumbling across the lawn.
“Midsize SUV,” Holmes mutters.
Even with the streetlights, it’s impossible to discern the color beyond “dark.” Black, maybe, or navy or forest, maybe a dark grey. Burgundy has a kind of gleam even in poor light, so that’s discounted, and purple does the same thing, as rare as that is in cars.
“No plates,” sighs Eddison. “She must have taken them off. There’s not enough for an APB.”
In the first frames, I can see Emilia slumped in a daze against the back passenger window. The driver is harder to make out, beyond the light hitting white clothing in a way that makes it seem to glow. In the opposite direction, there’s a decent shot of the disturbing, featureless white mask, spattered with blood, surrounded by . . . huh. I zoom in to be sure.
“She’s either got multiple wigs or one really good wig,” I point out. “It’s curled. Sarah said the angel’s hair was straight.”
“What about Ronnie?”
“Braid. Synthetic wigs usually don’t restyle all that well. Human hair wigs can be pretty pricy.”
“Are you sure it’s a wig, then? Could it just be her hair?”
“See how the bangs start below that bulge of hair?” I point to the screen, sweeping my finger under the spot in question. “These masks are usually made of porcelain, sometimes plaster. They’re thick. The bulge is from pulling the front of the wig over the edge of the mask. It’s definitely a wig.”
“Email me that footage,” Holmes says. “I’ll get the techs started on identifying the make and model of the car. We’ll keep the shot of her to pass around.”
“Or him,” Eddison points out. “We haven’t actually ruled that out.”
Holmes glares at him, but nods. It makes sense—behind the wig and the mask, it could be a man—but no detective relishes having the suspect pool expanded. “You two are free to go.”
I pack a fresh bag while Eddison loads the leftovers and most of my brand new groceries into a cooler, because there’s no sense in leaving them to rot, and we head out in his car. Holmes and one of the uniformed officers remain there to tape off my house yet again. I’m so fucking tired, and my home feels less like home every time I’m in it, and I just . . .
What happened to this woman? Where did our paths cross, and why is she so fixated on me?
Once upon a time, there was a little girl who was scared of the color red.
There was just so much of it.
She remembered the blood on her mama’s car windows, how dark it looked in the moonlight but how brilliant a red it was in the officers’ flashlights. Her mama escaped that night, got away from Daddy forever, and didn’t even try to take her little girl with her.
She knew the red on her body, blood from bites, and the pink from slaps, and the darker red of places that would become bruises. She knew the red of torn skin. It hurt for days after to pee.
Then there was a new red there, thicker, heavier, and Daddy laughed and laughed when he saw it. You’re a woman now, baby girl. My beautiful woman.
One of his friends was a doctor, the special lady kind, Daddy said, and took her to his office for an exam. The doctor nearly cried when he got to touch her there for the first time. Daddy never let his friends touch her. After that, there was a pill every day. One of Daddy’s friends laughed at the hair that started growing between her legs, said all the hungriest bitches should be redheads.
Daddy looked thoughtful at that.
She hated when Daddy looked thoughtful.
It wasn’t long before he came home with two boxes of hair dye. They weren’t even the same color; one was a fire engine kind of red, the other more orange, and he didn’t mix them together right and he missed spots, but he laughed and called her beautiful anyway, and he took away the hair between her legs and under her arms.
That night, when his friends came to the basement for their party, Daddy showed off the dye job. Gentlemen, he said, if the price is right . . .
Amidst all the clamor, one of them had nearly $300 in his wallet, and he gave it all to her Daddy. Daddy readied his favorite camera.
They’d never been allowed to even touch her before.
They did love a redhead.
13
We’re over hours for the pay cycle and that, as Vic likes to remind us, is a thing the Bureau cares about when you’re working a desk. None of us are allowed to go in on Monday, which we spend sprawled over each other on Eddison’s couch in front of the TV. I don’t hear from Siobhan at all, and when I get into the office Tuesday morning, there’s a box on my desk with the handful of things I kept at her apartment. Eddison peers over my shoulder and winces.
“I guess that’s that.”
“Guess so.”
“Olvídate de las hermanastras, la próxima vez encontraremos a la Cenicienta,” he says, and there are so many things wrong with that I can’t even try to list them out.
We’re still standing there, just looking at the box, when Vic walks up. He identifies it right away and grimaces in sympathy. “I’m about to make your morning worse,” he admits. “Agent Dern needs to see you. Then Simpkins’s team needs to talk to you.”
“They’re paired with Holmes and Manassas PD?”
“Yes. They have all of Holmes’s notes, but—”
“But they want to conduct their own interviews where possible,” I finish for him, and he nods. Grabbing the box, I drop it to the floor and kick it under the desk, out of sight and hopefully, at least for a little while, out of mind. “Is Simpkins going to be okay for this?”
“What do you mean?”
“Last time Eddison and I worked with her, she was pissy as hell, and Cass said something happened on their case last week in Idaho.”
“I don’t know about Idaho, but she’s a good agent, good enough not to let her disapproval of how I ran the team interfere with the case.”