I chewed my lip. “The convergence will begin to taper after this month. It’ll still be enough to summon higher demons, but my bet is that pulling an unwilling Demonic Lord through will be damn near impossible after this next full moon and for about another eighteen months or so.”
“So, we have just this month to catch him,” Ryan said.
I nodded. “And he’s going to throw everything he has into this summoning. He knows it’s his last chance for a while.”
Ryan moved to the top of the slope, looking down at the scene of the body dump, anger and dismay in his eyes. “I guess there’s no doubt that these are Symbol Man murders?”
I shook my head. “They all have the symbol, all have signs of torture, all killed by ligature strangulation.”
He was silent for several heartbeats as he looked at the activity at the bottom of the slope. “I wonder why he’s killing all his victims the same way now. The Series One victims were killed in different ways.”
“Well, I have a theory about that.”
“Share?”
I took a deep breath. “I think that the first murders were practice. It explains why those victims were killed in a variety of ways and had varying amounts of torture and damage done to them. The last two were strangled.”
Ryan scowled. “He was trying to see what kind of death would give him the most zing and found that strangulation worked the best.”
“That’s right. And I think he was probably also figuring out how to store that potency for later use. To build his little Demonic Lord prison.”
“And then he had to stop for three years …”
“Because the sphere that holds the demon world diverged from ours …” I trailed off, looking away from the lake.
“What’s wrong?” Ryan followed the direction of my gaze.
“The victim at the wastewater plant. I think that was from last month’s attempt as well.”
Ryan frowned. “What makes you say that? And what are you looking at?”
“See that fence?” I pointed at a tall wooden fence barely visible through the trees. It was probably about a mile away, and only the fact that we were standing on a slight rise allowed us to see it at all. “That’s the back of the wastewater plant.”
I watched his face as comprehension flashed across it. “The broken bones … She wasn’t dropped from the top of a vat. The demon was flying her body here and dropped her.”
I nodded. “You’re pretty smart for a Fed.”
“I missed a bunch of questions on the entrance exam on purpose so that I could get into the agency,” he retorted, smile flickering at the corners of his mouth.
“So it was an accident that the body was found so quickly.”
“But the others …” His expression grew more serious. “He’s been trying to find out what he can about you. He knows you’re a summoner.”
I nodded, feeling the prickles of cold sweat along my spine. If he knew that, then he knew damn near everything about me.
Meanwhile, I knew his name, and not a damn thing else.
WE HEADED BACK TO THE STATION IN SILENCE. I SWIPED my ID card at the door and pushed in with Ryan following behind me, but I’d barely stepped through the door before Captain Turnham leaned his head out of his office, looking down the hall at me.
“Chief Morse wants to see you, Gillian.”
I groaned. “Now?”
An expression of regret crossed his face. “Yes, now.”
I hesitated, then glanced at Ryan. “You can wait in my office if you want.”
Ryan’s eyes narrowed. “I’ll wait,” he said with a nod. He turned and headed to my office as I continued down the hall to the chief’s. I didn’t have a good feeling about this. The captain looked like he’d been handing me a death sentence.
The chief’s secretary was gone, so I knocked on the inner office door.
“Detective Gillian!” I heard the chief snap from inside. “Get in here.”
Yeah. That didn’t sound good. I took a settling breath as I entered. “Sir? Captain Turnham said you wanted to see me?”
Chief Eddie Morse stood behind his desk, scowl blackening his expression. Fuck him, he’s only my boss, I tried to tell myself in an effort to keep some semblance of composure, but it wasn’t working too well.
“Detective Gillian,” he said, voice tight and clipped, “since you have shown yourself to be clearly incapable of handling this investigation, I have informed Captain Turnham that you are to be reassigned and replaced with someone who knows what the fuck they’re doing.”
I stared at him in utter shock for a heartbeat, then I struggled to recover. “Sir, you can’t do that!” I blurted out.