“The hooker, Brittany Halsted,” I say. “He stuck a corkscrew so far inside her it almost came out the other side. Sally Pfiester, that backpacker? He used some kind of spear and drove it almost all the way through her midsection, right?”
“And somehow managed to drain all the blood out of her body,” Ricketts says. “By the time they found her on an East Hampton beach, she was white as a bedsheet.”
“Right. And last year, the other prostitute, Bonnie Stamos—impaled on a tree stump. And then my uncle Lang …”
I can’t bring myself to finish the sentence, but she gets it. The killer drove a heated poker through Lang’s kidney and into the kitchen floor.
“He likes to do more than just cut them,” says Ricketts. “He likes to stick it in deep. You think maybe this is a sexual thing with him?”
We stop at the grand wrought-iron gates of 7 Ocean Drive. All at once, it’s like the temperature has been turned up, the loss of breath, the pressure on my chest. I close my eyes and take a deep breath.
“Jesus, Murphy, are you having a heart attack or something?”
Something. I shake it off, slide between the gates, and look back at her through the bars. “Nobody invited us here,” I say. “And we’re cops.”
“Right,” she says.
“As in, we’re not supposed to do this.”
“Roger that.”
“You can turn back now, Ricketts.”
“I could.”
“You should turn back now.”
“I probably should.” She slips through the small space between the gates, joining me on the other side. “But I’m not. I’m going where you’re going. Tell me why we’re at the Murder House.”
I nod, take another breath, and move up the driveway until it curves off toward the carriage house up the hill. At that point, I take the stone path that, after a healthy hike, will lead to the front door of this grandiose monstrosity of a house.
“This place always gives me the creeps,” says Ricketts. “It’s like a multiheaded monster. All the different-color limestone, the different rooflines, all those gargoyles and ornamental spears pointed up at the sky.”
“Yeah, it’s a real fun place.” I divert from the stone path onto the enormous expanse of grass before the slope upward toward the mansion. I stop at the stone fountain with the monument bearing the family crest and inscription. “This is why we’re here,” I say.
“Because of a fountain?”
I point at the small stone tablet, the crest featuring the bird with the hooked beak and long tail feather, the circle of tiny daggers surrounding it. “That,” I say. “That fucking bird.”
She doesn’t get the context. She doesn’t know that this miserable little winged creature has been haunting my dreams.
“Looks like an ordinary bird,” she says, moving closer. “An ugly one. But it looks harmless. Why would you have a little bird like this on your family crest? You’d think it would be a falcon or an eagle or some scary, majestic bird.”
I’ve spent the last two days researching that animal, trying to identify it among hundreds of species of birds in a catalog. When I matched it up, some things started to make more sense.
“It’s a shrike,” I say. “A small bird, yes. No large talons, no great wingspan. Not what you’d think of as a bird of prey. You’re right, it looks harmless. But guess how it kills its food?”
Ricketts looks upward, thinking. “I’m going to use my powers of deductive reasoning and say … it spears them somehow.”
“Close,” I say. “It impales them.”
She draws back. “Really?”
“Really. It scoops up insects, rodents, whatever, and carries them to the nearest sharp point—a thorn, the spikes of a barbed-wire fence, whatever it can find—and shish-kebabs them. Then it tears at them with that hooked beak.”
Ricketts slowly nods. “Most of our victims suffered some version of impalement.”
I wag my finger at that monument, the crest and the shrike. “This isn’t a coincidence. Our psychopath has a real hard-on for this family, maybe for this house,” I say. “So I want you to find out everything you can about 7 Ocean Drive. And this note under the crest—Cecilia, O Cecilia / Life was death disguised—find out what that means, too.”
“I will,” she says, not hiding her excitement. “Right away.”
“Great. Now it’s time for you to go home, Ricketts.”
“Why? What are you gonna do?”
I nod toward the house. “I’m going inside.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No.” I shake my head. “Walking into the yard is one thing. Breaking into the house is another. I don’t want to be responsible for you.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“Get lost—that’s an order,” I say. “Besides, you have a lot of work to do.”
56
I HOLD MY breath and push open the front door. When I walk in, I immediately feel a weight pressing down on me, my movements slowing, an impossible wave of heat spreading through me.
Fight through it. You have work to do. So do it!
I stagger forward, feeling disoriented, light-headed, as if drugged.
So, so hot, like a fireplace inside my chest.