“So you two think that the dead woman tonight, the one with my spider runes lipsticked on her palms, is another one of the Dollmaker’s victims?” I asked.
“I do,” Ryan said. “Her injuries are consistent with the other women’s, and she has traces of makeup all over her face. Beaten, strangled, and dumped in Ashland. It’s the same guy. The only thing that’s different are your spider runes drawn on her palms. He’s never done that before. Never left any sort of runes or symbols behind on the bodies.”
“What do you think it means?” Bria asked, looking at me. “Do you think that it’s some sort of challenge to you? To catch him before he kills again?”
My head started pounding from all the unanswered questions. “I have no idea. I’m not blond, though, so why would he even care about me? Besides, I’m not known as a crime fighter. More like a crime killer. But whatever the runes mean, we have to find and stop this guy before he kidnaps his next victim.”
Ryan cleared his throat. “I hate to point out the obvious, but I think it’s already too late for that. Bria showed me a photo of that missing girl you’re searching for. Young, pretty, long blond hair. She fits his type to a T.”
With the sickening spider rune and serial killer revelations, I’d momentarily forgotten that Elissa Daniels was still missing. The ache in my head intensified.
“Plus, he’s been escalating,” Ryan said in a somber voice. “Kidnapping and killing the women closer together. Going from months between kills down to weeks. And it will only get worse.”
I glanced down at the photos laid out on the table again. Ryan was right. Elissa looked exactly like all the other victims. Young, blond, pretty. More important, she’d been at Northern Aggression last night.
I thought back to the security footage I’d watched. Something had caught Elissa’s attention and made her walk around to the back of the nightclub. Maybe she’d seen the killer messing around back there. Maybe the killer had realized that Elissa spotted him. Maybe he’d even called out to her, asking her to come help with his sick friend or some other ruse like that. Either way, the Dollmaker had just gotten rid of his latest victim, and he would have probably leaped at the opportunity to snatch up a new plaything. Elissa had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and she was suffering horribly for it.
“I want all your files,” I told Ryan. “Every note you’ve made, every scrap of evidence you’ve collected, every theory you’ve ever dreamed up about this guy. I want copies of all of it. And I want to know everything you find out when you autopsy this latest woman, especially when it comes to my spider runes on her hands.”
He nodded at me.
I turned to Bria. “And I want all of your notes, Xavier’s too. Info on every victim you’ve identified, background on all their friends and family, every time, date, and place this guy has dropped a body in Ashland, if there are any similar cases outside the city. Everything.”
She nodded too.
“What are you going to do, Gin?” Ryan asked, even though he already knew the answer.
“What I do best.” I gave him a grim smile. “I’m going to find this bastard and put him in the ground.”
13
Bria stayed behind in the cold-case room with Ryan, pulling out her phone and asking Xavier to come help them make copies of the files. I went back to the coroner’s office. Jade was slumped against the wall outside the office, with Sophia standing by her side.
Jade gave me a weary look, but she straightened up and pushed herself away from the wall. “Do you know anything else about that dead girl? Or Elissa?”
I shook my head. “Nothing concrete right now. I’m sure that Dr. Colson will do the autopsy tonight, so we might know more in the morning. Maybe he’ll find something that will at least help identify the woman, so her family can be notified.”
Jade nodded, although disappointment pinched her face. Elissa still being missing was bad enough, but my heart twisted at the thought of what I had to tell her about the Dollmaker and how he most likely had her sister.
I turned to Sophia. “You’ve been great today. I’ll take Jade home now. Thank you, Sophia.”
“Keep me posted,” she rasped.
“Of course.”
The Goth dwarf nodded at me, gently squeezed Jade’s arm, and walked off down the hallway, leaving me alone with the other woman.
Jade studied my face, her gaze sharpening. “There’s something you’re not telling me. Something bad. What is it?”
My heart twisted a little more. “Not here. I’ve had enough of this place for one night, and I’m sure you have too. I’ll tell you everything I know when we get to your house.”
? ? ?
Jade and I left the coroner’s office and walked over to my car. Even though it was creeping up on midnight now, the streets between the police station and my car were even busier than before, but all the hookers, pimps, and dealers gave us a wide berth.
Jade glanced around, watching everyone duck their heads, step back into the shadows, and do their best not to catch my attention. “I see that they know you around here.”
The image of those blood-red spider runes on the dead girl’s hands flashed through my mind. My heart twisted. “Yeah. You might say that.”
We reached my car. After making sure that no one had left any rune traps or bombs on the vehicle, we got inside. Jade rattled off her address, and I left the downtown loop behind and steered in that direction. She lived in a subdivision close to Jo-Jo Deveraux’s, although her sprawling, one-story, gray brick house was far more modest than the dwarf’s elegant antebellum home.
Jade unlocked the front door, and we stepped into an office that took up the front half of the house. Several workstations were spread throughout the area, each featuring an all-in-one computer and monitor, along with a phone, pens, notepads, paper clips, and other office paraphernalia. Since it was so late, no one was working, although red lights blinked on several of the phones, indicating a multitude of messages.
Jade saw my surprised look, and a faint grin lifted her lips. “What did you think it would look like? Some Old West bordello swathed in black lace? Roslyn Phillips might go in for red velvet at her club, but I do things a little differently.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t know what to expect. It’s a bit more high-tech than I anticipated.”
Jade shrugged. “It’s not just sending folks out on paid dates. That’s only a small part of my business these days, one that I’m slowly phasing out. I actually make a lot more money from my cleaning, temp, and other service businesses.”
“You’re quite the entrepreneur.”
She shrugged again. “I never wanted to be like my mother and have to depend on anyone else to support me. I never wanted to have to play all of the games that she did, and I especially never wanted to be as desperate as she was.”
“So you built your own business empire instead. Smart.”