He sighed and sat back down at his desk. Ignoring the trickle of blood from his hand, he started to tear down the pictures of Alfred Lawnbrook. He crumpled them all up and tossed them into a pile next to the mop bucket. When the wall was cleared, he looked at it for a moment, smiling. He then opened up the long drawer at his worktable and took out another pile of pictures. He set them on the table, next to a roll of Scotch tape.
With his hand still dripping blood onto the table, he began to tape these new pictures up. Pictures of his next experiment—of his next victim.
CHAPTER EIGHT
As everyone filed into the conference room for the briefing, Avery realized it was the most people she had been around since Ramirez’s death. Sure, there were more people than this in the grocery store when she’d had to go from time to time, but those people were dispersed throughout the store. Here, they were all packed into one room. It felt a little claustrophobic, but much like receiving her Glock and her badge earlier in the day, it felt warmly comfortable.
O’Malley had greeted her with a handshake as he took to the front of the room. Watching him prep for the briefing made her realize just how shaken up things had become within the A1 after she had left. While O’Malley had endured his share of running things in the past, he seemed more stressed now, making her think that he had a few more cases on his plate in addition to this one.
Finley sat across from her, bordered by two officers on either side of him. There were two others in the room as well, one familiar face and a brand new one. A younger officer sat at the end of the table, a woman who was surely no older than twenty-five. She saw Avery taking mental inventory of the room and gave her a stiff little nod.
“Okay, folks,” O’Malley said from the front. “Let’s go ahead and get this out of the way first: we are graced by Detective Avery Black once again. She’s agreed to help with this case because, quite frankly, I’m starting to feel as if my hands are tied. Detective Black’s track record speaks for itself and I’m sure she’ll be a huge addition to the case. Black, do you have anything to add?”
She shook her head, eager to get on with it.
“We’re going to start from the top today,” O’Malley said. “Retracing steps, ideas, theories, everything. We all know the details, so I won’t bore us all with them. But some newer tidbits that have been basically confirmed do warrant mentioning. First and foremost, we got results back this morning, having checked the Boston area for pet store break-ins or large purchases of spiders. We’ve come up with nothing. Of course, with the accessibility of the Internet, this basically means nothing, but we can at least cross it off our list.
“We’ve interviewed the family and there are no leads at all. All we know for sure is that Alfred Lawnbrook lived a very private life. His mother has indicated that he was a bit of a germophobe and scaredy cat. Hence why he had no real friends and lived alone. Now, Detective Black, you were the most recent body out at the crime scene, having visited this morning. Do you have any details to share?”
“Nothing substantial,” Avery said. “I saw absolutely no sign of a break-in, which only backs up previous reports. It means that Lawnbrook willingly let the killer in. And if the killer indeed brought the spiders with them, it makes me wonder if the two are somehow connected. Maybe Lawnbrook was expecting a package. Perhaps the killer somehow knew this and used it to get in, bringing in the spiders rather than whatever package Lawnbrook might have been waiting on. Or maybe Lawnbrook knew the killer. Right now, it’s all just speculation.”
“And that’s what we’re here to put a stop to,” O’Malley said. “All alibis with the landlord, family, and the one friend we spoke with checks out. There’s one neighbor we need to still speak to, but they are out of the country. Which, as far as I’m concerned, is their alibi. They’ve been in Spain for eight days so far and are due back next week.”
“Someone traveling to Spain for that long but living in those dumpy apartments?” the young woman at the back of the table asked. “That doesn’t add up.”
“It doesn’t,” O’Malley agreed. “And that’s why we’ll be questioning them the moment they return.”
“Do we know how long Lawnbrook had been dead before he was discovered?”
“The coroner’s report says as much as five days, but no longer than that for sure. Now…let’s see if we can get to the bottom of this so I can stop picturing spiders every-fucking-where.”
As O’Malley doled out assignments for the day, Avery kicked back into puzzle-solving mode. Somehow or another, she thought, the killer had easy access. They had easy access and they weren’t afraid to carry around poisonous spiders. Maybe it would be prudent to speak with an entomologist or an arachnologist at length. If I can understand the spiders that were used more clearly, maybe it will uncover something about the killer.
On the heels of that, there was another thought. And this one seemed to have legs to it because when it struck her, it struck her hard. Why those spiders? To have selected such specific spiders, the killer had to have known something about the victim.
As the officers got up to head out with their tasks, the young woman from the back of the table approached Avery. She had very short black hair and dark eyes. Her eyes were beautiful, the most striking thing about her. Her skin looked remarkably pale in contrast to the dark hair.
The woman smiled in an almost embarrassing way and offered her hand.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m Courtney Kellaway. I came on three weeks ago, a transfer from New York.”
Avery shook her hand. “Nice to meet you,” she said, instantly wondering if Connelly had brought her on with plans of eventually filling the hole Avery Black’s absence would leave.
“In the three weeks I’ve been here, I’ve heard nothing but amazing things about you,” Kellaway said. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”
“Likewise,” Avery said, getting up from her chair. Doing her best not to seem rude, she turned away from Kellaway and headed to the front of the room where O’Malley was gathering up his files.
“I’ve got full freedom on this, right?” she asked him.
O’Malley winced at her choice of words and considered his answer carefully. “Mostly, yes. Why? What’s up?”
“I know that you guys have already spoken to spider experts, but I’d like to follow up on that.”
“Arachnology,” O’Malley said with some distaste. “I didn’t even know such a thing existed until this madness. And yes, by all means, have a go at it.”
“I think I’ll reach out to the Boston Museum of Science. They’ve got that butterfly garden over there so there’s got to be an entomologist on staff, right?”
“I have no idea,” O’Malley said. “Why don’t you find out? But I’m going to ask that you do it without Finley. I need him with me for a portion of the day.”
Preferring to work alone, Avery tried her best not to seem too happy about this. Instead, she instantly took out her phone as she exited the room. She pulled up the number to the Museum of Science and started down the road for her next potential lead.
CHAPTER NINE
It took a few phone calls and transfers between different departments, but Avery managed to set up an emergency meeting with an entomologist. She’d had her hopes on an arachnologist but the museum did not have one on staff. So Avery went with what she could get and, in the end, turned out pleased…and a little creeped out.
Donald Johansson was a sixty-year-old man with a charming smile and a thick pair of glasses perched on his nose. When Avery knocked on the door of his office, he answered with a kind yet booming voice. Avery found herself walking into an office where every square inch of the walls was covered in photographs of different insects. She saw several spiders among them.
“Detective Black?” Johansson asked.
“Yes, that’s me. And thanks for meeting with me on such short notice.”