The hair on my arms prickles. I was right. He’s killed before. He trained. He practiced. He started hunting and killing, and he got better at murder. He got stronger, but his biggest regret will be the day Roberts disappeared. Because that’s the day I appeared.
Chapter 58
My mind is racing a million miles an hour with questions, so many questions. I want to crawl into Wade’s mind and into that file and know everything now, but I slow myself down. I remind myself not to get buried in the excess, to focus. I ask one simple, important question to start. “Were poems left?”
Wade gives a shake of his head. “But those types of details are easier discovered by calling the detectives on the targeted cases.” He angles closer, his eyes alight with a secret he wants to share. “Ask the next question.”
I’m not sure where he’s going, but I’m eager to find out. “Were any of the cases in Texas?”
“Two.”
Adrenaline surges through me, but I don’t allow it to control me any more than I will allow the man in the hoodie and baseball cap to intimidate me. “When?”
“Both in the last six months,” he says.
“Where?”
“Brownsville and Houston. Brownsville was the first of the two murders.”
My gaze rockets to Lang’s. “Brownsville. That’s where Martin was trying to meet up with the person selling cyanide on the dark web.”
“And Houston is where Roberts suddenly decided to transfer,” Lang says, pulling his phone from his pocket. “I’ll call Martin and the Brownsville and Houston PDs now. Maybe I’ll get lucky and catch the right detectives working late.” He’s all action now and with good reason. We’re getting close to him. We all feel it.
I turn my attention back to Wade. “What about the man with the hoodie? Were there sightings linked to any cases?”
“We’re going to need to rerun the report to get that information.”
“Right. Okay. Yes. I didn’t give you that information when you were running the report.” I shrug out of my jacket and kick off my heels. “There’s suddenly a lot to do.” I give Wade a pointed look. “And just so you know, I’m perfectly fine with you staying over and working all night.”
He laughs, a deep, warm laugh, the kind of laugh that disarms humans and killers alike. I like that laugh, but even more so, the savvy skills hidden beneath it. “Good to know,” he says, “especially since I’d already assumed as much. I’ll order food.”
“Perfect.” I stand up, walk around the table, and head up the stairs to the attic, then flip the light on as I enter a compact room with an angled ceiling. The realtor pitched this space as a giant closet or small bedroom minus a window. I’ve since learned that this “closet” is the best place for photos of dead bodies and crime scene data if I plan to have guests. Not that I have many of those who aren’t jaded members of law enforcement. I did at one point, back a few years ago when I tried a dating app. Traffic ticket advice and talking about episodes of CSI were far less appealing than solving crimes.
I’ve kept the space basic by necessity of size, with nothing but a built-in pale wooden desk against the far wall and a giant cushioned hammock couch framed by two simple side tables. That hammock was hell for Lang to get up here because he’s so big and the room is so small.
My eyes catch on a record player on the desk. It triggers something in me, and I walk around the hammock to get a closer look. Next to the player is a collection of jazz albums I’ve traded back and forth with my grandfather for years. It’s a special thing we’ve done, as granddaughter and grandfather and best friends. A pinch of guilt finds my chest. I haven’t been to see him at the nursing home since Dad died, but he doesn’t know; not that his son is gone or that I haven’t visited. He doesn’t remember much of anything, and that’s hard to swallow. A different kind of pinch finds its way to my chest this time: pain and loss. I lost him before I lost my father.
I grab one of the albums, Chet Baker in Tokyo, one of his favorites. He loves jazz, and not because of our last name, which he’s always thought was a fun gift passed down through the generations. A name I was blessed with because he adopted my father when he was ten. I fade back in time, sitting in Grandpa’s den, otherwise known as his “jazz room.”
“My dear Samantha,” he’d say. “Jazz and poetry speak to the soul in the same deep and profound way as do many of the great literary works, of course.” He’d held up a glass of whiskey and added, “But jazz, poetry, and good whiskey are magic together.” Something stirs in my mind about the case with this memory, something I try to reach out and grab but can’t quite manage.