12
For the second time in the last ten minutes, my mind spun around and around, trying to make sense of this startling new revelation.
Even in Ashland, where violence was sadly so very common, serial killers were exceptionally rare. The only one that I knew of recently had been Harley Grimes, the Fire elemental who’d kidnapped and tortured Sophia, and had done the same to dozens of other men and women before Sophia had finally killed him last year. But even then, Grimes had just been a mean son of a bitch who liked to hurt everyone who crossed his path. He hadn’t been a true serial killer, driven to hunt, abduct, torture, and murder the same kind of person over and over again.
But all these young women, all roughly the same age, with roughly the same features, and all killed in roughly the same way. It was a stunning new horror.
“How many?” I whispered. “How many women?”
Bria looked at Ryan, letting him take the lead.
“The dozen women before you are all the ones that I know of, that I’ve done the autopsies for,” he said, gesturing at the files and photos on the table. “There could be more victims—many more victims. I’ve been going through the cold-case files, trying to figure out if there are others and how long the killer has been active, but I haven’t found anything conclusive yet. All of these women have been murdered over the past two years. All of them badly beaten and strangled, with their bodies dumped in locations all over Ashland.”
“What made you connect the deaths? What ties them all together? Besides how they look and how he kills them?” I asked, part of me not wanting to know the answer. “Because it sounds like there’s something else. Something worse, if that’s even possible.”
Ryan reached back into the box and drew out a large plastic bag that I hadn’t noticed before. Several small compacts, all different colors, shapes, and sizes, rattled around inside, along with pots of eye shadow, sticks of eyeliner, and tubes of mascara. “Makeup.”
“Makeup?”
He nodded. “Makeup. Foundation, powder, eye shadow, eyeliner, mascara. I’ve found quite a lot of it on all the victims’ faces. Far more than anyone would normally wear, and all of it in these bright, gaudy colors that look more like paint than makeup.” He shifted on his feet. “It looks like the killer . . . dolls them up, for lack of a better term. That he either makes the women put on the makeup or he does it himself before he, ah, well, you know.”
“Kills them,” Bria finished in a harsh voice.
Ryan winced and nodded again. He set the bag down on the table, making the compacts and other items inside rattle together again. The harsh sound reminded me of bones breaking.
“My resources are limited, but I’ve been working on it in my free time,” he said. “I’m certainly no expert, but so far, I haven’t found one brand or type of makeup that seems to be used more than any other.”
I glanced down at the photos of the dead women spread out on the table. I didn’t want to ask the question, but I had to know more. “What about lipstick? Like the blood-red lipstick he used for my spider runes?” A horrible thought occurred to me, and I had to clear my throat before I could force out my next words. “Has he . . . drawn my spider runes on any of the other women?”
“No,” Ryan said. “This is the first time that he’s put any sort of runes on his victims.”
I exhaled. It didn’t change anything, and it certainly didn’t help any of the dead women, but at least he’d only used my runes this one time. I didn’t know what I would have done if he’d marked them on all his victims. Probably felt even more sick guilt than I already did. Although I wondered why he had drawn them on this girl and not any of the others. Why mark her up? Why now?
“As for the lipstick, I have found that on all the victims. Their lips are the one thing that he actually seems to use the same color on from woman to woman,” Ryan said. “I’ve been trying to determine exactly what color and brand of lipstick it is, but it’s been hard to get a good, clean sample, given how badly he beats the women, and their subsequent exposure to the elements.”
I barked out a short, brittle laugh. “Well, now you have a clean sample, thanks to my spider runes.”
He gave me a grim look. “Yes, I do.”
I curled my hands around the edge of the table, feeling the cold metal dig into the still itching and burning spider rune scars on my own palms. Fletcher had been wrong. Sometimes you just couldn’t brace yourself for the worst. Because I had never expected something like this to happen, not even in Ashland.
“So he kidnaps them, puts makeup on them, and kills them,” I said. “What else does he do to them?”
Ryan shook his head. “Nothing. He doesn’t do anything else to them. At least, not before the end.”
“What do you mean he doesn’t do anything else to them?” I asked. “Surely there has to be more to this than some creep painting women’s faces. He has to take them and make them up for some reason.”
He waved his hand over the photos. “There are no signs of physical abuse. No cuts, no burns, nothing like that. He restrains them, probably with a heavy rope, judging from the bruises around their wrists and ankles, but he doesn’t torture them.” His mouth twisted. “The beatings the women endure are horrific enough all on their own.”
Ryan looked at Bria, and she nodded, telling him to continue.
“If I had to guess, I would say that he ties them down to a chair. But he takes care of them. He feeds and bathes them on a regular basis, judging from my examination of the bodies.”
“So he kidnaps these women and holds them hostage. How long?” I asked. “How long does he keep them?”
“That’s a bit harder to determine. But judging from when some of the women were reported missing and when their bodies were found, the weather and the temperature at the time, and the varying rates of decomposition, I would say that he keeps them for at least four days. Sometimes a week or longer.”
So all of these women had endured at least four horrific days of being tied down, knowing that they would never see their friends and family again, knowing that they were going to be killed sooner or later, whenever the urge struck the monster who’d taken them.
That sort of helplessness was its own kind of cruel, cruel torture.
My gaze dropped to the photos of the dead women again, and for a moment, I could hear each and every one of their frantic cries ringing in my ears, screaming, begging, pleading for their captor to release them. Promising to do whatever he wanted if only he would let them live. If only he would let them go home to their families. A cold shiver crawled down my spine. I shook my head, but I couldn’t get rid of those dark, wailing echoes.
“But why even take them in the first place if he doesn’t actually do anything to them?” I asked. “If he just wanted to kill women, he could do that easily enough. Snatch them off the street, drag them into some dark alley, beat them, and leave their bodies behind. Not keep them prisoner for days on end.”
Ryan raised his hands in a helpless gesture. “I don’t know why he chooses these women, what they represent to him. My theory is that they remind him of someone close to him, someone he maybe even loved once upon a time. Whatever happened to that woman, and if he killed her too, well, that’s anyone’s guess. But I think that he’s trying to replace this person in his life. And when the women don’t measure up to his standards or don’t act the way he wants them to, that’s when he flies into a rage and kills them.” He hesitated again. “I think that he paints their lips last, right before he starts beating them. Then, of course, the strangulation is the final death act.”
“Why do you think that he paints their lips last?” I asked.
He grimaced. “Because I’ve found traces of lipstick on all of the women, especially in and around the wounds on their faces. Like it transferred from their lips to the fists of the man beating them and back again first thing, before he did anything else to them, before he strangled them.”
That made sense, but there was another question that I needed to ask. “Are you sure that it’s a man?”
Ryan nodded. “Yes. Most serial killers are men, and the size and the pattern of the strangulation marks around the women’s necks also indicate a man. A very strong man, judging from the fractured bones in the victims’ faces.”
“So you think that it’s most likely a giant or a dwarf,” I said, picking up on his train of thought.
“I do. Or perhaps even a vampire who drinks giant or dwarven blood on a regular basis. Whatever else he is, this man is exceptionally strong.”
My gaze moved from one woman’s photo to the next, their faces all cold, still, and frozen in death. Not just strong but smart too—a dangerous, devious kind of smart that had let him kidnap and murder a dozen women, maybe more, without getting caught.
I turned to Bria. “How long have you known about this?”
“About six months,” she answered.
“And why didn’t you tell me about it before now?”
“Because you’ve got enough on your plate dealing with the underworld and everything else. You didn’t need to be worried about a serial killer too.” Bria crossed her arms over her chest and gave me a pointed look. “Besides, I know you, Gin. You would somehow think that it was your fault that this guy was kidnapping and killing women.”
“Isn’t it my fault?” I growled. “He’s doing it in my city. What’s the point of being the big boss if I can’t stop horrible things like this from happening?”
She shook her head. “No, it is not your fault. You are not personally responsible for all the crime in Ashland, especially not something this terrible.”
I knew that she was right, that people made their own choices, including whether to hurt other people, but anger and frustration filled me all the same. Maybe if I had known sooner, I could have done something to help Bria, Xavier, and Ryan catch this guy. Maybe I could have put the word out on the street about this killer. Maybe I could have offered a reward for information. I glanced at the photos again. Maybe I could have saved some of these poor dead girls.
“I’ve worked several of these cases, but Ryan was the one who first noticed the similarities between the victims, especially the makeup,” Bria said. “He started going back through his files and compiling a list of similar cases. Xavier’s been helping too, and this is what the three of us have come up with so far.”
“A jackpot of evil,” I muttered.
“Yeah,” Bria said. “That about sums it up.”
“So if you know that there’s a serial killer on the loose in Ashland, then why are all of these cases down here in storage?”
Bria and Ryan shared a grim look.
“Our superiors aren’t as convinced,” she said. “They think that the cases are unrelated. Or rather, they don’t want them to be related. They think that Ashland has enough crime and corruption without adding a serial killer to the mix.”
Well, that was certainly true. For as violent as Ashland was, there was usually a method to the madness. Somebody had something that someone else wanted, so they took it by force. Or somebody screwed someone else over in some other way, and the wronged party came back for revenge. Not to mention all the territorial disputes between gangs, criminals jacking their rivals’ shipments of guns and drugs and money, and desperate folks knocking over convenience stores for petty cash. And of course there were the old traditional standbys: people hurting each other because of money, love, jealousy, or all three.
But a serial killer, someone whose dark motives and even darker desires were known only to him, who could strike at any time and in any place without any rhyme, reason, or warning . . . That was truly frightening, even in Ashland.
“And of course the higher-ups are worried about the media attention,” Bria continued. “They can just see the headlines. Dollmaker strikes again. Dollmaker claims another victim. Dollmaker still on the loose.”
“Dollmaker?” I asked.
She shrugged. “We had to call him something. But his name doesn’t really matter, just the headlines he could generate. At least, that’s what our bosses think. They want to avoid the bad press at all costs, along with the resulting panic it would create.”
I snorted. “You mean the esteemed members of the po-po just want to cover their own asses because they haven’t been able to catch this guy yet.”
Bria nodded. “Yeah. That too.”
The three of us fell silent, although my gaze locked onto that plastic bag full of compacts, eye shadow, and mascara again. Out of all the things you could do to someone, why put makeup on them? And why paint every woman’s lips the exact same shade of red? Why not pink or purple or even black? Why not just use the woman’s favorite lipstick from her own purse?
Ryan was right. How these women looked—the young pretty faces, the long blond hair, the makeup—it all had to mean something to the killer. But what? Maybe it was all tied to some woman he’d once loved, like Ryan thought. Maybe he was Dr. Frankenstein trying to create—or recreate—his own perfect mate. Or maybe it was something else entirely. No way to know for sure.
Until I caught the bastard.
“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.”