“I know. And I raised you to be honest.”
“You wanted me to lie?”
Pop said begrudgingly, “No….”
“I’ve been doing provenance research,” I said, and smartly avoided any mention of having chatted with Rose—Brad, I guess I should say—prior to his death, and finding Mariealreadydead. Those were technicalities I’d mention to Pop in about—
The thought flatlined and I mentally rewound:Rose—Brad, I guess I should say.
Someone whose appearance wasn’t what it seemed.
And then the floodgates opened.
Because none of this case, from the onset, appeared to be what it was.
The Ouija Killer who offed fraudulent psychics—but who had also killed Marie Yang.
A possible suspect who wanted my attention—but who had never initiated contact.
The mysterious person who argued with Sandra shortly before her death—but our one witness wasn’t certain if it’d been a man or woman.
Sinclair, who wanted drama and excitement for an exclusive story—but who had left a scene that all but promised those juicy details.
Even the murders felt off. They were all premeditated and methodically planned so as to resemble each other and tell the story of deceitful Spiritualists—but why? When, for example, the Zodiac Killer rained terror on California, they’d reached out to law enforcement, to media, because they wanted everyone to know exactly why they were murdering. It had been important to such a serial killer to be seen as smarter, unattainable, and to warn the public that they were always watching. And that wasn’t to say we were dealing with someone of the same unhinged caliber, but even when Brigg and Asquith had gone on their slaying frenzies here in the city, they’d communicated with at leastme.
But this perpetrator? Nothing. Nada. Zilch.
It was as if they wanted us to see more than what actually existed. And while understanding the motive of a sick person was sometimes impossible, there was nothing at the three different crime scenes to suggest we were dealing with an individual who had a compulsive desire to kill out of rage, financial gain, or even sex. I mean, it felt…contrived.
A séance in the dark.
And you simply had to trust that the medium wasn’t the onerap,rap,rapping on the tabletop and swindling you out of a hard-earned buck.
“Interesting…,” I whispered.
“What’s that?” Pop asked.
I shook my head. “No—nothing. Hey, Pop, did you ever have any students who you thought were one kind of person and then proved to be someone completely different?”
“You mean, did I judge a book by its cover?”
I frowned thoughtfully but said, “Yeah, maybe.”
Pop sipped his coffee. “Well… this must have been around the year you were born, so early in my career at NYU. I had a young woman in my Nineteenth Century American Authors course. She was taking it for required credit, so I thought, here we go, a warm body who won’t participate, won’t show up, or will only do the bare minimum because they’re being forced into it.”
“Why do you remember her in particular?” I interrupted.
“I suppose it’s because I’d pegged her as… a ditz.”
“Really?”
“Yes. She was very quiet too, and because I’d already decided she had no interest in the course, I was feeding my own bias. Then she submitted an absolutely phenomenal research paper at the end of the semester that compared and contrasted the art of Aubrey Beardsley and Gustave Doré—”
“Poe’s artists,” I said.
“That’s right.”
“Beardsley did a few illustrations for ‘The Black Cat’ and ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue.’ Doré did ‘The Raven.’”
