Lily squinted at it.‘No.Where’s it from?’
‘We found this in your sister’s hand.But we don’t know why.’
The sister pushed two fingers against her eyelids and sobbed.‘What is this?Some kind of sick game to him?’
Ella wished she could offer some kind of comfort, but in moments like this, words held no weight.Anything you could say was just an empty platitude.‘We’re figuring that out,’ she said.
‘You’ll catch who did this, right?’Lily cried.‘You’ll find this sick freak and put him in jail?’
‘That’s why we’re here.’
Ella looked at the ballet dancer in her hand.Lily had given her nothing on it, which was what she’d expected but not what she’d wanted.She was about to put both bags away when something made her stop.
A hunch, nothing more.Merely the nagging sense that if the figurines connected the victims, then showing each victim’s figurine only to their own family was the wrong approach.These objects didn’t belong to the women they were found on.That was the whole point.The killer had brought them, so where had they come from?
She pulled out the second evidence bag.The snowman.Ceramic, white body, black dot eyes, orange nose.Found on Amber Holloway’s necklace.
She held it up.
‘What about this one?’
Lily glanced at it and nearly dropped her cigarette.‘Where the hell did you get that?’
Ella sensed a revelation on the horizon.Her heart began to pound.‘You recognize it?’
The sister reached out and took it.‘Yes… this is… Rose’s.It’s from her music box.’
Ella caught Ripley’s eye.They had something.
‘Lily, you’re sure this belonged to Rose?’
‘One hundred percent.See this little blue mark on the bottom?Leo did that, with a blue pen.I remember Rose rushing to stop him doing it.’
Ella felt the back of her neck go cold.‘This happened here?In this apartment?’
‘Yeah.The music box was a gift from Jared.I told you, he bought all kinds of crap for her.’
‘The music box.Is it here now?’
‘No.Rose gave it away, along with a bunch of stuff Jared got her.Clothes, ornaments, you name it.’
‘To who?’
‘I don’t know.A donation place.She bagged it all up and dropped it off somewhere, but I don’t know where.I’m sorry.Where did you find the snowman?’
Ripley had stopped taking notes on her phone.Ella ran through likelihoods in her head and came to two possibilities: whoever Rose gave the snowman to was the one who killed Amber Holloway and planted it on her body, and that personmighthave been her ex-boyfriend, Jared Novak.
‘Lily,’ Ella said.‘You told us Jared made threats.That he said Rose would regret leaving him.Did he ever threaten physical violence?Specifically.’
The sister wiped her eyes with her sleeve and said, ‘Pretty much.I mean, he didn’t say it outright, but he implied it.Rose said he’d say things like ‘you’ll regret this.’
‘We need to know where Rose donated that music box to,’ Ripley said.‘Are there receipts?Or any donation centers you know she went to?’
Lily’s hands began to move hysterically, as though the burden of responsibility was too much to bear.‘I’ll try.I’ll look around.But I can’t promise.I don’t know everything she did.’
Ella took the snowman back and turned to Lily.‘Thank you.You’ve been incredibly helpful.If you think of anything else, like the name of the shop or anything Jared said – call me directly.’She placed a card on the table.
Lily didn’t pick it up.She was staring at the spot where the evidence bag had been, as though the snowman’s ghost was still sitting there on the pressboard.
