Ella slumped into her desk chair and let her head fall into her hands.
No, their killer was still out there and Ella needed a new angle before he struck again.
She raked a hand through her hair, thus disheveling it further, and got to work.She emptied the contents of the evidence bags onto her desk and arranged them.Figurines, crime scene photos, files.The two figurines winked up at her, and now Ella knew where one of them led.
The figurine from victim one led to the home of victim two, and if there was one thing Ella knew about ritualistic killers, it was that they stuck to patterns, be it consciously or unconsciously.
Which meant the figurine on victim two had to lead to victim three.The problem was that Ella didn’t have a clue where it went.
But there was another problem, one that had been scratching at the back of her skull since she’d first made the connection at Lily’s kitchen table.The chain went in one direction: the snowman on Amber pointed to Rose, and the ballet dancer on Rose pointed forward to someone else.But what about the other direction?What pointed to Amber?
If this killer was building a chain, then Amber was either the first link or there was a victim zero somewhere in New Orleans.Given the killer’s theatricality so far, Ella doubted there were others, so she had to work on the assumption Amber was the first.But still, what started the whole chain in the first place?
Ella turned her attention back to the task at hand.Unless she found a donation center nearby that had received a music box with a snowman on it in the past six months, then figuring out where this ballet dancer came from was Ella’s priority.
Ella picked up the evidence bag and looked it over.It was about three inches tall.The character had a white base coat, a turquoise dress, and her arms raised overhead in a classical pose.It had fine brushwork and had been hand-painted.This wasn’t some mass-produced job.
She’d already been through this at the coroner’s office.She’d studied the paint and the craftsmanship but none of that had given her a destination.So now she was going to brute-force it, because time was a luxury she didn’t have.
She pulled the laptop toward her and started with the obvious.Hand-painted ballet dancer figurine New Orleans.Google returned fourteen million results.The first page was Etsy sellers and eBay listings and a Pinterest board someone had titledCute Ballet Decor!!!with enough exclamation marks to rile up Ella’s inner linguist.She scrolled through them anyway and found porcelain ballerinas in pink tutus, resin figures on wooden stands and most annoyingly, crystal dancers from gift shops that charged forty dollars for something that cost two dollars to manufacture in China.None of them looked like what she had in the bag.
She refined the search.Ceramic ballet dancer figurine hand-painted turquoise dress.Fewer results this time, but no closer.A craft blog in Minnesota.An Etsy store in Portland that had been inactive for four years.A Facebook Marketplace listing for a box of old cake toppers, none of which were ballet dancers.
She trieda ballet figurine music boxbecause the snowman had come from a music box, and maybe the dancer had too.This sent her down a hole of antique listings and collector forums.She found hundreds of music boxes with spinning ballerinas, but they were all the same type: a single figure on a spring mechanism, arms out, one leg extended, mass-produced and identical.Nothing like the hand-painted piece on her desk.
Ella rubbed her eyes and tried again.New Orleans ceramic figurines hand-painted local artist.This gave her a few leads – a gallery in the Warehouse District, and a community art cooperative that sold pottery and small sculptures.She went through each website, each gallery page, each blurry photograph of somebody’s hand-glazed coffee mug.Nothing matched.
She went back to the figurine.She’d been looking at it as a product, she realized, but what if it wasn’t?What if it was something representational?The snowman had been part of a music box.It was decorative.It told people something about the object it sat on.What if the ballet dancer did the same?What if it wasn’t a product but a symbol?
She typedballet dancer logo New Orleans.
The results reorganized, mostly into dance studios.First came the New Orleans Ballet Association, then a children’s dance school in Metairie.Amongst the studios that followed was a pole fitness place that had somehow gamed the search algorithm.Ella scrolled past all of them because none of their logos matched what she was looking at.
Page two.A dance supply store with a silhouette logo that was close but not quite because the arms were at the sides, not overhead.A wedding venue that used a dancing couple in their branding.A performing arts school with a logo so cluttered she couldn’t make out what it was supposed to be.
Page three.Ella nearly skipped past it.The thumbnail was small and the website behind it looked like it hadn’t been updated since the early 2000s.
But the image stopped her cold nonetheless.
It was a ballet dancer.
One with her arms raised overhead and one leg slightly bent.She was wearing a dress that – even in the tiny, pixelated thumbnail – was clearly turquoise.
Ella clicked into it.The website loaded slowly, section by section, like a Polaroid developing.A banner image across the top.A navigation bar with tabs forShows,Workshops,About Us,Volunteer.And in the top left corner, the logo.
It was a hand-drawn ballet dancer in a turquoise dress.She was striking a classical pose with her arms in fifth position.The style was illustrative but the proportions were exact.
Ella looked at the screen.Then she looked at the evidence bag on the desk.
The figurine wasn’t a copy of the logo.It was the logo made solid.Someone had taken this image – this specific dancer in this specific dress in this specific pose – and recreated it in ceramic
Her pulse spiked.She felt electricity in her veins.
The website belonged to a place called the Colisée Theatre, which was apparently a community theatre on St.Claude Avenue in the Bywater.TheAbout Uspage said they ran local productions, youth drama workshops, and a volunteer programme.TheShowspage listed an upcoming production ofA Streetcar Named Desirewith a cast photo.
Ella didn’t read the rest.She didn’t need to.She grabbed her jacket off the back of the chair, stuffed the evidence bag in her pocket, and was out the door before she had a chance to second-guess her findings.
Because the snowman had pointed from Amber Holloway back to Rose Michaels.And if the ballet dancer was pointing forward – if this killer was stitching his victims together with ceramic and surgical glue in a chain she was only now starting to see – then someone at the Colisée Theatre could be next.Spree killers could keep their rampages going for days, and there was nothing stopping him taking multiple lives in one night again.
