Page 11 of Wrong Way

"Let’s run it against local neon and sign suppliers,” Miles said. “Whoever did this knew how to modify that unit. They may have a professional background in it."

"Already started it," Sarah said with some satisfaction. She made a note on her laptop. "But both of you should know that this woman’s client records…well, there are a lot of them. She had a steady book. It's going to take time to go through them properly."

"I know. Do what you can. And thanks, Sa—Agent Kim,” he said, catching himself and feeling a bit of red creep into his cheeks.

After he signed off, he sat back in his chair and looked at the whiteboard with its leftover case notes. The room smelled faintly of old coffee and dry-erase marker, and from the bullpen outside came the ordinary sounds of a working precinct, phones, low conversation, the periodic thunk of a door.

Vic looked up from the contractor's report. "Our guy knows electrical systems, that’s for sure. And it’s not that he just knows them; this guy is sophisticated. This section here on the impedance modification, for instance…the contractor's saying this isn't someone who picked it up as a hobby. He adjusted the wiring connections inside the unit, which means he had to know the internal architecture of that specific transformer model well enough to make targeted changes without shorting it out." She set the report down and leaned back in her rickety chair. "This is either professional training or a lot of dedicated self-study."

"Or both."

"Yeah. And the other thing is the execution of it all. He got into that shop, made modifications to an active electrical installation without leaving any sign of forced entry, and got out clean. And I wonder if they even knew her routines, right down to when she would touch the switch on that crystal ball.”

Miles was quiet for a moment, his thoughts landing back on the brief manifesto. The language in it was specific enough that it wasn't generic anti-psychic sentiment and loose enough so that it didn’t point to just one single complaint or grievance.

False illumination. The element does not lie.

Neon was the through line, he was pretty sure of that. That was where this began, not with the victim and not with any personal connection between killer and target, but with the element itself—and with what the killer saw when he looked at neon and the people who used it. The other disciples had found their method in helium, mercury, and argon. This one had found it in the lit tubes of a sign hanging in a fortune teller's window.

"The victim profile is going to be secondary to the method," Miles said. "He chose her because of the neon. Because of the element, just like all of the others. I seriously doubt Clements was chosen because of who she specifically was, or who she had wronged, or anything personal. The neon was the signal."

Vic looked at him, giving a small and hesitant nod. He understood it; it was an approach that butted up against traditional investigative thinking. "If that's right, then anyone with a prominent neon sign in their business is a potential target,” she said.

"Which is most of South Congress and half of downtown Austin." He stood and walked to the whiteboard, starting to erase the old content that was already there. "We need a tighter frame than that. The note called her false light and referenced a charlatan glow. The language was about authenticity, about people who fake luminosity to attract believers. If we take that seriously as a selection framework, we're looking at businesses that use neon to project a spiritual or mystical image. Psychics, tarot readers, energy workers, that type."

Vic pulled up a browser tab and instantly started typing. "There's a fairly dense community of that in Austin. It's that kind of city."

Miles uncapped the dry-erase marker from the ledge of the whiteboard and wrote NEON at the top. Below it: SPIRITUAL / MYSTICAL STOREFRONTS. Below that: SOUTH CONGRESS / DOWNTOWN.

"We start there,” he said. “We find out how many businesses in that profile are operating with neon signage, and we figure out what Kowalski's department can do to put eyes on them." He capped the marker. "In the meantime, we wait on the transformer trace and the client records, and we see if Sarah turns up anything in the victim's background that gives us a narrower lens."

Vic looked at the whiteboard and then to Miles. "You think he's already picked the next one."

It wasn't a question, and Miles didn't treat it like one. "Yes," he said. "He has a plan and he's following it, just like the others. Nothing is accidental or by chance. That's clear from the modification on that transformer. You don't build something that carefully unless you've built it before…or unless you're going to build it again."

“So, what can we do while we wait?” she asked.

Miled didn’t have to think about it for long. He thought of the manipulated wiring, the manifesto, and the place where the neon in question had been installed.

“I think we need to head back to Madame Celestine’s.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

As they drew closer to the storefront, they both decided that heading back was indeed the smartest move for now. The crime scene was already processed and released back to them for continued access, and that standing in the physical space was more useful than working off photographs and reports when what they were trying to understand was the neon infrastructure specifically.

Kowalski met them on South Congress with the key. The yellow tape was still across the door but the small sidewalk crowd from earlier in the day had dispersed, replaced by ordinary foot traffic. A few people glanced at the dark sign in the window as they passed but that was all.

Inside, the shop was exactly as they had left it. Kowalski stayed near the door while Miles and Vic moved through the front room and into the reading space. This time, they paid less attention to the crystal ball apparatus and the modified transformer, which had already told them what it was going to tell them.

Miles approached the neon signs one by one, certain they would end up being the key. There were five neon pieces in the storefront in total. The large custom sign in the front window was the most prominent, the flowing violet and gold script with her name and the word READINGS beneath it. That one was clearly the centerpiece of the exterior presentation, the piece Celestine had spent considerable money on. It was mounted in a custom frame fitted to the window opening, and it was of a size that would require a dedicated transformer rather than a small off-the-shelf power supply.

A second sign hung above the interior doorway between the front room and the reading space, a smaller piece in warm white neon that spelled out the word WELCOME in a simple arc. A third was on the wall of the reading room itself. It was a decorative piece, just abstract curves in pale amber that didn't spell anything but added to the atmosphere of the space. The fourth was a small OPEN sign near the front door, standard commercial stock, the kind available through any sign supplier.

The fifth was the crystal ball display, which was its own category.

Miles crouched near the back of the main window sign and looked at the rear of the mounting frame. The transformer for the large sign was mounted to the wall behind the frame. Its housing was partially obscured by the frame's structure. He leaned closer and looked at the face of the unit.

"Here," he said.