Page 338 of Rangers Last Promise

Captain Mills stood near the window with his arms crossed. His dress shirt was already stained beneath the arms, and the sun hadn’t fully risen.

“Tell me this isn’t number seven,” he said.

I looked at the dead woman.

“It’s number seven.”

“Damn it, Langley.”

I didn’t bother reminding him I wasn’t the one killing them.

Mills had been taking heat from the chief, the mayor, and every television station in Texas. Seven women had vanished in eleven months. Six of them had been discovered posed in bedrooms across the Dallas area.

Now we had another.

Each victim was between thirty and forty-five. All had dark hair. All lived alone. None had known each other. We hadn’t found a single connection that tied them together.

Except him.

The man we had started calling the Keeper.

He washed them, dressed them, brushed their hair, painted their fingernails, then arranged them as though they were sleeping before disappearing without leaving so much as a partial print.

No witnesses.

No usable DNA.

No mistakes.

Until now.

Will rose from beside the bed.

“You need to see this.”

I followed him around the foot of the mattress. He pointed toward the woman’s left hand.

Her fingers were curled around something.

It looked like a piece of folded paper.

“Did you photograph it?”

“From every angle.”

“Open her hand.”

Will gently released the victim’s fingers. The paper had been folded into a square no larger than a Post-it.

He lifted it with tweezers and placed it inside a clear evidence tray.

“Do you want the honors?” he asked.

“Absolutely.”

I unfolded it carefully.

The paper was thick and yellowed with age. It looked like it had been torn from an old letter. A few handwritten words stretched across it in faded black ink.