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“How long have you been studying this guy?” Turner asked.

“Five years,” Trinity said.

“Then you’ve got some theories, even without having all the information.”

Trinity put a hand on her chest. “Well, yeah. Have you even met me?”

Turner chuckled. “In fact, I have, which is why we’re here. You’re our resident Last Kiss Killer expert. Want to take us through your dossier?”

Trinity’s eyes lit up but quickly dimmed. “You have to find him,” she said, voice almost a whisper. There was still some rasp to it from the smoke she’d inhaled. “I mean it. You have to. For Sylvia.”

Josie knew she was picturing Sylvia in her bed, looking tiny and broken, the macabre smeared lipstick unnaturally bright on her face, its red a shout from the center of the packed room. Josie herself had awakened in a cold sweat the night before after a nightmare in which she was trapped in the bedroom with Sylvia, who kept crying for help. Help Josie couldn’t provide because there was no escaping the room. She slid an arm across Trinity’s shoulders and hugged her. “We will do everything we can. I promise.”

Eleven

Turner cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable with their raw emotion. That he didn’t make a sexist remark about women being overemotional was a surprise. Then again, since Josie had shattered his façade, he’d been far less obnoxious when it came to such things.

Trinity straightened and clicked on a folder marked “A. Jarrett.” She pulled up a photo, this one different from the one on the first page of her presentation. The woman was in her mid-thirties. She stood behind a bar, one hand clutching a towel. She wore a blue and white flannel shirt. Long chestnut-brown hair cascaded over her shoulders. Mischief danced in her amber eyes. She had the kind of smile that made you want to smile back, no matter what kind of day you were having. A brittle feeling settled in Josie’s chest. Whatever infectious joy this woman had had to offer had been snuffed out. In a world in desperate need of joy, her murder was doubly tragic.

“This was his first victim,” Trinity explained. “Alanna Jarrett. She was a thirty-six-year-old bartender from Morgantown. Recently divorced with shared custody of her eight-year-old son. Her husband kept the house. She’d moved into an apartment.”

“Was the divorce contentious?” asked Josie.

“According to him it was tense but mostly amicable. He claims they just grew apart, but one of her friends told me Alanna thought he’d been cheating. Anyway, he paid child support but she was still struggling. She worked at the bar in the evenings and by day, she was a sales consultant for a company called Luxe Glimmer.”

Turner stood and walked around to the other side of the table, pacing. He could never stay still for very long. If they were at the station he’d be tossing his stupid foam basketball at his desktop net. When the finger tapping and heel bobbing weren’t enough, he had to get up and move around. Josie briefly considered getting him a fidget toy and quickly dismissed the idea. She’d never be able to tolerate his smug satisfaction at the idea that she’d given him a gift.

“What’s Luxe Glimmer?” he asked Trinity.

“Direct-to-consumer cosmetics.”

“Like Avon?” Josie said. “Or Mary Kay?”

“Yep. They opened in 2006. It worked like a lot of multi-level marketing models at first, with cosmetic consultants hand-selling the products to family, friends, acquaintances, coworkers. Basically, anyone who would listen to their pitch. They hosted makeup parties to drum up sales. Then they recruited clients to become consultants and took commissions from those sales.”

Turner stopped pacing and sat down across from them. “Did people still have those parties when Alanna Jarrett was a consultant?”

“They did,” Trinity answered. “But everything had gone online by then. Each consultant had their own landing page where their customers were directed for purchases, so ordering was easier for everyone and the consultants still got to do their thing.”

“Are they still in business?” Josie asked.

“Yes.” Trinity brought up her internet browser and pulled up the Luxe Glimmer website. “But they’re just an online retailer now.”

It couldn’t be a coincidence that the Last Kiss Killer’s first victim was a cosmetics salesperson. Josie couldn’t wait to get her hands on the police files to find out more about the lipstick the killer had used. Did he use the same type on each victim? Was it a Luxe Glimmer product? Law enforcement would not have revealed whether they’d matched a particular lipstick to the one used on the victims to Trinity or any other journalist. That was something they would have held back from the public.

If he had used a Luxe Glimmer lipstick, did it have significance to him, or had he simply grabbed it from Alanna Jarrett’s collection as a matter of convenience? She had been his first victim. Had they known one another? Had she meant something to him?

Josie’s mind was a storm of unanswered questions. It took great effort to stow them away for later so she could listen to the rest of the information her sister had.

“The night she was murdered, Alanna helped her coworkers close up. She left for home around two thirty a.m. Two of the other bar employees saw her drive off in her car. The next afternoon, she didn’t show up to work and wasn’t answering her phone so her boss got in touch with her ex-husband, who went over to check on her. There was no sign of forced entry. He found Alanna inside, strangled, with lipstick smeared across her lips. Before you ask, the husband checked out. He had an alibi. He’d taken their son to stay with his parents that weekend for a family reunion. Thirty people saw him there.”

Josie’s chest felt tight, imagining that eight-year-old boy losing his mother. Going for a weekend with Dad and never seeing her again. He’d been the same age Harris was now. The thought of something like that happening to Misty was so sickening that her mind erected an immediate barrier, rejecting the idea before it could fully unfold. Instead, she focused on the horror Alanna’s ex-husband must have felt when he found her.

“Any details on where in the house she was found?” asked Turner. “Which room? Did he tell you what she was wearing or if her clothes were torn?”

Josie knew he was trying to figure out if anything about Alanna Jarrett’s murder matched up with Sylvia’s, beyond the lipstick and strangulation. “We’ll get that information from the police files,” she reminded him.

“I want to know now.”