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“Kara! Ryan!” Garner called. “Come see this!”
“You go,” Ryan said. “I’ll stay here and make sure no one messes this up before it can be documented.”
I nodded, then headed through the living room and down the hall toward Garner’s voice. As soon as I entered the room, I knew why he was so excited. “Oh, wow.”
It was a workroom where Greg had obviously done a great deal of the final work on the comic. Framed covers of the series were arrayed on walls that had been painted in chaotic patterns—wild colors that clashed with the black-framed pictures and presented a sharp contrast to the muted tones of the rest of the house. Interspersed among the covers were photographs of varying sizes, thumbtacked or taped to the wall, and each photograph had several drawings surrounding it, tacked up in similar haphazard fashion.
“Oh, wow,” I repeated, stepping into the room, looking more closely at the drawings that surrounded the photographs. Some were just pencil sketches, others fully inked and colored. I shifted my attention to the photographs. “It’s more victims. Holy shit. They’re all here. All the victims.”
“Plus a bunch of others,” Harris said, expression dark. “We have our link now.” He jerked his head toward the door. “So, our guy is dead? Did a victim fight back and do him in?”
“No, he’s not the Symbol Man,” I said absently, eyes still traveling over the pictures. “But the Symbol Man sure as hell knew him or worked closely with him.” I tapped my chin. “Did Greg do all of the work on the comic himself? If not, we need to get a list of everyone else who worked with him. Check them all out.”
Garner shook his head. “It looks like he did all of the work by himself.” He let out a low whistle. “Amazing that he turned out such an impressive product on his own.” He glanced up at me. “Comics usually have teams of people who work on them. Different people do the concept, script, penciling, inking, coloring, lettering, and so forth.” He touched one of the framed covers. “He was talented, that’s for sure.”
I stepped closer to the wall of pictures. “All these people. He used them as models.”
“Maybe he wasn’t very good at drawing people out of his imagination,” Garner offered. “Lots of artists use references. In fact, there are websites devoted to pictures that can be used as references for comic artists.”
My mouth twitched. “I take it you like comics.”
Garner grinned shamelessly. “Love ’em.”
I couldn’t help but smile. And people said I was weird. Garner looked far more like a jock than a comic nerd, with his tanned face and surfer-blond hair. “Okay, so he took pictures of these people so he could use them as models? Why these people?”
“He probably didn’t want to pay for regular models,” Garner said. He tapped a latex-gloved finger on the wall. “All these folks are homeless or drug addicts or prostitutes. He could probably buy a couple of hours of their time for about ten bucks or a hot meal.”
“But there are a lot of pictures here. More than the victims that we already have.” I narrowed my eyes. “Which means that some of these people are possibly still alive,” I said. “We need to find them.”
“That’s going to be tough,” Harris said, tucking his thumbs behind his belt as the buttons on his shirt strained dangerously. “But if we can find even one of them, we’ll finally have a strong lead.”
I clenched and unclenched my hands. “We’re close. I can taste it.”
Garner nodded at me, but Harris was silent, his gaze traveling slowly over the display on the wall. “Why don’t you think that this artist is the killer?” he asked. “All the links are here. It seems possible that his death was a retaliation, either by someone he knew or a potential victim.”
I shook my head. “The way that Greg was killed and the way the blood was displayed around him doesn’t indicate a revenge or self-defense death.” Harris should know that. Was he just brainstorming again? Or was he baiting me? Testing me? It was so hard to tell with him. “The pattern is too accurate,” I added, more to myself than to him.
“Accurate?” The beady gaze fell on me.
“Yes,” I replied. I’d worry later about being thought a nutcase. Catching this guy was the important thing now. “Those aren’t random scribbles around the body. It’s just not possible for someone who doesn’t have intimate knowledge of the arcane to be able to set a scene like that. The odds of a potential victim being knowledgeable about that sort of thing are pretty extreme.” I ran a hand through my hair. “No, I think that Greg was starting to figure it out, so he was taken care of.”
“So it’s likely that he was involved.” Harris frowned as he scanned the wall of photographs and drawings. “Perhaps there were two killers, and the other one decided to get rid of Greg before he squealed.” Harris looked back at me, his arms folded across his chest.
I took a deep breath, controlling my annoyance. It was possible. As much as I’d liked Greg, that didn’t mean he hadn’t completely snowed me. “Yeah, it’s definitely possible,” I admitted reluctantly. And Tessa had said that there were two. I opened my mouth to say more, then stopped. I’d told Greg that I was a summoner. There weren’t too many people who knew that. My aunt, Ryan, and Greg. And it wasn’t the kind of thing you could determine just by looking at someone. Well, not for humans, at least. There were some demons that could sense a person’s ability to summon.
So, either Greg told someone that I was a summoner, or I’ve had a demon sniffing around me without my knowledge. The latter was fairly unlikely, though not impossible. Any creature with enough skill in the arcane could remain undetected.
“Detective Gillian, are you all right?”
I realized that I was staring off into space. I jerked my attention back to Harris. “Yeah, sorry, just had a thought.”
“Care to share it?”
I flexed my fingers, excitement growing. “He’s screwed up. It’s the first time he’s screwed up.”
Harris unfolded his arms. “How?”
“Killing Greg. Now we know that the Symbol Man is connected to Greg somehow. He must have felt that he had to eliminate Greg. Maybe Greg was going to rat on him or something, I don’t know.” Another thought struck me, but this revelation was not quite as pleasant. “He screwed up—and it doesn’t matter to him.”
