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“Is the Pegasus killer opening his pool to hetero relationships?” Matthew asked, those arresting liquid-gold eyes turning toward me.
“I don’t believe so.” Emma pulled the attention back to her. “I’m not sure if this is all that well-known, but Lionel was bi. I’m sure you’ll figure it out with your investigation, so might as well make things as easy as possible.”
Matthew and I both nodded. Lionel must have come out during the time I’d been gone. It was an important facet of this mystery to know and gave me some slight reassurance that the patterns behind the killings weren’t changing.
The longer things stayed the same, the better our chances got of figuring out who was behind this.
“Let’s go see the body,” Matthew said. We thanked the mayor for her help and offered some more condolences to her and Byron, the words falling on ears still ringing from shock.
Matthew, the sheriff, and I all walked in silence across crunching branches and rocky gravel, a carpet of red and orange leaves leading the way. Police and forensics were scattered around the park like an anthill that had been kicked by a stray step. We crossed a dance floor set on a flat part of the field that had a pair of break-dancing scarecrows flanking the vacant DJ booth.
The food trucks were all locked up and shut down, although the lingering smell of fried carnival food still hung around. We wound through the back of the trucks and onto a path that led to the pumpkin-carving area, a small stage set up next to the babbling creek. The tables were all draped in orange tablecloths, with pumpkins sitting in neat rows on each one. Carving utensils glinted in the sun, seeming more and more sinister as we approached the snaking flow of blood that pooled around a smashed pumpkin, the pulpy innards stained a crimson red as the sun worked to dry the mess.
We turned the corner, around the back of the stage, and I came upon my first Pegasus killer scene in person.
My stomach twisted, my mouth drying to ash. I fisted my hands, nails digging into my palms, just to avoid passing out, trying to redirect the blood flow back to my brain, away from my gut.
Fuck me sideways and call me Sally.
4
MATTHEW HALE
This had to be one of the most vicious fucking crime scenes I had ever seen. Lionel’s face looked like a rotting pumpkin left out in bloody rain, caved in from hits that must have come from a professional boxer or a full-on semitruck. His body rested up against the back of the stage, where the wings of blood were drawn behind him. Like a finger-paint project, except the stakes were much higher than your preschool teacher could have ever fathomed.
No horn this time. Interesting.
He had on all his clothes and didn’t look to have died from anything except the head trauma. His wrist was slit but much too neatly for it to have happened while he was alive. The Pegasus killer must have done it postmortem so they could get the ink they needed for their morbid masterpiece.
Jason said something next to me—sounded like he was calling someone “Sally.” I felt a sudden urge to put my hands over his face and shield him from this nightmare fuel. Then I remembered we were both grown-ass men, and I no longer served that protector role for Jason. That had been years ago.
Shit changed. We’d changed.
“Has forensics searched the area for prints or DNA?” Jason asked the sheriff.
She shook her head, the point of her bird nose nearly taking out an eye. “They’re walking over now.”
“I doubt they’ll find anything that belongs to our killer,” I said. “Although…”
That perked both of them up. Jason looked at me with those puppy dog eyes of his. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
I nodded. Even in the academy, the two of us would usually land on the same thought without much work involved. It’s what made us the perfect pair, and what ended up destroying us as well. “This is messy,” I said, crouching down to get a closer look. “Messier than any of the other murders.”
“Exactly,” Jason said, crouching next to me. “Think the killer is starting to lose control?”
“Maybe.” I chewed on the inside of my cheek. Bruises on Lionel’s knuckles told me that he tried fighting back. “How did no one hear the struggle? We aren’t that far from the main part of the festival.”
“The music was playing earlier,” the sheriff answered. “You could barely hear your own thoughts.”
“Do we know if Lionel came to the festival alone?” Jason asked as he stood back up, blocking some of the setting sun from my face. The sheriff answered with another shake of her head. I placed my sunglasses back on and looked around. The back of the stage pressed up against a wooded area of the park, and beyond that, the terrain became more rugged as it sloped up into a steep hill. The blood and signs of struggle were contained to this one area, which meant Lionel was likely here already or… was he meeting someone? Did the Pegasus killer lure Lionel to a semi-private area so they could strike?
