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“I’ll fill you in later. Take a screen shot of the button. Good as you can get, and text it.”
Gif came through in less time than it took for them to wait out a traffic light. It wasn’t a clear or well-focused picture, but it was good enough.
Drex said, “Brass, round, with an embossed anchor.”
Locke took his phone back so he could see for himself. “Well. I’ll be damned.”
Menundez grinned at Drex in the rearview mirror. “We have him.”
“Not yet,” Drex said. “We know it’s him, but we still have to catch him.”
Inexplicably, he felt that cheer was premature. Why? Him and his damned whys. He hated them, but he trusted them. There was always a reason for them.
He laid his head back against the seat of the car, closed his eyes, and looked for a distortion in this development. What didn’t feel right? What was clouding this cause for celebration?
What did he know about Jasper? What did he surmise? How did Jasper fit the profile?
With the exactitude of a die-cast puzzle piece.
Drex’s thoughts went back to the conversation he’d had with Talia when he’d described to her the common characteristics of serial killers.
No conscience. Overblown egos. They’re smug. They’re also collectors.
They take souvenirs.
He’d been absolutely certain that Jasper collected something from his victims, and that the collection would be his secret but most sacred possession. He’d emphasized to Talia that he would have a perverse affection for his souvenirs, that he would fondle the items, possibly derive sexual pleasure from them. He would treat those buttons like a cherished lover. He would never—
The realization slammed into Drex as though Jasper had sucker punched him as he had Gif.
Jasper would never, ever, under any circumstances, have left his collection in someone else’s hands, not in the hands of a tailor.
“Oh, fuck, oh, fuck!” Drex sat up straight, banged the ceiling of the car with his fist, and yelled, “And I made sure he knew where I would be.”
Talia had told Drex she would never come back to the house. At the time, she had meant it, but as Mike turned onto the street, she realized the impracticality of that statement. The house represented Jasper to her, and, therefore, she would never spend another night under this roof.
But there were things totally unrelated to him, her parents’ effects, photo albums that chronicled her life with them and special friends, these things she would want to keep. Removing them was a project she didn’t look forward to.
Now, however, she was eager to get inside.
Mike pulled into the driveway so sharply, one of the tires bumped over the curb. “Where are the cops guarding the place?” he asked.
“Locke recalled them this morning when Drex and I went peaceably to the police station. And Jasper is considered either a corpse or a fugitive. No one expects him to return.”
She popped the door handle, got out, and headed for the front door.
“Hold up.” Mike squeezed himself out from behind the steering wheel. “If you open the door, it’ll move the envelope. I need to take a picture of it as it was found.”
“Without my remote, I can’t open the garage. We’ll have to go in through the back porch.”
The latch on the screen door that Drex had broken was dangling loose, but the door leading into the kitchen was locked. Talia used her key. The alarm beeped when she pushed open the door.
Mike remarked that at least Rudkowski had had the courtesy to set the alarm when he left after searching the house.
“Locke, actually,” Talia said. “He asked me for the code last night and had one of the guarding officers set it.”
They quickly cut through the kitchen and dining room, into the wide foyer. A heap of mail lay on the floor just inside the door beneath the mail slot. “That has to be it on top,” Talia said.
It was a standard white envelope without a letterh
