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“Another dead body?” David sounded alarmed. “Did something happen? Are you okay? Why didn’t you call—”
“Relax, dad.”
Laura mouthed the word, “Dad?” with her face scrunched up.
Cassie waved her off. “I took her to the morgue. Dr. Underwood explained Shapiro’s injuries to us and compared them to the original victims. Let’s just say it wasn’t quite the sister bonding time she was hoping for.”
Laura pouted. “I thought the cookies were going to be for us.”
“In that case,” David continued, “I can guarantee there will be no dead bodies. Just a bunch of letters. I’d like to see if you get anything off them. And I’d like her professional opinion about Shapiro’s mental state. Think she’d be up for it?”
Cassie pulled the phone away from her face. “How do you feel about reading a bunch of letters written by a serial killer?”
Laura tried to hide the way her eyes lit up, but Cassie saw right through it. “That could be of professional interest.”
Cassie placed the phone back against her ear. “We’re in.”
20
“David, this is my sister, Laura. Laura, this is David.”
David leaned forward and extended a hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Good things, I hope?” Laura replied.
“All good things. Cassie says you’re a psychologist. I was hoping to pick your brain.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Have a seat.”
David pulled out a chair for Laura and then one for Cassie. The latter grated across the floor like nails down a chalkboard. They were inside the same room Cassie had visited earlier, but now David had replaced the boxes of reports and evidence with the letters they’d found in Shapiro’s house. The room looked just as disorganized as before, but the dim lighting made it easy to gloss over the clutter.
“Have you made any progress?” Cassie gestured to the letters on the table.
“Yes, and no. There’s a lot to go through.” He turned back to Laura. “How much do you know about the case?”
Laura exchanged a look with Cassie. “Um.”
“You’re not in trouble.” He chuckled. “If Cassie trusts you, I trust you. Even if you weren’t her sister. But I’m assuming good genes run in the family.”
“I don’t know much, I guess. We saw Robert Shapiro’s body last night. He killed all those people twenty years ago, right?”
“That’s right.”
“And I know you’re lookin
g for the person who killed him.”
“Correct again.”
She looked down at the table. “And he wrote these letters to the victims?”
“Yes.” David sounded both excited and exhausted at the same time. “We’ve got two goals right now. One, we’re trying to locate all known family members of each victim. We have twelve sets of letters here, all addressed to former inmates at the Coastal State Prison. Now that we have the name of everyone he killed, we can locate all their living relatives.”
“Is that just to tell them what happened?”
“Not exactly. The family of the victims are our prime suspects. They would have enough motive to want Shapiro dead. Someone figured out he was the serial killer, considering he was murdered in the same manner as his victims, so it’s a logical first step.”
