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She took a bite of her mushroom and olive pizza but found it didn’t solve any of her problems.
28
As soon as Cassie and Laura walked through the door and into David’s chilly meeting room, he threw his arms out wide and shouted, “Congratulations!”
Cassie hesitated before letting the door shut behind them. “For what?”
“Shapiro’s case has officially been closed. Well, unofficially officially. There’s still a lot of paperwork and wrapping up of loose ends, but we have everything we need, including his last victims.”
Cassie was glad, but her heart wasn’t in it. “That’s great.”
“Where’s the enthusiasm? We just solved a twenty-plus-year-old cold case on a serial killer.”
“Big lunch.” Cassie caught the way Laura glanced at her and hoped David didn’t notice. “I don’t have room for enthusiasm.”
“What about you, Laura? Will you be excited with me? It’s a damn good day.”
“I could make room for some enthusiasm, yeah.” Laura held up her hand and David high-fived it. “Not to rain on our own parade here, but explain to me again how we’re sure there are no more missing victims?”
David made a face. “You guys are a load of fun today. To be honest, we don’t know that for sure. Paulson is still searching our records for any bodies that may have turned up with similar injuries that might not have been previously connected to the cold case, but he hasn’t found anything yet. We’re going to do another thorough search of Shapiro’s house and related properties, but I doubt we’ll find anything.”
“Why’s that?” Laura asked.
David glanced at Cassie, and now she was hoping Laura didn’t catch the exchange between them. “You know, just a hunch. I assume he’d keep all his tokens—the letters—together in one place, but there’s no way to tell for sure unless we find more or come up with another body. For now, however, this case has been laid to rest.”
“Good riddance,” Laura said.
David clapped his hands together. “Which means we can finally focus on the problem at hand. Solving Shapiro’s murder.”
“Do we have to?” Cassie was joking—mostly. Going home and taking a nap sounded better by the second. “He was a terrible person.”
“According to the law, yes, we have to,” David responded.
“Fine.”
David gestured to the table in front of them, which had once again been transformed. “Please meet Shapiro’s twelve victims. They’re in no particular order. I’ve collated all the information we have on every single one of them, including a photograph, their records, and other miscellaneous information.”
“Including family members?” Cassie asked.
“Especially family members.”
Cassie and Laura circled the table until they stood next to David. Laura leaned in closer. “How sure are we that the most likely person to have killed Shapiro is a family member of one of his victims?”
“Not sure at all.” David shrugged after Laura shot him a confused look. “Right now, a family member is our best first guess. They have proper motivation, so now it’s just about finding those who would have had knowledge, skill, and opportunity.”
“So, we start here. And if this doesn’t work out?”
“We keep looking.” David sighed. “I hope it doesn’t come to that because I hate starting back at square one, but we have some options. Maybe he tried to take an apprentice under his wing and that person got pissed. Or he took a new lover who found out about his past and killed him. Could be an amateur sleuth stumbled upon the case, and instead of making a podcast out of it, they took matters into their own hands. Perhaps—”
Laura held up her hands. “I get it. I get it. There are lots of possibilities. Let’s just start with this one.”
David smiled over at Cassie. “She really is a quick learner.”
Cassie was only half paying attention to the banter. Either her eyes were going bad, or her Spidey senses were tingling. She took a step closer to the table and leaned over the pictures of the twelve victims but couldn’t even read the name of the first because it looked like someone had blurred it out. She tried blinking her eyes to clear it, but nothing worked. And when she looked at the victim’s face, it looked as though someone had scratched it away with the tip of a knife.
As Cassie made her way down the line, she found most of the victims appeared this way. So against her better judgement, she gathered those files together and set them to the side before her vision cleared and she couldn’t remember which had appeared normal and which had been blurred out.
“What are you doing?” Laura asked.
