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“I’m here with the music box,” he says to Sara. “But you’re with a customer, I can wait.”
He walks all the way inside and lets the door close behind him, glancing at my belly and then smiling at both of us.
“Or maybe you’d like to see it too,” he says to me.
There’s something shark-ish about his smile. Maybe it’s all the teeth. They’re very big and very white.
“Sure,” I say as I laboriously stand up. “But I was just leaving.”
I need time to process all I’ve learned about David and how it ties in with what we know of the latest victim, and all the others too.
He grins wider as he opens the box slowly. A gentle, soothing melody fills the room and the lid opening causes a tiny ballerina to rise from the box. She’s twirling on a bed of purple velvet that matches her tutu and its silky white skirt is swirling and flowing around her as she turns. The doll is meticulously painted, right down to the expression of serenity and quiet bliss on her tiny face. Now that would be perfect for the nursery. In theory. Though olden-time toys like this did always depress me for some reason. Maybe because the children they were made for are all either very old or dead now.
“That’s truly a work of art,” I say as I examine it closer.
“It belonged to my great-great grandmother,” he says. “It was made to order by one of the finest craftsmen in Vienna at the time, and it’s perfectly preserved. All it needed was a bit of oil on the mechanism.”
“In other words, it must be expensive,” I say and smile at him.
“What’s expensive?” he asks and glances at my belly again. “I’m willing to part with it for two-thousand if I know it will go to a good home.”
I scoff loudly, can’t help it. “That’s definitely more than I can spend right now. But I wish you the best of luck selling it. I’m sure whoever buys it will love it.”
As things stand, our house doesn’t even have a roof at the moment, and Mark still hasn’t gotten a final quote for the repairs. But they won’t be cheap. The last thing we need is an expensive antique music box, however pretty.
“Pity,” he says as I turn to Sara.
“Thank you for your time today,” I tell her. “I know it must be difficult, but things will work out, you’ll see.”
I don’t even know why I decided to end our conversation with a platitude. I don’t usually use them at all and she doesn’t seem like a person who needs to hear them. So I deserve the slight scoff and sarcastic grin I get back.
I leave them to it and take a very deep breath of the fresh air outside as soon as the antique store door closes behind me. My nausea is barely there anymore, the rest and the water did it, and the fresh air cinched it, like I knew it would.
I also feel like I have a good grasp on who David was now. He was a high-strung young man with a lust for life and a dark side that he was constantly running away from. On the surface he had everything—money, a beautiful fiancée, and the freedom to live his life as he wanted—but below the surface, he was always struggling to enjoy it all.
And that sounds like exactly the opposite of how the lady we spoke to yesterday described Ana. The only connection between them seems to be the river just like Mark said this morning.
I stop on the bridge and look down at the raging water. It’s flowing fast now, dark green and menacing, frothing and whooshing and drowning out almost all the other sounds of the world.
It’s only like this in the winter. All other months it is calm enough to paddle on and would be calm enough to swim in, if it were cleaner. Its draw is powerful, I have to admit that. Here, in the city center, the banks are high to prevent flooding. What draw does it have for the killer? Does the raging water call up his need to kill? But the way he kills is clean and methodical, never rageful.
Does he bring his victims to the river so his crime will be washed away, carried by the fast current?
But that makes no sense. He’d place them in the water if that’s what he wanted.
But the river is significant to both the victims and the killer. That much, at least, is clear to me.
“Are you all right?” a high-pitched, yet pleasant female voice asks me. “Is the baby all right?”
She’s standing next to me, her hand gently resting on my arm and her big blue eyes fixed on my huge belly. Her blonde hair is greasy and almost black near the roots because of it, and the large green parka she’s wearing is covered in stains of all colors and shapes. The sweatpants and sneakers she’s wearing are too.
“Yes, I’m fine,” I say and smile at her. “I was just thinking.”
“Not about ending it all?” she asks. “That’s what it looked like. But your baby deserves more.”
It’s an odd thing to say, but she’s clearly homeless and possibly a little mentally challenged. I can’t tell how old she is because the expression on her face is so childlike it belies the tiny crow's feet around her eyes.
“No, I wasn’t thinking anything of the sort,” I say. “But you should get somewhere warm too. It’s too cold and windy to be out today. Do you need some money?”
I’m already reaching into my purse for my wallet, but she grabs my forearm and shakes her head, smiling wide.
“No, no, I’m fine, I don’t need your money,” she says. “You just promise me that you will take care of the baby.”
Then she just smiles at me for a few more moments, releases my arm and walks away in the direction of the antique store.
What an odd encounter. But I’m sort of used to it to, especially since I got pregnant. Random people will come up to me to speak about the baby or my general well-being. Some even want to touch my belly, and that’s perhaps the most annoying thing about being pregnant.
